Vigilante

“You believe him?” Hitch asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think this guy bluffs.”

We called Chase Beal, the county DA, and ran it past him. Chase set up a meeting for nine o’clock the next morning.

I went home. Alexa was cooking dinner. I told her what happened. She could see how bummed I was and gave me a long, tender embrace.

Later that evening we made love.

Afterwards we lay in each other’s arms.

I didn’t sleep worth a damn all night. I already knew who Nix was going to give us.

CHAPTER 52

A friend of mine in retail once told me that a job is 90 percent things you don’t want to do, for 10 percent that you do. I remember thinking at the time those were pretty lousy percentages.

Police work can be ugly, emotionally draining, and yes, you do see the worst in the human condition. You meet and have to deal with serious predators like Nix Nash and Lee Bob Batiste. You see drive-by killers whose hate burns with the strong smell of sulfur. In amongst this human wreckage, you encounter tragic cases like the Persian rug and Fuzzy-so lost and passed over, their world is defined by their delusions.

Even with all this witnessed devastation, I’ve always felt the job was about much more. I hope this doesn’t sound corny, but I believe it’s about getting answers for the lost and dispossessed, about finding justice for victims and solutions for problems so ugly that you know in the end you have to make a difference. It’s what keeps most cops going. But occasionally, you get a solution where you’re the one feeling lost.

We arrived at the MDC at nine the next morning. Chase Beal didn’t make it, but he assigned the duty to ADA Ferguson St. Claire, a big ex-linebacker who once played for UCLA and only missed the pros by three-tenths of a second in the forty. St. Claire had graduated law school and was one of the DA’s brightest minds. Still huge and the color of polished mahogany, he was one of those guys who never smiled but always seemed to be slightly bemused. It was in his attitude, not his expression.

We filed into I-room four and met Nixon Nash. He was strangely subdued this morning. He had an attorney named Timothy Rutland with him, but it was soon obvious that Rutland was just an ornament and that Nash wanted to handle the negotiation himself. Rutland settled into a seat beside his client, who sat on a stool chained to the wall. It seemed an unnecessary precaution, because I had already broken Nash’s jaw and Fergie could have drop-kicked him over the dome in City Hall.

After the introductions, Fergie said, “Let’s hear what you’re trading.”

“I can give you Hannah Trumbull’s murderer,” Nash said.

I had already prepped Fergie and he had Hannah’s case file in his briefcase.

“Then do it,” he said.

“I want a few reductions in charges.”

“Show us your wares,” Ferguson said.

“Here’s what I’m looking for,” Nash continued. “The double kidnapping needs to get kicked down to illegal restraint, the conspiracy to commit murder to involuntary manslaughter.”

Ferguson had been writing in a notebook, but he stopped in the middle of this and looked up.

“You must be getting some pretty good drugs in here,” he said.

“I’ll give you the shooter now, just as a preamble, so you’ll know how tasty this is. You will never be able to charge him without my witness. I think once you hear who the doer is you’re going to change your mind on the disposition of charges.”

Ferguson began tapping his pen on his notebook but finally nodded.

“Hannah Trumbull was shot and killed at her apartment in December of ’06 by Lester Madrid, who was then a current member of SIS.”

It was exactly what I thought Nash was going to say. This was complicated for me, because only two days ago Lester Madrid had saved Marcia Breen’s life and mine.

“What was the motive?” Ferguson asked.

“Adulterous, love triangle,” Nash replied. If his jaw hadn’t been wired shut, he would have been smiling. “Lester was having an affair with Hannah Trumbull,” he continued. “His wife suspected it, but couldn’t prove it. She confronted Hannah at the hospital. They had words. After that, Hannah tried to convince Sergeant Madrid that since his wife already suspected the affair, he should just leave her. If he didn’t, Hannah threatened to go to Stephanie herself. It’s not healthy to threaten guys like Sergeant Madrid, so it didn’t end well for poor Hannah.”

“And you’ve got a witness to all this?” Fergie asked.

“Yep. A retired cop. He even dated Hannah once. She confided all this to him, looking for his help.”

“That’s hearsay,” Fergie said. “You better do better than that.”

“He saw Lester pull up in front of her house. She’d called him and asked him to look out for her. He was right outside her house, looking in the windows, when Lester dropped her. He saw Lester carry her out and put her in her car in the garage.”

“And all these years later, he’s finally developed a conscience?” I asked.

“He’s in the final stages of bone and liver cancer,” Nash said. “So this deal has a tight clock on it. He won’t be around to testify or depose a month from now. I guess he doesn’t want to try getting past Saint Peter with that much dirt on his shoes.”

“I’ll kick it down to first-degree murder with no death penalty,” Fergie told Nash.

“Never happen.”

“Then I guess you need to go back to your cell now,” Fergie said. Nash’s attorney called the guards and they led him out.

“Illegal restraint and involuntary manslaughter, that’s gonna be less than ten years. How does this guy think he rates that?” Fergie groused.

“He doesn’t,” I said. “But the Trumbull murder is our case. We’d sure like to close it. And then there’s a big murder case with a miscarriage of justice in Atlanta. We might be able to sign Nash up for a piece of that and get them to add a few years, maybe get him up over twenty.”

“Instead of focusing on the charge, how about cutting a deal on the length of sentence?” Hitch suggested helpfully.

The rest of the day was spent negotiating with Nash and his attorney. The sentence the DA signed off on was for twenty years on two counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

Hitch and I stopped for a beer after work. We sat in a booth, drinking silently. It was a victory that felt like a loss.

CHAPTER 53

V-TV was immediately yanked off the air. A cheer went up in squad rooms all across America. The next week was spent gathering evidence and signing off on all our deals.

We got in touch with the Atlanta PD and told them about Joffa Hill aka Fuzzy’s potential miscarriage of justice.

Our evidence techs collected beer bottles and coffee cups from the kitchen of Lee Bob’s Airstream trailer. We sent them to Atlanta with a request that they scan the overcoat that Fuzzy had been wearing for a DNA match. It came back that some of Lee Bob’s DNA was on the sleeve of that coat, which tied him to the murders in Piedmont Park. The Atlanta PD was so angry about the way the case had gone down with Nix Nash and V- TV, they were actually eager to reopen the investigation. There was a pretty good chance they would be able to tie Nix Nash to Lee Bob in Atlanta. If they could, Nash would catch a piece of their prosecution, adding more years to the sentence he had agreed to here in L.A.