Vigilante

CHAPTER 31

“What on earth are you wearing?” Jeb asked sharply as Hitch slipped into the captain’s office, where four of us were already waiting. He was dressed in a white chef’s smock with a Spago logo on the breast pocket.

“Sorry, skipper. I was at a cooking class and Dina Lohan accidentally spilled some red wine on my shirt. This was all I could borrow.” He smiled an apology and dropped into a chair next to the door.

Alexa and DC Bud Hawkins were already seated. Jeb was standing near his desk and I was on the sofa across the room.

“Okay, now that we’ve all finally arrived, let’s hear what you’ve got,” Deputy Chief Hawkins demanded, pinning me with a cold look. He’d delayed dinner plans to be here and was making no attempt to hide his displeasure. Hawkins was Chief of Operations and Alexa’s immediate supervisor.

I ran them through my interview with Linda Baxter. When I got to the part where Baxter told me that Hannah Trumbull had been dating Sgt. Lester Madrid in 2006, I felt most of the air go out of the room.

“You can’t be serious,” Hawkins said, appalled.

“While I was waiting for this meeting, I went on the computer and found out Lester and Stephanie got married in 1998,” I said. “So if he was dating Hannah Trumbull in ’06, that means Sergeant Madrid was having an extramarital affair with Hannah just before she was murdered.”

Everyone just sat there trying to process that.

Bud Hawkins finally asked, “How does Nix Nash keep getting so fucking lucky? This is worse than Atlanta. Captain Madrid is on the short list of suspects for Lita Mendez’s murder and now we find out Nash is also featuring the Hannah Trumbull murder from ’06. A case that happens to involve Captain Madrid’s husband, Lester.”

“What are the odds that these two completely unrelated murders could both involve the Madrids?” Alexa said.

“Astronomical,” Jeb replied. “And how the hell can they both just happen to randomly pop up on that damn TV show? What’s going on with that?”

Morale in the room was plummeting.

“Well, it might not be so far-fetched if you look at the situation back to front instead of front to back,” Hitch said quietly from his seat by the door.

“What the hell are you babbling about?” Hawkins snapped. He had very little patience to begin with and was not displaying what little he had.

“This may seem a little off the point, but when you plot a movie you often work from the resolution backward to the inciting event,” Hitch said. “That way you’re able to keep the story tight. If Nix Nash just happened to pick these two cases randomly, then yeah, the odds are astronomical that they’d both involve the Madrids. But let’s say that’s not how it happened. Suppose Nash knew before he started that Lester and Stephanie touched both situations and he picked those two cases precisely for that reason.”

“I see what Hitch is getting at,” I said. “Nash doesn’t take chances. He knew he was moving to Los Angeles, so working backward, like Hitch says, this isn’t quite so far-fetched. Let’s say Nash researched the whole LAPD in advance of his arriving here. He has his team of researchers digging into the thousands of open homicides. Then after Lita was murdered, he throws all that info on the table and starts looking for a connection. He has his staff investigate Lita’s life. It wouldn’t take him long to come up with Captain Stephanie Madrid and the long-running battle she’d had with Lita. There’s no direct evidence against the captain, but Nash would certainly know she’d make our suspect list because of their numerous public disputes.”

“So how does that get us to Hannah Trumbull?” Hawkins asked.

“It’s like the six degrees of separation. He starts digging around in Captain Madrid’s life and up pops her husband, Lester, who’s a real gold mine. The guy is ex-SIS, just the kind of rogue cop Nash loves to feature on that show. Nash researches him, talks to some sources inside our department, and finds out there’s a rumor that Lester had been cheating on his wife with Hannah, who also just happens to be an open murder case from ’06. It’s just what he’s looking for. Lester doesn’t have to be guilty. He just has to look guilty. After all, this isn’t about justice; it’s about Nielsen ratings.”

They all sat there looking doubtful.

“I’m not buying this,” Deputy Chief Hawkins said. “It’s too far out there.”

“Out of the thousands of uncleared murders all he had to do was tie one of them loosely to the Madrids,” I said. “I think Hitch may be right. This guy is plotting his shows in advance by working backward, not forward.”

“It does make some kind of crazy sense,” Alexa said thoughtfully, although I think she was just trying to save us from Deputy Chief Hawkins, who looked like he was about to start giving birth to a chair.

“All we need to do is clear the Trumbull murder fast,” Hitch said. “If Lester is innocent of that murder, it destroys Nash’s conspiracy theory.”

“And what if Lester was cheating on his wife and Stephanie found out?” Hawkins said. “What if Stephanie Madrid is the woman who threatened Hannah Trumbull in the hospital ER and then, two nights later, killed her for sleeping with her husband?”

“We better pray that’s not what happened,” Jeb said.

When the meeting broke up, nobody was happy. We were standing in the squad room outside Jeb’s office and he took a parting shot at Hitch just because he was handy.

“Stop going to cooking classes while you’re on duty, Hitchens.”

“I was off duty, Skipper.”

“I don’t care. You look like … like … like a fucking cook.”

“Yes, sir,” Hitch said softly. “Sometimes I am. But I’ll take that under advisement.”

As we walked to our cubicle, Alexa caught my eye and pointed toward the elevators, then went up to her office, leaving me with Hitch.

When we were alone, Hitch said, “While we were rolling that out, it sounded pretty damn weak even to me. It’s very dangerous to pursue an offbeat idea like that if we can’t prove it.”

“A dangerous idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it,” I said.

“I really hate this,” Hitch said. “Our theory sucks.”

“There are no coincidences in police work,” I said, trying to reassure him. “I agree that there is something more than we know about going on here. We’re obviously missing a big piece. However he’s doing it, Nash has a great source that’s giving him an edge. We just have to keep working it until it all makes sense.”

It was almost midnight now and the administration floor was deserted. Alexa was waiting for me in her new tenth-floor office. It was larger than her old digs at the Glass House, where she had no view. This new office had wide double windows that faced City Hall. As soon as I entered, she shut the door.

“Do you really believe any of that?” she said. “Working backward hardly explains this coincidence.”

“Caleb Cole told us everything would tie in and look what just happened.”

“And you think it’s not random, the way he picks the cases?”

“I think the guy is writing a script like Hitch said. Then he’s shooting it. None of this is coincidence.”

“It still doesn’t explain how he’s doing it,” she persisted.

“I know, and if we don’t find out fast, we’re all going to be looking for new professions.”