The Trials of Nikki Hill (8 page)

“Don’t be greedy. We’ll split the difference. You flying home tonight?”

Doyle looked at the saleswoman, who was shifting from one foot to the other impatiently. “Tomorrow morning, probably.”

“Have dinner with me at Morton’s.”

“I’m a little tied up. Catch you next trip.”

“You’re not upset, are you, Jimmy?”

“Not at all,” Doyle lied. “The situation changes, you know where to reach me.”

He’d barely replaced the phone when the saleswoman was handing him a slip to sign. “Am I keeping you from something?” he wondered.

“Since you asked, yes.”

“What?”

“I’m meeting a friend for drinks.”

“Male friend or female?”

“Female.”

“She as bitchy as you?”

She eyed him appraisingly. “At least,” she said.

“What’s your name?” he asked. When she hesitated, he said, “You’ve got mine on the card.”

“Zorina,” she said.

“Zorina what?”

“Just Zorina. You know. Like Madonna.”

“You’re not a dyke, are you?”

“A dyke?” She shook her head in mock disbelief at his naïveté. “You old guys are too much. You mean do I go down on women? Sometimes.”

“But not exclusively?”

“No. Not exclusively.”

“Good. Then why don’t you and your friend have dinner with me tonight? At one of those hot new places where we can all smoke illegal Cuban cigars with our coffee.”

“I don’t eat red meat,” she cautioned.

“Tell me something I can’t guess,” he said.

T
EN

W
hen Nikki returned home that night, Bird was waiting. It had been an exhilarating day, from Nikki’s promotion to Jamal Deschamps’s interrogation to the discovery of Madeleine Gray’s secret cash boxes. All the Bouvier cared about was that it had been a long time since breakfast.

He yipped in delight at the sight of her, his nubby tail twitching like a pendulum as she bent to embrace him. “Sorry I’m late, baby,” she said. “My hours are gonna get a little goofy from here on, but I won’t forget to take care of my big boy.”

When she stood up, she saw that he’d dragged his cedar-filled mattress into the otherwise bare living room. He marched to the lumpy, loud plaid object and plopped down on it proudly.

“Don’t get too cozy in here,” she told him. “Sooner or later I’m going to make it to the Furniture Mart. Then you and your bed get moved to the spare room at the back.”

Bird gave her a skeptical look that suggested hell would freeze over before she furnished the room. Then he growled that he was more than ready for dinner.

“Probably want a walk, too?” she asked.

He ate while she switched into her jogging gear. She selected a hot-pink outfit because it reflected automobile headlights. It almost glowed in the dark. By the time she’d double-knotted her shoes, snapped on her fanny pack, complete with Walkman, and downed a glass of water, Bird had finished his meal and was eagerly pacing the floor.

They’d gone about ten blocks when she heard her name on the Walkman. She’d been listening to one of the all-news stations, fully expecting more of the same Gray murder bulletins that had been broadcast during her drive home. A statement from the LAPD that an unnamed suspect was in custody, a sound bite from Arthur Lydon about what a caring boss Maddie had been, and several short eulogies from Hollywood celebrities who considered themselves to be “among her closest friends.”

What the anchorman was saying now, however, was that “the district attorney’s office has announced the appointment of deputy Nicolette Hill as Joseph Walden’s special assistant. The career prosecutor’s main assignment is to act as liaison between the district attorney and the LAPD Major Crimes unit working on the Madeleine Gray murder.”

“So
that’s
my main assignment, huh?” Nikki said. “Maybe if Joe Walden had let me know I might have been able to give that
Times
reporter at least one definite answer.”

The big dog slowed his gait to look back at her.

“Don’t mind me, Bird,” she said. “Just talking to myself, like all the other crazies.”

Two messages were waiting on her answering machine when she returned.

The first was from Loreen Battles. “Well, girl, you keeping secrets from me?” Though her best friend’s raspy smoker’s voice was no less harsh than a weed-whacker scraping the sidewalk, Nikki always found it extremely comforting. “Do I have to get my information about your new job from Channel Five?” Click. End of message.

The other call had been even more abrupt. A hang-up. No name. No comment. Nikki wondered if it might have been her father, though whatever gave her that idea she couldn’t say. They hadn’t spoken in over two years.

Loreen was at the beauty salon she owned and operated. Judging by the amount of noise coming through the phone, the place was jumping. It usually was until nine or ten at night. “Oh, it’s you,” Loreen said, pretending disinterest, “my suddenly famous friend who knew me when.”

“I’ve been wanting to call you all day to tell you about the new job and everything. But I’ve really been on the run.”

“I know,” Loreen said. “I been watching the TV. Justice in L.A. has a new name. Nicolette Hill.” Nikki laughed. “I’m bad, huh?” “You’re badder than bad,” Loreen said. “Pam Grier’s got nothing on you.”

Nikki carried the phone into the kitchen. While she searched the shelves for something that might pass for dinner, she filled her friend in on some of the day’s highlights.

“What’s the scoop on Maddie?” Loreen asked.

“Much as I love you, girlfriend, I can’t get into that,” Nikki said.

“Oh, Lord, the sister’s goin’ Hollywood on me.”

“I knew you’d understand,” Nikki said.

“Hell I do,” Loreen said, only half joking. “You want to get some food tonight?”

Nikki peered into her nearly empty fridge. One solitary frozen fish dinner. “I’d love to,” she said. “But I’ve got notes to type and I need some sleep. Been up since four.” “Fess up. You headin’ out to Spago, right, with your new fast friends?”

“Hell, yeah. Then we might just jet off to Mah-zet-lan.”

“I knew it. She’s goin’ Hollywood. Probably won’t be able to make it to Juanita’s tomorrow night, either.”

Every month Nikki and the other women who constituted the Inglewood Money Mavens investment club met at one or another’s home for drinks, dinner, gossip, and whatever news of their stocks and bonds the remaining time allowed. Nikki usually enjoyed the gatherings, but if Loreen didn’t quite understand why she couldn’t tell all about Madeleine Gray’s murder, what would the rest of the Money Mavens think? That she was one stuck-up bitch.

Of course, they’d think that if she didn’t go, too.

“I’ll be there,” Nikki said.

“Probably won’t be as glam as a secret agent like yourself is used to.”

“Girl, the day I outglam Juanita is the day fish stop swimming.” Juanita Janes was a very theatrical actress, formerly of Broadway but for the last seven years a member of the cast of a popular soap opera,
The Power and the Passion.

“Juanita’s something all right,” Loreen said. “Takes a special kind of woman to make a turban look like anything ’cept the result of a bad head wound.”

“By the way, my title is Special Assistant,” Nikki said, feigning annoyance, “not Secret Agent.”

“ ’Scuse me,” Loreen said, chuckling. “All your secrecy musta confused me.”

E
LEVEN

T
he morning was overcast and gloomy, a fitting backdrop for Nikki’s arrival at the four-story building on Mission Road in downtown Los Angeles where the county autopsies were performed. A traffic snarl on the freeway had made her at least ten minutes late. That was only part of the reason for her anxiety, however. It was her first visit to the dreary facility.

She walked down a long hall, purposely keeping her eyes above the level of an incoming body bag. A confusion of people in a variety of uniforms moved swiftly around her. Nikki thought that if she worked there she’d keep on the run, too, to avoid having to think about the constant presence of death. By standing in his way, she got an orderly pushing an empty gurney to pause long enough to direct her to the elevators.

There, she waited beside a man smoking a cigar, its fumes adding to her general malaise. She was relieved when he took a car going up, but, descending alone to the second basement level, she longed for even his smokestack company.

She emerged from the elevator to face a sign on the wall reading “Autopsy Room.” Her nostrils were assailed by a strange and powerful odor. Not a stench exactly. Something strong and...what? Malignant? She tried to find some category for it. A combination of Mr. Clean and collard greens? A mix of medicine and funk? It confused her senses and increased her apprehension. She remembered something Blackie had once told her about the way cops would soak their handkerchiefs in cologne before dropping in at the morgue. Good advice that came to mind too late.

She paused, poked in her handbag for perfume, breath spray, anything. Coming up empty, she gritted her teeth and prepared for the next sensory assault—the visual one. She told herself that if a wimp like Ray Wise could stand the sight of a body reduced to dead meat, blood, bone, and tripe, so could she. She made a silent prayer that her sensitive stomach would not betray her, clasped her leather briefcase close to her chest, and ventured forth. The words of the late, great King Pleasure never seemed more appropriate: “So afraid of where I’m going, so in love with where I’ve been.”

A right turn introduced her to an amazing sight: a logjam of corpses on gurneys. She shivered. The chill she was feeling had more to do with emotion than air-conditioning. Head held high, she made her way through the corpses. Although she kept her eyes straight forward, her peripheral view took in the bodies. Male. Female. Fat. Thin. Black. White. Brown. Yellow. Stabbed. Shot. Beaten and bruised. Blood draining off in troughs along the sides of the gurneys.

She realized she was holding her breath. She paused, eyes on the ceiling, then continued on to the operating room.

The scene before her was worse than any nightmare she could have imagined. Surgeons in powder blue casually making “Y” incisions on corpses. Faces being pulled back. The top of one head being cut off, like opening a can of tuna. Brains being scooped out for analysis. Organs being removed, bagged, weighed, and labeled.

One of the masked men approached a body with an instrument resembling a bolt cutter. Nikki stood rooted to the floor, unable to look away as, with a crack as loud as a gunshot, he broke and lifted the breastplate of some hapless corpse.

Onward she moved, faster now. Passing organs being weighed. Blood being measured by a ladle. A brain being set aside for dissecting.

Nikki stopped at a table where a fleshy black woman was humming peacefully through her powder-blue mask while her latex-gloved fingers sewed up a long, gray male corpse with an instrument that looked like a thick crochet needle. “Excuse me,” Nikki said to her.

The woman looked up from her work and nodded. “Minute,” she said. She finished a stitch, and then, instead of merely setting the needle aside, she stuck it into the dead body’s stomach as if it were a pincushion.

She yanked down her mask and said, “Now. How can I help you, sister?”

“The autopsy of Madeleine Gray?”

The woman gestured with a gloved hand. “Down that hall, the first door on your left. Dragon Lady’s there, herself, so make sure you get suited up,” she added, offering Nikki a wink as she adjusted her mask and withdrew her needle.

In the hall the prosecutor was struck by a wave of dizziess. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
Damn you,
she cursed herself,
toughen up right now!

It seemed to help. The wooziness passed and she entered the autopsy room, already crowded with powder blue people. In spite of their surgical masks she easily identified Ray Wise, Detectives Morales and Goodman, and the coroner, a bland, emotionless Asian-American named Ann Fugitsu, who stood back a pace, observing the pathologist and his assistants as they hovered over the remains of what had once been Madeleine Gray.

Nikki lifted a scrub suit from a hook near the door. One of the assistants got her a mask.

Dr. Fugitsu brought them up to speed in very little time. “It is our preliminary opinion that death was due to skull fracture causing injury to the brain,” she stated without emotion. “There appears to have been a significant brutalizing of the body. Then a solid object, smooth rather than sharp, did the final job, cracking the back of the cranium.”

Judging by physicochemical changes of the body and bodily fluids and the residual reactivity of muscles to electrical and chemical stimuli, she explained, they had narrowed the window of death to approximately three hours. “Between eight and eleven P.M. The body was, of course, in rigor when it was first examined in the alley.”

The deceased had been legally inebriated. “Blood showed an alcohol content of point-one-four. There was some drug residue. Cocaine or some other coca derivative. We will send the usual sample to the forensic toxicologist. The vagina showed some irritation, and vaginal fluids were present but no semen was found.”

“Meaning what?” Wise asked. “That she hadn’t been schtupped?”

Dr. Fugitsu’s normally unreadable face showed a flash of annoyance. “She apparently had been sexually stimulated prior to her murder. The stimulation did not go as far as orgasm. If she was with a man, he must have used a contraceptive, and one that left no traces of latex or lubricant.”

Dr. Fugitsu noted that no foreign hair, pubic or otherwise, had been found on the body. “No flakes of skin, either,” she said. “However, the fingernails on the victim’s right hand yielded a small amount of blood and tissue. A slightly larger amount was recovered from under the left thumbnail.”

Goodman asked about rug fibers.

“Numerous coarse fibers dyed mainly red and yellow were found on the skin and in the hair,” the doctor said. “In addition, many other particles were clinging to the body, probably the result of the corpse’s residence in the garbage bin.”