The Trials of Nikki Hill

by Christopher Darden; Dick Lochte

  She smiled. That was Emerson to a T. “What do you want from me, detective?”

  “My boss, Lieutenant Corben, has ordered me to stay clear of Nita Morgan. So I can’t very well question her about her story. I was hoping you might.”

  “Why me?”

  Goodman took a deep breath. “The way I see it,” he said, “by the time Dyana Cooper’s lady lawyer finishes with me and this blackmail claim, I’m going to make Mark Fuhrman look like Policeman of the Year.”

  “As of this morning there was no Nita Morgan on the list of defense witnesses.”

  Goodman was surprised. “I just assumed...It doesn’t mean they won’t add her.”

  “True,” Nikki said. “I still have to ask: Why come to me? Why not Ray Wise or Dimitra Shaw?”

  “If we may speak frankly,” Goodman said, “this is my life and my career and I don’t feel like entrusting it to an asshole like Wise. Or to somebody I don’t know.”

  “Gee. You sure know how to flatter a girl.”

  Oh, Christ, he thought, I’m playing this all wrong. “It’s not just that. From what I can see, you care about your work. You don’t just phone it in.”

  He thought she softened slightly. “Speaking of phones, I suppose you had access to Nita Morgan’s number?”

  He nodded. “Unfortunately. But the timing is off,” he said. “When she made her initial complaint, she said the blackmailer called her at the same time I was interrogating Dyana Cooper. You were there. You know I didn’t leave the box. Today, Morgan changed her mind about the time of the call. Said it was later. I got no alibi for later.”

  For what seemed like an eternity but was probably a minute or two, Nikki stared at him, saying nothing. It made him uncomfortable, but he knew the game and stared back, a man with a clear conscience.

  “Okay,” she said, glancing at her watch, “I’ll go see Ms. Morgan.”

  Goodman felt greatly relieved. “I really appreciate this.” “I’m not going to rambo an old woman,” she cautioned. “All I’ll do is listen to her story and see if I can shake it a little.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Goodman said. “Except, could we keep this just between us for a while?”

  “Ray’s gonna have to know about it when he goes over your courtroom testimony,” she said. “Until then, all you’ll have to worry about is Nita Morgan or the defense leaking the story to the press.”

  Goodman avoided the reporters and cameras by leaving the CCB from a rear exit. He circled the block and was headed toward his office when he spotted Gwen Harriman at the corner, having an animated conversation with a man who seemed vaguely familiar. A big, solid man, with a square jaw, wearing a cocoa-brown suit.

  The big man said something that turned Gwen’s face into a mask of anger. He grabbed her arms and began to shake her Goodman started toward them, then paused. Ten years ago, hell, five years ago, when his own personal brand of male chauvinism was still in full bloom, he’d have thought nothing of giving his instincts full rein. Now he considered the possibility that Gwen might not want to be “rescued.” What he was witnessing might be a lover’s quarrel.

  As he pondered his next move, Gwen made hers, kneeing the big man in the groin. With a howl, he folded, releasing her.

  Gwen hissed something at him, turned, and stormed away.

  Goodman watched the man gradually straighten. He wiggled the upper part of his body, as if trying to reclaim some semblance of dignity, and followed Gwen.

  Goodman followed him.

  The man seemed in no hurry as he crossed the street and entered Parker Center.

  Goodman pushed through the heavy doors just as the man was stepping into an elevator. Going down.

  By the time Goodman got to the subterranean parking level, the man was nowhere to be seen.

  He waited for a minute or two, checking cars as they headed for the exit. Then, more than a little annoyed and confused, he got back on the elevator and headed up.

  Gwen was at her desk, phone to her ear. He waved to her. She gave him a wink. With a sigh, he sat down at his desk and wondered what the hell was going on.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  As if the members of the prosecution team needed a reminder, Ray Wise tacked a countdown calendar to his office door. It consisted of a stack of pages, approximately six by six inches, on which three-and-a-half-inch-high numerals marked the number of “Days Left Until Trial.” Wise would tear off a sheet when he arrived at work in the morning. By then, one of several office humorists usually had altered the previous day’s sheet to read something like “20 Days Left Until Trial Anna Marie Kicks Our Ass” or “19 Days Left Until Trial Wise’s Housekeeper Kicks His Ass.”

  On the morning the calendar read “16 Days Left Until Trial the Battle of the Bitches,” an indication of how the staff felt about Dimitra Shaw, Meg Fisher gathered the key members of the team in the small conference room to look at a videotape presentation she’d assembled. Dressed in a smartly cut business suit appropriate to a public relations maven whom fate had suddenly awarded instant access to all media, Fisher dimmed the lights and started the video machine.

  The assembly watched the monitor as a montage of newspaper and magazine pieces appeared, all, even the most conservative, favoring Dyana Cooper. There were stories about the Willinses’ happy marriage, photos of Dyana Cooper in church, visiting children’s hospitals, attending the Special Olympics, welcoming orphans to a luncheon she’d arranged at the Beverly Hills Hard Rock Café.

  This was followed by a compilation of pro-Cooper television news bites topped off by a report from a usually scurrilous tabloid show that a group of Catholic African-Americans in Michigan were seriously campaigning for Cooper, a living non-Catholic, to be considered a candidate for sainthood.

  Suddenly, Dyana Cooper was replaced by a plump, hard-eyed white woman. This was, according to the screen caption, “Adele Kellman, former wife of Prosecutor Raymond Wise.” She was telling the world that she was awarded custody of their child because “Ray didn’t have any interest in either our daughter or me.”

  She was followed by Wise’s ex-housekeeper, the new darling of the press, who described in loving detail his disdain for people of color—“black, tan, yellow, all the same to him, all bad.”

  Fisher turned off the TV. “I didn’t mean to single you out, Ray,” she said. “We’ve all had our hits and there will be more to come. Some excellent spin doctors are trying to make this whole office look slightly to the right of Saddam Hussein. We must remember the cardinal rule: Truth is nice, but public perception is everything....”

  It wasn’t Nikki’s cardinal rule. In fact, she was offended by it. She looked across the table at Dimitra and was surprised to see that she wasn’t smiling either. Maybe they were more alike than Nikki had thought.

  “This office is in dire need of a quick-fix image overhaul,” Fisher was saying. “Now is the time to engage in public services that offer positive photo ops. Visits to hospitals, attendance at civic affairs, speaking before groups like MADD or battered wives, upbeat appearances on talk radio and TV. I have some ideas I’ll be bouncing off of you within the next few days.

  “And, Joe, I’ve taken the liberty of checking a few upcoming events that I’d like to discuss with you right after this meeting.”

  Walden took that as his cue to call a halt to the proceedings.

  As Nikki was leaving, she passed by Dimitra, who was still seated, staring off into space. “You okay, Dee?” she asked.

  Dimitra didn’t respond.

  Pressure of the job? Nikki wondered. Pressure of sleeping with the boss? In either case, none of her affair. She shrugged and headed out.

  At twenty minutes before five that evening she was called back to Walden’s office. Waiting for her were the district attorney, Wise, and Dimitra.

  “Shut the door, will you, Nikki?” Walden requested. “Then take a chair.”

  When she’d carried out these simple requests, Walden said, “We suddenly have an opening at the pros
ecution table. Ray has convinced me you should fill it.”

  Nikki looked at Dimitra, who said, “I’m going on leave from the office.”

  “Why?” Nikki asked.

  “My doctor says I’ve got to take it easy for a while,” Dimitra said. “Nothing serious. But if I stayed on, I wouldn’t be able to contribute a hundred percent.”

  Walden patted the woman’s arm in a gesture that seemed to Nikki to be more than a little patronizing. “She’ll be back

  with us soon,” he said.

  “Badder than ever,” Dimitra said.

  “Well, Nikki,” the D.A. asked. “You still want the job?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said.

  Dimitra stood up. “I got things to take care of,” she said.

  Walden nodded. “If you see Meg out there, ask her to come in.”

  “We need to have a talk,” Dimitra whispered to Nikki on her way out.

  Meg Fisher bustled in, carrying the news that the National Association of African-American Leadership would be presenting Walden with its top honor, the Mabwana Amali Cup, when its annual meeting took place in Los Angeles the following month. “Their PR director, an extremely cooperative fellow,” Fisher said, “tells me that mabwana amali is Swahili for ‘man of action.’ The dinner will be black tie at that ballroom at the top of the Hotel Balmoral. Our end of it is five tables at two thousand dollars each, and worth every penny.”

  “I thought we wanted the NAACP,” Walden said.

  “They passed,” Fisher said. “But Af-Am Leaders carries a lot of weight, too.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy Walden, who moved on to Nikki’s appointment.

  “We have a bio, but we’ll need a more comprehensive one,” Meg said. “And, Nikki, if you could ask any celebrities you know for a few quotes.”

  Annoyed by this petty bullshit, Nikki said, “The only celebrity I’ve been talkin’ to lately is Dyana Cooper.”

  Meg gave her a flinty smile. “Then we’ll stick to just the bio,” she said.

  Nikki spent as little time as she could with Meg, then devoted most of the afternoon and some of the evening to discussing the trial with Wise and Dimitra. They explained that they had decided to focus on the jealousy motive. It was basic enough for any juror to grasp immediately and it didn’t require a ton of proof.

  It did require some, Nikki reminded them.

  Wise told her that a number of the investigators from their office were working on the John Willins–Maddie Gray connection. “According to the gossip scum they talked to, something definitely was going on. Goodman and Morales have discovered that Maddie was seeing a black man.”

  Dimitra added that the investigators were taking another pass at Maddie’s neighbors and associates and were checking hotels and hideaways. They were presently awaiting copies of Willins’s credit card purchases.

  Nikki finally returned to her office at seven-thirty with a nearly filled notepad. She spent another hour sorting out the material well enough to proceed in earnest the following morning.

  She was sitting at her desk, wondering if Virgil had already had dinner, when her phone rang. A long-distance operator asked the familiar question. This was followed by Mason Durant’s deep, depressing baritone.

  “Hi, Nikki, thought you might be workin’ late. Jus’ heard on the news you’re gonna be prosecuting Dyana Cooper.”

  So all that time spent with Meg working out a biography and press release hadn’t been a waste.

  “Looks that way,” she said.

  “The brothers in here think she’s being set up by the D.A.”

  “Since the brothers are in there, Mace, I wouldn’t say that thinking was something they did very well. If we were going to set somebody up, my guess is it wouldn’t be America’s sweetheart. It would be one of the usual suspects.”

  “What they say is you folks are so desperate, you’ll prosecute anybody you can get into court. ’Cept the guilty party, of course.”

  “Goodnight, Mace,” she said.

  “Wait. You know about this dude, Lee-O?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “Real bad mother. Very powerful. Mixed up in the Mad-die Gray murder.”

  “Who told you that?” she asked. “The thinkers?”

  Mace coughed from deep in his chest. “Keeps gettin’ worse,” he wheezed.

  “You taking something for it?”

  “What? Some magic sauce gonna polish up my lungs? Listen, Nikki, you decide you wanna know more about Lee-O, gimme a call. Maybe we can make some kind of deal. I help you out on this; you help me get out of here while I still got some breath.”

  “I’ll keep your offer in mind,” she lied, hanging up the phone. Something about “Lee-O” struck a familiar chord. Considering the source, she wasn’t going to think too hard on it.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Two days later, as Eddie Goodman headed to work on a bright, minimally smoggy morning, he pondered the way his life was shifting. On the job, things seemed to be falling into place. The Gray investigation was pretty much complete. The Arthur Lydon case was going nowhere, but since the D.A. had chosen not to attempt to introduce it into the Will-ins trial, there was only the usual pressure to get it off the books. The annoying blackmail charge was looking less and less serious. Especially since Nikki Hill, the new Dyana Cooper prosecutor whose picture had been in every newspaper and on every channel, was in his corner.

  That left his personal life, which was in the crapper. Mainly because he refused to accept the fact that Gwen Harriman was in love with somebody else. The hell of it was, he wasn’t totally convinced he was in love with her. The only thing he knew for sure was that he cared for her and that he felt she was screwing up her life. His experience with romance and marriage had taught him that women didn’t like men to try and help them when they didn’t want to be helped. He would have to put his concern and curiosity on hold, hoping that one of these days she’d decide to tell him what was going on with her and the asshole she was so fond of she’d kicked him in the balls.

  He strolled into the bullpen, expecting to find her at her desk on her second cup of coffee. She was there, all right. So was the big galoot, resting his broad butt on her desk and chatting her up.

  Balls all healed, I presume.

  Goodman strolled over to the desk sergeant who controlled the traffic into Major Crimes and asked, “Who’s the flattop with Gwen?”

  The sergeant, a grizzled specimen on the cusp of retirement, squinted across the bullpen. “Lattimer,” the sergeant said. “Vice jagoff. Been in a couple times lately.”

  “To see Gwen?” Goodman asked.

  “Naw,” the sergeant said. “To put my sorry ass to work looking stuff up for him.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  The sergeant spun around, punched a few buttons on his computer. He looked at the screen, then brightened. “Yeah. Right,” he said. “He asked me to see if this officer worked any of our cases. There was only one. Martinez. Rudy Martinez.”

  “That the officer’s name?” Goodman asked.

  “Naw,” the sergeant snorted. He seemed surprised at the detective’s ignorance. “You don’t remember the Martinez case? Rudy Martinez, son of the actor Nestor Martinez? Got involved in some kind of weapons sale and wound up with more bullets in him than Mussolini?”

  Goodman nodded, vaguely recalling the murder.

  “It was the only one of our cases the computer spit out that had William Hill connected to it.”

  “William Hill? That’s the name of the officer Lattimer asked about?”

  “Yep. On the beat his whole career. Retired now, I guess.”

  Goodman watched the vice cop Lattimer give Gwen a smirky farewell wink. He couldn’t read her expression as she watched the asshole depart. She brightened when she spotted Goodman. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the departing Lattimer, raising his eyebrows questioningly. She shook her head as if to say, “It’s nothing.”

  It didn’t seem like nothing to G
oodman.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It was only nine-fifteen in the morning, but Nikki’s desk was covered with transcribed interviews, reports, case studies, and a stack of messages. She picked the one from her bank. Something about an overdrawn account due to a $12,500 withdrawal.

  “I didn’t withdraw any twelve thousand dollars,” she informed a clerk in a deceptively calm voice.

  “Twelve thousand, five hundred,” the clerk corrected her. “On Tuesday of last week. I’m looking at your account, Ms. Hill. It shows very clearly that you made an on-line withdrawal—”

  “Hold it! What kind of withdrawal?”

  “On-line, using your computer.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to make a computer withdrawal if you put a gun to my head.”

  “Just a minute, Ms. Hill.”

  A woman identifying herself as the branch manager, Mrs. Hellman, took over the call. Her voice was soft and genteel and annoyingly passive as she repeated what her assistant had already informed Nikki.

  “As I just told your assistant,” Nikki said, “I made no such withdrawal.”

  “Yes, it is a bit odd. I see that the withdrawal order entered the system only today, yet, for some reason, was predated. Most confusing. But we were following your requ—”

  “What happened to the money?” Nikki interrupted.

  “Hmmm. It appears you used the funds to open a second account in your name.”

  Nikki tried to remain calm, but it was an uphill fight. “I didn’t use the funds, Mrs. Hellman. This is the first I’ve heard of the funds. You’ve obviously made a mistake.”

  “Our system doesn’t make mistakes, Ms. Hill.”

  “Okay. Close the new account. Take the twelve thousand, five hundred dollars and apply it to my old account. That should solve all our problems.”

  “We can do that, Ms. Hill,” Mrs. Hellman said. “There will be bank charges, of course. And interest on the funds your automatic overdraw protection borrowed from your credit card account.”