CHAPTER 38
The call came in at 8:00 A.M., just as Alexa and I were about to leave. I picked it up in the den.
“Detective Scully?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yeah.”
“This is Erica Hobbs with Forensic Biology. We got back the overnight on that DNA scan you requested.”
“Whatta you got?” My heart rate started climbing.
“We have a solid match to the cup you found in Lita Mendez’s driveway. One in fifty billion probability.”
“Which one is it, Lester or Stephanie?” I asked, hoping it was Lester, because at least he was not an active police officer anymore.
“I’m afraid it’s Captain Madrid’s DNA,” Erica said.
“Shit,” I muttered softly. “Listen, we really need to keep this on the DL. How many people know about it yet?”
“Just me and my lab partner.”
“Okay, look. You know what’s at stake here. We’re going to have to move fast. Just guard that info.”
“It’s guarded,” she said.
I hung up and found Alexa in the bedroom, loading rounds into her light Spanish Astra, which she jokingly called the lady’s home companion.
“That was CSI. The DNA matched on Stephanie Madrid.”
Alexa paused mid-motion, then turned slowly to face me.
“Na-a-aw-w-w,” she said softly.
“I gotta call Hitch. We better pull this together fast. We’re going to need an arrest warrant. If it leaks before we can release a statement to the press, we’re fucked. We’ve gotta control the message. I’d like to pick Captain Madrid up before ten.” I looked at my watch. “That’s in a couple of hours.”
The next hour was a flurry of activity. I called Hitch, told him the bad news, and agreed to meet him downtown in forty minutes. I rode in with Alexa in her BMW, leaving my bugged Acura in the garage. All the way to the office, Alexa was on the Bluetooth in her car, setting things up, giving instructions.
“Notify DC Hawkins and Chief Filosiani,” she said to her adjunct. “And get Captain Myer from Media Relations over to my office right away. We’re going to need a prepared statement and I want somebody full-time on media tamp downs. Also, get a warrant delivery team on standby and send a UC out to Captain Madrid’s house to keep her under surveillance until we can pick her up. I think she lives in Valley Village or Sherman Oaks. Get the address from Records. I want to make sure we know where she and her husband are at all times.”
We arrived in the PAB at eight forty-five and convened a meeting in Alexa’s office on the command floor. In the room were Jeb, Hitch, Bud Hawkins, and Sgt. Britt Mills from the warrant delivery team. Mills was another one of those expressionless, hard-eyed gunfighters who always seem to end up in our high-risk shooting units.
Chief Filosiani stuck his face into the room but said he couldn’t stay. The superchief was a short, lunch box-shaped guy with a shiny bald head and Santa Claus cheeks. He didn’t look as much like a police chief as he did a market manager, but this morning he was a grocer with an attitude.
“Two things,” he said sharply, standing in Alexa’s doorway. “This has to be a no-incident takedown. That means you screen Lester Madrid off first. Second, everything, and I mean every little scintilla of info headed to sources outside this immediate venue, gets processed through my chief adjunct, Rodello Morales. I want RoMo to have strict control of all facts and be the sole distributor of information.”
Capt. Bert Myer from Media Relations showed up and waited in the corridor behind the chief until he finished. Dubbed Myer the Liar by the troops, he had a thankless job. Myer ran the LAPD Media Relations office and he was going to have to manage the press fallout, which would be huge. How often does the head of Internal Affairs get arrested for killing the city’s leading police critic?
After the chief left, we got down to it. The undercover was already out at Stephanie Madrid’s house and had notified us by phone that both Lester’s and Stephanie’s cars were still in the driveway.
“Let’s do this,” Alexa said after we ran through our arrest plan.
Forty minutes later, we were parked half a block down the street from the Madrids’ well-cared-for faux Italian two-story house in a middle-class Valley neighborhood. The gray Navigator with the tinted windows was still in the driveway. Parked in front of it was Captain Madrid’s deluxe dark blue department sedan. When we got there and relieved the UC, it was just a little before ten.
At ten thirty, Lester Madrid exited the house, got into the gray SUV, and pulled out. Once he was gone, the warrant delivery team moved. While Hitch, Alexa, and I covered the outside, SWAT Sergeant Mills knocked on the front door.
Stephanie Madrid answered, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. We watched from positions of advantage as the three cops on the front porch spoke to her for a few seconds, then took her into custody, cuffed her, and drove her to the Police Administration Building.
The arrest was quick and easy, but booking Captain Madrid for suspicion of Lita’s murder was a little more complex. What happened now was going to be part of the public record and would be on the evening news. Nix Nash would have a field day.
As soon as she was Mirandized, Captain Madrid demanded her attorney. It turned out that, as a precaution, she had already hired Clarence Moneymaker. He was L.A.’s new Johnnie Cochran-an elegant, spindly African-American who fit his name remarkably well. He oozed confidence and diamond accessories. His client list spanned everyone from A-list celebrities to unrepentant gang killers. However, he was shrewdly effective when he got to the defendant’s table.
Of course, he immediately pointed out that a coffee cup outside a crime scene wasn’t enough to charge his client with Lita’s murder, suggesting it could easily be planted. Captain Madrid had an alibi, supplied by her husband. Alexa called the DA and after a heated ten-minute discussion it was determined that we should hold off a day or so before booking Madrid. She was labeled a person of interest and we were instructed to let her go. The DA had cold feet and pointed out to us that we’d collected similar cups by Dumpster diving, agreeing with Moneymaker that somebody could have planted it. Of course Clarence Moneymaker forbade all future LAPD or DA contact with his client. After that, all that was left for us to do was start writing search warrants for Stephanie’s house and car. I would have loved to find a box of 9mm Hydra-Shok Federals like the ones we pulled out of Lita’s kitchen floor somewhere in Captain Madrid’s possession, but I didn’t think she, or Lester if he was involved, would be that careless.
One really unsettling thing happened as Hitch and I were heading out to get a taco for lunch. Lester Madrid was sitting on the bench in the atrium, across from the elevator, silver-headed cane leaned between his legs, waiting for us. As we stepped into the lobby, he stood.
“I don’t think you two ass wipes see what’s really going on here,” he said in his whispery growl.
Since I didn’t want to guess what he thought was really going on, Hitch and I waited him out.
“Steph isn’t going down behind this horse-shit murder beef. She’s being set up. If I have to rip out a few yards of somebody’s colon to prove it, then that’s what I intend to do.”
“Stop threatening us,” I said.
“I’m not threatening, Scully. I’m promising. In SIS they said we were assassinating criminal dirtbags. But that wasn’t what we were doing at all. We were just eliminating problems. Cleaning up the city. You two idiots have been parked in a cul-de-sac, jerkin’ off while this fucking case went down the road without you. That means I’m gonna have to get involved and fix the problem. When I get involved there are consequences.”
He turned and left us, walking out of the interior atrium into the midday sunshine. Hitch and I just stood there.
“Isn’t that a crime, threatening a police officer?” Hitch asked.
“Yeah, Section Seventy-One of the Penal Code. I had one filed against me once in the Valley when I threatened to knock my training officer’s teeth out.�
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“Then let’s hit that guy with a seventy-one and give him a ride in a squad car,” Hitch said. “I don’t want him hunkered down in my bushes tonight with a SWAT rifle.”
“It’s borderline. All we got is his promise to eliminate a problem and a warning of consequences. Let him cool off and we’ll take his temperature again tomorrow.”
Two hours later, we’d finished with the IA paperwork for Stephanie Madrid’s charge sheet. We filed it and took off early, both emotionally wasted.
When I got on the freeway, I thought I saw a gray Navigator a few cars behind, tracking me from two lanes over. I couldn’t be certain. I kept changing lanes, trying to spot it again, but it never reappeared.
I finally decided it was just my imagination.
CHAPTER 39
Ten minutes after I got to Venice, Alexa called to tell me she wouldn’t be home until later that evening. Deputy Chief Hawkins had put the Stephanie Madrid case under Alexa’s direct supervision, and she was stuck in the office working on a media plan with Bert Myer. The press had already scooped up the arrest report, which was now public information. An hour after that, Nix Nash had a mobile unit parked in front of the Police Administration Building and was doing shotgun interviews with anyone who he thought might conceivably touch the case.
I hung up with Alexa and, to take my mind off this disaster, was trying to decide what to do for dinner or if I was still even hungry. Just then the phone rang again. This time it was Hitch.
“Dawg, get your skinny ass up to my place, inmediatamente!”
“I was just gonna go down the street to get something to eat,” I told him.
“Got that covered,” he said, sounding excited. “Stop arguing and get up here.”
“All the way to Mount Olympus? Man, can’t we at least meet halfway?”
“No. Gotta be here. You’ll thank me. Just get moving!” He hung up.
I don’t much like being commanded, so in a self-involved show of indifference I wandered slowly into the kitchen, poured some orange juice, swallowed it down, taking my time about it. Then I ambled out to the Acura, took the keys off the visor, got in, and inched back slowly onto the street. I know, I know, pretty juvenile.
All the way up to Hitch’s place in Hollywood, I kept checking behind me for gray Navigators. Every time I looked in the rearview mirror, I remembered Nash’s bug sequestered in there. I’ve had these devices planted on my vehicle once or twice in the past. They can often be turned into a very effective source of disinformation. I was circling a few ideas as I drove.
Thirty minutes later, I parked in the drive of Hitch’s magnificent house and rang the bell. The familiar Dum-da-dum-dum chimes sounded, followed by Hitch’s voice over the intercom.
“Come on in!” he yelled. “It’s open!”
I entered, leaving the Dragnet theme behind, and was greeted by the classical sounds of some turn-of-the-century European composer like Strauss or Rachmaninoff. The music was coming from Hitch’s thirty-thousand-dollar wraparound sound system. Then the aroma of something delicious engulfed me. Hitch was cooking.
“In the kitchen,” he called out.
I went into his beautiful living room-sized, professionally outfitted kitchen and found him perched on a wood stool beside the stove. He had a drink in one hand and a cooking spoon in the other.
“You gotta fix that doorbell,” I said. “I go from Dragnet to Rachmaninoff. It’s giving me whiplash.”
“Not Rachmaninoff, it’s Bach. Sonata Number Five in C Major.” Hitch set down the drink, then looked at me expectantly and said, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“The smell. You recognize it?”
I took another sniff. “Kind of, but I’m not sure from where.”
“Lita’s house, man. This was what was in the curtains. It’s been driving me nuts. I’ve been combing through cookbooks ever since we found her. I finally came up with it.”
I realized he was right. This was the same smell that we’d experienced when we first walked into Lita Mendez’s living room.
“You’re right. It’s more pungent of course, because it’s still being cooked. But you’re right. It’s the same.”
“You know what it is?”
“Uh-uh.”
“It’s fucking gumbo, dude.”
“It is?”
“Yep. Look.”
He showed me the cookbook. The page was open to a recipe for gumbo.
“Besides the chicken, your main ingredients are garlic, onions, tomatoes, cayenne, okra, and ta-da-a … andouille.”
“What’s andouille?”
“A spicy country pork sausage. It’s what gives it that pungent odor. They use it in a lot of Cajun dishes.”
As I read the recipe, he removed the lid from the pot and waved some of the steam in my direction.
“I thought it was the bay leaf and garlic,” he said, grinning. “But I tried that and it didn’t do it. Then I found that recipe. It was the andouille.”
“Damn,” I said, smiling at him. “Lita couldn’t have had all these ingredients. You think the killer brought his own groceries?”
“Don’t know. Let’s eat this stuff before it gets cold. I’ve got the rice all steamed.”
“Isn’t that like eating evidence?”
“Right. Grab a plate, dummkopf.”
We each dished up a large helping on rice, then grabbed some lagers from the fridge and went out onto the deck.
The view tonight was partially eclipsed by a low blanket of fog hanging over Hollywood, but the air wasn’t too cold and we sat at the table and tasted the gumbo. Masterful.
“So who do we know in this big, ugly, bullshit case who could be cooking Cajun?” Hitch asked.
“Lee Bob Batiste,” I said.
“Correcto mundo.” He beamed. “Our Creole-French chucklehead from Louisiana.”
“Okay, okay. Hold on. Let’s not get carried away. This is a big jump. Let’s take it slow.”
“Fine,” he agreed. “But remember what you said about Nash calling Lee Bob Bobby? I think you were actually on to something there.”
“Now you think Lee Bob and Nix Nash knew each other when he was a cop?” I asked. “I thought you said I was grasping at straws.”
“Maybe the bust in the Everglades was for real and Nash fucked up on the square, or maybe he knew the guy and arranged to get him kicked loose. Either way, it’s the same result. What’s important is, I think he knows him now.”
I thought it over for a minute before I said, “So you’re saying Nash cut a deal with Lee Bob Batiste to commit these murders at times when Nash is out of town and alibied up. Then Nash solves the case on his TV show, looking like a genius, making huge ratings and multi-million-dollar grosses.”
“Exactly,” Hitch said. “Going back to Atlanta, what if Lee Bob Batiste, not Fuzzy, was wearing that overcoat when he killed those girls in Piedmont Park? During the murders, Batiste gets their DNA on the coat. Then Nash finds Fuzzy sleeping in the public toilet there. He’s brain-dead from all the meth and doesn’t know if he’s upside down or inside out. They give Fuzzy the coat. It’s December and he’s glad to have it. Then, a day or so later, Nash just happens to find poor old Fuzzy in the evidence-stained overcoat, and the Atlanta PD busts him while Nash is rolling cameras, taking all the credit. How hard would it be to get a schizophrenic to cop to the six kills? Fuzzy had a pet spider named Louis, for chrissake.”
“It also helps connect the two murders here in L.A.,” I said, warming to Hitch’s idea. “Obviously, Nix had nothing to do with Hannah Trumbull’s death in ’06, because he was still in prison, but this could explain how he was able to link Lita and Hannah to Stephanie and Lester Madrid. He worked backward, like you said before. But the second death, Lita’s, wasn’t random like we thought. He selected her because of the fights she’d had with Stephanie and then he had Lee Bob kill her.”
“Bingo,” Hitch said. “He starts with the cold-case Trumbull murder from ’06. Nas
h, or some L.A. contact, finds out Hannah was dating a cop and that turns out to be Lester Madrid. He probably turned that up just like we did, by asking around. Then he starts looking at Lester’s life and up pops Stephanie, who runs IA and has a history of public dustups with his old compadre from the Anti-Police League, Lita Mendez. She’s an acquaintance of Nash’s, but she’s also a perfect murder victim who will be a high ratings getter for V-TV, so she goes into the chipper.”
This take wiped out the impossible coincidence of both those seemingly unrelated cases touching the Madrids. “Nash sets up his alibi in advance,” I said, ironing out a few more wrinkles. “He accepts an invite to be at that fund-raiser in Boca Raton while Lee Bob, or Bobby as he calls him, sneaks over to Lita’s house. Batiste beats her to death and then double-taps her with the nine-millimeter Federals.”
“A perfect murder,” Hitch said, nodding.
Then I remembered another detail from the meeting in Captain Bligh’s cabin. “Nash told me that in the Everglades, Batiste was stealing food out of his victims’ backpacks and cooking it over their own campfires. Could that be some kind of MO? The Gumbo Killer? He whacks Lita, cooks a Cajun meal in her kitchen just like he cooked food from the backpacks of the campers he killed in the Everglades.”
We both thought about it. The gumbo feast over Lita’s body seemed a little far-fetched. He would have had to bring all the ingredients. But in ten years of solving homicides I’ve seen some very strange behavior.
“Sociopaths and psychopaths have strange realities,” Hitch said, picking up my unspoken thought. “Remember that gay unsub in Santa Monica who killed boys on their twenty-first birthdays? He brought them home, sat them up at his dinner table, and served the corpses birthday cake.”
“Okay, let’s put a pin in that for a minute. We don’t know why he actually cooked a Cajun dinner, but let’s assume he did. Then he washed the pots and pans, vacuumed the body. This guy used very strict crime scene protocol. The kind an ex-cop or an ex-lawyer like Nix Nash would be able to give him.”
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