Vigilante Page 2

  Most cops across America knew Nash’s history by heart, because we all watched the show like ghoulish rubberneckers checking out a freeway disaster. In the mid-nineties Nix Nash had been a patrol officer in South Florida. After just three years on the job, he’d decided to change professions and quit the police force to go to law school.

  As a lawyer he found his way to L.A. and began practicing here. The majority of his clients were violent predicate felons who, by the account of most, were guilty as hell of the charges brought against them. Despite that fact, Nash did very well getting them off, usually by claiming every imaginable brand of police impropriety. His favored courtroom tactic was to put the arresting officers on trial.

  From 2000 to 2006 he expanded his L.A. practice to cover civil lawsuits against cops. The word around the courthouse was he was not above buying false testimony, although, in all fairness, that claim had never been proven.

  If there is such a thing as karmic payback, it made a heartfelt appearance in 2006 when one of Nash’s partners turned him into our bunco squad for embezzling from his own law firm to support an over-the-top Hollywood lifestyle. Needless to say, a lot of overtime went into that investigation, but not one of the cops working it put in for even an hour. The case quickly rose to the level of divine providence.

  This magnificent investigatory effort resulted in a three-year sentence for Nixon Nash at Corcoran State Prison in Central California and the stripping of his law license. However, because of “good time” served, he got out in eighteen months.

  While in jail, Nash wrote a book about his adventures taking corrupt cops to court. The book was titled Vigilante. It won the Prison PEN Award, was published in New York, and became a national best-seller. With its success, Nash arose like a battered zombie in a George Romero film. Nash optioned the rights to Vigilante TV to a local TV station in his hometown of Miami and continued his crusade against local law enforcement there, only now it was playing to a much larger audience. The guy was like a fungus you couldn’t kill.

  The first season of V-TV with Nixon Nash aired on a local channel in Miami Beach. At the end of the year the show had left a trail of broken police careers in its wake but had earned a huge Nielsen share in the Miami market. That encouraged a big syndicator to pick it up and distribute it nationally.

  Then V-TV moved on for a second highly rated season in Atlanta, this time going after two homicide detectives who had mishandled a serial murder case that took place in Piedmont Park. Because of Nash and his show, the two Atlanta detectives were humiliated on national TV and took early retirement. Two months later, under intense media scrutiny, the Atlanta police chief also resigned.

  Now Nix Nash was in L.A., ripe for vengeance against the city that had cost him his license to practice law. The third season of V-TV was about to start, but nobody yet knew what case they were going to cover. So far the show had been riding our radio calls, and sending crews to crime scenes, where they would shoot a little test footage and leave.

  “Maybe this will just be another dry run,” I said hopefully, looking over at Hitch, who just grunted as he turned to look through the front windshield at the murder house we were pulling up to.

  Ricky Laguna was waiting by the curb. He was a short, stocky forty-year-old Hispanic detective who wore his too-tight blue suit uncomfortably, like the costume from his high school play. He had a low forehead, lots of black hair, and tobacco-stained teeth. His garish tie was too wide and out of style. The whole ensemble screamed cop. Adding in his drinker’s red nose, all that was missing was the white socks.

  His partner was a tightly wrapped female detective named Pam Becker who, after we all introduced ourselves, stayed outside with Patrol, busily organizing the yellow tape detail.

  We got what we needed from our briefcases, stuffed our pockets, and got out of the car. Rick Laguna walked us up to the house. He seemed glad to see Hitch.

  “I seen your movie. Good shit, homeboy.” He grinned as he pulled aside some yellow crime scene tape blocking the front door, then said, “Better put on your paper booties.”

  Hitch and I reached into our pockets and pulled out hospital slippers to protect the crime scene from unnecessary shoe prints. We put them on and stepped inside.

  The front room of the house had several bedsheets tacked up on the front windows. I wondered why. All the lights were on. We followed a premarked entrance path strung with yellow tape along the east side of the small living room that had been set up by the patrol officers. They had also taped off the murder room and marked an egress path. All of this was standard academy-taught procedure for primary responders on any murder scene. It kept the swarm of LAPD officers and crime techs from inadvertently leaving their own trace evidence near the body. I glanced around the living room. It was strewn with old Coke cans, fast-food boxes, and magazines.

  “Is it okay for you to tell us now who the vic or vics are?” I asked Laguna as we paused outside the kitchen, which had a big X in yellow tape across the threshold, identifying it as the murder scene.

  “One vic. Female. Looks like she got beaten first, then double-tapped in the face with a large-bore weapon.”

  “You got an ID on the deceased?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, and rocked back on his heels like a man surveying a tall building.

  “So who is it?”

  “Lolita Mendez,” he said.

  “Shit,” Hitch hissed under his breath.

  “Lita Mendez lives here?” I said, looking past Laguna into the kitchen, where a woman’s lifeless body was sprawled.

  With the V-TV van parked half a block up the street I instantly knew that this was the case Nix Nash had been waiting for.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Standing in the kitchen doorway, I noted that the inside of the house had a faint but pungent odor of garlic. I looked down and studied the body.

  I’d never seen the deceased in person, only in an occasional newspaper photo, or once or twice on TV, but it was now easy to understand why Hollenbeck Homicide had kicked this one over to us.

  Lita Mendez was one of the city’s most aggressive police critics and gang activists. She’d filed over a hundred civilian complaints against Hollenbeck Division police officers on behalf of Evergreen gang members and their families. As a result, quite a few cops had lost grade and pay. Some had even lost their pensions.

  I’d been in break rooms in different stations over the years when Lita’s name had come up, and the hatred that poured out was genuine and overpowering. She hated us and we had returned that hatred in full measure. She’d been arrested several times by overly ambitious cops on questionable charges. None of those arrests stuck.

  Her younger brother was a notorious Evergreen banger named Homer “Conejo Loco” Mendez. The Crazy Rabbit was incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison for conspiring to kill a police officer, something Lita Mendez always maintained was a trumped-up charge and another example of police harassment against her family.

  I remember reading a news story once that claimed Lita had nothing more than a tenth-grade education. That hadn’t slowed her down, because with natural intelligence and street guile she’d served up a lot of trouble for the LAPD.

  Hitch and I took two short steps into the kitchen so we could view the crime scene but stayed well back from the body. The victim was lying on the floor and, in death, no longer seemed as formidable. She just looked shriveled and sad. It was still hard to believe she was dead.

  I saw that the “Chalk Fairy” had been here. Patrol officers all carry chalk to mark the pavement during traffic investigations. Occasionally, on murder scenes, they develop the unreasonable urge to draw an outline around the body before detectives arrive. This is in violation of all the rules of a homicide investigation, starting with disturbing the crime scene and up to and including potentially leaving the patrol officer’s own trace evidence on the victim, which can end up sending us on a search for a red-haired killer when the hair actually belonged to
the responding officer.

  At the academy, it is scrupulously explained to recruits that chalk outlines are only drawn by the medical examiner, and then only just before the body is transported. However, the Chalk Fairy still made the occasional phantom stop at various murder scenes. My guess was in Lita’s case this outline was more than just helpful enthusiasm. Whoever did it was making a statement on behalf of all the cops in Hollenbeck Division.

  “You find out which numb nuts chalked her out?” I asked.

  “It was like that when we got here,” Laguna said predictably. “Patrol is claiming it wasn’t them, but you know how that goes.”

  She’d been such a large presence in life I was surprised by how small Lita Mendez actually was. Only about five-two and no more than a hundred pounds, she lay sprawled on her back in the center of the kitchen. Her once natural gold tan complexion had turned ashen. Purple lividity colored the lowest parts of her body, indicating she’d been dead for a while. Her head had leaked blood and cerebral spinal fluid, the result of two gunshot wounds in the face.

  One shot looked like a third eye, dead center in her forehead. The other was squarely in the nose, leaving nothing but a deep, nickel-sized entry wound and fragmented chips of nose cartilage. The exit wounds were massive and had taken out most of the back of her skull. I looked around but couldn’t see any bullet holes in the walls or appliances.

  “You see where the slugs went or find any brass?” I asked Laguna.

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe she was already on her back when she got tapped. I bet CSI is gonna find the slugs in the floor under her head. From the placement of those wounds, center forehead and nose, this looks execution-style.”

  Laguna nodded.

  The victim’s legs splayed awkwardly, like she’d been unconscious or even dead when she’d gone down: her arms were bent at the elbows as if signaling a touchdown. The green blowflies that find a corpse within hours of death had been at it for a while. There were maggot larvae in her open mouth and inside the two oozing bullet holes.

  “Let’s get an ambient room temperature to help Entomology pin down a closer time of death,” I said to Hitch, who was sketching the murder scene in the expensive red leather writer’s journal he used as a crime notebook.

  He nodded, then took a small digital thermometer out of his pocket and set it on the nearby kitchen counter. Heat or cold has a drastic effect on the speed of fly larva gestation. The warmer it is, the faster they mature.

  “I don’t see any footprints near the body,” Hitch said. “But we should get ERT out here to do an electrostatic dust lift for latent shoe prints.”

  It was a good thought, because often if a killer doesn’t see that he’s left footprints, he won’t bother to clean up the floor. That doesn’t mean his shoe prints aren’t there. If present, an ESDL would find them and lift them up for us.

  “You think that piece of shit, Nash, knows Lita’s the vic?” Laguna asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “He’s been cruising our radio calls. Not hard to back-finger this address, use the real estate tax records to find out who owns this house.”

  “Except Lita didn’t own it. Just renting,” Laguna said. “Matter of fact, she just moved in about a week ago. The real estate contract is on the front hall table.”

  “He’s coming up the street with his camera crew,” Hitch warned. He had moved and was now looking out the side window at the advancing group of TV people in the street.

  “Okay,” I said, turning back to Laguna. “Have your partner tell Patrol we’re widening the crime scene area. String the yellow tape all the way down to the intersection on First Street, put a cop on it, then set up a media control area one block over and make sure Nash waits there.”

  Hitch and I stepped back to the kitchen doorway as Laguna went out to talk to his partner.

  “We’re sailing into a big storm here,” Hitch said, looking down at Lita’s body.

  A moment later, Laguna returned and told us Detective Becker and two patrol officers would take care of Nix Nash and his TV crew.

  “Let’s get all the patrol officers off the property,” I told Laguna. “Get hair and shoe-print samples from everybody who was inside and see if there’s a house nearby we can use as a CP. I only want people on this scene who need to be here.”

  “Already did that,” Laguna said. “There’s a vacant house across the street. We’re calling the owner and will get the phones turned on. I also had my supervisor call up the superior court. He’s working on getting us a crime scene search warrant.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Without a warrant we couldn’t do anything but secure the scene and the body and do a neighborhood canvas to see if anybody saw anything. The collection of evidence had to be done on constitutionally legal grounds or it would be challenged in court. Until the search warrant arrived we could only observe the crime scene, make sketches, and note transient evidence, which included such things as smell or temperature and the fact the room lights were still on. All pattern, trace, and conditional evidence had to wait for the warrant.

  “You call the crime techs yet?” Hitch asked Laguna.

  “Soon as I got here. CSI, the ME, and photographers are all rolling.”

  “Who found the body and called it in?” Hitch continued.

  “Leasing agent. Apparently there was a problem with the old tenant on some of the attached fixtures. The agent came over to work it out this morning and she found the body. The door was ajar, so she just walked in.”

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Waiting in her car out front.” He pointed out the side kitchen window to a blue Prius parked by the curb. “Name is Vanessa Valente.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Hitch and I decided that I would question the leasing agent while he observed her demeanor. Ms. Valente looked up from the laptop she was working on when I knocked on her car window and flashed my creds. Then she opened the door and got out. She was a big-boned Hispanic woman about thirty-five, wearing a nice-looking dark business suit and conservative two-inch heels.

  “Ms. Valente? I’m Detective Shane Scully. This is my partner, Sumner Hitchens. We’re taking over this investigation. We understand you found Ms. Mendez’s body?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Vanessa Valente was not fat, but she wasn’t exactly thin either. A good description would be “abundant.” Her features were rounded, pleasant, and ordinary. She also seemed strangely unaffected by the violence that had greeted her this morning.

  “I came over because the old tenant who used to rent this duplex had a list of things that needed to be retrieved,” Ms. Valente said with no trace of an accent. “Things that had been left during the move. I talked to Lita about it and we set a time to meet and go over the list first thing this morning.”

  “Detective Laguna said you opened the door, walked in, and found her already dead?”

  “Yes. It was ajar. She was in the kitchen. Those green flies were everywhere. I touched her. I hope that was okay. I only took her pulse. When I couldn’t find one I called nine-one-one.”

  “Were the lights all on when you got here?”

  “Yes. I guess that means it was still dark when she was killed, huh?”

  “Probably.

  “Was her body stiff when you tried to take her pulse?” I asked.

  “Why does that matter?”

  “If it was stiff that means rigor mortis was present. Rigor sets in about four hours after death. It might help us determine when she was killed.”

  “When I touched her she was cold, but not stiff,” Vanessa said.

  Upon hearing that and after looking at the fly larvae, my guess was the body was at least six hours old. Lita probably had been killed during the night before turning off the lights to go to bed.

  “Did you use the phone in the house when you called nine-one-one?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to need to take a set
of elimination prints and a hair and skin sample before you leave. We’ll also need your shoe prints. CSI should be here momentarily and can do it.”

  “Okay. That works.”

  “You don’t seem too upset,” I said.

  “I was born around here. I came back to this neighborhood after college. My office is at a REMAX ten blocks away. People die frequently on these blocks, Detective. I saw my first dead body when I was seven. I was roller-skating to school. He was shot, lying across the sidewalk right up from my house. That one scared the shit out of me. I’ve become more accustomed to the experience since then.”

  “Can you think of anything that could be helpful, like any enemies she had, recent disputes, or people who might want her dead?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know of anybody who would want to kill her.”

  I did. Half the cops in Hollenbeck. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I handed Ms. Valente my card and said, “Give me a call if anything occurs to you.”

  She nodded and I started to leave but then turned back. “Were you also friends with the victim?”

  “Lita was my client. It was hard to be friends with her. She was … I don’t know … ‘Driven,’ I guess, is the word. She saw everything through a very unique prism.”

  Hitch and I returned to the house and were walking up the drive when I looked back and saw Nix Nash along with his camera crew being escorted down the street by two patrol officers. None of the TV people looked too happy.

  Once we were back inside I again noted the faint odor of garlic. “You smell that?” I asked Hitch.

  “Yeah, it’s stronger in the kitchen. Besides garlic I also smell cooked onions with sage, or maybe it’s bay leaf, like a Bolognese sauce or something.”

  “A Bolognese sauce? Get the fuck outta here. We’re in the Mexican ghetto.”

  “You can eat Italian in a Mexican ghetto. I was raised in South Central and my mom made the best pasta vongole you ever tasted.”

  Among his many other talents, Hitch is a gourmet cook. When he goes on vacation, he frequently takes classes at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, something that millionaire movie people get to do. They also go to tennis camps run by ex–Wimbledon champs.