The Trials of Nikki Hill Read online

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1999 by Darden Family, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  A Time Warner Company

  First eBook Edition: January 2001

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55635-4

  The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  EIGHTY-TWO

  EIGHTY-THREE

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  EIGHTY-SIX

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  EIGHTY-NINE

  NINETY

  EPILOGUE

  PRAISE FOR THE TRIALS OF NIKKI HILL

  “Darden makes good use of his own extraordinary experiences...You realize by the end that Darden has delivered one heck of a closing.”

  —People

  “A smooth murder tale loaded with insider information...You could hardly ask for more from a legal thriller.”

  —Arizona Daily Star

  “A genuinely suspenseful crime novel with a charismatic heroine and a cast of well-drawn supporting characters? The verdict: highly recommended for fans of Grisham, Turow, and Court TV.”

  —Booklist

  “A book that looks deep within the Los Angeles criminal justice system...The plot has all the twists and turns, false hopes, and strong leads that make a successful mystery. And Nikki Hill is also surprisingly believable as a strong, likable character.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “First rate...a solid thriller.”

  —Greensburg Sunday Tribune Review (PA)

  “Like its heroine, the thriller is tough, funny, and quirky.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “Darden draws on his insider knowledge of the L.A. justice system and presents an entertaining tale, fast-moving dialogue, and an exciting new heroine.”

  —Next Step

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER DARDEN

  In Contempt

  ALSO BY DICK LOCHTE

  Sleeping Dog

  Laughing Dog

  Blue Bayou

  The Neon Smile

  To my wife, Marcia, and the baby Dardens—

  Jenee, Tiffany, and Christopher, Jr.

  C.D.

  To Jane and Bryson, the home team.

  D.L.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank:

  San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Michael Runyon and Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Patricia Ector, two old friends who were kind enough to read the early drafts of this text and offer their comments.

  Special thanks to a lawyer with a conscience, my former boss, Head Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson, Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. We tried.

  Dean Leigh Taylor and the faculty and student body at Southwestern University School of Law, for putting up with all the distractions.

  Deputy District Attorneys Michelle Gilmore, Karen Nobomoto, Charlene Underwood, and Shante Penland, for your inspiration.

  My good friend and mentor, Norman Brokaw, chairman of the board at the William Morris Agency, and my literary agent, Mel Berger. Thanks guys. We did it our way, with class and dignity.

  My publicist at the Brokaw Company, Claudia de Llano. I can’t help but laugh whenever I reflect on the way you took on the “big heads” at the Republican National Convention.

  My friends and editors at Warner Books, especially Susan Sandler, who worked long and hard on Nikki’s behalf. Thanks for everything. Larry Kirshbaum, you’ve made a dream come true.

  A very special thanks to Dick Lochte, my new best friend. A great writer. Nikki Hill lives and breathes on paper. You have my endless gratitude. You, sir, are the bomb. Okay?

  Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to the thousands of people who stopped me on the street to say “thanks,” gave me the thumbs up on the crowded Santa Monica freeway, or who wrote me during difficult times. You helped make my life easier. God bless each and every one of you.

  CHRISTOPHER DARDEN

  PROLOGUE

  The way Jamal Deschamps saw it, life was a good news–bad news proposition. For example, the good news was bumping into a fine young sister at the 4-Speed Club on a slow Sunday night, having some drinks, talking some trash, and then spending some quality bump time in her bed until her roommate showed. The bad news was that he wound up all alone out on Dalton Street at around 2:30 A.M., which is when a black ’63 Chevy filled with Crazy Eights gangstas rounded the corner.

  Jamal did a swift backpedal into the nearest alley and tried to make himself small behind an overripe industrial-size faded blue Dumpster. His mind was filled with grisly images based on what he knew about the Crazies, the worst involving an acquaintance who’d had his hands, tongue, and private parts hacked off with a machete for daring to get too close to one of their women. He wished he knew a bit more about the history of the woman he’d just been with.

  He strained his ears. And heard nothing. They didn’t see me. I’m too fast for ’em.

  Then he heard the Chevy brake at the entrance to the alley.

  Okay, so they stopped. They’ll check out the alley
and I’m gonna be like Casper. They’ll see nothing but empty space and be on their way.

  He heard the Chevy door open. The pat of rubber soles hitting concrete. Then, oh, shit, the harsh metallic click of an automatic that damn well had to mean it was dying time!

  Jamal squeezed in tighter against the brick building, trying to become a part of it. The gangsta came closer. Pat, pat pat, pat. He must’ve been right at the Dumpster. Another two steps and he’d be staring down and pointing his gun and...

  Then Jamal heard the good news: a police siren a few blocks away, coming closer.

  “Yo, Fupdup,” someone yelled from the Chevy. “Get yo’ ass back in here, bro.”

  Listen to the brother, Jamal begged silently. Get your homicidal ass back in the car.

  “It’s right here, sucka. Jus’ be a minnit...”

  The driver of the Chevy revved the engine. “We bookin’,” someone called out.

  “Bunch o’ pusswipes,” Fupdup growled angrily as his thick rubber soles pat-patted away.

  A car door slammed shut and the Chevy roared off. Jamal rested his head against the brick wall and let out the breath he’d been holding for what seemed like hours. Thank you, Jesus.

  His eyes wandered up past the buildings to the clear night sky. Stars were blinking way up there, without a care in the world. He knew just how they felt.

  The police siren was coming closer, down Dalton. Jamal turned his head toward the street and saw, for the first time, something draped over the edge of the Dumpster. He linked, his mind initially refusing to accept the image before him. But it was real. A human hand. A woman’s hand. Not small, exactly, but delicate. White. It was the whitest damned hand Jamal had ever seen.

  His immediate reaction was to move away from it, to put as much distance as he could between him and that got-to-be-dead-as-Dracula hand.

  Then he saw the ring on her finger, its diamond twinkling like the stars overhead.

  The ring posed a dilemma for Jamal. His brain was screaming at him to do a three-minute mile away from the dead woman in the Dumpster. But that ring sure as hell wasn’t gonna be much use to her anymore.

  Screwing up his face in disgust, he approached the lifeless hand and gingerly poked it with a finger. The hand felt cold, stiff. Over the line. No fucking way do I touch that thing with my bare hands. Near his feet was a Fatburger wrapper. He scooped it up and, using it like a glove, grabbed the corpse’s wrist. With his other hand he gently tugged on the ring.

  He hovered next to the bin, the garbage smelling so ripe a rat would turn its nose up at it. He didn’t want to look at the dead woman, but he couldn’t help himself. She was buck naked. Was a time she might have been Penthouse material, but not now.

  His eyes traveled up the pale trunk, past the bruised chest to the face. Somebody had done a dance on baby’s face, busted it up big time. But there was something familiar. He blinked. He knew that death created its own disguise. His daddy had looked like some other dude entirely, lying in his coffin. But this corpse... Jesus! he thought. It’s Maddie Gray.

  In a mild state of panic, he yanked harder at the ring, cutting his palm on the corpse’s jagged thumbnail. The ring wouldn’t move past the dead woman’s knuckle.

  The police siren was wailing now, really close. Too close. Almost on top of him. Shit!

  He gave the ring a final jerk and there was a popping noise as the pale white finger broke, dangling like an icicle ready to fall off a roof. But the ring slid free. Jamal jammed both it and the burger wrapper into his pocket and started running down the alley.

  A bright light caught him full in the eyes, blinding him.

  “Hold it right there, boy,” a voice shouted.

  Jamal couldn’t see a thing but the bright light. He didn’t need to. There would be two big beefy white boys in blue drawing down on him, licking their lips at the thought of him making a move. He held it right there.

  Good news–bad news, he told himself. My life ain’t nothing but good news–bad news.

  ONE

  Nikki Hill awoke to colored lights dancing on her bedroom ceiling.

  She raised her head high enough to glimpse a youthful Marlo Thomas on the silent TV, wearing a Peter Pan collar and a worried expression. Just what I need, she thought as she flopped back against the pillow, a white-bread night-light.

  She was suddenly puzzled. If the TV sound is off, what am I doing awake?

  As if in answer, the phone rang.

  With a groan she shifted on the bed, sending Witkin on Criminal Law, Volume 5 and several Manila folders and their contents tumbling to the carpet. Her “Liar For Hire” T-shirt, a joke gift that she perversely embraced, was sticking clammily to her body. At least she hadn’t fallen asleep in her good clothes again.

  The phone rang once more.

  As she reached for it on the bedside table, she saw the time glowing on her radio alarm: 3:47 A.M. She cleared her throat. “This better be an emergency,” she warned her caller.

  “Nikki?”

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Yeah?” she replied warily.

  “Joe Walden.” It was her boss, the district attorney for the county of Los Angeles. “Sorry to wake you, but this is an emergency.”

  Her head was fuzzy. “Uh...right,” she managed to reply, feeling a little embarrassed, as if he’d caught her doing something weird. Like getting a night’s sleep. She turned on the bedside lamp, then grabbed the TV remote to send Marlo back to nostalgia heaven.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  Something caught her eye—Bird, framed in the doorway, observing her curiously, black curls obscuring part of his dark handsome face.

  Nikki winked at him as Walden asked, “You familiar with Madeleine Gray?”

  “Uh... sure,” Nikki said. Her mouth had that dry, sucking-up-smog-all-night ashy aftertaste. “On TV. Big Viking of a woman. Whiter than rice with a mess of blond hair. Does gossip news. Interviews. Not exactly Barbara Walters.”

  “Lucky for Ms. Walters,” District Attorney Walden said dryly. “Maddie Gray’s big white naked body was found in a Dumpster in South Central a few hours ago.”

  Nikki forgot about the early hour, morning mouth, and nearly everything else except the voice on the other end of the phone.

  “A suspect was apprehended near the corpse,” Walden was saying. “They’re getting ready to interrogate him.”

  Bird approached the bed, yawning.

  “A couple million people watched Maddie Gray every night,” Walden said. “The media jackals are going to dine large on this one. It’s got everything. Sex. Drugs. Showbiz.

  I want you to get down to Parker Center ASAP and keep tabs on Homicide’s progress.”

  She didn’t know Walden very well. She couldn’t imagine why he’d phoned her—a midlevel deputy D.A. who’d been stalled at Grade 3 for three long years in Compton, the Siberia of the district attorney’s office. But she wasn’t about to question his decision. Any prosecutor with an ounce of ambition would slit both wrists for a chance to rub up against a high-profile case like this one. Nikki had more than anounce.

  “I’m your man,” she said, trying not to giggle as Bird touched his tongue to a bare brown foot he discovered sticking out from under the covers.

  “Good,” Walden said. “I hope I’m not, ah, taking you away from anything...more pressing.”

  “What could be more pressing?” Nikki replied, reaching out a hand to grab Bird’s curly head.

  “Yes, well, as soon as you know something, I want to know it, too. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, scowling at the clock radio.

  “Oh, and should the detectives handling the case wonder what you’re doing there, tell them you’re my special assistant. Assuming you’re okay with that title.”

  It took a moment for her to realize she was being promoted. Not a major promotion—probably wouldn’t mean more money—but it was a step up, and it made her feel the time she’d spent in Compton hadn
’t been wasted. “No, sir, no objection at all. Thank you.”

  Bird, who was not used to a subservient tone in her voice, gave her a questioning look.

  “We’ll see if you’re still thanking me by the time this all shakes out,” Walden said.

  She replaced the phone, exhilarated. “Guess who’s just been appointed the special assistant to the district attorney?” she asked Bird happily.

  Bird yawned again, unimpressed. He didn’t really get the gist of her question. Though he understood nearly fifty words, the only ones he really reacted to were “food,” “walk,” and “cat,” and, of course, the special commands. He was a Bouvier des Flandres, a coal-black Belgian sheepdog weighing eighty pounds, much of it muscle. The full name on his papers read Charlie “Yardbird” Parker.

  He had been the bequest of the only man Nikki had ever loved, and she couldn’t look at him without thinking of his departed owner. Tony Black. She smiled wistfully. “Tall as pine, black as crow, talk more shit than radio.”

  Her first thought had been to find Bird another home. At the time, she’d been in no condition to assume the responsibility for a large animal who demanded a certain amount of attention. Especially one who would be a constant reminder of all that she’d lost. Something about Bird—her best friend, Loreen Battles, said he looked like a beautiful holy man in a dog suit—kept her from giving him up. In fact, Bird had helped her through that difficult period of mourning, had been a protector and companion and, on those long, lonely nights when she felt she had to talk to someone or she would freak completely, a doggy shrink.

  That had been four years ago. Now, she could hardly remember what her life had been like before she began sharing it with the lovable, loyal, hardheaded, territorial, demanding beast who obviously adored her.

  Bird was digging his nose into the skirt she’d dropped on the floor the night before. She grabbed it from him. “It’s messed up enough without you slobberin’ on it, fuzzball,” she said.

  He cocked his huge head to one side, staring—critically, she imagined—at the other clothes sharing the carpet with law books and files and scattered newspapers and magazines. “Okay, so I ain’t Martha Stewart,” she said, slipping her feet into her tatty but comfortable old Bugs Bunny slippers. “You’re not exactly Lassie.”