The Trials of Nikki Hill Read Online Free PDF

direction of the lavatories. The tall man was clean shaven, with longish, graying hair that stuck up in back as if he’d slept on it. Detective Edward Goodman.
    As for the black man, she’d been expecting Jamal Deschamps to be dressed in bulky gangsta clothes, but he was wearing rumpled and dirty chino trousers and a maroon silk shirt with a rip at the right elbow. He looked a lot like the brothers who’d been in her law school classes.
    Morales spotted her across the room and winked at her. A solid Chicano in his mid-forties, even in his boots he wasn’t more than five feet eight, slightly shorter than she. He’d trimmed his Pancho Villa mustache since she’d last seen him. Aside from that, the years didn’t seem to have changed him at all. Maybe obnoxious behavior kept you young. She’d have to try it sometime.
    He strutted to Duke Wasson’s desk, his thick torso shifting under his untucked pale blue short-sleeved shirt. He bent over the desk, his back to Nikki.
    Wasson looked up, eyes shifting to her, then back to Morales. He mumbled something to the detective, who turned and ambled toward her. “Well, well,” he said, “back from bad Compton country and already special assistant to our new D.A. You two must get along pretty good, huh?” He gave her a conspiratorial wink.
    “Got something in your eye, Carlos?” she asked.
    “Only your beauty,” he said.
    “I like what you did with the mustache,” she said. “That and those high heels. And is that a rug you’re wearing?”
    “Ooohhh. Compton turned you mean, huh?”
    “Mean? Little ole me?”
    He cocked his head to one side and said, “It did do something to you,
chica.
An improvement, I think.”
    “We shall see.”
    “How you like our radio show so far?” he asked.
    “I think you’re ready for TV.”
    He smiled broadly, white teeth gleaming under the mustache. “Yeah. Us an’ Maddie Gray. You ever watch her?”
    “Once or twice.”
    “My wife was a big fan. Usually had it on at dinner. Mad-die looked pretty fine, but she was a real ball buster. I never much cared for her.”
    “Maybe we should check
your
alibi.”
    “Now, Nikki, you know we got our killer. You prosecutin’ this
pendejo?
”
    She shrugged. Yesterday, she wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible. But today...“That decision won’t be made for a while,” she said.
    “Maddie had lots of fans. They gonna want our Jamal strung up by his
cojones.
”
    “I think they stopped that particular form of justice a few years ago.”
    “Too bad. The mess he made of that woman, gas is too good for him.”
    “Assuming he did it,” Nikki said.
    “Yeah,” Morales said, grinning. “Assumin’ that.”

F OUR
    B y seven A.M. , when Nikki made her second call to D.A. Walden, several other facts had surfaced to strengthen the case against Deschamps. He’d previously been arrested for assaulting a young woman named Irma Childs. His day job, delivering and picking up mail for a production company in the San Fernando Valley, had taken him often to the studios where Madeleine Gray’s series was taped.
    Detective Morales eventually got Jamal to admit having met the deceased on the lot. He had, in fact, delivered scripts to her on at least two occasions that he could recall.
    “She was a nice woman,” he told the detectives. “Wacko, like all of ’em, but nice.”
    “All of whom?” Goodman asked.
    “TV, movie people. All wacko.”
    “Wacko how?”
    “You know. Kinda wired. Nervous, like.”
    “She gave people a hard time on her show,” Goodman said. “Probably gave people she worked with a hard time, too.”
    “Not me, man. She was nice.”
    “Give you a big tip?” Morales asked.
    “Tip? Hell, they never tip.”
    “But she was nice?”
    “Yeah. Friendly.”
    “How friendly?” Morales asked. “Pet your pony for ya?” “Jesus, man,” Jamal said indignantly. “She smiled. That’s all. Always real busy, but she took the time to smile.” “Maybe it was a