The Trials of Nikki Hill (3 page)

The district attorney at the time, Thomas J. Gleason, a professional Irishman whose resemblance to the late John Wayne had convinced voters that he was a rawboned crime fighter, knew what to do with a media opportunity when one dropped in his large lap. He invited members of the press to “a simple lunch to publicly congratulate deputy Nicolette Hill on a job well done.”

A photo of Gleason and Nikki dining on Nathan’s franks at the luncheon adorned a section of that Sunday’s
L. A. Times
and even found its way inside
People
magazine. For about a week, television couldn’t get enough of Nikki’s sound bites. She was invited to an assortment of Hollywood parties where, to her surprise, the celebrities wanted to meet
her.
She was, in short, flying high. Then came the fateful day when the trial’s evidence boxes were delivered to her office. While waiting for someone to remove them to the D.A.’s evidence locker, she idly lifted the lid on the top box and began browsing through the items in their protective plastic bags. One held the contents of Durant’s hastily packed suitcase— a comb, a nearly empty bottle of aspirin, a razor, a dry shave cologne. She sniffed the pungent scent.
So that’s what Hi Karate smells like.

Bag two contained apparel Durant was wearing when apprehended. Rumpled black chino pants and a strictly seventies shirt, shiny dark blue synthetic with bright purple and red streaks, collar rolled up.

The third bag became her personal Pandora’s box.

When she opened it, a ghastly odor chased away every hint of the Hi Karate. There was only one item—a tan poplin windbreaker. What was that stench? She felt a small, solid object in the jacket’s inside pocket. Her fingers daintily searched for...
God!
She yanked her hand out. What had she touched? Something hard and furry.

Scowling, she shifted the jacket and shook the object loose.

It fell onto the floor of her office. The remnants of a moldy bun wrapped around a gaseous chunk of nearly desiccated meat.

Reeling not only from the odor but from the implication of her discovery, she pulled a Kleenex from the box on her desk and returned the remnants of Mason Durant’s defense to the windbreaker’s pocket, then shoved the jacket back into its plastic bag.

What now?

She had little doubt of Durant’s guilt. She’d done her homework prepping for the trial. The witnesses had been certain that they’d seen a metallic gun in Durant’s hand. He’d definitely been on the run from something. Though it had not been admissible as evidence, he had a long rap sheet and had previously stood trial for murder. That time, the jury had found him not guilty. But investigators had provided Nikki with a number of people, including the victim’s widow, to whom Durant had later bragged that he had indeed killed the man.

Did any of this permit her to ignore the fact that she was in possession of evidence that might possibly have changed the outcome of the trial? While she wasn’t sure what her obligation was to the law, she knew what her conscience was telling her.

Well, as Grandma Tyrell, who had raised her, used to say, the only way to handle bad news is to take off your gloves. She went to see Tom Gleason.

The district attorney was not amused. His ruddy, normally jovial face went purple with apoplexy. He took a small plastic bottle from his desk, removed a tiny pill, and popped it into his mouth. He grimaced, then demanded, “Who in their right mind digs through evidence
after
they’ve won? What the Christ were you thinking?”

“I sure wasn’t thinking four-month-old hot dog,” she told him.

He glared at her. “Well, you’re not gonna like what
I’m
thinking.”

He picked up the phone and dialed the number of his head deputy, Raymond Wise, who answered almost immediately.

Waiting for the call,
Nikki thought.
Like Rover listening for his master’s voice.

Gleason explained the situation tersely, requesting that Wise join them. Then he strolled to his windows, where he remained staring out, ignoring her, until his head deputy limped into the room.

Wise was a pale, thin, unsmiling man in his mid-forties, with lank brown hair lying on a high forehead. His manner of dress was ultraconservative except for aviator frame glasses perched firmly on a long thin nose. He was the top prosecutor in the county, but his coworkers, though they envied his conviction record, considered him arrogant and egotistical, not to mention sexist and racist. The origin of his stiffened right leg remained something of a mystery. Nikki imagined he might have broken it trying to climb up Gleason’s fat ass.

He stared at her blankly, then said to his scowling boss, “There’s no legal obligation here. The acknowledged precedent in these matters,
Brady v. Maryland,
1963, refers specifically to a trial in progress. Even there, the prosecutor must be convinced the evidence is exculpatory. I doubt a desiccated hot dog qualifies.”

“C’mon, Ray,” Nikki said. “You know how much emphasis was placed on the hot dog. It was Durant’s main defense.”

“You see, Tom,” Wise said to the D.A. “That’s exactly what I was telling you. We’ve got too many deputies like Hill who don’t know what their job is.”

“Hill knows enough about her job to recognize evidence when she sees it,” Nikki said heatedly.

“Evidence of what?” Gleason asked. “That a murderer ate half a hot dog? Even if Durant’s pathetic lawyer had dangled the sausage under the jury’s nose, they still would have found him guilty. Maybe even guiltier.”

“Why’s that, Ray?” Nikki asked skeptically.

“Because, you,
People
magazine’s sexiest D.A. of the year, would have explained that Durant was so cold-blooded that he calmly stood there eating his victim’s hot dog while blasting him in the gut with the gun six clear-eyed witnesses saw him holding.”

“Any way you slice the weenie, Ray, it’s still evidence.”

“You honestly think this scumbag is an innocent man?” Wise asked.

“No,” Nikki replied, remembering the people she’d talked to who heard Durant boasting about beating the rap on his last trial. “I’m sure he’s a murderer. And I’m about ninety-eight percent sure he’s guilty in this case. But that doesn’t change the fact that the jurors were not in possession of all the evidence when they decided to send him off to Folsom for the rest of his life.”

Wise threw up his hands.

Gleason leaned forward and said in as calm a voice as he could muster, “Ms. Hill. Nikki. Thanks to your trial this office has been on the receiving end of some very beneficial publicity. We’re not gonna dump that and run the risk of looking like donkeys just to satisfy some fucking schoolgirl notion you have about the law.”

Nikki stood, tingling in anger. “We’ll see what the court says about my fucking schoolgirl notion.”

“No, we won’t,” Gleason said softly. “Because if you go public with this, I’ll put you behind bars for the rest of your life.”

Nikki couldn’t believe it. He was threatening her. “What kind of bullshit is this?” she asked.

“Hiding evidence from a jury during a murder trial with special circumstances can put a prosecutor away for life,” Gleason said calmly.

“You saying I hid evidence during the trial?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

“I’m saying you discovered that devil’s own wiener in the midst of the trial, but failed to disclose it. You came to me today because your conscience has been bothering you.

“Isn’t that right, Ray? Isn’t that what you heard?”

Wise looked surprised and a bit shaken. He said nothing.

“Well?” Gleason prompted him.

“Tom, don’t ask me to be a party to anything like this.”

Gleason’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me. I thought you were somebody I could count on. Somebody who knew how to play the game. Hell, this is all speculation anyway. I’m sure Nikki’s bright enough to do the right thing, which is to flush the evidence of
her
crime down the crapper and go on about her business. Right, Nikki?”

The jive-ass son of a bitch!

Both men were staring at her. She wanted to scream. Or tear out their hearts. Something.

Gleason took her silence for affirmation. “Fine, then,” he said. “Ray, you’ll supervise the removal of the ‘old business.’ ”

“Tom,” Wise complained, “you’re carrying this too far. Let’s just put the fucking hot dog back in the box and file it. We’re still on legal high ground there, but no matter how inconsequential the evidence is, once you start destroying it—”

“That’s the point, Ray,” Gleason said, grinning. “That’s how I can be sure there’ll be no more discussion of this matter. You two will get rid of the so-called evidence.”

“I...I don’t think so,” Wise said.

Gleason stood, his face filling with angry blood. Then he seemed to relax. He slumped back in his chair and grinned at Wise. “That’s a curious career choice, Ray. Just after I bumped you up to head deputy. Could be a short-term decision.”

Wise blinked in surprise, and Nikki could tell by the change that came over his pasty face that he would be raising no more objections. Gleason saw it, too. “Good. Now that we’re in agreement, be off with the two of you. When you’re finished, Nikki, come back and we’ll work out your reassignment.”

“What reassignment?”

“I’m sure you’d be happier somewhere else.”

“Where?” she asked coldly.

“You’ll stay on here for a few months, closing out your caseload. Then when the media has forgotten all about the damned ‘weenie defense’ case, you’ll quietly request a reassignment to Compton.”

“You sorry sack of shit,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he said. “Now, why don’t you and Ray get rid of that nasty old weenie.”

They made their way to her office in silence, Nikki leading the limping Wise by several paces. When they arrived, she turned to him and said, “He’s gonna be holding this over us for the rest of our careers. Even head D.D.A. isn’t worth it.”

“Grow the fuck up,” Wise replied. “You can’t beat Tom at this game. You do it his way, or you pay, as you are paying. I have no desire to wind up at the desk next to you in Compton. Besides, you know damned well Durant is guilty as sin.”

“He is. But...aw, hell, what’s the point of talking ethics to you? You want to destroy evidence, Mister Integrity, do it without my help.” She sat down at her desk. “I’m already on my way to Compton.”

She took no delight in the sight of Wise limping gingerly from her office, one hand clutching the rotten food wrapped in a Kleenex, the other holding his nose. When he was gone, she went to her bookshelf and pulled down a thick volume. She shuffled through its thin pages until she found what she was looking for. “
Brady v. Maryland,
U.S. Supreme Court, 373 OS.83 (1963).”

She scanned the words of the decision. “A prosecutor that withholds evidence... which, if made available, would tend to exculpate the accused or reduce the penalty helps shape a trial that bears heavily on the defendant, that casts the prosecution in the role of an architect of a proceeding that does not comport with standards of justice....”

Wise had been right. She hadn’t withheld any evidence. She’d turned over the jacket. It was not her fault that the public defender had failed to inventory the contents of its pocket. She’d had no legal obligation to practice law for the defense. But she still felt sick. To her mind, she was still in the position of being the “architect” of Mason Durant’s fate. That did not comport with
her
standard of justice.

Glumly, she returned to Gleason’s office.

Ordinarily, she would have waited for one of the secretaries to announce her, but her anger pushed her beyond that sort of formality. Gleason looked up from the magazine he was reading. “All done?” he asked.

“Yeah. And I quit.”

“Oh? What are your plans? Gonna work as a cleaning lady? Drive a cab? Certainly nothing in law, nothing to compensate for all those years of study and struggle. Even if you managed to get as far as the personnel office of a firm, can you imagine the kind of reference I’d provide?”

“Why are you being such an asshole?” she asked.

“Because you disappoint me. Because I thought you were smart enough to know how the game is played. Because in this office defiance is simply not tolerated.”

“Well, fuck you and your disappointment,” Nikki said. “I didn’t become a prosecutor so I could play games with the law. Ask Mason Durant what he thinks about your damned games.”

“You want to set him free, Nikki?” the district attorney asked. “Would that be serving the society we’re sworn to protect?”

Nikki remembered the woman whose husband Durant had bragged about killing, remembered her tears and bitter words. She shook her head, trying in vain to remove that sad image. “It’s... not my call to make,” she said, more hesitatingly than she wished.

“No it isn’t,” Gleason said. “A jury found him guilty and that’s that. Know why? Because I say it is.”

“That’s fine for folks who don’t have a conscience.”

He grinned at her. “That’s the other reason I’m sending you to Compton: punishment should put a little salve on that wounded conscience of yours.”

“Who died and made you God?”

“I’m a self-made man,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I’d rather drive a cab than spend the rest of my life working for you in Compton or anywhere else.”

“Use your head, woman,” Gleason growled. “We’re not talking about the rest of
your
life. Just the rest of
mine.
I’ve got angina, I’m a hundred pounds overweight, and my cholesterol level is higher than the Dow. My doctor gives me five years tops, but I imagine he might be a little optimistic. If by then you’ve done the kind of job at Compton I think you’re capable of, you’ll be back here in a nanosecond.”

She remembered her grandma telling her about school, how “smart learnin’ is like carryin’ a sword at your side, ’specially when dealin’ with white folks who expect colored people, women in particular, to have heads full of cotton instead of brains.”

That bit of advice had been given on a sunny afternoon on the front porch of Grandma Tyrell’s little stucco cottage in South Central L.A. a few decades before. The ashes from the Watts riots were still coating the bushes in the yard, and Nikki knew that she was going to need some weapon to get through life. Knowledge seemed like a good bet. So she ground her way through grade after grade, always excelling, always pushing herself.