I checked over the rest of the room. A stained sofa was pushed against the wall opposite a new small one-burner butane stove, which looked to me like a recent addition. There was a paint-chipped, cigarette burn-scarred dresser. No mirror, no shower. In the back of the trailer, a toilet sat behind a dirty brown curtain.
I knew I was in the right spot because on the dresser I saw a half-empty box of 129-grain Hydra-Shok Federals.
CHAPTER 42
A quick survey of the Airstream trailer revealed a potential treasure trove of evidence. A pair of rubber boots were in the back of the small but cluttered closet along with some wadded-up camouflage clothing. As soon as I had done a quick no-touch search, I backed out of the trailer with the two uniformed sheriffs, secured the site, then got on the phone to the crime scene techs and got them rolling.
While I waited for CSI to arrive, I talked with the sheriffs about trying to track Batiste up into the hills by utilizing their mountain rescue team and a fire department chopper. They said they’d get on it. As soon as the techies arrived I turned the crime scene over to them and took off for Huntington Hospital.
As I drove, I began to fit a few more pieces of the puzzle together. The original stove from the burned-out Airstream had been removed and replaced with a small camp stove, a less elaborate cooking device. I wondered if that was Lee Bob’s purchase. It was the kind of unit you could pick up in any outdoor supply store. The stove had only one butane burner and no oven and would barely heat a pot of coffee or can of beans. It would never accommodate a complicated gumbo recipe. Maybe Lee Bob had grown tired of eating warmed-over supermarket pork and beans. Maybe that was why he brought the groceries to Lita’s the night he planned to kill her. Admittedly strange behavior, but my gut told me that might have been what had happened.
Alexa and Jeb were in the waiting room when I arrived at Huntington Hospital. Hitch was already in surgery, so we went down to the cafeteria to get some coffee. On the way they explained to me that the admitting docs in ER had told them the wound was through the meaty part of Hitch’s thigh and, barring infection, wouldn’t cause any lasting damage.
“This whole deal is pretty much blown,” Alexa said as we returned to the surgery wing and settled on the waiting room couch with cups of cafeteria coffee. “We still don’t have any direct evidence against Nash, and if Batiste gets away, all we’ve got is just an interesting theory.”
“There’s gonna be plenty of direct evidence in that Airstream,” I told her. “There’s a pair of rubber boots in the closet that look like Baffins, and I’m betting there will be a triangular scar on the left sole which will match our crime scene print. He also left a box of nine-millimeter Federals on the dresser. If we can match up the lead content in that box to the slugs in Lita’s floor, that could put Lee Bob in her kitchen with the murder weapon. It’s more than enough to bust him. Like you said, it doesn’t directly tie Nash to her murder, but it’s a start. All we have to do is get our hands on Batiste and flip him.”
She heaved a deep sigh. “If we don’t catch Batiste, it’s just a semi-weak circumstantial case.”
“The good news is this probably takes Stephanie Madrid off the hook,” Jeb said.
An hour later my partner was out of surgery. At Hitch’s insistence they’d only used a local anesthetic to clean and close the wound, and when they wheeled him back he was still awake. I went in to see him, along with Jeb and Alexa. They left after twenty minutes when it was obvious Hitch was going to be okay.
Once they’d gone, Hitch grinned up at me.
“What was all that Audie Murphy BS?” he asked. “Throwing yourself on top of me. Next time you pull shit like that, I’m gonna need a kiss first.”
We reached out and bumped fists.
The docs wanted to keep him overnight as a precaution against infection, so after another hour I headed home. It was around four when I left the hospital. I called Alexa as I drove. She was still at the PAB in a meeting with Clarence Moneymaker and the DA, bringing them up-to-date. They were discontinuing the investigation against Stephanie Madrid. Alexa told me she wouldn’t make it home for a few more hours because she had to work on the press release.
I didn’t have much hope that Batiste would be apprehended, because a swamp rat like Lee Bob could go to ground indefinitely in the vast 650,000-acre Angeles National Forest.
I was pretty sure an egomaniac like Nash wouldn’t leave this hanging and would feel compelled to prove his superiority. I was also pretty sure he’d make the next move. When he did, I resolved to be ready.
The problem was, I never expected what he did next.
CHAPTER 43
Once home, my body began to crash. I’d been pumping too much adrenaline for too long and was coming down fast. I needed an emotional boost and some sugar, so I went to the fridge and got one of the expensive blond lagers Hitch drinks and grabbed a few Oreos. I walked outside with this feast and came to a stop next to my low white picket fence a foot from the edge of Venice’s Grand Canal. I hadn’t seen our cat, Franco, in a few days, but it was cat season and he was out hunting up a love connection. I stared down into the murky depths, all two feet of it, and started munching down cookies. The canal is fed by the ocean, and a school of saltwater minnows was swimming in the shallows near where I stood. I watched as a few of them nibbled the mossy rocks at the edge of the bank. The beer was light gold and ice cold. As I chugged half of it down, it made my throat ache.
You can sense when a case is coming to an end. It seems to have a heartbeat. As pieces begin to fall into place the vibe always changes like a big momentum shift in a football game. I could feel the road we were on narrowing and getting slick. I wanted to make sure I didn’t finish this one upside down in a ditch.
It was hard for me to wrap my head around the insanity of Nash creating these murders solely for the purpose of driving up his TV ratings. Could there be something else going on with him that I still didn’t understand? As I stood watching the little inch-long silver fish nibbling at the moss by my feet, I tried to find a rationale that would explain it. I tried to get inside Nash’s head, predict his game.
Going back over what I already knew, he was from a family of cops. When he was on the Florida Marine Patrol, he had humiliated the family name by screwing up a high-profile, media-intense serial killer bust in the Everglades. Lee Bob Batiste had slipped off the law enforcement hook and disappeared like a deadly water moccasin back into that teeming swamp. As a result, Nix had been forced to resign from the Marine Patrol. His father and brothers were all Dade County cops and they had defended him, argued to keep him on the FMP until the heat died down so his departure wouldn’t feel like cause and effect. Then half a year later Nix had quietly resigned. But for a law enforcement family that must have been humiliating. I wondered what Christmas dinner was like at the Nash house that year. Had Nix felt ostracized? Had that chapter in his life changed him, or was Nix a damaged personality from birth?