The Trials of Nikki Hill by Dick Lochte, Christopher Darden Page A

Deschamps, and the DMV, he has no car.”
    “That’s not quite true,” Wise said. “He doesn’t own a car, but he’s been using one. A Buick Regal, two decades old, registered to George Penn, Deschamps’s uncle. It was found this morning near the bar where Deschamps picked up the Downs woman. Lab’s going over it now.”
    Nikki mentally chided herself for not keeping on top of every aspect of the investigation. She should have known
    about the car. Well, she still had one more card to play. “About the busted file cabinet in Maddie Gray’s office,” she said. “According to Detective Goodman it’s filled with blackmail material.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” Wise said. “Let’s not go off on some wild tangent. Jamal busted open a locked drawer because he thought there was money inside. He found only Maddie’s files, which he left in place.”
    “The killer ignored a box full of jewelry in her bedroom,” Nikki said. “Ignored an expensive wristwatch resting on the side of her bath. Ignored a small cash box containing several hundred dollars for office expenses that was on her desk. And he pried open a metal cabinet in the hope there was money inside? Doesn’t it seem more logical that the killer was looking for something specific—a folder full of information that Maddie Gray was using to blackmail him?”
    “Ray?” Walden asked. He had an amused smile on his face that Nikki found irritating. He was enjoying the Hill-Wise battle a little too much for her taste.
    “This is all unnecessary speculation,” Wise said. “We don’t know who ripped open the cabinet drawer or why. It may not have even been the killer. As for Madeleine Gray being a blackmailer, she made her money from gossip. That’s what she did every night on TV, spill the beans on a bunch of celebrities. Naturally, she had a cabinet full of nasty secrets. Where’s the blackmail?”
    “I was with Detectives Goodman and Morales when they opened her bank boxes filled with cash,” Nikki said. “Two hundred thousand dollars. What does that tell you?”
    “It sure as hell doesn’t tell me we’ve got the wrong man,” Wise said. “Not when our boy was apprehended in the alley just ten feet from his victim with her frigging ring in his pants pocket.”
    “Why would he risk going back to the body to take her ring, after leaving all the other jewelry and money at her house?” Nikki asked.
    “Because he’s an asshole,” Wise almost shouted. “Read my lips: Murderers usually don’t make sense. It’s also possible he didn’t see the other stuff.”
    Nikki was formulating a reply when the phone rang.
    Walden scooped it up, listened for a beat, and then crooned a reply that was not quite audible from across the desk. Obviously puzzled, he replaced the receiver. “Dr. Fugitsu’s office,” he said. “The blood type from under Gray’s thumbnail is O-positive, same as Deschamps’s.”
    “All right!” Wise exclaimed.
    “The other samples, however, from the fingernails, are AB.”
    “So she scratched somebody else that morning, or the day before. Maybe somebody she bumped into. We still have Deschamps’s type under her thumbnail.”
    “You’re just gonna ignore the other tissue?” Nikki asked.
    “Why not? It has no bearing on our case. We’ve got a type O-pos that does.”
    “It’s the most common type,” Nikki said. “The presence of the AB is a problem and we’ll need something more conclusive on the O. In four weeks, we’ll have the irrefutable DNA results.”
    “Sure,” Wise said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We can let Deschamps go home now. He’ll just hang around his apartment for several weeks, waiting for us to make sure he killed the Gray woman. Then all we’ll have to do is send somebody out to pick him up. Maybe Nikki can go.”
    She ignored him and concentrated on Walden. “If Madeleine Gray was a blackmailer, Durant is probably not our killer,” she said.
    “Durant?” Walden asked.
    “I’m