by Nancy Grace
Thank God. Here came the EMTs. The body would soon be out on a stretcher. The cops were already fiddling with the lock on the glass doors.
What was the hold-up? Even Hadden could jimmy a sliding glass door in no time. Then . . . They got it. The door slid open and they all walked in, including Quinton. Hey, maybe Hadden could actually enter the pool house after they all left and get inside shots.
Within forty-five seconds, the young one was back outside puking again, this time on a different bush. Who could eat that much this early in the morning?
Hadden couldn’t hear what the other cop was asking or what the EMTs were saying over all the puking sounds. Plus, the puking cop was obscuring his view. He finally finished, wiped off his face, and went back in to the murder scene. A man in a blue sports coat—Hadden could tell it was polyester from fifty feet away by the way the material shined in the morning light—and gray slacks reappeared. He’d walked up along with the EMTs and started taking pictures with a black camera. Not a bad piece of equipment, either. Hadden recognized it as similar to his own. Must be the detective for the Coroner’s Office.
Hadden crouched into position, secured the long lens, and started snapping away. He was waiting on the body. They’d probably have a white sheet over the face but maybe he’d get lucky and they wouldn’t. After he got shots of the dead body being rolled out, he’d take a few beauty shots from the front yard, a couple of side shots showing the walkway around back, and of course a few shots of the pool, complete with hidden grotto. He could only imagine what went on in the grotto.
Then, who would give him the best money? After all, it was Eric Saxton’s house. Who knew who the broad was. Whoever she was, he had plenty of shots of those legs.
It came to him in a flash. Mike Walker with Snoop. That was the primo mag. Walker was no idiot. After a stint in the air force in Japan, he became the youngest-ever foreign correspondent for International News Service, which later became UP. He ended up as a foreign correspondent for NBC, then went for the big money with Snoop. They were the single largest-circulation mag in America. Over seventeen million readers weekly.
Hadden was nearly giddy at the thought of Walker and Snoop. He started snapping shots even faster.
Who knew what headline they’d attach to the story? One of Walker’s fortes was headlines. Hell, Hadden didn’t care what they printed, as long as they paid him. He could easily get fifty grand for this. He’d make sure to get a shot of the Oscar statuette, just yards away from a dead body!
Hadden had no idea how to reach Walker directly. He’d only spoken to underlings at Snoop in the past, and in all his years, had only gotten two shots published on Snoop’s pages.
He could hardly wait until they rolled the body out.
It had been over an hour now. Hadden could see the coroner’s investigator down on his knees, measuring the length from the pool house door to the body, then from the window to the body. The others were also on their hands and knees, likely combing the carpet for a shell casing or maybe even a bullet. The head was so mangled, it would take an autopsy to determine if there was an exit wound. For all they knew, one or more bullets could either still be in her skull, or have shot out the back of her head onto the floor.
How long would they be in there? He had a cramp in his leg but didn’t dare move a hair. Squatted there behind the bushes, Hadden was shifting positions when he spotted a dog. Oh, hell.
The damn thing came right over to him and started to bark. The cops turned around and looked. Hadden froze.
The dog nosed his way through the azaleas and actually started sniffing at Hadden.
What the hell? He must smell the McDonald’s. Fast-food sausage biscuit smell could linger on clothes for hours. One of the cops stepped outside the pool house, looking back at the bushes.
Damn dog. Now he was sniffing Hadden’s leg. What would be next?
The cop took a few steps toward the bushes where Hadden was trying his best to shoo the dog away before its sniffing got any more personal.
The dog looked him straight in the eye, raised its left hind leg, and seemed to enjoy taking a long, warm piss right on Hadden’s shoe. There was not a damn thing Hadden could do about it. He could feel the urine soaking down through the ankle of his sock.
Static-laced squawks came out of the cop’s shoulder radio. He stopped to talk back into his shoulder, turned on his heel, and walked back to the pool house.
Suddenly, it happened. They were bringing out the body on a gurney. Hadden could barely contain himself. He needed a cigarette badly.
The coroner’s staff rolled her out, and sure enough, they had a white sheet over her body, including her face. Damn them to hell.
But then, in a moment of serendipity, her left wrist fell out.
The girl’s dead, manicured, salon-tanned hand dangled there, as only a dead hand could. It was beautiful.
Hadden almost wet his pants.
Chapter 7
YOU KNOW WHAT A JPEG IS DON’T YOU? YOU’VE HEARD OF THAT, right?”
Walker was losing patience with the moron on the other end of the phone, but if he had a shot of what he claimed to have, this could be the winning lottery ticket for Walker. But you had to give the guy credit for persistence. Walker didn’t know how Frank Hadden, whoever the hell that was, got his cell number, but he’d called it no less than fifteen times.
Walker noticed the cell lighting up on the bathroom counter when he got up to take a leak. Assuming it was an emergency that early in the morning, he picked it up even though he didn’t recognize the caller’s number. After a brief self-introduction, Walker could hardly make out, Hadden said one phrase loud and clear: Dead girl, great legs, Eric Saxton, and pool house.
Hearing those words together in the same sentence, alarms started going off in Walker’s head. Now he was trying his best to walk Hadden through sending the photos to him via his iPhone. He’d been explaining for the last fifteen minutes.
It was way too early for this BS. Walker clicked the phone on speaker and turned to pour his coffee. Then, the magical “ping,” the phone alerted him to a received message.
It was the first of Hadden’s jPEGs.
“Hold on, Hadden, I think I got something.”
Walker opened up the text. Holy shit!
He set down his mug and reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe, he pulled out his other cell phone, punched in a number off speed dial and put Hadden on mute with his other thumb.
“Jerry, get up. Hurry. Get out to the Hamptons right now. There’s a dead girl in Eric Saxton’s pool house. I’ve got photo confirmation. She’s probably at the morgue by now. Don’t stop for a shower. Get out there and try to get whatever you can. Take the coroner doughnuts, find the cop, do whatever you have to do, get something now. Find out who she is. I want it on the cover of Snoop but it’s gotta be fast. We go to press in twelve hours.”
Walker clicked off. Taking Hadden off mute, he broke into Hadden’s monologue. “I’m sorry, I lost you for a moment. Look, let’s cut the crap. How much do you want?”
The jPEGs kept coming. They were beyond fantastic.
“So how many do you have?”
“Over a hundred. I’ve got the mansion exteriors, shots of the family on the grand piano . . .”
“You didn’t break in, did you? That’ll screw the pooch . . .”
“No way! I’m not an idiot, Mr. Walker. I shot from outside, through the window! For all they know, I coulda been thirty feet away! No trespassing here!”
“Okay. What else do you have . . . exteriors, photos . . .”
“I got the backyard, the tranquility pool, pool house, about twenty-five or thirty shots of the girl, the cops arriving, and the jackpot . . . shots of the girl being wheeled out with a wrist dangling off the gurney!”
“Face covered?”
“Yeah. The S.O.B.s covered her up with a sheet.”
“Damn. I hate when they do that. But you said a wrist was dangling out?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. But we still have no idea who the girl is . . . She could be nobody . . .”
“Who cares who she is? It’s Eric Saxton’s house! This is at least worth fifty grand! Don’t bullshit me. I’ll go to another tab if you don’t pay. I’ll call right now you cheap son of a—”
Taking a closer look at one particular shot of the dead girl, the one where her leg was sprawled out from the chair, Walker abruptly stopped the bargaining, cutting Hadden off mid-sentence.
“No need for you to do that. No need to haggle about money. You’re right. Your work is phenomenal. You have a real talent for, let me say, capturing the moment so well, so beautifully. Perfectly, actually, to be completely accurate. Snoop will absolutely pay you the fifty. I can wire it from my laptop in thirty minutes. Give me a number. Happy?”
Hadden was speechless. He knew Snoop was the best, but he’d expected a big argument, and in the end, he’d realistically hoped he could turn around fifteen large. This was over triple what he had hoped for.
“Just send the rest of what you’ve got. I’m firing up my laptop right now. E-mail the numbers so I don’t wire to the wrong account. Okay, buddy?”
“I’m e-mailing now from my BlackBerry. Thanks . . .” Hadden didn’t know quite how to end it, but he wanted to get off the phone before somehow, it all went wrong.
The phone clicked off. Man, what a morning!
Little did Hadden know that at that very same moment, Walker was yelling out to his wife, “Honey! Honey! Come here! Hurry! Look at this!”
When she arrived in the kitchen rubbing her eyes, Walker was standing by the kitchen window to get the morning light, squinting into his iPhone.
“Look at this dead girl . . .”
“Why do I want to look at a picture of a dead girl first thing in the morning? I haven’t even had any coffee . . .”
“Okay. Don’t look at the dead girl. Just look at her leg.”
Marjorie Walker squinted in the light to get a look at a shapely leg attached to a dead woman’s body, seated in a straight chair. The leg was sprawled at an unnatural angle.
“Okay. I see it. What about it?”
“The tattoo, Marjorie, the tattoo! Forget the head. Look at the tattoo!”
By now, Walker was on his laptop, to which he’d sent the photos. He punched a few keys and the photo was enlarged. He zeroed in on the ankle tattoo and blew it up. Along with some Chinese characters, the tattoo depicted two intertwined hearts. The hearts had initials in them. LS and KD.
Leather Stockton and her former husband, Kenny DePaul.
The dead girl was Leather Stockton.
Chapter 8
OMG! DID YOU SEE THE TWITTER? ABOUT LEATHER STOCKTON?” Sookie breathed it into her cell phone, barely able to contain the excitement.
“Yee-es! Of course I saw it! Twenty minutes ago!” He had to outdo her on the timing . . . Sookie had to think he saw it before she did.
He was a little stunned she knew about the murder. Sookie hadn’t even known Reagan was dead for two days, while Russo booked like mad.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” He breathed it right back into the receiver at her, his lips actually grazing the mouthpiece.
“Yes! Absolutely! Pull Harry’s last interview with her . . . you know the one after her DUI? Or was it after her divorce from that Wall Streeter? Whatever . . . I think it was right after her DUI . . . Didn’t you tell me she was drunk in the Green Room?”
“Yes, I definitely told you. You weren’t here. You were in the Bahamas, I think, weren’t you celebrating your fortieth? Weren’t you on a yacht and you had that French Champagne you told me about? You know, a thousand dollars a bottle?”
“Tony . . . You’re right! Again! I was in the Bahamas with Julian for my fortieth! The French Champagne! Your memory is amazing!” It hit neither that all Champagne came from France, or else it wasn’t Champagne.
“I remember! I never forget a detail!” Tony desperately wanted praise. It didn’t happen.
“But, please, Tony, don’t get me started on Julian. He’s dating a girl in college now. College. Some little tramp from Barbados. She’s probably eighteen. That’s sick. Please, I can’t think about him anymore today.”
Tony didn’t bother to point out he wasn’t the one who brought up Sookie’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Julian. She did. As usual. No way did Tony want to launch another three-hour phone therapy session about Sookie’s most recent marriage disaster.
“How do you know she’s eighteen? Where did you see her?”
“Where? It doesn’t matter . . . Okay . . . from my car . . . across a parking lot when they were going out to dinner. I happened to be there at the same time they were.”
Oh, no, Sookie was stalking her ex again. Tony knew it.
“But Tony, let’s focus on Leather.”
“It’s got to run today.”
“No! Tonight! We’ll stick with Hailey Dean and the torso for today daytime, then push the suits to preempt political coverage and go with Harry’s last sit-down with Leather! That White House bunch, whine, whine, whine, it’s always the same thing night after night. How do they do it?”
“Yes! Tonight!” Tony paused. “But wait . . .” Stay calm . . . Stay calm. Tony thought it through. “If we go prime time tonight, we won’t get the credit for the big number . . . It won’t be our time slot . . .”
“Doesn’t matter . . . we don’t have time to promo before air . . .” she reminded him.
“Okay. I’m on it. By the way . . . where are you?”
“At the salon . . . remember? The root emergency? I can’t do everything . . . you’ll have to handle it.”
Sookie’s attention was already drifting; she was looking in the mirror at her roots and, shockingly, observed they were more gray than dark brown. She assumed something was wrong with the lighting . . . probably the fluorescents beaming off the crown of her head.
“We have time! We can promo it as Live interview with Leather Stockton.”
“But it’s not live, Tony. We can’t.”
“But Sookie, it was live when we shot it . . . remember? The viewers won’t know . . . They’ll think Leather Stockton must not be dead . . . and they’ll have to watch because they’ll have heard all day she is dead!”
“So when Standards and Ethics starts whining and complaining, that’s our out. That it was live when we shot it?” Sookie feigned attention to the show’s details, but couldn’t peel her eyes away from several gray hairs along the part of her hair.
“Sure! Plus, better to ask forgiveness than permission . . . Right?! That’s what you always say!” Tony had it all figured out.
“Okay. Handle it . . . I have to go . . . somebody’s beeping in.”
She was gone.
Leather Stockton’s last interview.
What would the lower font read? Bullet to the Brain of TV Beauty?
He had to get the dot-com people on the phone right now to start the promos. Picking up his cell and land line, he started punching digits simultaneously. Once one began to ring, he put it on speaker and started typing furiously onto his BlackBerry.
This would be tough. He’d need the whole staff on board. He’d order them pizza to make it okay.
Russo was in Heaven.
Chapter 9
THE HARRY TODD SET WAS ICY COLD. GOOD THING SHE’D WORN A suit jacket and blouse to top her usual jeans and cowboy boots. Hailey noticed all the other women in the Green Room, totally decked out with intricate hairdos and over-the-top makeup and jewelry. Even though she knew she didn’t fit in to the scene, no way would she have slipped on the hideous gold lamé blouse Tony Russo tried to force on her again. Ridiculous. Plus, it smelled slightly of sweat. He’d obviously used it on other guests that didn’t meet his “eye” for TV ratings.
Whatever. She didn’t want to fit in with this phony bunch, although she was looking forward to meeting Todd; she’d watched him for years.
After sitting there for abou
t fifteen minutes on a sofa before a live TV audience who talked among themselves, occasionally stirred up by one of the producers on a megaphone who was trying desperately to get them riled up, Todd made his entrance.
He was flanked by three staffers who were prepping him even as he walked up on the set.
“Hello, Hailey.”
Her first reaction was astonishment. His face seemed unreal and he was so tiny. His bleached-blond hair stood up in a stiff spike down the center of his head and the rest was combed thinly around it. A gold chain peeked from his open collar . . . He seemed so much more robust on camera. She’d heard rumors he stuck to some fad diet in the false belief that thinner was younger, but now she believed it.
Hailey stood and reached out to shake his hand. He conspicuously did not take her hand, so she casually let it drop by her side.
Hmm . . . Maybe he’s a germaphobe. Poor thing. The staffers laid out several thick, yellow sheets of paper before him on his anchor table. Reading them upside down from across the table, Hailey realized they were the exact questions he was being spoon-fed to ask, word for word.
Within two minutes max, the intro music to the show started. The audience producer motioned everyone to start clapping.
Did that include her? She couldn’t think of a reason to clap, so she sat completely still, trying to maintain a half-smile as the lights maxed on to bright, right into her eyes, to the point she could hardly look up.
A deep baritone voice came out of nowhere overhead, reporting the headlines of Stockton’s murder and announcing the live show that night. The voice introduced Harry Todd first, then her.
Her chest tightened as she listened.
“. . . and after being the target of a serial killer herself, she goes on the offense and murders the murderer! In cold blood! Murder weapon? A dentist’s drill! Today, her secret past life revealed . . . Why she killed a killer! Because she was a crime victim herself . . . her fiancé gunned down! Now . . . she fights back against crime!”
