The Eleventh Victim

by Nancy Grace

Opening the street door in the night chill, she pulled it closed and locked it behind her before heading up the stairs to her office.

  Stepping inside into her office foyer, she found it silent and undisturbed, just as she left it.

  She locked the door behind her and crossed the room to a neat row of filing cabinets. Thumbing through the files, she reached back toward the end of the row, pulling out a cream-colored manila folder titled “Hayden Krasinski.”

  Hailey settled into the wingback chair by the office window, flicked on the floor lamp just beside her, and started reading. The gun and holster dug into her shoulder, so she took it off just while she was reading and hung it right beside her over the wing of the chair.

  Two hours passed and she still had no idea exactly what she was looking for; only that she hadn’t found it, despite going over and over everything in Hayden’s file. Now for Melissa’s.

  Her head ached and her eyes were burning, but she didn’t dare give up. There might be a clue to the murders here. There had to be, because she didn’t know where else to look.

  Rubbing her fingers into her forehead, she stood up and walked across her office floor to the kitchen to brew tea. Just as she was adding milk, hoping the tiny shot of caffeine would keep her going, she heard a single clicking sound.

  In the instant, before she spotted the human figure, she heard his voice.

  “Hello, Counselor. That’s a standard door lock. Easy to pick. I’m surprised you wouldn’t do better.”

  He was dressed in solid black and stood blocking the door of Hailey’s office, facing her, his head and face completely obscured in a green ski mask leaving nothing visible but eyes and lips. Just before hurling the tea cup at him from across the room and turning to run, it registered in the back of her mind…perpetrator approximately six feet tall, 185 pounds, dark clothing. Race, hair color, other identifying features and characteristics, unknown.

  The shot was a perfect aim, but he ducked his head out of the way a few inches and the cup smashed head-level into the wall beside the door. Darting backward, she lunged for the door out of her little kitchen and into the shared back hallway. Before she could get out, he closed the space between them, grabbing her from behind at the waist, yanking her hand off the knob so violently it felt as if several fingers were instantly broken.

  He pulled her backward, hard. She hit the floor and tasted blood. He came down on top of her. As she struggled forward to get away from him, her hand grazed the cord to the coffeemaker on the counter above.

  She pulled hard.

  The coffeemaker, filled with scalding water for tea, smashed down, drenching the ski mask.

  He screamed in pain, clutching his face. In that second, she scrambled up off the floor and ran.

  She made it through the door and out into the hallway. She knew the door to the street was locked with a key—she had locked it herself. The key was back in her office…. There was nowhere to go but up. One of the older dentists notoriously left his back office door unlocked. She could only pray that was the case tonight. Her boots still lay at the foot of her reading chair; she ran up the hardwood stairs as noiselessly as possible.

  What if it’s locked? The thought ripped through her brain in the last second before she grasped the knob with her uninjured left hand.

  She almost cried out in relief when she turned the handle: it was unlocked. Slipping in, she maneuvered through a darkened file room, sliding through the tall metal stacks of patient folders reaching floor to ceiling, then through a side door to the waiting area, closing the door behind her as silently as possible. Her goal…the third-floor fire escape.

  Negotiating the darkened room, Hailey passed by the coffee table stacked with magazines, a large ceramic umbrella holder, a magazine rack. Then, in search of the fire escape window, she stepped into the dentist’s clinical exam room.

  To her horror, there were no fire escape steps outside the exam room’s window. She had chosen the wrong room.

  With nowhere left to go, Hailey huddled down behind a massive piece of diagnostic machinery looming over a cushioned, reclining hydraulic dentist’s chair.

  She waited. She hardly breathed for fear of making noise.

  It seemed like forever, the silence hanging in the room as she crouched there on the floor…the quiet ringing in her ears…when finally she heard it…a far-off click as the front door lock was jimmied and snapped open.

  She stifled a scream and tried to scrunch down even further onto the floor.

  She couldn’t hear a thing.

  Seconds passed; minutes. She could hear movement now in the waiting room she had just left…. It was the metal magazine rack, she was sure, that crashed to the tile floor.

  Then quiet. She strained to hear in the darkness. Nothing more, and then…

  The air moved in the room and she knew. He was here.

  She could feel him, lurking there in the room with her.

  Silent tears flowed hotly down her cheeks.

  Why? Why had it come to this? Who was he?

  Nothing stirred in the room, yet she didn’t dare believe he had moved on. She could sense him, could feel him in the air. She could see nothing in the black of the room, crouched down near the floor.

  All at once, he pounced from behind, heaving her up by her neck.

  She screamed out in pain and fought wildly, lashing out in every direction, kicking at his knee, his crotch, anywhere she could make contact.

  He gripped her neck from behind. She wrenched free and scrambled away.

  He came after her with a curse. Again, his hands closed around her neck. Again she broke free and tried to claw her way to the doorway.

  She didn’t make it. He picked her up and literally threw her across the room. She landed against an antique sideboard. Pain shattered her body, yet somehow she managed to stand. He was on her, strong fingers digging into her neck as he bent her forward at the waist, over the sideboard.

  Suddenly, a cloud passed away from the moon outside. In the dim light filtering through the office window, Hailey looked into an ornate mirror above the sideboard and saw his shoulders and head, still shrouded in the ski mask, looming behind her.

  She struggled against him. He wrenched her arm and she heard the crack of bone. Searing pain, poker hot, shot through her arm and shoulder. “What’s the matter, Counselor? Still don’t recognize me?”

  With her one good arm, she managed to get hold of the mask, pulling at it. But it hit her—just before she saw his face in the dim moonlight—she knew his voice.

  After all the years of courtroom practice, this was one with whom she never shared a cup of coffee, a Christmas card, a sandwich at lunch, or even a joke over the phone or in pre-trial plea negotiations. Instinctively, she had always kept her distance.

  Now she understood why.

  “You don’t have to do this…. Stop now before you make it worse on yourself,” she gasped out. “You know they’ll get you…maybe not now, not tonight, not tomorrow—but they will.”

  He held her in a vise grip as he talked, his lips against the side of her head.

  “Not if they never find your body, Hailey. That’s the mistake I made with LaSondra. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that. I got a little sloppy with a cheap hooker just once…just once.”

  Matt Leonard’s hands circled around her throat and squeezed. Facing the mirror, she saw her own mouth open for air, saw her eyes begin to bulge. As she watched in silent horror as her own life drained away, she saw it.

  The ring with three rubies.

  And just before the ring twisted inward to the palm during the struggle, she understood. In that moment, she understood the trident mark on the neck of LaSondra Williams…. She understood why a man like Leonard would volunteer to take the case of Clint Burrell Cruise pro bono. Her mind flashed back to the courtroom and Cruise gnawing his nails down to the quick. He was a nail biter…he couldn’t leave fingernail marks on LaSondra’s neck. She understood it all. Leonard murdered Victim
Eleven. He’d strangled LaSondra Williams and set up Cruise to take the fall for her murder.

  “Don’t you see, Hailey? I have to…I have to do it.” Leonard breathed it into her hair. “Cruise is out. When I went looking for him, I heard he came to find you. Only you could put it together, only you, Hailey. Only you.”

  His fingers dug into her skin, the rubies tearing at her throat.

  “I knew the deal with Cruise’s MO—can’t keep a secret in APD Homicide. So I set it up to look like Cruise’s work and took the case pro bono. Brilliant. I knew he’d take the fall. Until the feds nailed your detective for stealing from dopers, and caught on tape, too! Good cop, Hailey. Too bad he was the one that found the murder weapon. But the reversal wasn’t all bad, Hailey. My firm needed the money we started losing after the Cruise conviction. But then Cruise headed up here. I knew once he found you, between you two, you’d put the pieces together. Once you got my Internal Affairs file from APD. There’s no other way, Hailey. Go out with a little dignity. Let me remember you that way…”

  In one last spurt of strength, Hailey pushed backward, and they both went sprawling on the floor.

  Hailey began crawling again, trying to get to the door.

  Leonard grabbed her again by the back of the hips and jerked her back. She flailed, reaching—reaching for anything.

  Her fingers wrapped around something and squeezed, and in the moment, she didn’t even know what she had.

  She heard a whirring sound just as she sunk the object into Leonard’s neck, hot blood spurting onto her face and shoulder.

  The dentist’s drill.

  Two things she hated most in the world…a sleazy defense attorney and a whining dentist’s drill…united at last. It was her final thought before she slumped forward.

  77

  New York City

  “HAILEY! HAILEY, WHAT HAPPENED?”

  From far away, she heard Dana’s familiar voice mingled with the buzz of others blending together through the haze.

  Forcing her eyes open, she saw daylight. She was looking up, surrounded by faces. She recognized a few—one of the dental hygienists, and the receptionist, and Adam, and…

  Dana…mascara streaked down her cheeks.

  “Hailey…I don’t understand. What were you doing here with Greg? Did you kill him, Hailey? He’s dead. My God…he’s just lying there, dead.”

  Confused, Hailey followed her gaze and saw a sheet-covered figure on the floor not far from where she lay.

  It came back to her in a flash.

  Leonard…Leonard attacked her, and she…

  “Did you kill Greg, Hailey?” Dana asked again.

  Greg?

  What was she talking about?

  “Easy, there, Ms. Dean,” said a paramedic who was kneeling beside her. “Don’t move just yet. You’re pretty banged up.”

  “I can’t believe Greg is dead,” Dana sobbed.

  That wasn’t Greg.

  It was Leonard. Leonard had—

  Suddenly, the truth hit.

  It had been him all along, Hailey realized.

  Posing as Dana’s new boyfriend, infiltrating her life so that he could get close to Hailey. He must have slipped her keys away from Dana and made a copy, setting him free to come and go from her apartment when she wasn’t there.

  From across the street and half a block up, Cruise stood jammed inside a doorway…watching. He’d been here ever since circling back and tracking Hailey from her apartment to her office. He’d been waiting for the two of them to come out. But now, an ambulance and police had arrived. He naturally shrunk further into the shadow of the door frame. It didn’t make sense. Why was Leonard here? Why the attack the night before? What did he have to do with Hailey? He didn’t know now, but he’d find out. And he’d be back.

  Cruise turned on his heel as yet another squad car pulled up, and no one noticed a man with a limp and a hat riding low on his face, slowly blending into the crowded street and fading away.

  “Step back, please. I need to speak to Ms. Dean. Excuse me. Excuse me. NYPD.”

  Hailey recognized Kolker’s voice even before the crowd parted and she saw him there, badge in hand.

  “Looks like you took quite a tumble, Hailey Dean,” he said—but not unkindly. He knelt beside her. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “Later,” she murmured.

  “I just need you to know—”

  “She said later.” It was Adam who stepped in.

  Adam, too, who squeezed her hand and said, “Hailey, you’re damned lucky to be alive, you know that? If the office cleaning lady hadn’t come in and found you when she did…”

  In time, she knew, it would all make sense.

  For now, he was right. She was just lucky to be alive. But purposefully releasing Adam’s hand, she motioned Kolker over and down, close to her face so he could hear. The crowd parted, and he knelt down beside her. Her throat hurt so terribly as she tried to speak, but couldn’t. She looked straight into Kolker’s eyes.

  “I just want you to know, Hailey…I’m sorry.”

  78

  Atlanta, Georgia

  THE SUN WAS SHINING DOWN WARM ON LEOLA’S FRONT PORCH. Ivy and plants surrounded it, dozens of hanging baskets placed across the top of the porch created a canopy overhead. A single tear made its way down her wrinkled face as she sat alone, rocking. In her lap was today’s Atlanta Telegraph. A gentle breeze breathed across the porch, barely rustling the paper’s headline.

  The detective’s taillights disappeared around the corner as they drove off. He’d been there a long time, trying to explain how attorney Leonard had taken Cruise’s case to cover up a murder of his own, the murder of LaSondra. Leonard’s history with prostitutes was apparently well known among the APD brass; his police file was full of brutality incidents with hookers as well as others. But nobody knew it continued after he was pushed off the force. After he became respectable, a lawyer.

  Leola sat perfectly still there on the porch for a while, feeling the sunlight hot on wooden planks beneath her feet. She sat down in a rocker and opened up the front page of the Telegraph.

  Finally, her little girl could sleep. Years ago, Leola had given up on the hopes and dreams she had for her girl, but at least now LaSondra could sleep in peace. Leola glanced down at the headlines.

  CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST CRUISE IN WILLIAMS MURDER

  Well, all right, it wasn’t so much the headline that mattered. It wasn’t even the topic of the article or the fact that her daughter hadn’t been murdered by Cruise, but by his defense attorney—who couldn’t hurt anyone else, ever again, because he was dead.

  Miss Hailey Dean herself did the deed.

  Thanks to her, the papers weren’t calling Leola’s baby girl all those awful names anymore.

  Leola Williams reread her favorite phrase in the article.

  “LaSondra Williams, an aspiring dancer from Atlanta…”

  Oh how she could dance. When she was little, Leola would put on a record and the minute the music started, LaSondra would twirl around and around, arms outstretched, calling out to Leola, “Mama! Mama! Look! Look at me, Mama! I’m a dancer, Mama. Can I be a dancer when I grow up?”

  “Yes, baby, you’re my sweet ballerina girl,” she would say.

  A good girl. Her LaSondra.

  Leola set the newspaper aside, not noticing the other front-page headlines below the fold.

  LOCAL BUSINESSMAN DIES IN FREAK ACCIDENT; BUILDING PROJECT CURTAILED AFTER SITE NAMED HISTORICAL SLAVE BURIAL GROUND

  Humming to herself, Leola closed her eyes and said a silent prayer in her head.

  God bless Miss Hailey Dean, and make her well, wherever she was.

  EPILOGUE

  New York City

  THE SHEETS WERE COOL WHEN SHE LAY DOWN.

  She was so tired, her body ached.

  Not one light was on inside the apartment, but the window was cracked open with the shade pulled nearly all the way down. Gray-white light from First Avenue f
iltered in under the shade, and she could hear the tires of cabs whiz by, slicing through the rain on the asphalt.

  She no longer knew what time it was, but it was late in the night…so late that other sounds were gone. No voices or activity, no horns, even—just the wheels turning in the rain.

  She was hungry, but so bone tired she didn’t have the energy to make it to the kitchen and look in the fridge.

  She just lay there, drifting, floating.

  Leonard’s face appeared in her mind, contorted with rage just before she’d killed him. She blamed herself for not fitting the pieces together sooner. Of course Leonard had learned all the details of the serial murders from his cronies who graduated to APD Homicide long after Leonard was forced out. They still hung out at Manuel’s Tavern, the local cops’ bar, practically every week. Details like the baker’s twine and the poultry-lifter were never leaked to the press or the general public, so naturally investigators believed the same killer murdered LaSondra. Now, APD was launching investigations on other unsolved prostitute homicides with Leonard in mind.

  And now Leonard’s Internal Affairs file had been made public, including that when he was investigating a string of burglaries, he held on to burglars’ lock-picking tools. Her office and apartment were easy pickings, and he’d gotten most of his information from his new and unwitting girlfriend, Dana, and maybe even Hailey’s keys as well. He’d been wooing Dana for weeks, milking her for information and spying on the two women from the abandoned building across from Dana’s office. He first thought it was Hailey’s.

  After his attempted frame-up and attack on Hailey, it had all gone public. When his sixth wife learned of the multiple incidents of brutality on hookers and suspects he’d arrested, she appeared devastated, for about five minutes. His house and law practice were already up for sale, and Leonard was buried in a non-denominational cemetery near the interstate.

  Even now, Hailey could feel his hands tighten around her throat. She forced her thoughts back further. To something pleasant. She was somewhere, maybe as a child? At home in front of the old black-and-white? Maybe it was in law school at the end of hours and hours of grueling study? Or was it after a long day in court?