by Nancy Grace
What followed was nearly a full hour, an excruciating fifty minutes of Sookie waxing on about wine. As they trudged back up the stairs, Sookie finally came to the point.
“So, I was thinking . . . you must get terribly bored in your little psych practice down in the Village. All those patients, all their miserable problems, it must be awful! We’d love to have you join our show as a regular contributor . . . taking the police or prosecution side of course.”
Hailey was stunned at her rudeness. But Sookie was apparently so extremely self-absorbed, she clearly didn’t realize how insulting she truly was.
What a boor . . . was Hailey’s first thought.
“Actually, they’re neither miserable nor boring. They are all fairly wonderful people. I’ve grown very attached to them and it would be extremely difficult for me to leave them or even cut back on their sessions.”
The guided tour of her mansion was clearly over. Apparently, it was time to get down to business. Sookie turned, quite clearly stunned someone wouldn’t jump at the chance to appear regularly on The Harry Todd Show.
“But, darling, you’d get paid. Certainly another paycheck wouldn’t hurt anything . . .”
Hailey looked around the monstrosity of a home Sookie held out on display. “I don’t need the money that bad. And if you’re suggesting that I get paid to take a certain position, even if it is the side of the state, my opinion is not for sale. But thank you so much for your kind offer. I’m extremely flattered, Sookie.”
“But we could make you a star. Don’t you understand? I could make you a TV star, Hailey.” Sookie’s gray eyes were widened and fixed on Hailey’s face.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun appearing on the show. But I don’t want to peddle my opinions. I think we should just keep it as it is. When you need me, call me and I will do my very best to make it happen.”
They were now standing exactly before the front door. Out of nowhere, Consuela appeared with Hailey’s coat.
“Well, you certainly have your principles! But I’m not giving up so easily.” Sookie’s smile was fixed.
“Thank you for the tea and the lovely tour of your home. It’s unique!” Hailey continued to try not to lie.
Sookie awkwardly leaned forward and gave a sort of air-kiss to the side of Hailey’s head. An air-kiss was something Hailey would absolutely not do under any circumstances, so she just smiled again as best she could. Consuela ushered Hailey out. But, just before she made it down the front steps to the driveway, Hailey heard a loud crash on the other side of the front door, inside the foyer. It sounded like glass smashing.
“Little bitch! I can’t believe she turned me down!” She heard Sookie yell it out, apparently to no one in particular. There were a few seconds of silence, followed by a door slamming somewhere in the bowels of the house.
Hailey looked up and saw Conseula at the corner of one of the front windows. She smiled apologetically at Hailey.
Hailey turned and made her way toward the limo, waiting there in Sookie’s circular front driveway.
“Poor kids . . .” It was all Hailey could think. “They don’t have a chance . . .”
Chapter 33
MIKE WALKER OF SNOOP KICKED BACK IN HIS BRAND-NEW Longhorn. It was a Barcalounger power recliner with generous proportions and soft, rounded arms. They were the “motion furniture” specialists and every single one of their products either reclined, swiveled, rocked, glided, or had some special combo of moving features. Walker’s Longhorn was spectacularly comfy and fully automated. After the fat paycheck from the Leather Stockton murder photos, he couldn’t help but splurge.
He loved his Barcalounger. He rubbed the soft curved arm with his fingertips. He’d always wanted one but could never really afford it. Now he had one, and she was a beauty!
His wife, Marjorie, had objected at first, based purely on aesthetics. But this baby was so swank, you’d never even know it was a recliner! He even chose the nailhead-trimmed, large-scale Vintage option with a deep-tufted back and turned legs with a stained cherry finish. Fashionable and functional!
What’s not to love?
The Longhorn purred into three different positions with absolutely no effort at all by using a control panel tucked between the arm and the seat cushion. After discussing it in-depth with the Barcalounger sales rep, he even went all the way and went for the optional leather-seat cushion upgrade. And it was all top-grain leather . . . He could tell.
The Leather Stockton murder photos had been viewed all around the world and Snoop was having a field day, going after any and all outlets that used any of the pictures without their consent. That meant even more money for Snoop.
Walker told his bosses he’d used old info from a longtime source, a doorman at the L’ Hermitage Park Towers, where Fallon Malone lived, to get inside her apartment and get even more murder photos. Years ago, the same doorman had spilled to Walker about the servants’ entrance to Malone’s place. The maid’s door wasn’t caught on the hall’s surveillance camera because it used a kitchen entrance that opened up into the high-rise’s common stairwell.
Walker had used the info to catch a big-time movie director, who happened to be “happily married” at the time, sneaking in and out of Malone’s apartment. That was back when Walker was a young hotshot who’d do anything for a story. Now that he was older, a few gray hairs had popped up, but he cured that with his Just for Men hair color. “Darkest Brown” was his shade . . . Even his wife didn’t know about it.
Now all these years later, Walker knew exactly how to get photos from inside Malone’s apartment without his minion turning up on grainy surveillance video. And nothing had changed. Malone still left her spare key under a ficus in the hallway like she used to. Hadden was in and out in less than fifteen minutes. Piece of cake.
Hadden’s shots netted Walker another fifty grand from Snoop. They were stunned Walker got the first photos of Stockton still dead on the murder scene, plus the gurney shots were primo. As to the shots of Prentiss Love dead in her SUV, he told his bosses he was tailing Love 24/7 in order to catch her boozing, hopefully at a public bar. He’d said he had to have a private eye stay on her day and night due to her unusual drinking habits. That’s how Walker explained the fresh shots of Love behind the yoga studio. He even got them before the Post.
The bigs at Snoop never bothered to ask too many questions. They obviously understood he had a true journalist’s integrity.
Naturally, he had to pay Hadden out of his own paycheck, but other than that, the three murders had pulled him out of the red and put him not just in the black, but in the pink. The good thing about Hadden was he always showed up pretty quickly no matter how late he had been out snookered the night before, and importantly, he never asked questions. Walker liked that in a photog. Just snap the shot and keep your yap shut.
And now, there were even rumors that if Walker came through with another big story get, he could be in the running to topple the mag’s executive editor, who’d been in place nearly fifteen years. That was a record at Snoop.
The TV was on low, one of the morning shows droning on in the background. Same old, same old. Weather, Washington, women’s health, and a stupid cooking segment.
Walker pressed the hidden automated control panel stuffed conveniently between the chair’s rounded arm and the seat cushion. The Longhorn made a gentle humming sound as it reclined him nearly prone. He loved this thing.
Where would the story go next? Walker was about to doze off there in the Longhorn with the TV on low. He could see Snoop’s headline now . . . “Madman Serial Killer Stalks Silver Screen Beauties.” Wait . . . no . . . the headline should be “Who Dies Next?”
Brilliant!
Snoop hadn’t had a good Death Watch in over two years. They could use the Death Watch headline and place red-hot actresses underneath, suggesting they, too, had been labeled for murder! It would be in all caps across the top of the mag. He’d have the sole byline.
The news. Man,
what a business.
Chapter 34
IT WAS HOT AND DARK AND THE SHEETS WERE TWISTED AROUND HAILEY’S WAIST like ropes. There at her bedroom door stood a figure, partially shrouded behind the door frame, only the left half of the body, head to toe, visible. The intruder was silent, seemingly content for the moment just to stare across the room at her as she lay sleeping.
Although the intruder made no sound or movement whatsoever, the feeling she was not alone woke Hailey with a start, and she sat straight up in the bed, instinctively reaching for the .38 she kept in the shoulder holster hanging on the bedpost beside her pillow. She tried her best to peer through the dark of the room, lit only by dim, milky moonlight filtering in from behind the bedroom window shade.
Hailey saw her standing there. Hayden Krasinski. She stood staring without blinking. Her face was pale white but blue around the mouth and her eyes bulged out of the sockets as a result of a strangling death. Her neck looked shrunken halfway between her jaw and her clavicle, the result of a powerful ligature strangulation.
On the front center of the old hooded sweatshirt she wore so often was a huge blossom of dark red blood that had seeped through her clothes, the result of a searing, double-pronged stab wound to the back. She had been left to die over a year ago, facedown in slushy ice of a Manhattan back alley, and blood from the stab wound that punctured her lungs, staining not only her T-shirt and sweatshirt but the ice lying beneath her.
And here she was at 1 a.m. in Hailey’s apartment, high above the city. How did she get in? Hailey had locked up tight and set the alarm, a new feature in her apartment she’d added after Atlanta defense attorney Matt Leonard had come after her. Not to mention his client, Clint Burrell Cruise. Hailey convinced a jury to send him to death row for the murders of eleven young female prostitutes, but between a bad cop and a bad judge, the case was reversed on appeal and Cruise walked. He was last spotted in New York City.
Hayden just stared, her blue lips twisted into a curve. First smiling, she then opened her mouth to speak, but at that precise moment, a gush of blood came pouring out, a result of the piercing of the lungs, the blood involuntarily pushing upward through the throat and out the mouth. Hayden looked shocked, alarmed, afraid when the blood poured out of her mouth and downward onto her sweatshirt, leaving a wide, deep-red trail from the neck of the sweatshirt down.
She looked up from her shirt to Hailey and began to scream . . . a bloodcurdling scream. Hailey leaped out of the bed and ran toward the door, to Hayden, and just as she got there . . . Hayden dematerialized, simply vanishing, particle by particle, into the dark of the apartment.
Hailey stood rooted to the floor, not moving an inch. Her mouth seemed locked open, her heart beating wildly in her chest, sweat pouring down the front and back of her neck and into the white T-shirt she’d worn to bed that night.
It took several minutes for Hailey to understand what had happened.
It was a dream. It had to be a dream. Hayden and Melissa, both her longtime patients, both murdered in a plot to discredit and frame Hailey Dean. Matt Leonard had, in fact, murdered the eleventh hooker and let his own client, Clint Burrell Cruise, take the fall. Only Hailey had access to all the files and all the facts of the murders, and although she might have failed to put together the pieces, Leonard believed otherwise.
So he’d come after her. Her clients were the collateral damage. It was all Hailey’s fault, or at least she believed it was, on nights like these. This wasn’t the first time she’d had nightmares where she was visited by Hayden or Melissa, although she always prayed each visit would be the last.
There was no way she could go to sleep now, icy chill replacing the heated spikes flashing through her body just moments ago. She trudged toward the kitchen, .38 held down and close to her right side. She wanted to check the apartment . . . just to make sure.
The lights were still burning brightly all across Manhattan, and the dark sky rose above it. There were a million points of light sprinkled across the high-rises and office buildings. The Crown Building, Chrysler Building, Citigroup Center’s sloping peak, and of course, the spike of the Empire State Building, were all lit up in the night for tourists and residents alike to adore. Looking down onto the city somehow gave her comfort tonight.
Hailey switched on an eye of her gas stove and put on the kettle to brew a cup of tea. Heading back to her bedroom, she picked up the notebook she was keeping on the serial killings . . . the “murdered D-Listers,” as Kolker called them.
Once in her bedroom, she settled back into her bed with her hot tea, propping herself up against pillows. Opening her notebook, she clicked on her bedroom TV. A few days before, she’d spotted Malone’s golf pro at a charity event Leather Stockton also attended. Not much, but it was something. Earlier that evening, she’d been reviewing clips again for Kolker. They were a mélange of various appearances the three women had made. Hailey stared at the screen, sipping her tea. Her blue pen rested in the center fold of the notebook, inviting her to start work.
She watched the first thirty minutes of one of the Prentiss Love DVDs without making a single note. There were award speeches, red carpet events, interviews about various projects, especially her gig on Celebrity Closets.
The next DVD was of Prentiss’s funeral. It was pure Hollywood. Several blowup head shots that must have each stood eight feet tall hung by nearly invisible strands from the top of the auditorium where the public service was held. They were stunning. The place was packed with special friends and family sitting in reserved seating up front.
They’d all filed in one by one or in little knots of two or three. There was a little bit of a stir when Prentiss’s yoga instructor came in with his boyfriend. Apparently, all her entourage knew she had a huge crush on him and had invested quite a bit of money in his studio as well as his plan to build a “yoga empire.” No one, not even Prentiss, knew he had a boyfriend. No doubt Prentiss Love’s investment decisions would have been far different if she had known that tiny detail. An argument broke out between one of Prentiss’s girlfriends and the yoga instructor, and the boyfriend intervened.
It wasn’t pretty.
Anyway, after that bumpy start, the service got under way. Hailey watched the whole thing intently, but found nothing of merit to report back.
She got up and headed to the kitchen to heat up more water. Brushing past her doorjamb, Hailey got a chill. In her mind’s eye, Hayden had just been standing there. Hailey’s eyes burned and tears welled up in them.
Had it all been her fault? Would they have been alive if it hadn’t been for their connection to her, Hailey Dean?
Climbing back into bed, she clicked the remote to start the next DVD, then took a sip of tea, holding the cup with both hands. She could hear the wind blowing outside her window high up in the sky.
The old, familiar ache was spreading from her chest up to her throat, and it felt like she’d swallowed a huge lump. No matter how hard she tried to get away from the pain of Will’s murder, it just kept coming back. As a psychologist, her mind told her that the new wave of grief she was feeling was simply an aftershock from the murders of Hayden and Melissa, her patients.
Her heart didn’t care why, it just hurt.
Leaving Atlanta and her career as a felony prosecutor had seemed like such a great idea at the time, and for a few years here in Manhattan, it actually seemed to have worked. But now, not only was the pain over her patients’ deaths dredging up the old grief from Will’s death, she was alone . . . completely alone. Again.
Hailey swallowed hard to try to get rid of the lump in her throat. She wiped her eyes and face, now wet with tears, with the edge of the bed sheet, and took a sip from the cup of tea she’d been clutching.
She stood up. Walking over to her bedroom closet, she opened it with one hand, still holding the tea in the other. She carefully set it down on the closet floor. There in the corner. There it was. Hailey just looked at the white cardboard box. She didn’t need to open it to see wha
t was inside. She just wanted to look and see that the box was still there. She knew what was inside.
Her wedding dress, still beautiful and pristine, still made of silk the color of champagne. With the gown would be her veil, both gently folded away between layers of crinkly tissue paper, and placed in the white cardboard box. She’d never sealed the box, just in case she wanted to take them out and look at them just once in a while. But she never let herself do that. It would be too risky.
It always seemed to end up there in the corner of her closet, not far away at all. The white cardboard box had taken on its own identity over the years, and although she never lifted the lid, she carried it like a treasure . . . a reminder of another life and another time, a fresh-faced girl who grew old too young.
She used every ounce of self-control to step away from the closet, to shift her thoughts away from Will and Melissa and Hayden, and attempted to focus on the stack of DVDs still left to sort through. She headed back to the bed and the remote, rewinding the part that had already played while she was thinking of Will, and not Prentiss Love, Leather Stockton, or Fallon Malone.
She started with the raw footage of the Harry Todd shoot. Tony had gotten all of it for her, including the parts that never made air. She saw the tour of Fallon’s apartment, and it was just as beautiful and jaw-dropping as the day Hailey saw it herself. Fallon spent a lot of time standing on the front staircase landing, directly in front of the towering Penley portrait of herself. It was magnificent and Fallon worked it to her best advantage.
Then there was a segment where Sookie positioned Fallon in the kitchen as if the actress were whipping up a homemade dish. Trying their best to get a flattering shot of Malone, Hailey glimpsed Tony Russo and Sookie several times in the background hovering over the shoot. But after much fidgeting with lighting and positioning and such, the segment fell flat when Fallon admitted she had no idea how to light her gas stove.