The Eleventh Victim

by Nancy Grace

  He stalked out sulking, knowing full well he was banished from the booth for reprimanding a woman who could end up being the State’s star witness.

  “Cassie, please…” Hailey reached out and gently touched the hooker’s bony, tattooed arm. “Don’t go.”

  “I don’t need this shit.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about that. We just don’t want to see another woman, or you, killed. Fincher feels the police didn’t work the case because the dead girls were hookers. Or dancers—like you, Cassie. Please. You could be saving a life. I need you. Don’t you have a little sister? Or a little girl? Would you want this to happen to her?”

  Hailey pulled out a crime scene photo of one of the victims and handed it to Cassie.

  Cassie paused, looking at the photo. Then, she put her purse back down beside her in the booth, got out a cigarette, and lit it up.

  Thank God, a second chance.

  “When did it happen, Cassie? Did you ever see him again? Just tell me what you remember.”

  “It was July, last year.” She exhaled. “It was sticky hot the minute I stepped out of the back of the club and came down the steps.”

  “July. Good. When in July?”

  Cassie thought hard about it, as Hailey calculated…July of last year would have been nearly two years ago…when Homicide figured he’d first started the killings. Cassie must have been one of his first victims, but he had gotten put off by the vomit and quit. But by the time he geared up for his next victim, he was past backing out. The next girl wasn’t so lucky.

  “You know what?” Cassie said at last. “It was probably, like, the week after the Fourth. I remember because I had made a little outfit for a special show at the club for the holiday and I wore it the next week, too. It had red, white, and blue sequins and a matching sequined choker. I wore the leotard part of the outfit again the next week but without the red tux jacket. It was that night, the night I went with him in the car. He tore the neck of it in the park.”

  “Tore the neck out?” Hailey alerted to the significance.

  “Yeah. Just the neck was torn.”

  “What else? Just tell me what you remember…every detail. It’ll come back to you.”

  Cassie shrugged. “It was late, like four a.m. I stepped out of the back of the club. He was waiting for me in his car, looking up at the door when I came out.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know…it was big, but I don’t remember what kind. I thought we’d go to a hotel room or even in the car because it was so big, but he wanted it outdoors. I figured it’d be quick and at that time of night in the cul-de-sac, nobody would be around for sure, so I took him there.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  Cassie shook her head. “He never came back after that night, and up ’til then, he had been pretty regular, same seat every night for about a month. Good tips, too. Then—poof! Gone. Never came back. I told some of the other girls about it. They remembered him, but they said it, too—you know, that he never came back in the club.”

  She stopped talking and got quiet, looking down at the ashtray.

  “What else can you remember?” Hailey coaxed.

  “Yeah…thinking back…you know, I wouldn’t have thrown up, but I had just had my dinner break. He smelled funny, like a kitchen smell, like real strong garlic. But it wasn’t his breath. It was just him. It like…came out of his pores or something.”

  Hailey’s thoughts raced as they sent Cassie on her way and pulled out of the Denny’s parking lot. All they needed was a break…one break. One hint, one clue, one sign.

  They finally had something…same MO, outside in a secluded area located off the strip, prostitute-victim, half-and-half, manual strangulation during the trick…a fascination with the victim’s neck…it was all too similar not to be connected.

  The sheer impact of how close this woman had come to losing her life, if this was the right guy, slammed into Hailey like a tsunami.

  “Fincher…stop the car.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He was out there.

  “Nothing. Just…” She turned, looking out the back window, and watched Cassie until she was out of sight, back in the club, safe.

  Safe for tonight, at least.

  3

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “LOOK, I KNOW IT SOUNDS CRAZY,” SHEILA GRAHAM TOLD HAILEY as they sat facing each other across her living room coffee table, “but I just can’t get involved in this again.”

  “It doesn’t sound crazy at all, Sheila. I’ve heard it a million times. Nobody wants to get involved. But what I’m telling you is that he could get out. If I get evidence suppressed or the jury just doesn’t like the victims, for whatever reason, Clint Burrell Cruise could walk, he could get out. Then who do you think he’d want to come back to? You, that’s who.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Please, Sheila…we need you. Believe me, I know how difficult it will be for you to come face-to-face with Cruise again, after what he did to you. He almost killed you, I know that.”

  Cruise—the woman’s former live-in boyfriend—had harassed her with a series of late-night, sexually obscene phone calls. Then, when she’d continued to rebuff him, he broke into her apartment, crept into her bedroom, and tried to rape her. When she’d fought back, the sex attack turned into attempted murder. He tried to strangle her there in her own bed.

  If it hadn’t been for her sister, sleeping over in the guest bedroom that night and calling 911, Sheila would be dead. As it was, the sister left town and couldn’t be found after Cruise threatened to come after her.

  Even in the darkened bedroom, Sheila could still make a positive ID, and a voice ID as well. Prints lifted off the back window matched Cruise’s. The case was rock solid.

  It was that arrest and book-in photo that landed Cruise’s photo in the mug-shot album, where Cassie recognized him from the strip club. From Cassie’s identification, a warrant for Cruise’s blood evidence, which meant DNA at trial, was suddenly possible.

  The prosecutor at the time dropped the ball and didn’t push when Sheila refused to testify against her ex-boyfriend at trial. But even though the case had to be dropped for lack of prosecution, the mug shot was still there, still there in Hailey’s fat book of photos.

  “What makes you think she’ll do it now? For somebody else? When she wouldn’t even do it for herself?” Hailey asked herself, sitting immobile on the sofa, not willing to give up just yet but knowing inside it was probably futile to try and convince her.

  But without Sheila, the evidence would just be the dry testimony of scientists from the crime lab on the stand, and maybe Cassie, too, if she didn’t OD or disappear before trial.

  “It’s not just what he did that day that’s so painful for me to face,” Sheila said slowly. “It’s what he was like before that. I thought he loved me, Hailey. He had me fooled. I thought he was perfect. Sweet, charming, he could dance, he brought home a paycheck…everything.”

  “Classic psychopath,” Hailey thought.

  Sheila was her only hope. Here was her chance.

  “Sheila, this isn’t just about what he did to you. It’s about the eleven women he murdered after you broke up with him. But really, Sheila, it’s about your little girl. Until he’s behind bars, she’s not safe. Didn’t you say she was the only thing you cared about? That’s what you told me on the phone. What about her? It’s not just about you, Sheila. You’re a mother now. It’s not all about you anymore.”

  Coming down on her was a risk. It could make her furious and land Hailey back out on the sidewalk where she came from, empty-handed.

  It started with one tear, and quickly Hailey was searching for Kleenex. Sheila broke down. The woman really had been through so much and here was Hailey, badgering her.

  From the moment Hailey first laid eyes on Sheila, she had the nagging sensation that she knew her, that they must have met somewhere in the past. But Sheila said no, and she didn’t
have a record. She was a nurse at Northside Hospital pediatric NICU without a single blemish on her record, not even a speeding ticket.

  But there on the sofa, watching her movements, listening to her speech patterns as she talked, the way she dabbed at her eyes with the Kleenex…there was something familiar…

  Hailey came up dry. She couldn’t place her. The woman must be telling the truth. She had never been in the courthouse as a defendant, suspect, or witness. Nevertheless, Hailey instinctively continued to look her up and down, staring intently whenever she looked away.

  There was something about her…

  “Want some coffee? It’ll only take a minute to brew.”

  “I’d love some, thank you, Sheila.”

  Hailey stood up, too, and followed Sheila into the kitchen. Her baby girl was there, playing on the kitchen floor. Hailey sat down at the kitchen table and started playing with her.

  “What do you take in it? Milk?”

  Hailey looked up to answer and, glancing over to Sheila’s profile, there at the kitchen sink, it hit like a ton of bricks.

  Hailey realized where she had seen Sheila before. In autopsy photos. Ten of them, anyway.

  All Cruise’s victims—with the exception of LaSondra, the very last—looked just like Sheila, front and side. All had the same slight, ghostly pale features, with hair cascading down over one shoulder. Sheila had dark brown eyes, they had dark brown eyes. Even their height and weight…Sheila was five foot one, ninety-five pounds. Cruise’s victims were all between four foot nine and five foot two, not one weighing in over one hundred and five.

  How had Hailey overlooked that?

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. It was as if the victims had come to life again, through her.

  Here was motive, handed to her on a silver platter. The State didn’t have to prove it, but juries without exception expected to hear a motive, especially in a murder case.

  Over and over, with each woman he attacked and strangled, he relived Sheila’s rejection, acting out the same rage over and over. With each murder, he got her back.

  “Please, Sheila,” Hailey begged. “Please say you’ll testify. I know you can do it. For their sakes.”

  She laid out the eleven folders on the kitchen table, setting them carefully one by one and opening their covers to reveal eleven photographs of eleven dead women.

  Sheila stared at them for a long time.

  “And to protect her.” Without turning away from Sheila, Hailey gestured toward the baby girl sitting on the kitchen floor.

  Sheila looked over at the baby, then back up at Hailey. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “All right,” she said at last. “I’ll do it. I’ll testify.”

  Walking back out to her car, Hailey glanced back to see Sheila standing at the window, baby on hip, looking out after her.

  “Maybe now I can pull this thing off…maybe…”

  4

  Atlanta, Georgia

  IN HER OFFICE AFTER HOURS, HAILEY POURED OVER A MOUNTAIN OF evidence against Clint Burrell Cruise in the murders of eleven women.

  Evidence that was now under attack and in jeopardy of being suppressed by a defense team led by Matt Leonard.

  Leonard knew every trick in the book and was pulling out all the stops on this one. First, he papered her with motions, knowing she was trying the case solo. She wrote and argued every response herself. He knew that.

  Already, he had taken the use of DNA evidence up to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing that between junk science, possible police corruption, and contamination both at the scene and at the crime lab, it was not reliable enough to use in cases so serious as to warrant the death penalty, cases like this one. Leonard argued that, unlike a sentence of years behind bars, once the death penalty was imposed, there was no possible “reversal,” as far as his client was concerned.

  Luckily, she had insisted on a warrant for backup DNA testing at the crime lab, so the Court felt secure that not one but two DNA tests pointed to Cruise as the strangler in ten out of eleven cases. With the startling similarities in MO in all eleven murders, she was determined to prove the last victim, Victim Eleven, Leola’s daughter LaSondra, was Cruise’s as well.

  The circus Leonard created was designed to throw her off her game and distract her from trying the case.

  The next morning, a mortal blow was delivered to the State. The judge ruled the strangling incident with Sheila would not come into evidence at trial in his courtroom. He bought into the defense theory that to introduce evidence of another bad act—not the ones on trial—was more prejudicial than probative…that it wasn’t evidence proving the murders and just served to taint Cruise’s reputation before the jury.

  But Sheila alone showed motive. The judge couldn’t care less. Sickened by the decision, Hailey stood alone in the courtroom as it emptied.

  She held her left fist to her mouth, the right twisting the silver pen. What to do…what to do? The jury would never hear motive and if they didn’t accept the DNA or disbelieved any of the cops, Cruise would walk. Look what had happened in O. J. Simpson’s double murder trial…one bad cop and it was all over.

  The case was sacked, with Leonard winning round one of pre-trial motions.

  Hailey heard the rush of air when the courtroom door behind her was pushed open and she turned.

  It was Leonard.

  He stopped short when their gazes locked, but he continued to eye her from across the State’s counsel table.

  “Ready to bite the bullet and drop the case?”

  She laughed. “When hell freezes over, Leonard. Not a day before.”

  “If I get the blood warrant thrown out on legal grounds, it’s over. But I can make it easy on you. I won’t tell the press, and you dead-docket the case. Nobody’ll know. You can tell everybody there just wasn’t enough proof.”

  “Well, you’ve finally lost your mind, Leonard. I’ve seen it coming, though, no surprise here. Too much pressure?”

  “Face it, Hailey, you can’t win them all, as much as I know that disappoints you.” His tone was cruel and sarcastic, belying the half-smile playing on his lips.

  Hailey looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time after having handled countless guilty pleas and various other negotiations and motions with him over the years.

  To her he was just another defense attorney, one out of hundreds she dealt with in the course of handling the State’s business. She had never really noticed the thin curve of his upper lip, the twist at the corner of his mouth, the cold glint in his gray eyes, his bulky frame. His face was pale but his skin was blotchy, as if he’d had severe acne as a teenager.

  Leonard had been an Atlanta cop for several years but never rose above street cop status, and he still stayed in close contact with his old cronies. Many of them had risen in the ranks. He still had the body of a cop, with a barrel chest and thin at the waist. He was a fitness buff, spending hours watching himself work out in front of mirrors at the gym. He even had to have his suits specially tailored wide at the shoulder and then taken in for an almost freakishly thin waist and bottom. Word was that he left the police force with an Internal Affairs file as thick as your fist, filled with police brutality complaints. Gossip or lore, Hailey never knew the truth of it.

  He’d gone through five wives that Hailey knew of. She saw the most recent one at the annual Lawyer’s Club Christmas party: a bleached platinum blonde, tiny, in her early twenties, incredibly frail and thin. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds and was dressed like a runway model. She never said a word, though, looking ill at ease and nervous. Her frosty red lipstick kept glomming at the corners of her mouth, giving her an unnatural clown frown. Hailey later heard they, too, had divorced.

  Standing there, facing Leonard’s steely gaze and imposing figure, Hailey had no problem believing that the brutality rumor was true.

  “Take the dead-docket, Hailey. It won’t spoil your record. That’s what it’s all about for you, right? Un
defeated?”

  “This isn’t about my record, Leonard. It’s about what went down on the strip. It’s about your client and what he did. You may win one round in court, Leonard, but it’s not over…yet. I’ve just gotten started with you.”

  “What do you want, Dean? To rot in a job as a local prosecutor? Nothing but dopers, thugs, killers?”

  “Like yours is any different? Except, oh yeah, you defend the dopers and the thugs and the killers. You put them back on the street.” She shot it right back at him.

  “Some life you’ve got going here, Hailey. No family, no kids, just a worn-out, bitter prosecutor. How’s that working for you?”

  His hulking frame was hovering closer, his hands clinched, the knuckles white as they gripped the other side of the State’s counsel table. Instead of playing his game, Hailey turned her back on him and started packing her files to leave.

  “Don’t do it, Hailey, you’re being stupid,” he hissed, low in the silence of the courtroom. “Here’s the deal. You can go on to a judgeship. I can make it happen for you. That’s what you want in the end, don’t you? To be a judge? Don’t go down the tubes over some dead hookers. Your career is everything to you, right? It’s all you’ve got left…why blow it now? Play this case right, don’t make enemies.”

  She snapped, turning around to look him square in the face.

  “Leonard, I think you should go get into your car and drive out to the jail to see your client and tell him he’s getting the chair. You know, the electric chair. ‘Old Sparky,’ I believe they call it, Leonard. Ever heard of that? ‘Old Sparky’?” She gestured her head toward the parking deck.

  “You little bitch…you just won’t play ball with the rest of us, will you? You think you’re all about justice. You think you’re above us all, don’t you? You’re nothing but a prima donna and I’m bringing you down.”

  Leonard advanced around the corner of the table. Too close. Too menacing. She saw his trademark nervous tic erupt across the corner of his lip and eye, his fingers working that ridiculous family crest ring encrusted with rubies. It was monstrous. Pompous ass.