The Eleventh Victim

by Nancy Grace

  In one last bizarre, frozen moment, she hung suspended in the air from the straps of her backpack, arms and legs flailing like a drunken ballerina in a frenzied dance. Then a brutal kick to her back sent her sprawling face-first into the alley, her head hitting the concrete with a thud. She tasted her own blood.

  Her backpack ripped open and her precious notes, months of labor contained on page after page of penciled scrawl, went flying to the four corners, the wind lifting them up sharply, threatening to hurl them down the alley.

  She wanted to tell him to take her wallet…just don’t touch her notes…get the notes back…she had to get the notes back…

  The nylon hose jammed deep down her throat made it impossible to speak, hard to breathe…

  She could still gather them and save them if…she was sure of it…if she could just get loose. Her eyes followed them as they gusted up into the air, seeming to pause there, captured on an icy upward surge. But before she could offer her wallet in exchange for her papers, now wet and dirty and scattered down the alley, she felt her jeans yanked from behind, hands on the flesh of her hips and back, and then on her neck.

  The blood from her head was in her eyes, her knit hat was pulled down over one side of her face so she could hardly see ahead of her. Deep-seated survival instincts kicked in and she waged war the only way she could…scratching, clawing, until her nails broke backward at the quick and bled…clawing at the set of hands now digging into her flesh…trying to pry them from around her neck…trying to scream, to inhale. The hose in her throat wouldn’t allow her to inhale and scream out…just some air…God please, some air…

  Suddenly, she saw her mother and little brother standing together at the end of the alleyway. Mom had her arm draped loosely around her little brother’s shoulders…they were looking at her.

  But why were they here? And how?

  They had both been in the family sedan when it plunged off a slick roadway, skidded through a metal guardrail and dove headlights first into the cold, dark waters off Long Island.

  That was two years ago, but tonight the two of them looked warm and toasty, even though they were wearing the same summer clothes they had on when they drowned, her mom’s favorite sleeveless summer dress with green and gold flowers on it, Chad in jeans. The freezing cold gusts up and down the back alley didn’t seem to bother her mom and brother at all.

  Why did they just stand there, watching what was happening to her? Why wouldn’t they help her?

  All at once, a sharp, burning pain pierced upwards through her back.

  The hands around her neck didn’t budge, remaining hard, like a vise crushing the fragile front hollow of her neck so that it touched all the way back to her spine.

  Her eyes hurt, a bulging, throbbing pain that gained momentum every time her heart pumped more blood into their delicate vessels as they hemorrhaged one by one…hurt worse than anything she had ever felt in her life. They felt like they were exploding out of her eye sockets…out of her head.

  It wasn’t cold anymore.

  The snowflakes floating through the air seemed like fuzzy angels dancing around her head. Her mom was smiling at her.

  48

  Atlanta, Georgia

  IT WAS SILENT IN THE PRIVATE SIDE ROOM TO THE ROBERT E. LEE Ballroom at Atlanta’s Marriot Marquis.

  C.C. sat back limply on an overstuffed leather sofa. The world seemed warm and amber-colored through the haze of whiskey. Eyes closed, tie askew around his neck, his jacket was carelessly tossed beside him, legs stretched out in front of him, feet up on a matching leather ottoman.

  The announcement of his candidacy for the Democratic bid for the governor’s spot went off without a hitch. Well-wishers, flacks, hangers-on, and party honchos had all crowded the ballroom, and oh how the liquor flowed.

  The Democratic hordes ate all the free food, drank all the free booze, and left, along with reporters from the Telegraph and the rest of the local news media. Which was worse? Demo party flacks or journos? Who ate the most free food? That was a toughie, C.C. decided. Lay out a plate of sandwiches and you could put money on journos and party hacks to appear out of nowhere.

  Hell…who cared? It was all business-expensed anyway.

  Once C.C. was in the Mansion, he’d be able to throw any soiree he wanted, and the already-bloated state budget would pick up the tab. The state budget was so fat, none of it mattered anyway.

  Eugene himself had made a brief appearance, wearing those damn aviator sunglasses again, even in the darkened ballroom. He spoke only a few words of congratulations as Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” pulsated so loudly C.C. could hardly make out what Eugene was saying.

  Whatever it was, it was something warm and supportive, C.C. was sure.

  Before melting back into the crowded room, Eugene clapped C.C. on the back and spoke directly into his ear, saying something about C.C. deserving not only the governor’s bid, but one hell of a celebration.

  C.C. planned to do just that as soon as he could lose his wife, Betty, up from Dooley County since the afternoon before on one of her rare trips up to the big Sin City.

  He had to hand it to her, though. Betty had stood by him dutifully throughout the onstage regalia. She actually looked damn fine, decked out in a navy blue long-sleeved suit, hair back in a ’do courtesy of her beautician at Cut and Curl back home in Dooley.

  The memory of another woman intruded as he thought wistfully of Tina. He had noticed that woman at the party tonight, in her mid-thirties and wearing a low-cut red dress. What a rack that one had.

  Suddenly, the red dress stirred up surprising thoughts of romance that broke through C.C.’s hazy buzz.

  Should he wrestle his way out of the easy chair and go try with Betty? For old times’ sake? Just to see what would happen?

  It had been nearly four years since he’d last attempted such a thing. The rebuff was still fresh in his mind. Betty could be a cold, cold woman when she wanted to. It was after a bitter breakup after a brief affair C.C. had with a former court reporter, Janice. When he couldn’t “commit,” Janice had dumped him. He was sure Betty never knew about Janice, but the fact that his own wife rejected him when he needed her the most still hurt C.C. deeply.

  Thank God Tina came into his life.

  He started humming “their” song, “Freebird.”

  He hadn’t seen her in nearly two weeks, and missing the club was making him cranky and antsy. To hell with it—after a stop at Phipps Plaza for some power shopping tomorrow, Betty would be long gone. Praise the Lord.

  His first order of business once he got to the Mansion would be to re-examine the damn Hope Scholarship.

  Currently, all Georgia Lottery proceeds, repeat all proceeds, went to education. That was just wrong. The state was sitting on a pile of money and it was all going to education. Whose idiot idea was that anyway?

  Reform. That would be his platform! Genius!

  Oh how he wished he could write that down so this thought wouldn’t just evaporate in a few hours the way so many of his breakthroughs did…but he had no idea where he could get a pencil.

  Kicked back there in the leather chair, C.C.’s mind wandered, and surveying the world around him, he happened to spot his own shoes.

  They were absolutely stunning. Italian leather, shined to a sheen. Who did that? he wondered. Made his shoes so shiny? Someone. Whoever did the laundry.

  What a night. C.C. dozed.

  49

  St. Simons Island, Georgia

  MONDAY. MORNING. EARLY.

  Something stirred in the morning quiet.

  Virginia Gunn awakened and rolled over, twisting herself in the sheets, resisting the urge to open her eyes.

  Something woke her up…hadn’t it?

  Everything was silent in the house, upstairs and down…so what was it she just heard? Was it anything? In the still of her bedroom, the only sound was the waves outside, lapping up against the thin strip of beach beyond her house.

  She rolled over aga
in, yawning.

  As she tried to fall back to sleep, her thoughts naturally drifted to the pressing problem at hand.

  Time was of the essence…there were millions riding on the Palmetto high-rises, and she knew it. She did some digging around at the County Clerk’s Office and discovered the possible moneyman was Floyd Eugene, a cutthroat…a political majordomo out of Atlanta. Property in surrounding blocks had changed hands during the past two years, and Virginia smelled a rat.

  Her raids on his property were costing him money. How much longer until payback came around? She’d have to—

  A loud thump suddenly ripped the silence.

  Immediately, the old wooden beach house was filled with an intense storm of barking from a pack of hysterical wiener dogs…her wiener dogs.

  Obviously, the newspaper boy had driven up and stepped through the gate of the high wooden fence surrounding her yard to sling the morning paper, rolled and rubber-banded, at the front door. The boy’s bull’s-eye hit in the center of the front door sparked the usual fear of deadly attack among the wieners and, in an effort to protect everything they lived for, i.e., Virginia, the house, the doggie treats in the kitchen, they commenced to throw themselves violently at the door in the entrance hall.

  “Shut up, damn it…shut UP!” she screamed into the empty space in her bedroom, not bothering to roll over off her stomach, much less trudge out to the top of the stairs and yell down at them.

  She could see them in her mind’s eye right now, a snarling, furry mass at the foot of the front door, barking their lungs out at the tiny slit of light between the base of the door and the hardwood floor…prepared to maul to death their would-be attacker.

  The sharp reprimand she screamed out didn’t make a dent. It just bounced off the bedroom walls and disappeared into the carpet, while the barking continued at the same fevered pitch.

  The newsboy would have been toast if Virginia hadn’t locked the doggie chute at the bottom of the front door last night.

  Opening one eye only, she looked over to see the digital clock display. It was only 7:15 a.m. What the hell. They’d never let her sleep now, and the furious barking had woken up the birds, all housed in elaborate cages in the dining room.

  Claudine the parrot was squawking full blast and attacking the little row of bells Virginia had attached directly beside her water bowl…a distraction…. something for the bird to play with. Quietly. Delicately. In a manner befitting a beautiful bird…a beautiful tropical bird that Virginia had paid good money for in order to spring her from a pet store in Baxley, Georgia. What the hell was the bird doing? Tearing the bells out of the cage with her bare claws?

  Then came the last straw.

  The phone began to ring.

  She still refused to move. It was too early. She lay on her stomach, face to the side underneath a pillow, counting. She silently counted fourteen rings.

  In Virginia’s mind, fourteen rings at this hour amounted to stalking. Any idiot would know that after four to five rings, either the callee wasn’t at home or obviously didn’t want to be bothered. Hello! Didn’t anybody have any damn manners on this Island?

  At last, the phone went quiet, the barking subsided, the bells on the bird cages were stilled…peace.

  Virginia burrowed down under the covers and tried to re-enter the deep REM state she was in earlier.

  The phone started again.

  Eighteen rings this time. It was either a stalker or an emergency. The odds were against sleeping any later, so she finally gave in, rolled over, and eased out of bed toward the phone.

  “Hello. It’s early. It better be good.”

  “V.G., can you come down?”

  Larry was on the other end, and he sounded choked up.

  “What’s wrong, Larry?”

  “Today’s the anniversary of the D.”

  She needed some coffee. “What the hell is a D?”

  “Dale!”

  He broke off abruptly. She could tell he was crying.

  Dale…Dale…

  It took a moment to make the connection.

  The walls of Larry’s garage were covered in huge, colored posters of his idol, the late, great, Dale Earnhardt. More than once, his father had driven him for hours, crisscrossing the Southeast just to see the D race round and round a NASCAR track.

  “V.G., they’re memorializing him on TV. I’ve been watching the instant replays of the crash all morning on the thirteen-inch here in the store. I can’t take it.”

  “Listen, I’ll be right there.”

  Virginia hung up and stepped into a light pink sweat suit she had taken out of the dryer the night before and thrown on the easy chair in the corner of her room. After clamping her old Atlanta Braves baseball cap down snug on her head, she pulled her long, dark ponytail through the adjustable hole in the back. She picked up her favorite windbreaker, one she had bought on the side of the street during the ’96 Olympics. It was covered in the interlocking Olympic rings with eagles swooping across the back. It had seemed glorious and patriotic at the time.

  She pulled the door to her bedroom gently shut, hoping not to alert the dogs she was going out and avoid a mob scene.

  Quickly and quietly, she went down the stairs and out the back door. She tiptoed to the Jeep, knowing that the moment the engine turned over, the pack, led by Sidney, would resume their hysterical barking, throwing themselves at the door and running in circles around the den.

  Virginia backed out of the gravel driveway. She shifted and turned it wide to swing out into the street.

  The morning was still cool and wet…the sun hadn’t scorched everything in sight just yet. The breeze off the ocean smelled fresh and salty. No other cars were out yet.

  50

  New York City

  THE AIR WAS STILL FRESH AND THE SIDEWALKS WERE COVERED IN a blanket of glistening snow, still undisturbed, when Hailey went into work. Her walk the night before in the cold air had left her feeling so much better. Her mind was clear, and while still sad over Melissa, at the same time she felt happy to be alive and rededicated to helping her other patients. But the eerie similarities between Melissa’s death and a string of cases she prosecuted in Atlanta wouldn’t leave her mind for long. Of course, murders didn’t happen just in Atlanta, and she really didn’t know all the details about Melissa’s death yet.

  Hailey stepped into the foyer, kicked snow off her boots, went upstairs three flights, and put on hot water. Not a soul was stirring in the little brownstone this early. She puttered around the suite and flicked on the computer to work on the outline for her article. Hayden wasn’t due for another forty-five minutes. She was often late, but never early.

  Hailey was seated at her computer when a light rap on her office door broke the silence.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” Hailey called out, rising from her seat, heading to the door. That was odd…she hadn’t heard a sound…no one had gotten buzzed up.

  No reply.

  Hailey opened the door to Kolker.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  “Hi. What’s up? Come on in. Any news on Melissa?”

  “I think you know,” Lieutenant Kolker said cryptically.

  “Excuse me? What happened?” she returned, as his handheld police band radio squawked.

  Kolker held up the index finger on his right hand to her as he listened to a handheld police band radio he held in his left, signaling her to hold on. She did. He then finished the transmission by barking a series of numbers into the lower end of the radio.

  “I’m really feeling much better now and I’m happy to talk to you. I do have a patient coming in just a few moments, would later today be okay? I can definitely meet you when I break at lunchtime.” Hailey walked around to her desk, sat down, and started flipping through her appointment book, a thick full-size black spiral notebook.

  “Ms. Dean, I wish it were still that simple. Things have changed since we last met. For you, anyway,” he said flatly.

  He leaned over toward her
with his palms spread on her desk. “Ms. Dean, Hayden Krasinski was also one of your patients, correct? Just like Melissa Everett was?” His voice was cold. His eyes never left her own.

  “Lieutenant, you know as well as I do that any communications between Hayden Krasinski and myself are protected under the doctor-patient privilege. I will say, though, that I know Hayden very well.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  “I spoke with Hayden last week and plan to see her this morning, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask? Wait…Kolker, please don’t tell me you think Hayden has anything to do with Melissa’s death.”

  When he didn’t respond, she went on, “I assure you—no, I’ll go so far as to personally vouch for Hayden. She’s incapable of violence. She’s a very caring and sensitive person.”

  He let her go on with neither comment nor reaction.

  “Listen, I give you my word on that, as both a psychologist and an officer of the court. You do know that I am an officer of the court, Lieutenant? You seem to know everything else about my clients and me.”

  “Believe me…I do.”

  What was with his attitude?

  “Then you know I’ve probably handled just as many felonies as a prosecutor as you’ve handled as a detective. And I swear to it…Hayden’s not involved in Melissa’s death, and if you’re trying to find her so that you can—”

  “Ms. Dean, we don’t think Hayden was involved.”

  She looked back at him across her desk, closing the appointment book and standing. “Then why all the questions about Hayden?”

  “I don’t think Hayden was involved. This is about you. We don’t want to locate Hayden Krasinski. We know where she is. She’s at the morgue, Ms. Dean. Hayden Krasinski is dead. She was stabbed and likely strangled in the last twenty-four hours, and not too far from your office, either.”

  Stunned, Hailey grasped the edge of the desk to keep her balance. The pain showed in her eyes and her immediate, gut reaction was one of disbelief. Her mind couldn’t accept the news, and the color drained from her face.