The Eleventh Victim

by Nancy Grace

  “Dean!” Her name rang out.

  No answer. Hailey’s head was still slumped on her shoulder, her eyes closed.

  “Dean! Answer up! Hailey Dean!” A female bailiff barked her name at the entrance of holding. She was holding a clipboard in her left hand, staring down at the pages of a computer printout to make sure a Ms. Hailey Dean had not already left the cell.

  “Hailey Dean…where are you?”

  It took a moment for Hailey’s head to clear…to realize this wasn’t just more of a bad dream. The dream was over. She truly was in the bowels of a Manhattan holding cell.

  Hailey rose from the bench, weak-kneed. A stabbing pain shot through her ribs as she spoke. “I’m Hailey Dean.”

  “Let’s go. This ain’t no garden party, Missy. They want you upstairs an’ I got to take you.”

  Hailey stepped carefully over several women sleeping it off on the filthy linoleum-tiled floor.

  Making her way out through the others, it hit her that the smell no longer nauseated her.

  She’d take a packed holding cell any day over the sick, sweet scent of death and funeral home carnations.

  53

  New York City

  THE FEMALE WARDEN WAS TIGHT BEHIND HAILEY, LIGHTLY TOUCHING her shoulder as they walked single file down a worn, pale-beige institutional corridor.

  “Left,” the warden called out, and Hailey turned into an interrogation room. She naturally and immediately took in the lay of the land. In lieu of a window, a long, wide, seamless mirror covered one of the walls.

  Hailey was seated in a metal folding chair. She looked around. These four walls had seen it all, and it showed, in layer upon layer of semi-gloss paint jobs. Hours of interrogations, confessions, threats, denials, hushed whispers between lawyer and client, witnesses, victims…it all played out between these four walls.

  Now it was Hailey’s turn…forced to match wits with some of the best homicide detectives in the business, skills honed by years of working the streets and solving the unsolvable.

  But so are yours, she reminded herself.

  She wasn’t shackled, so she got up and walked over to the two-way mirror. It covered the entire length of the interrogation room’s wall, from the chair rail up to the low-hung ceiling of industrial perforated squares. The detectives were undoubtedly leisurely kicked back in worn chairs on the other side. She decided to spoil their fun and chose a straight-back office chair, setting her back squarely against the mirror, keeping her face hidden from their view.

  She looked straight ahead at the opposite wall, taking in the blank expanse covered in peeling beige paint. They’d be so disappointed they couldn’t watch her face as she sweated it out…no nail-biting, wringing of hands, fidgeting, let alone crying for them to enjoy. Nothing. Just the back of her head.

  But forget the goons on the other side. How the hell was she going to get out of this mess?

  Think…think…think…

  Her mind kept churning over bits and pieces. It all had to be connected.

  Crumpled up on the floor of Dana’s office with the carpet rough on her cheek while she took a manic beating from…whom? And why? Just before she had passed out, she was sure she’d heard a voice.

  It was low and soft, almost a hiss…drifting out of the grayness closing in around her, familiar.

  But as hard as she struggled, she couldn’t remember what it had said or place who it was. It remained just a voice—angry, evil, spit out close to her ear there on the carpet.

  Reliving the night of the attack was getting her nowhere fast. She could worry about her aching ribs and the break-in later. She hadn’t even been able to process it all, much less to mourn the loss of two patients.

  But right now, she had to somehow convince hard-boiled New York City homicide detectives that she was not the perp in the double murders of two longtime patients. She was armed only with a few facts she gleaned from the Post, combined with a little information Kolker unwittingly gave up.

  Footsteps in the hall…She tensed, waiting.

  But then the hall beyond the door fell quiet; no more footsteps to be heard.

  So she sat, not twitching even a muscle, forcing herself to gaze neither at the mirror nor the door.

  Commanding her mind to shift gears, she focused on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Melissa and Hayden.

  If she could just think just one step ahead of the homicide detectives…. Over and over she spun the story in her head, to think her way out of this beige-painted hellhole and get home.

  First, what did Kolker spill? In his attempt to come off like the big guy, he had likely spouted off information known only to police. Same old story…a self-important official leaking like a sieve. Even if he couldn’t actually be a captain, he could at least feel like one for a moment. His bragging may have given her all the information she needed.

  She predicted an interminable wait before Kolker showed up to meet her, and she was right.

  But those were the rules of the game, and in order to win, she had to play by the rules. A frustrating wait in the interrogation room, after hours in lockup, sitting on a hard wooden bench and pacing a concrete floor, was meant to wear her down and soften her up.

  She knew it…and they knew it.

  Finally, after a good twenty minutes more had passed, Hailey made the next move. She stood up from the metal chair and strode purposefully up to the two-way mirror.

  54

  Atlanta, Georgia

  C.C. COULD HARDLY FOCUS HIS EYES THIS EARLY IN THE MORNING. He looked down at his wrist.

  Eleven thirty?

  Eleven thirty!

  Where the hell was he, anyway? What was his room number? His head felt fuzzy and even he, C.C., recognized that the taste in his own mouth was from beyond the grave. Of course, he had no idea how bad it actually smelled, and assumed it was nothing a cup of coffee wouldn’t fix.

  He staggered off the couch and looked around.

  This was definitely not his room…. His room didn’t have a leather couch. Wait…maybe it did. Nope, it didn’t, of that he was sure. He flopped back down on the sofa to get his bearings.

  Where was his room?

  He felt the outline of his plastic magnetic room key in his pocket. Pulling it out, he realized it did not have the room number stamped on its surface. Damn. When did they stop putting your room number on the key? Ridiculous. Another issue for his agenda.

  Spotting a phone on a table beside the couch, he reached over, picked it up, and dialed zero.

  “Welcome to the Atlanta downtown Marriott Marquis, the home of the world’s elite travelers. This is Ellie, and how may I direct your call?”

  That was a mouthful. It was almost too much for C.C. to comprehend first thing in the morning.

  “Yes…ah…ahh…what room am I in?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “I said what room am I in?” C.C. raised his voice on the last three words to help the receptionist better understand his question.

  Marquis phone operator Ellie Jostad duly noted the nasty tone on the other end of the phone. Who in hell was this moron? What room is he in? How can you be sitting in the middle of a damn ballroom and not know it? Why was she, Ellie Jostad, destined to answer morons on the phone all day? Her mother was right…she should have finished classes at DeKalb Junior College and maybe she wouldn’t have to listen to idiots like this for a living. Man, she needed a cigarette.

  Instead of throwing down her headphone and lighting up a Merit, she answered. “Sir, you are calling from the Robert E. Lee Grand Ballroom study, if I understand you correctly, sir.”

  C.C. tried to lower his voice and attempt to reason with someone clearly suffering from a mental disorder.

  “No, let me repeat so you can understand me. What room am I in?”

  I should hang up on this rashy jackass, it’s just not worth minimum wage. I can hardly put gas in the car and now this…If Ellie’s supervisor wasn’t four feet away at the coffeemaker, she’
d blast this guy…. “Sir, how can I help you? You don’t know where you are? Do I have that right?”

  “I mean what room am I registered to? What is my room number?”

  “Sir, I am not allowed to release that information over the phone.”

  “Ma’am, you are talking to the next governor of the great state of Georgia.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Dumb bitch. C.C. had to go to the bathroom badly, and he had an intense aversion to all public bathrooms. He would actually only sit on certain commodes…in his homes, and then, only in his master bathroom, his office, the Supreme Court men’s room…his country club was questionable….

  “This is Supreme Court Justice Carter,” he said succinctly. “You’re saying you can’t tell a Supreme Court judge his room number?”

  “Sir, it is against the Marquis’s security policy to—” C.C. hung up on her, slamming the phone down as hard as he could at a seated angle. He dragged himself out of his chair and stepped into a wide, sunlit hallway outside the Robert E. Lee Ballroom. His eyes were immediately assaulted with light, and his head pounded.

  After walking in what seemed to be a circle, he came upon the elevator. Head still pounding, he leaned up against the wall beside the buttons to wait, his eyes closed against the light filtering through the hall.

  This was ridiculous.

  Once he was in the Mansion, there would be no meetings before noon.

  After a lengthy and unpleasant argument at the front desk, C.C. managed to convince a thin young man in his thirties with a pencil nose, that he was in fact Georgia Supreme Court Justice Carter.

  It required producing his driver’s license and undergoing a thorough comparison of his person to the photo on the plastic rectangle.

  Reluctantly, the clerk handed him a new magnetic strip card and reminded C.C. that the room number was not displayed on the strip for his own safety.

  C.C. wouldn’t let it go. “It’s just damn inconvenient.”

  “Sir, as I said before, your room number is not displayed on the card for your own safety.”

  Sanctimonious little shit.

  C.C. fumed as he turned away from the marble-top desk and headed back across the expansive lobby to the elevator bank.

  He would refuse to set foot in this shit-box again when he made it to the Mansion. And he’d see to it that no other Democratic Party soirees would ever be held here on principle.

  C.C. made his way down the carpeted corridor and unlocked the door to his and Betty’s room, number 1112.

  He started talking before he was even fully in the room, calling out to Betty as he opened the door.

  “Betty? You’ll never believe what happened to me!”

  Maybe if he talked fast enough and filled up the room with chatter he could avoid the fallout. He had long ago realized his best strategy when coming home after misbehaving was to simply pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “Hey, Betty. What a night! Did you have a good time? That was some dress you had on, honey.”

  Damn! Before the words were totally out of his mouth he realized his mistake. What if she asked about it? What the hell did she have on? Why did he have to open his big mouth? Wait…he could just say how great her figure was. That was easy. He could fake it.

  But the question just hung there in the still air of the hotel room. The AC was off and the curtains were pulled open, letting the sunlight pour into the room.

  “Betty? Sugar Pie?”

  Uh-oh—not a sound. She must be sulking in the restroom.

  The TV was on with the volume muted, having reverted back to the hotel channel offering in-room movies and games. It even offered porn, C.C. knew, and a pretty damn good selection, too. Especially the ones with nurses.

  Of course, it would be a cold day in hell before Betty would even think the word “porn,” much less order some. C.C. tiptoed past the two neatly made double beds and rapped on the bathroom door.

  “Honey, about last night…I just had to meet up with some of the party people until it was so late…I hated to wake you up late after your drive, so I just let you sleep.”

  No answer still. He rapped the door again and finally opened it. He knew she would be there, sitting at the vanity, either in tears or staring at him disapprovingly.

  He sucked it up and went in.

  Other than the faintest smell of hairspray, Betty was gone.

  Nothing…not a suit in the closet, no eyeglasses by the bed, no damp towel on the rack, no tissue in the trash. Nothing.

  On the vanity was a note, though. “Leaving early to avoid delays southbound between Atlanta and Forsyth. B.”

  Man, she had nerve. If that didn’t beat all.

  After all he had done for her. Truth is, he’d made her. She was a skinny nobody before him and now she was Mrs. Clarence E. Carter. And her leaving the hotel like this without even a word?

  C.C. left the room and headed for the valet. No reason to tarry.

  Easing himself behind the wheel of the Caddy, he put the AC on max and the stereo on high. Luther Vandross’s voice melted through the speakers and sunk into the car’s soft leather interior.

  Reaching under the driver’s seat, C.C. dislodged the super-secret silver flask he kept wedged beside the seat controls. Looking into the rearview, he waved good-naturedly at the poor schmuck just behind him driving an old burgundy Toyota Camry.

  Poor guy was close enough that C.C. could see his face pressed up against the front windshield, squinting because the glass wasn’t even tinted. The sun was brutal at this time of the day. You just didn’t know what driving was until you’d had a Caddy.

  55

  Atlanta, Georgia

  GRAVEL FLEW AS C.C. TURNED IN TO THE PINK FUZZY. HE GLANCED at the clock embedded in lacquered wood on the Caddy’s dash. Tina should be here by now, having a salad for lunch as usual.

  She rarely dined at home, and who could blame her, with that roommate?

  That Lola, she was a strange one. Not only did she strip fulltime at the club with Tina, she was a devout Catholic who collected reams of religious memorabilia. She was born deep in the bayou in Slidell, Louisiana, a Cajun who dabbled in the art of “white magic,” as she euphemistically called it. Lola practiced Santeria, voodoo, and was not at all afraid to throw a little hank on somebody now and then, if such a hex were absolutely necessary. Lola was forever cooking up some foul stank on the stove in order to heal the sick, bring home a loved one, or seek Christian vengeance on an enemy. Lola’s “enemies” were normally other girls at the club who cheated her out of lap dances and tips, obnoxious customers, and, quite often, the phone company, who routinely disconnected her phone for nonpayment.

  On good days, Tina and Lola’s apartment smelled heavily of flower-scented potpourri, Glade Plug-Ins, and hairspray. On others, it reeked of boiling chicken entrails stirred up with who knows what. Lola occasionally threw the gooey stuff on the enemy’s car, smeared it on their front door at an opportune moment, or, in special cases, actually fed a tiny voodoo replica of the enemy to the stank as it boiled on the kitchen stove.

  C.C. made it his business not to ask what exactly stunk, but for safety’s sake, he stayed on Lola’s good side and never, ever ate out of the refrigerator.

  Tina avoided it as well, and had as many meals as possible at the Pink Fuzzy.

  C.C. was aware that some people didn’t enjoy eating at strip clubs, citing sanitary concerns such as pubic hair in the food. C.C. personally pooh-poohed such reviews. Food and theater critics are always asses anyway. Too snooty to review food in a strip club…fine, they were the ones missing out. Food. The little bit he’d eaten at the announcement party last night had been just enough to pad his stomach for his assault on the bar.

  The lot was only about a third of the way full at this hour, and C.C. parked in his usual spot under a telephone pole with a security light attached. That always helped to locate the car once the parking lot had grown dark and jam-packed with vehicles. Damn SUVs and pickups would end
up towering over the Caddy.

  Now there would be some innovative legislation that everyone could appreciate, parking spots delegated for SUVs, pickups, and the like, allowing the rest of the world to see their cars when they came out of clubs at night. Hey, it could apply to grocery stores too, not just strip clubs.

  This governor thing was going to be good.

  C.C. had been on a roll with the press lately, especially since the Cruise reversal. They actually liked him now that Cruise had walked free. He just hoped the little freak didn’t kill somebody else, but of course he would. With any luck, though, he wouldn’t get caught and it wouldn’t come back on C.C. Maybe he’d commit the next murder in another jurisdiction.

  By that time, the election would most likely be over anyway.

  C.C. opened the driver’s door and rolled out his left leg first, his black leather shoe crunching down into deep gravel. He took another pull on the flask before his right foot joined the left and he made his way across the parking lot to the heavy wooden double doors of the club.

  Not one to ask for special treatment, he reached backwards for his wallet to get his ID as he stepped inside.

  “Hey Judge. How’s it hanging?” asked a burly bouncer, squeezed into a shiny, dark-gray suit and sitting on a stool behind the ticket counter–type lectern. His biceps were straining against the cloth like he had two Virginia hams stuffed into them.

  “Good, Sam, good.”

  Sam smiled out from above a collar that was bound tightly with a maroon tie. C.C. noticed his diamond tie tack. Always classy here, he thought approvingly.

  “Saw you on the news last night, Judge. Looking good.”

  That gave C.C. pause. The news? “What was that? I was tied up for both the six and eleven.”

  “Don’t be shy, Judge! Congratulations! The announcement last night! About throwing your hat in the ring for governor! It was everywhere, especially at eleven.”

  “Oh, yeah! The announcement. It was something, all right. You know I just want to serve the people, Sam, just want to serve the people.”