by Nancy Grace
The dreaded buzz came again and the call passed through to Toby’s desk.
He put on his game face, kicking back in his chair and putting his feet up on his desk, trying to get in the mood. “Hi, buddy…how’s business? Hot as hell here, Floyd, you ought to come on down and go out fishing with me on my boat. How is it up north in Atlanta?”
There was flat silence on the other end.
Toby involuntarily sucked in his breath and held it there. He didn’t have to wait long.
“You stupid piece of shit.” Floyd was speaking low. “Don’t even start the glad-mouthing. Save it for the locals you brainwashed into voting for you every two years. I’m not buying. Your boat…my ass. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’d let you steer anything with me in it. I rue the day I picked a complete imbecile for an operation this big. You wanna tell me how you managed to totally screw this thing up?”
This morning’s “Huevos Ranchos” egg special he’d ordered at the Huddle House was making loud churning sounds in Toby’s stomach. “Floyd, I understand why you’re upset and…”
“‘Upset’ isn’t the word for it, moron.” Eugene never raised his voice, but his unique hissing quality was worse than a rattlesnake’s. “I’ve got eight million in equity tied up in Palmetto so far. And that’s pre-construction. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Toby couldn’t answer—a whiny stutter came out instead of words.
“Because of you, McKissick, there’ve been delays. Timing is everything.”
“But, Floyd, I can’t control a group of kids tearing the place up. We tried to…”
“And because of your delays, I’m out an extra two hundred thousand. The place is guaranteed to open its doors for occupancy in two months. Two months. Another delay and we could lose committed buyers. You know how much that’ll cost me, you moron?”
“We hired extra weekend security…the best.” Sweat rolled down the side of Toby’s temple.
“Bullshit! You got one sad sack from the Brunswick mall and the other from Wal-Mart. I already checked them out, idiot. Just for once…just once in your miserable pea-brain life, try not to bullshit. I can smell it on your breath, two hundred miles away over the damned phone line.”
The Sansabelt waistline in Toby’s madras-print pants was soaked from the sweat coming down his back, and his mind was a blank.
“We’re starting up again in twenty-four hours. If anything goes wrong, McKissick, you’ve got more than a couple of thousand riding on it. You’re about to put some skin in the game. Now buzz your secretary so I can hear you send her to lunch. And keep it on speaker.”
“Why? She can’t hear what you’re saying. She has no idea what’s going on anyway.”
“Just do it, McKissick. Now.”
Toby left the line open and buzzed Sean. “Honey?” He struggled to keep his voice level. “Why don’t you go on to lunch early and take your time…do a little shopping?”
She buzzed back immediately. “What? Shopping for what? And I’m not hungry. I just ate a Slim-Fast bar and they’re great…. Want one?”
“No, lemon-pie. You go ahead. I need to have a private conference.”
“Okay…but it’s not gonna be private. Two gentlemen are out here in the front office waiting to see you, from Atlanta they say. They said you’re expecting them.”
She buzzed off before Toby could say anything, and frankly, he didn’t know what to tell her even if he’d had the chance.
He heard the front door to the office slam shut behind her as she headed out to her Geo, sitting in the office parking spot.
For a moment, there was only the even, grinding sound of the air conditioner, cranked up on high even this early in the day.
Then two men appeared, standing silently at his office door.
They didn’t speak, just strode uninvited straight through his door, into his office, and toward him. The taller one silently massaged the knuckles of his right hand and took in his office like it was a two-bit flophouse. Toby knew instinctively that all the Kiwanis awards, civic trophies, and local celebrity snapshots covering his office walls—each one carefully evocative of his own importance—didn’t impress these two in the least.
The shorter man trained his eyes on Toby like a Doberman, watching him as if he were some sort of a doggie meat-treat. He spoke in a low, guttural tone toward the speaker on Toby’s desk. “We’re here, boss.”
“Good. Keep the speakerphone on for me, boys. I like to know when a job’s finished.”
They were on him immediately.
The first punch was sharp and to the stomach. The Doberman’s fist disappeared deep into Toby’s gut, the pain doubling him over and smashing him facefirst to the floor. His head hit the metal trash can and it toppled over, papers flying across the floor, now at his own eye level.
His favorite Mexican egg dish came up in a blur of brownish salsa and egg. It spurted across the carpet and dribbled down the sides of his mouth.
They pulled him up and, despite the intense pain, Toby struggled with one hand to keep his toupee atop his head.
As the intruders looked down as if Toby were a giant garden snail they were about to salt, he managed to adjust the hairpiece to a perfect center.
“I knew it was a piece,” the shorter one paused to snicker.
“Shitty piece, dumb-ass. We spotted it a mile away. Not only are you a dumb-ass, you got no style. I hate a guy with no style. Don’t you hate a guy with no style?”
“No style whatsoever. It’s disgusting.” Even thugs have standards. This one looked down at Toby like he was something foul smeared on the bottom of one of his snakeskin boots.
He reached down, ripped the piece off Toby’s head, and threw it like a Frisbee across the room, where it landed on a shelf covered with local softball trophies.
Toby had never, not even once, been seen publicly without his toupee, and it was quite the topic among the locals. Moreover, he never even went to bed in the dark of the bedroom he shared with his wife without his hairpiece carefully adjusted on his head, much less allowed the shiny red skin covering his skull to ever be seen by strangers. Of his many vanities, it was the greatest.
With vomit dribbling down his chin, his hairpiece stripped away, and his gut aching, he was terrified of what was about to come.
He’d known from the start that Eugene was dangerous, but how did things go so wrong? And the money…it had seemed like a dream come true, a deal he couldn’t turn down….
The second punch made the room go dark.
Toby fell back to the floor, faceup and prone against the wall behind his desk.
The smell of the eggs managed to reach through the hazy pain to his nostrils. He retched again onto the floor under his desk and all over the side of his prized briefcase—alligator, pre-governmental ban.
“Okay…talk. The boss wants to know who did it.”
Toby could barely hear, much less talk.
A punting kick from a sharp-toed cowboy boot landed at the small of his back.
“I don’t know…. It was kids,” he blubbered it out.
“Bullshit! The boss wants a name. Talk, you fat turd, or you’ll be picking up your teeth off this carpet.”
Tears streamed down Toby’s cheeks.
He recalled the hours of veneer and porcelain work the cosmetic dentist had placed in his mouth, creating a megawatt smile that shone out of his tanned face.
The big one lifted him up off the floor by his collar. A punch landed on his nose. Warm blood oozed down his face onto his golf shirt, and bloody bubbles formed between his lips when he managed to speak.
“Virginia Gunn. She probably did it.”
“Crybaby snitch. I knew you’d talk.” The big one looked down at him. “Didja get that Tony? Virginia Gunn…whoever the hell that is.”
“Got it. Virginia Gunn. We’ll find her.”
Sharp kicks in quick succession landed to his lower back and stomach, worse than either of the previous blows.
After a few moments, he felt nothing more.
The vomit dried brown on his face. He was out cold when Eugene clicked off the speakerphone and the Dobermans disappeared into thin air, out in the sweltering mirage of the strip-center parking lot, as if they’d never existed.
58
New York City
HAILEY LOOKED UP AND SMILED BRIGHTLY WHEN KOLKER ENTERED the room, face red and notebook pressed tightly under his left armpit.
“Hi, Lieutenant.”
He eyed her suspiciously when he caught her smiling over at him, leaning back casually against the two-way. He was all prepared to be the “bad cop.” A good mood was too weird and it threw him off.
“Hailey.” He nodded curtly, pulled out a chair, sat down, and crossed his legs ankle to knee. “Sit down.”
Hailey walked over to the conference table, pulled her chair in a little too close to Kolker, straight into his personal space, and sat, knowing he’d feel it was too awkward to pull his chair away from her.
“Feel like talking?”
“Sure.” She didn’t move a muscle, keeping her hands loosely clasped together in her lap.
“Mind if I use a recorder?” He took it casually out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the table in the tight space she’d left between them.
Hailey knew it was a well-practiced move, keeping it all very nonchalant.
“Go ahead,” she said. “But shouldn’t I be read my rights again?”
“Excuse me?”
“A substantial amount of time has passed since you last read them and I’m now in official custody, aren’t I? Might not hold up in court, you know.” She was practically quoting straight from police manuals used in cadet training all over the country, reminding him that she knew the rules and had played the game as many or more times than he had.
He rankled. “Of course, Counselor.” Sarcasm dripped off each word.
She held the smile.
He flicked on the recorder, took out the standard Miranda card all cops carried, and started reading it out loud. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be held against you…”
Halfway through the reading, she made eye contact with him and held it hard.
As if challenged to a duel, Kolker quit reading, slipped the card back into his wallet, and continued reciting Miranda by heart.
They squared off and the questioning began.
“So Hailey, how long had you treated Melissa and Hayden…and was it purely professional?” He asked it suddenly, with a smile.
Interesting. Was he switching to the good cop routine? Did he think she was crazy? That maybe she’d forgotten all the crap he’d put her through at the hospital?
She hadn’t.
He went on. “And when I was in your office, I noticed some papers on your desk. They were in plain view, I couldn’t help but see them. They’re about murder victims, stabbing victims to be exact…written by someone who gets a thrill out of it.”
“Well, Kolker, sorry I waited for you to get all set up with the recorder here and get all the way through Miranda, but maybe I shouldn’t talk without a lawyer.” She knew she could bring it all to a screeching halt by demanding a lawyer now. But the truth was, the lawyer might not show until the morning, and the overnight delay would give the cops enough time to trump up probable cause to rifle through her home and office—that is if they hadn’t already. Plus, it always looks bad to lawyer up when you claim you’re innocent. Like you have something to hide…which most suspects did.
He looked confused.
Encouraged by the reaction, she went on, “Frankly, I’m concerned about the way this investigation is being handled. You questioned me at the hospital before you read me my rights, and they had me on meds, meaning everything we discussed in my hospital room and office would be fruit of the poisonous tree. Much less a search. It’ll be suppressed in court, of course. And it’s not just your word against mine. Remember my colleague, Dana? She was present the whole time and will swear under oath that no rights were read before you questioned me.”
A scarlet pattern began to creep up his neck, spidering out of his shirt to blotch his face.
She pressed on. “Kolker, you are familiar with the fruit of the poisonous tree, aren’t you? You know, any evidence that flows from illegal beginnings is no good. I mean, they do run you guys through a little Crim Pro class here before they dump you out on the street…don’t they?”
Kolker might be screwed legally and know it, but that didn’t stop him from continuing the interview while he still had her on his turf, still banged up, and still minus a defense lawyer.
“Good try, Dean, but the evidence isn’t based only on what you said to me. The facts surrounding the deaths of Melissa Everett and Hayden Krasinski point directly to you. You’re the common link, Hailey, between two dead bodies. Not only that…there’s the forensics I mentioned. Yep, you’re locked in pretty tight on this one. And remember those eleven decomposed hookers, back home, Hailey? The last case you ever tried? Remember you were the big hero back then? Same exact MO.
“Four-pronged stab wounds, Hailey. Both Melissa and Hayden. You stabbed first, then posed the strangulation once they were down. Yeah, I checked it out, Dean. Lots of people down there say the case drove you kind of crazy…said I should have seen you in court. I hear you tried the case like you were possessed.”
Hailey remained carefully expressionless, but Kolker knew he hit a raw nerve.
The memories of the eleven dead women in Atlanta rose up in her mind’s eye, and she thought of her own clients, Hayden and Melissa, dying the same death. She could feel the sweat on the back of her neck making her hair wet underneath, but the rest of the loose blonde hair covered it.
She had to make it out of this stifling hole. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to work the case on the outside to build a defense and figure out who was responsible. Surely something Melissa or Hayden had said over all those months would give her a clue that the two murders were somehow linked.
“Female victims, right?” Kolker said. “All in their twenties, staged manual strangulation, four-pronged stab wound from a gourmet poultry knife, wallet and driver’s license intact, partially clothed, always with dirt and mud smeared on their faces, and of course, the fancy baker’s twine on every victim. It’s sick. What, you want to swoop in and be a hero again? Wanna talk about it, Hailey?”
His eyes bored straight into her as he struck a match on the bottom of his shoe and lit a cigarette.
“You could do it, all right. You could pull it off. We know you work out. We know you work out every night, running, weights, the whole thing. You’re strong. With the element of surprise on your side…not to mention the element of trust you had with your patients…listening to all their problems day in, day out. Picking out just the right ones…the weakest ones. Probably had ’em doped up on Prozac, lithium, sedatives, all arranged by you…. Oh, yeah, you could do it…no doubt about it. Did you sock them in the head with something first, Hailey, just to stun them before you gave it to them with the poultry knife? And those journal entries of yours about stabbings…twisted!”
Hailey reached down deep. She was a lawyer…. He wasn’t. So hit where he was soft…legalities of the arrest.
“Poultry-lifter, Kolker, not poultry knife. And, nice job…but you know I’m right about the interview being suppressed as poisonous fruit. You screwed up, Kolker. Now it’ll all be thrown out of court, and you know it. But forget about that for today. You’ve got plenty of time ahead to worry about your case getting thrown out. There’s something else even more rudimentary.”
Sitting there, she discovered for the first time that Kolker had a tic…in his right eye. It was twitching now, and she knew she had done it. In the space of five short minutes alone in the conference room together…he was pissed.
Kol
ker snapped off the recorder.
She kept on. “It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure this out, but it seems to me the first thing you should do in a murder investigation, much less a double-murder investigation, is establish times of death. Of course, that’s after determining cause of death, I assume at least that’s been done.”
She paused, desperately wanting a glass of water. The verbal sparring was wearing her down and her mouth was dry.
“But hold on a minute, Lieutenant…didn’t somebody mention there was a crack on the head? Or have you even had the morgue check for head abrasion under the hair? So is it strangulation, stabbing, or blow to the head? Better get that straight before you start comparing MOs from other unrelated cases, no matter how much you want to nail me for this.”
Kolker’s face twisted. She had obviously hit upon something with the possibility of blows to the head as the actual causes of death. Plus, in the Atlanta murders, strangulation and stabbing were causes of death, each lethal enough to cause the death in and of itself. Here, from what she was hearing, one of the wounds was postmortem.
The strangulations here could actually have been staged postmortem, in some sick game. The killer could have posed the bodies as if they’d died by strangulation, or even have strangled them after they were dead, just for the thrill of it.
And then there were the unmistakable puncture wounds to the back….
Her head was spinning. If a blow to the head was the true cause of death, it would only be worse for Hailey, since a crack to the head with a blunt object would take much less upper-body strength than manual strangulation. The same for stabbing.
What was the true cause of death? She’d bet he wasn’t even sure yet….
It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was throwing a wrench in Kolker’s preconceived theory. That was the only prize for Hailey right now…keeping him off balance. And the times of death…there was a weakness here. She sensed it.
“But back to the time of death,” she said, trying her best to wheedle information out of him so she’d have something to go on in her own defense. “I mean, that is step one, wouldn’t you say? Time of death?”