The Eleventh Victim

by Nancy Grace

  Darkening winds whipped up the street to fly above him and around the building that rose like a mountain in the middle of a New York City block. He melted against the stone of the building.

  Then suddenly, the hours spent hunched there against the building came to an abrupt end.

  It was her.

  The moment was perfect…just like he dreamed…the precise moment he saw her emerge from the giant front doors. A huge overhead lantern-fixture hung down in the middle of the old building’s entrance, glowing golden in the night and spilling light down over the steps. It bathed her body with light against the dark and when it did, the sight of her hit him hard in the gut. He sucked in wind so cold it hurt his chest and made his teeth ache.

  The blonde hair, the pale face, the slight frame…the figure precisely matched the one etched into his memory.

  He watched her step out of the building and into the night air. He refused to even blink, drinking in the sight of her as she stood for a fleeting moment on the gray-streaked solid granite landing of the NYPD. She was poised there, topping thirty or so sharp granite steps leading down to the street level, like a tiny, delicate marzipan ballerina decorating a giant cake.

  She almost seemed to lean back and rest against the heavy doors. Her coat fell back, away from her body. He could barely breathe.

  What was she thinking?

  She could have absolutely no idea he was this close to her.

  But then, none of them had.

  How does it feel now, Hailey? The hunter is the hunted. The destroyer is being destroyed. Does it hurt, Hailey?

  His eyes were sharp and he spotted the bandage on her left hand as she reached up to grasp her shoulder bag.

  She was lucky to be walking at all. She better not complain. A few cracked ribs were nothing compared to what the others got.

  When she pulled her scarf off to rearrange her blonde hair, he was nearly sliced in two by the sight of her face, pale after hours in lockup, blonde hair blowing against her cheeks.

  The others in Atlanta had meant nothing to him. He couldn’t possibly have cared less when they died. He was only interested in that beautiful moment, the intense eclipse of pain he gave them at the very moment of death.

  Maybe it was something the two of them, Hailey and he, could discuss back at her place.

  As she came down the long flight of granite steps to the street, he stepped out of the shadow and onto the sidewalk.

  She never even looked back, not nearly as sharp as she was during her days as a prosecutor.

  This was going to be easy.

  He tried to imagine the look on her face if she were to turn around by chance and see him so close, just behind her.

  Would she be scared? Would she fight? Would she confront him, here in the streets, alone? Or would she turn and run as best she could with her ribs bandaged?

  The thought of her trying to run from him made his whole body tense.

  God, his hands had started to tingle in his coat pockets. The electric heat pulsed past his fingertips up through his palms. Even his wrists ached.

  He was so close to her now, he could call out her name and she’d turn around.

  He wondered if her hair smelled the same as it had in the courtroom five years ago. He’d been fantasizing about the inside of her apartment. He had gazed up at it from the street for hours at night, watching until her bedroom light went out. He could tell she left a light on somewhere, maybe the kitchen, over the stove.

  Once he was inside, maybe he’d even find a scrapbook in her apartment. Maybe there’d be news clippings with him in it.

  He knew in his heart she thought about him just like he thought about her.

  The big difference was that he hadn’t made her suffer for five years in the bottom of a stinking hellhole.

  He followed along behind her. It would be tough for her to get a cab tonight, especially in this neighborhood. It was cold as hell and late. She had a nice long walk ahead of her. He noticed she favored her right side as she continued walking, and he saw from behind that she was wearing old cowboy boots.

  Nice. They were walking through the city together. How romantic. Just like a movie.

  His fingers were starting to feel like they’d explode straight out of their skin inside his pockets, and his groin throbbed in sync with the blood pulsing through his temples.

  He could feel it all. He was here, now…with her. He’d dreamed about this moment for the past five years, waking and sleeping.

  Everything would be okay.

  63

  St. Simons Island, Georgia

  THE BELL WAS RINGING OVER AND OVER, BUT IT SEEMED FAR away…. Then something else…a pounding sound.

  Virginia opened her eyes.

  It took her a while to get her bearings. Why was she on the floor, wedged between the wall and a love seat? She was lying directly beneath a tall bedroom window and looking under the love seat toward her bedroom door. She could make out the bottoms and legs of the furniture, and could see straight under and through to the other side of her bed, and on to the hall beyond the bed and bedroom door.

  She closed her eyes again, her head in a vise of pain.

  The house was still, completely still. As her vision corrected, she realized she was staring straight into a set of deep, brown eyes that stared right back at her, trained and unblinking.

  Sidney.

  The wiener lay flat on his stomach, all four sausage legs splayed out to his sides, gazing mournfully at her. Immediately recognizing she was awake, he army-crawled on his tummy across the carpet to where she lay trapped between object and wall. He crawled all the way, till they lay nose to nose. Lying on the carpet, inhaling his doggie exhale, she tried to speak his name. The pain in her throat was so intense she caught her breath mid-syllable.

  She tried to roll over and up, but she couldn’t. Summoning up all the strength left in her body, she managed to rise up halfway and sit with her back against the wall, her head spinning with the effort.

  What the hell happened?

  Sidney’s joy that she was alive could not be contained and he began rapid-licking her calf. The wiener looked for the world like he had been crying. She tried to reach out to pet his head, but the fierce pain in her side wouldn’t let her extend her arm.

  When she looked down at her right hand, she saw that blood had dried down two of her fingers where there should have been nails. The nails had been broken off backward.

  What day was it? Why was she on the floor? Confused, she glanced around and spotted her phone and digital clock radio, both torn out of the wall and broken in pieces on the floor.

  It all came back in a rush…. the two men with no necks. The threats about the beach. Her shirt being torn from her….

  She looked down with momentary panic and was relieved to see that the shirt was still around her waist and her jeans were still on, buttoned and zipped.

  At least she only took a beating from the no-necks. It could have been worse. So much worse.

  But how did they know? How had they found out about her?

  And what about the others…her little band of misfits…her guerrillas? Had they been beaten as well? Were they even alive? Had they fought back? Could they? Could the two intruders possibly know how to get their names, much less locate them?

  Virginia stiffened; there was movement downstairs.

  The sound of the sliding glass door onto the deck opening…She could hear the metal slide down the floor groove and then catch. A pause, then the door was slid shut again. She heard the glass door’s lock click back into place.

  They were back.

  They must know she was still in the bedroom. They must think she was still alive. She looked wildly around the room for an escape…other than down the stairs and directly into the path of her attackers.

  The only other way out was the bedroom window. Better to jump from the second story and risk a broken arm or leg than the alternative.

  She caught Sidney’s eye.
<
br />   Please, please don’t start barking…. just this once…

  Sidney seemed to get it…that he had to remain silent…

  She couldn’t stand, so with her heart pounding frantically, Virginia started to crawl toward the window.

  They must know she was still in the bedroom. How much time did she have? Not enough.

  She rounded the bed, her body screaming in agony. She inched herself past the bed…then just a few feet more to the window…

  She was there! She’d made it!

  Now, to lift herself up, unlock, raise the pane, stand, and get out…

  It was impossible.

  No, it isn’t. You have to save yourself. It’s the only way.

  Struggling, she pulled up on the sill and reached for the lock, stretching…stretching…

  All she had to do was open the window. She could try and scream. Maybe the neighbors would hear…Someone…Anyone…

  The pain, so acute it took her breath away…No scream escaped her lips. It was futile anyway, her house was set apart from the others; her neighbors would be sealed into their air-conditioned houses, insulated from the day’s heat. Her voice would be drowned out by the surf.

  She silently reached to unlock the window. Straining for the lock, she stopped, tried again. She managed to reach it, turn it.

  Wincing in pain, she began to raise it, just enough to get her torso out, then fall to the ground twenty feet below.

  She gazed out the window, and when she looked down, the ground was swirling, her vision blurred from the beating.

  Concentrate. You have to keep going…

  The window was up.

  Now…if she could get her leg up and out, the rest of her could follow….

  It was too late.

  Two hands grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back, away from the window.

  The pain was so intense. She couldn’t fight anymore. Where was Sidney? What did they do to Sidney? The room disappeared in black.

  64

  New York City

  HAILEY HUNCHED FORWARD INTO THE COLD WITH HER ARMS crossed over her chest, moving quickly up the street toward her own apartment.

  Her own apartment.

  It seemed like months had passed since she’d been home.

  Ricky was there, manning the front door, holding it open for her, and she stepped into the familiar warmth of the lobby.

  Habit carried her through the lobby, nodding good-night to the snoozy second doorman manning the desk, past the mailroom hidden behind the elevators.

  Now, finally, she slipped into the elevator alone, humming its way up. She leaned back against the wooden panel and focused on the one thing that had consumed her for the past three hours.

  Her silver pen.

  Now, years after she had lost the memento of one of her most famous murder trials, it turned up again. Not in an old trunk or trial file, not crammed to the back of her underwear drawer where she often put letters and cards she wanted to keep, but in the hands of the NYPD, lifted as evidence off the dead body of one of her own patients.

  When the elevator’s muted bell rang to a stop at her floor, Hailey stepped off and headed down the carpeted hallway to the end of the hall to her corner apartment. It seemed amazing to her to take out her key, open the door, and find everything as it had been when she’d left. The light still burning over the stove, the window still cracked slightly in her bedroom to let in cool, fresh air, her clogs still sitting at the edge of her bed, as if nothing had changed.

  But it had. It had changed horribly.

  Home. Home at last.

  She could hear her own footsteps in the quiet of the apartment, stepping back to the bathroom attached to her bedroom to fill the tub with hot water.

  Leaning over to plug the stopper, her thoughts raced. She was clearly the cops’ chief suspect. They’d be out for blood now that she’d trumped their theory from behind bars. They’d want to nail her on this no matter what. They’d never admit they were wrong, especially after she’d humiliated Kolker. Plus, if she wasn’t the killer, they’d be screwed at trial. How could they testify under oath to a jury they were positive they had the killer, when a few short months before, they’d been were positive she was the killer? They couldn’t. They were locked into her, and they’d make the evidence fit.

  She knew it. She felt trapped.

  Hailey turned abruptly, leaving the bath water running. She went into her closet and kicked off her boots and socks, leaving them there on the closet floor. Barefoot, she went silently across the hardwood floor into the kitchen.

  The pen. That’s what they had against her, that, the hair match, and a few pieces of circumstantial evidence. They’d be working the case against her now harder than ever. They wanted her at all costs. She was going down. They’d find a way to do it…unless she could figure it out before she was re-arrested.

  She robotically went through her cabinet until she found the tea she wanted. Filling the kettle at the sink, she wondered…

  The pen had never been in her apartment or her office here in the city; she was certain of that. That ruled out Hayden lifting it by accident. It hadn’t happened that way, but for the very first time, Hailey had lied to police. To save her own skin.

  Standing there in her kitchen waiting for water to boil, her lips curved up wryly on one side. The shoe was finally on the other foot.

  How many dozens—no, hundreds—of times had she shredded criminal defendants and their lawyers in open court when they had been caught in a lie to cops after a crime? And when defendants were foolish enough to take the stand, she carefully dissected their every word, twisting them, slicing them, slowly roasting them until sometimes they broke down and cried. Sometimes they had confessed…and sometimes they lunged at her across the witness stand. Unsuccessfully.

  The stillness of her apartment was disconcerting compared to the sounds of the city, so alive outside, far below, even at this time of night. The water was heating and she walked from room to room, innately seeking some sort of comfort from the things around her. She glided back across the hardwood floor onto the cold slate kitchen floor.

  The only sound was the hot water running on high in the bathtub. She stopped at the den window beside her mother’s piano and leaned against the built-in heater, staring out at the Empire State Building. She was hundreds of miles away from the old life full of murder, rape, gun violence, child molestation, and drug lords. She thought she’d left it all back in Atlanta to come here, to start over lost in crowds where nobody knew her name, where every time she ate out, she wasn’t surrounded by a potential jury pool.

  But tonight, she was right back where she started.

  Images of Hayden and Melissa appeared in her mind’s eye, then suddenly blurred with the dead and decomposing bodies of the murder victims she represented for so many years. They all blended together.

  Shaking it off, she turned away from the window and walked back through her bedroom to the bath. Reaching across the tub to twist off the hot-water tap, she was relieved, once again, to see that all was as she had left it.

  Back in the master bedroom, she went to the rosewood wall unit at the far side of the room, directly across from the bed. She’d had it specially made and installed, and it covered the entire wall.

  The shelves on one side were full of volumes and volumes of research, both legal and psychological, notes, presentations, and oral arguments. The other side, when opened, revealed a built-in desktop computer topped by shelves that held a fax, printer, dictionary, thesaurus—all tools of her trades.

  Hailey adroitly reached beneath the computer’s slide-out keyboard, pulled a lever, and a panel along the back swung open.

  It had been nearly a year since she’d opened the cabinet’s concealed door to survey its secret contents. Tonight, it was pure instinct.

  A small overhead light in the back of the unit automatically illuminated the gun and knife collection she had amassed over a decade of prosecuting everyone from bank robbers to d
rug lords to street gangs.

  Yes, she’d been the only assistant district attorney who, on principle, never carried a weapon.

  But these weapons—which were entered into evidence in Hailey’s more memorable prosecutions—were always carefully stored in a locker in her office. At some point, when the appeals process was exhausted, they’d all be auctioned off or just melted down somewhere.

  Unbeknownst to Hailey as her flight jetted her from Atlanta to LaGuardia on the day of her move, somewhere below her on the interstate snaked a moving van full of an arsenal she never intended to bring with her. When the movers had packed her belongings from the office, they had simply shipped the huge lockbox along with everything else.

  It had taken a while to discover what happened. She was in no hurry to unpack the boxes she thought contained old trial files…in no hurry to relive the violence, the hatred, the crimes that had worn her down…that caused her to leave her roots for a so-called regular life.

  But the day she finally unpacked the box and realized what was inside had actually not been upsetting at all. She hadn’t been upset…no…she was almost…nostalgic. Nostalgic for her old office, the friends she’d had there, and the dedication that propelled her for so long.

  She handled, checked, and polished every weapon. They totaled forty-three guns, ranging from a Colombian Uzi to a hooker’s twenty-two to a sawed-off shotgun with its blunt end covered in black masking tape. The knives included plenty of switchblades, but also a machete polished to a high sheen, a kangaroo knife, a Smith and Wesson boot knife, and a Puerto Rican pig sticker.

  Now she stared at them all, taking stock.

  At last, she reached out, and with a firm hand, chose the .38. It fit better than the others in her hand, and she’d used it more often at target practice.

  Hailey shook open the chamber and peered inside.

  It was loaded.

  Setting it on top of the computer, she took down from a peg a specially designed shoulder holster made of black, flexible Lycra and Velcro. Leather bulked up and was easy to spot outside clothing. Not this.