The Eleventh Victim (16 page)

W
HEN HAILEY’S CELL PHONE RANG, WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT, SHE
was wide awake in bed with a book she’d been trying to read to put herself to sleep.

She kept telling herself it was the coffee keeping her awake.

That, and the dinner. With Adam.

But there was something else, too. Some nagging uneasiness she somehow sensed had nothing to do with caffeine or Adam Springhurst.

Who was calling so late? Somebody who had her cell number. She reached across her bed and down to her purse on the floor, fishing around for the cell. This late, could it be bad news from home?

No. The caller ID displayed a local area code.

“Hello?”

“Hailey?”

“Karen!”

“I’m so sorry to call you so late, but you said to call anytime if I needed you, and…I do. I’m so sorry….” Karen spoke the last three words on a sob.

“What’s wrong?”

“He has a new phone number on his speed dial, Hailey.”

“What?”

She didn’t have to ask who Karen was talking about. Of course it was James…again.

“He assigned it to number one, Hailey. I’m number three—after his mother. Number one used to be his voice mail.”

“Whose number is it now?”

“I’m not sure. I called it, and a woman answered.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Are you kidding? I hung up, plus I blocked my number. I looked up the area code, though, and it’s for Tallahassee. Remember when James went to that conference in Florida a few weeks ago?”

“Yes. You think he met someone there?”

“I know he did. And I hired a private eye to find out who she is and what’s going on.”

Hailey gently spoke to Karen for almost fifteen minutes, working through conflicted feelings for a man she thought she loved.

A man who now had a twenty-three-year-old pharmaceutical sales rep with long dark hair as number one on his speed dial.

Finally, Karen yawned and said, “I’m exhausted. I think I can sleep now.”

“I hope so. For some reason, things always seem better in the morning. It’s getting through the night, sometimes, that’s the tough part.”

“I’m so sorry I woke you in the middle of the night, Hailey.”

“Don’t worry. Go to sleep.”

Hanging up the phone, she glanced at the book she’d dumped when the phone rang.

Instead of picking it up again, she turned off the lamp and burrowed her head under the pillows.

Like Karen, she was exhausted.

But instinctively she realized she wouldn’t sleep in the hours ahead.

All was not right in her world tonight. What was it?

She didn’t know how she knew, she just did.

A
S HAILEY STEPPED OUT OF THE ELEVATOR IN THE LOBBY OF HER
building on a cold February morning, Ricky, her favorite doorman, flashed a familiar grin. “Hello, Ms. Dean.”

“How are you today, Ricky?”

“Same as every day, just happy to be alive,” he replied. “How about you?”

“I’m great, thanks,” she replied, same as she did every day, and their morning ritual was complete.

She left him to his
New York Post
, folded so that most of the front-page headline was hidden.

Only the last four bold black letters were visible: R-D-E-R.

You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that the missing letters were M-U.

Murder. Never a lack of crime to report. There was always a headline. Print reporters only had to wait overnight, the TV people got it instantly.

She stepped out into bright winter sunlight. Nine a.m., and Second Avenue was already tangled in a honking snarl.

She raised her arm to hail a cab headed downtown. Ordinarily, she’d start out walking the first few blocks in the morning air, but didn’t feel like it after no sleep the night before.

She had gotten home at eleven last night to find a message from Adam.

“Hi, Hailey. I’m leaving tomorrow morning on that ski trip, so I wanted to tell you Happy Valentine’s Day, and…I’ll see you when I get back.”

They kept running into each other at the mailboxes in the common hallway downstairs at work.

She had turned him down for a gallery opening they were both invited to, but he didn’t seem upset, and coincidentally, the two days she had actually left the office last week to go out for lunch, he’d shown up almost instantly at the same spot. It was just around the corner and had the best homemade soup in town, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a coincidence. They’d shared the same table and the same newspaper. It was pleasant and she couldn’t explain why, but Hailey found herself instinctively avoiding another chance meeting, staying in for lunch the rest of the week, ordering salads over the Internet that showed up twenty minutes later. Adam had appeared out of nowhere…and he’d probably disappear into nowhere the same way.

Why, then, had she had such a hard time sleeping last night, and woken feeling troubled again today?

Hailey felt her cell phone buzz in her pocketbook a second too late to catch the caller. Checking her messages, though, she heard her mother’s voice.

“Hailey, your dad’s feeling so good, we’re heading down to Cumberland for a few days. We’d love you to meet us down there. We’re driving but we could pick you up at the airport. I love you, sweet girl. Let me know.” The phone clicked off.

Cumberland Island was just off the Georgia coast, so extreme an opposite to Manhattan Island that they might as well be on different planets. Rustic and remote, with thirty miles of undisturbed Atlantic coastline, Cumberland boasted no TVs or phones, no cell pockets, no paved roads. Maybe a dozen residents, and even fewer homes and cars. Just natural beauty.

Looking out the window of the cab, she daydreamed briefly about going back home and meeting her parents at Cumberland. A nice dream, especially this morning. A bitter wind blew off the East River.

Hailey sat back and listened to the radio, glad it was tuned to 1010 WINS.

“All news, all the time. Give us twenty-two minutes and we give you the world,” the radio voice promised the backseat.

The local segment was recycling the discovery of a body. “NYPD this morning is investigating the discovery of a body at around midnight on the city’s East Side. The identity of a white female, estimated to be between twenty to thirty years old, has yet to be determined. Witnesses on the scene described her as small in stature.”

The news announcer’s voice gave way to a taped man-on-the-street account from a male bystander with a strong New York accent.

“We were all there when the ambulance came up, but it was too late. They covered her with a sheet and took her away.”

Back to the announcer. “Police investigating cause of death and matching the body’s description against missing persons in an ef
fort to identify the victim. The victim had been both stabbed and strangled, according to sources within the NYPD.”

With that announcement, Hailey sat forward and frowned. Two causes of death? Strangulation and stabbing…that didn’t make sense….

Strangulation suggested a “sweetheart murder,” requiring close physical contact, even a struggle between killer and victim suggestive of sex or intimacy between the two in the past, or at the time of death.

Analyzing the MO, she lowered the window for a lungful of cold air off the East River, gazing at the glass-and-concrete landscape as the cab crept another block, approaching the United Nations.

Police were most likely holding back information from the public to avoid jeopardizing the ultimate jury trial. Even worse, too many details to the media could spin off a copycat killer.

1010 WINS had jumped to the weather—cold and sunny with potential for snow flurries tonight. Hailey barely noticed, still caught up in the murder of a total stranger.

The canned news report left out crucial details and sent her mind spinning.

Where on the East Side was the girl found? In the dark waters of the East River, where Hailey jogged every evening? Thrown from a car off the FDR? Dumped in an open area—if there was such a thing in this city? Or was she stabbed and strangled right there where she was found? If so, the crime techs at the scene could make or break the case by the way they handled the forensic evidence on and around the body.

Through force of habit, Hailey methodically began to fill in details. Friends and foes alike accused her of having a clairvoyant streak, but reading minds did not account for her ability to decode a criminal mind. That talent was hard-won, via ten years in the trenches of one of the busiest courthouses in the world…serial murders, rapes, child molestations, and arson all routine.

“And now, traffic and transit on the eights,” the radio voice declared.

The cab hummed forward, miraculously dodging pedestrians who showed neither fear nor respect for oncoming vehicles. Incredibly, few were ever mowed down. Knowledge being power, that statistic only egged them on.

Watching traffic whiz by, she knew why the news report had grabbed her attention and not let go. The stabbing/strangulation MO reminded her of her final jury trial, the Clint Burrell Cruise serial-murder case.

C
LARENCE E. CARTER WAS NOW KNOWN AS THE JUDGE WHO HAD
a heart, the fair-minded champion of the people, not too proud to listen to reason nor afraid to hold the justice system to the careful scrutiny allowed only by the bright light of the Georgia Supreme Court.

In other words, he’d reversed himself midstream.

Tipped back in his desk chair on a glorious morning, C.C. gazed out the window at the glittering city, basking.

He had let a serial killer walk free with a single vote and blamed it all on the State. It was the cops’ fault.

Now he was the centerfold in legal journals across the country. Suddenly, even the American Bar Association lauded him, despite his profusely and publicly ridiculing the ABA repeatedly in the past. He publicly declared it was headed up by liberals and law
professors who had never been in the trenches and knew nothing about the real world, frequently describing them as bloated house pets who lounged in plush ivory towers.

Funny, he saw them in a whole new light now that they had invited him to a genuine Hawaiian luau
in
Hawaii next month, and would fly him and Tina first-class to present him with an ABA Certificate of Honor, shellacked to a high sheen and embedded in oak.

The Prosecuting Attorney’s Counsel had never shelled out like this.

And then there was last week’s invitation to an all-expense-paid trip for two to Italy, where the Criminal Defense Lawyers Association was planning to fete the Cruise reversal. Although he’d heard American Italian food was much better than real Italian.

Of course, not everyone applauded his vote.

His law clerk, Jim Talley, resigned. So much for
his
chances of landing a spot at Lange and Parker. For all C.C. knew, Talley was waiting tables at Cracker Barrel. But hey, if you can’t take the heat…

Meanwhile, C.C.’s longtime supporters, the pro–death penalty groups, were furiously licking their wounds over the reversal. They hoped this single reversal must be a freakish aberration on the part of a fry-’em-like-chicken-ask-questions-later kind of judge. The reasoning behind C.C.’s swing vote remained a mystery, though the legal community was rife with speculation as to the true cause of the vote change.

Outright disgust with C.C. was evenly matched by the jubilance of the anti–death penalty camp, hailing a new era wherein future Penalty votes would now be one vote in
their
favor.

Wrong.

C.C. knew in his heart this was a one-shot deal, and it was over.

He planned all along to “leave the dance with the one who brung him.” C.C. was brought to greatness by his die-hard support for the electric chair. He couldn’t and wouldn’t abandon Old Sparky on the cusp of his governorship. That would be bad luck.

Plus, liberals represented mostly poor, indigent clients strapped for cash. They could never fund his gubernatorial bid, much less a re-election campaign.

If he ever wanted to live in the Mansion, he had to make nice again with the “fry-babies,” C.C.’s pet name for pro–death penalty groups.

He took another sip from his flask and spun away from the window.

Time to call Floyd Moye Eugene.

“N
OW HE’S JOINED ‘JDATE.’” KAREN BLEW HER NOSE INTO A
Kleenex in Hailey’s office. Again. “It’s online dating for Jewish singles. And that’s on top of Adult Friend Finders, Yahoo Singles, and Match.com.”

“Is he Jewish?”

“No…and he’s not single, either! Well, technically, maybe, but…”

Hailey shook her head. For a half hour now, Karen had been filling her in on James’s latest. The man never ceased to amaze.

“And you should read the things he says on this JDate…all
bullshit
, of course.”

“Like what?”

“I checked out his profile and he’s got some nerve. The photo he posted of himself is half a picture somebody took of
us
one night at a party…and
I’m cut out of the picture
! He’s just standing there with a glass of wine in one hand and his other arm reaching out off the photo. It might actually be funny if it weren’t so…so…”

“Duplicitous?” Hailey supplied the word Karen was searching for.

“Exactly. Why is he doing this, Hailey?”

“He’s not my client, Karen. You are.”

“I know, I know. You always say that. But what’s your theory?”

They’d been over and over it. Maybe someday, it would stick. Maybe Karen wasn’t ready to let go, so she subconsciously remained in a perpetual state of limbo.

“My theory is that all the telephone foreplay and online flirtations make James feel like he’s still out there, a ‘player,’ a nice-looking package of man. It’s all about his insecurities. He prefers anonymity because there’s no fear of failure. We’ve been over this. You agreed just last week.”

“Remember that bootleg Viagra I told you about?” Karen avoided her avoidance.

Hailey nodded, almost afraid to hear. “What about it?”

“I told him about it, and I told him to use it. All the pills are still there, right where I left them in the bathroom cabinet. I secretly counted them so that I could make sure he wasn’t using them somewhere else. He wasn’t…at least, not according to my math.”

“Well…that’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s good he isn’t using them somewhere else…not so good that he’s not using them with me. And the thing is, all this online stuff of his—it’s not just about sex. Last week he e-mailed an Asian escort service and asked some hooker named Lotus if she’d like to go to dinner and a Broadway play. He wrote, ‘Before the tab starts running.’
Dinner and a play
, can you believe that?”

“Taking Lotus the hooker to a Broadway play and Sardi’s after for dinner? No, I can’t,” Hailey said matter-of-factly.

“But Hailey, do you think he’d actually go through with it? I keep telling myself no, that it’s like all the other online chats and phone-sex services, that he never follows through. Or am I just fooling myself?” Teary-eyed, Karen plucked one of the last tissues from the bottom of the box and looked at Hailey, for reassurance and comforting.

“Karen, you’ve had the man followed by a private dick eight, is it ten times now? Phone and computer sex aside, if you’re asking whether I honestly think he goes any further than just fantasizing like a million other guys in America, I’d still say no. I’m willing to bet that so far, the worst he’s done is BS strippers in the clubs, and believe me, they’ve heard it all before. He never even takes one home. That we know of.”

“So that means…”

“So that means I’m sticking with the international-man-of-mystery theory.”

Karen burst into laughter and blew her nose. “Remember when Harry double-confirmed James never actually hooked up with that pharmaceutical sales rep?”

Hailey definitely did remember the emergency wee-hour call she’d received a few weeks ago when Karen found out James had a new phone number on speed dial. Karen matched it up with a number James stashed, hidden under “Chinese Take-out” in his BlackBerry.

Two thousand dollars later, Harry the Private Eye had discovered the woman was a married pharmaceutical sales rep James met at a hotel bar in Florida. Ever since, the two had burned up the lines with phone sex whenever Sharon hit the road out of Tallahassee to peddle allergy medicine.

That was abruptly curtailed, however, when Karen called the girl and threatened to tell Lance, her unsuspecting, redneck husband.

“Karen, I’m just curious, not judging one way or another, but how much more do you plan to spend on private dicks?” The question met with dead silence.

Hailey went on. “Is it really worth living with all the singles sites, the online chats, the hooker sites? Will you always need to know everything about what he’s doing when he’s not with you? Think about it…when you’re fifty, will you still be going through his pockets and reading his e-mails? Wouldn’t life be great with someone you trust? Or do you even remember anymore what that feeling is like? It’s a wonderful feeling, Karen, and you deserve that in your life.”

“Come on, you know I hate therapy talk. Fifty years old is still twenty years away.”

“Karen…this
is
therapy. You’re paying me one-fifty an hour, remember?”

“One-fifty’s not bad, and the insurance splits it fifty-fifty with me.”

“You’re hedging.”

“That’s because I don’t know all the answers. That’s what you’re for. I come here for answers and you beat me up with questions.” Karen sighed. “Can I just have some hot tea? Maybe with milk, just to be crazy.”

“I’ll fix it. What kind?”

“Sleepy Time?”

“It’s still morning…”

“To counteract all the caffeine I’ve had already.”

Hailey, sensing Karen shifting subjects short of reaching any tough decisions, headed to the kitchen to start brewing the tea.

From her perch on the sofa, Karen called out, “And would you please not call Harry a dick? He’s a certified, licensed private investigator and was highly recommended by a girl at work.”

“Okay.” Hailey pulled down Karen’s favorite Celestial Seasonings tea from the cabinet over the counter, along with two coffee cups.

“And he’s worth every penny, just like you are. Even if insurance isn’t splitting his fee,” Karen went on from the next room.

“I’m so flattered,” Hailey called out.

Karen went into the suite’s tiny bathroom and Hailey could hear her blowing her nose through the door. The commode flushed, and Karen called out through the closed door, “Hey, why do you keep all these framed law degrees hung in the bathroom? If I had all these, they’d be on display under a spotlight! What’s
Law Review
?”

Hailey paused and remembered hanging them over the toilet the day she moved into this office suite and started a new life. “Oh, I don’t know why I did that,” she called back. “Just making fun of all the pompous lawyers I’ve ever known, I guess.”

She tossed it off as a joke, but inside, Hailey knew why. On a Freudian level, the positioning of Hailey’s law degree, awards, and achievements there in her patients’ bathroom silently spoke volumes.

No more trying to right a world that was broken when Will was murdered. She had been saturated in her own crusade, a crusade that left her tired and broken at the end of the day, a crusade that forced her to relive Will’s murder with every felon she tried.

Hanging her law degrees perfectly centered over the crapper seemed to be poetic justice.

How clearly she remembered packing her trial materials for the last time the night the Cruise verdict came down. She had just watched the mothers, fathers, and loved ones of eleven murder victims troop out of the courtroom for the last time.

Karen emerged from Hailey’s bathroom with a red nose, but smiling.

They drank their tea and hugged good-bye, as always.

Hailey’s next scheduled patient was Melissa Everett, but she still had about fifteen minutes—and that was if Melissa made it on time.

Leaving her office door unlocked, Hailey went across the hall to knock on Dana’s. Her
Post
had been missing again this morning, and she had a good idea where to find it.

“Hailey!” Dana was there, with her coat on and her bag slung over her shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Just getting back. I had lunch with Greg. He wanted to make up for breaking our date last night.”

“That’s nice.” Hailey had heard all about that this morning. Of course Dana had been beside herself, worried that the new guy had already lost interest after they’d been going strong for a whole week.

Dana had really been looking forward to the date, too. She’d bragged about it for days ahead of time and obsessed over what to wear and how much she weighed.

Through it all, Hailey wondered whether to mention Adam. Dana pressed her for details after that first dinner, and for days afterward. But when Hailey had nothing more to report, Dana lost interest.

Something told Hailey not to share Adam’s pursuit. She couldn’t quite figure it out herself. Adam was great…in theory, but some lingering doubt, some nagging concern, something made Hailey leery. It was nothing she could put her finger on. But it wasn’t as if she could get a word in edgewise anyway, with all Dana’s excitement over Greg.

“You know, he’s really incredible, Hailey. Did I tell you he told me he’s going to cook dinner for me on Valentine’s Day next week?”

Hailey nodded. “You did.”

“Greg’s just so sweet, and such a gentleman—he’s got old-fashioned manners. Did I tell you he’s from the South?”

She had…along with everything else there was to know about Greg, a recent transplant from somewhere. He was great-looking and said he’d never been married—perfect, in other words, for Dana.

“I can’t wait till you meet him,” Dana said. She hurriedly shed her coat and pulled out a compact. “You’re going to love him.”

“He sounds really nice. What does he do for a living? Does he have a job?”

“Something legal, I think. I mean, I know he has a law degree. Hey! Maybe he can get someone for you and we can double date! You’re lawyers…you’d have so much in common.”

“That’s okay, I hate blind dates.”

“Hailey, I’m sure you don’t want to spend another Valentine’s Day all alone. I’ll see if Greg has a friend for you.”

“Isn’t he new in town? I’m sure he doesn’t. And even if he does, I’m not…” She broke off, hearing footsteps coming up the stairs.

“I hear a client, gotta go. Thanks anyway.”

She was sure it would be Melissa, but the footsteps turned out to be Dana’s next appointment. Hailey made a beeline for her own office, grateful to be extricated from the whole Valentine’s Day setup thing.

Only after she’d closed the door did she remember she’d forgotten to ask Dana for her
Post
. And now she finally had a chance to read it. Five minutes went by, ten, fifteen.

Hailey looked up Melissa’s home number and dialed it.

“Melissa, hi dear…it’s Hailey. We had an appointment at two o’clock…did you forget? Don’t worry. I’m here, waiting for you. Give me a call when you get this.”

She hung up. Being late had become Melissa’s routine, and Hailey had come to accept it, but it didn’t stop her from worrying. Hailey methodically busied herself, finishing paperwork, watering plants, and rinsing out the coffee mugs, keeping one eye on the clock.

A half hour had passed, then an hour.

Still no Melissa.

But Mazz showed up, right on time for his own appointment.

“I had a new dream about the monkey,” he announced, flopping into the chair opposite Hailey.