The Eleventh Victim (27 page)

Before he could respond, she continued on. “After that, I went across the street to the mini-mart at Thirty-eighth and Third. A few of them are open twenty-four hours, you know that much, right? I bought groceries.”

Almost immediately, his eyes lit up.

Before he could even blurt it out, she held up her hand. “Don’t get excited…. I didn’t pay cash. Used a debit card. Comes right off my checking account. Immediately. If you have wireless in here I could pull it up for you right now. You know how to use a com
puter, right? You know…e-mail…online banking…surfing the Internet…. It’s easy now, Kolker, it even shows the time—somewhere around ten thirty. How does that fit into your theory? Pretty well, if you totally want to throw out the time line your Medical Examiner established for the time of death. Or, hey, your theory could still conceivably work…if the body had been found in the dairy section at the mini-mart.”

She saw him glance over at the mirror. They had to be laughing into their fists at him back there by now, and before he thought it through, he shot back.

“The time is fluid, Dean. And I’ve still got you on Hayden’s murder. You may talk your way out of one—and I’m not saying you did—but not the other. You’re dead in the water, Dean.”

The veins on either side of his temple were bulging, and his face was red.

You’d better watch it,
she told herself, realizing this might not be the right time to be a smart-ass.

After all, he did have the keys to the jail, literally. “What about Thursday night? Where were you?” Kolker asked without a pause.

She pulled back. “I’m clear on Thursday, too. I ran the East River.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.” The tables turned abruptly. She knew she was in trouble.

“Running alone along the East River? No witness? No running buddy?” Kolker smiled, rummaged in his pocket for a quarter and pushed it across the worn tabletop with the pink eraser tip of a yellow pencil. “I know it hurts, Hailey…but don’t feel too bad. Here’s a present. It’s from me to you…to call your lawyer. Nice try, Hailey.” He stood up and gazed triumphantly toward the mirror, nodding his head slightly to his cronies on the other side, as if he were taking a bow.

She knew he was right. Running by herself…all alone along the East River jogging path…wouldn’t work. No witnesses…but wait…what could she do…Was there any way she could alibi herself? They’d still hold her, even on the single Murder One
count, even if the other was weak. Without thinking it through, she spoke.

“Well, you have a point. But, Kolker, I ran with my cell phone tucked into the pocket of my sweatshirt. I was thinking as I ran. I had an idea about an article I’m working on, and before I lost the thought, I called my office. I left a message to remind myself.”

“So what does that prove? You could have easily made the call anytime from anywhere…maybe leaving the body warm on the ground at the scene of the murder, for all I know.”

He was right. Again. She had to think faster.

“So the call, if it does exist, only proves one thing—you’re even more cold-blooded than I thought. Cold-blooded enough to stab some mixed-up, innocent kid and then before you even turn the block, you set up your own alibi.”

He was gaining ground. “And everybody knows that even a high-schooler knows how to change time and date stamps on incoming and outgoing calls. This’ll make a hell of a closing argument for the prosecutor, won’t it, Hailey Dean?”

He sat back in his chair, now relaxed, grinning into the two-way. Kolker’s moment of triumph. He was loving it.

But it didn’t last long. Watching him carefully, Hailey pulled the trump card. “No.”

The moment faded for Kolker and he turned slightly in his chair to look at her.

Her voice was cold now. “In the middle of the message, fire trucks from Sixty-seventh Street pulled out onto Third. It’s Engine 39, I’m sure. It had to have been. I could hear the ladder man over a bullhorn shouting so that they could get the big pumper truck out. I heard him telling drivers to back up so they could get out. Cars were blocking the driveway. The pumper couldn’t pull out onto the street. If the machine picked it up and I’m sure it did…it locks me in on the time. I’m clear across town, practically in the Seventies, the murder is at the other end of the island, in the Village, you said.”

He didn’t respond, but looked briefly toward the mirror as if for guidance.

“Check the message, Kolker. I know I saved it because I didn’t have time to work on the article yesterday before…”

Before you barged into my office and you brought me here…

She held her tongue, saying only, “I can play it back for you right now on remote if you want. You’ll hear the ladder captain in the background and the sirens. They’ll have a record of a fire-truck detail being sent out that night…that time. And you do know how to triangulate, right? To ping? You know, to pinpoint the exact location, sometimes down to the square block, where a cell call’s made?”

Kolker was looking down at the table between them, deep in thought.

She didn’t let up, she went for the kill. “Go ahead…ping me. And oh yes, my doorman, Ricky, saw me when I came back in.”

Hailey put her right index finger on the face of the quarter and slowly pushed it back across the tabletop toward Kolker.

“Keep it, Kolker.” Hailey stood up, preparing to leave. She’d won her way out of the jail and she knew it.

She glanced over her shoulder at the two-way mirror and nodded her head.

“Not so fast, Counselor. Your hair’s usually pulled back, right? Maybe you should have kept it back the nights of the murders, Hailey.”

She stared at him full-on. “Get to the point, Kolker.”

“I told you we have forensics. Can’t argue with the crime lab. You were on the crime scenes all right, both of them. DNA puts you there.”

“There is no way my DNA was at the crime scenes.”

“Save it. We got top-notch crime techs working Melissa’s body within the hour. Hayden’s, too. The best in the state, maybe even the country. They combed the scene, Hailey. It didn’t take them ten minutes to find long blonde hair—not one piece, Hailey, several.
We’ve already had it tested, mitochondrial DNA, Hailey, maybe even some nuclear DNA, too
…
and
they’re yours.
”

Her hair? At the scene?

“And Hailey, they weren’t just
at
the crime scene. They weren’t just
on
the body. Melissa was clutching them in her right hand. She was fighting to live…fighting with you. I think you had them doped up on some of your shrink meds…and they never saw it coming…and from someone they trusted. It’s sick. On Hayden it was caught in a bracelet she was wearing.

“And one last thing, as if we needed it. What about this? Any idea who
this
belongs to?” Kolker stood up, stretching his long legs. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out something shiny, something silver.

Hailey turned and froze. Hanging from his right hand, on its black silk cord was a small, silver necklace, a tiny Tiffany’s ink pen.

“Recognize this, Hailey?” Kolker asked, gloating.

She did. Of course she did.

She didn’t have to look any closer to know what was engraved:
For Hailey, Seeking Justice, Katrine Dumont-Eastwood
.

“We found
your
jewelry,
your
necklace from Tiffany’s. It was on the Krasinski murder scene. And it wasn’t in her pocket or sweatshirt. She didn’t just pick it up accidentally. It was under her body. And to top it off…the cord’s broken. Lose it during the struggle, Hailey?”

She had once treasured it dearly but now it dangled in Kolker’s fingers like a noose.

F
RANK LAGRANGE HADDEN (THE THIRD) HAD BEEN WORRIED ABOUT
being able to walk, let alone run, after being folded into the crapper stall for so long.

Thanks to the burst of adrenaline shooting through his body when he sprang up and snapped the first shot, he somehow found himself sprinting through the hot breeze of the parking lot with amazing agility for someone so horribly out of shape. Tall and thin, he never exercised, spending most of his time online, parked in front of his big screen, or closeted away in his darkroom.

But once he was off the toilet, he unfolded long, thin legs and ran like hell.

His Nikes dug into the gravel and he pumped his arms furiously, weaving through hundreds of parked cars to get to his own burgundy Toyota.

Laying the camera on the passenger’s seat, Hadden cranked up, jerked the Camry into reverse, put it in drive, and took off spewing gravel. He burned rubber pulling onto the asphalt, locked the car doors, and belted himself in all while gunning the gas, surreptitiously glancing into his rearview mirror just in time to see C.C. lurch out of the club, a burly bouncer on either side of the Judge.

Damn fool.

Looking back, he could see the Judge and his two goons running through the strip club parking lot, looking for him in the wrong direction.

By now, he knew, Baby was long gone and wondering who had given “her” the two thousand dollars cash. He/she should have known that was way too much for just a Monica. But there was no way a hooker would turn down a cold two thousand dollars, and Frank knew it.

He also knew, after following this jackass for weeks, a judge no less, that there was no way he’d turn Baby down.

What a way to make a living.

His legs had fallen asleep while he’d been crouched on the toilet seat for nearly an hour, and now they felt like fiery daggers were tearing through them.

Hadden snaked through the back streets of Hispanic neighborhoods surrounding the Pink Fuzzy until he made it back to I-85.

Once there, he floored it, going north of the city, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror, just in case.

In minutes, the traffic and streetlights began to fall away. He picked up his cell and dialed the number he had been given.

No one ever answered, but he always got his payments on schedule, like clockwork.

The line was picked up by a machine, identified only by an outgoing beep.

“It’s me, Frank. I got the photos. The ones you wanted and plenty of extras. As soon as I get the last payment, they’re all yours. Negatives included, as promised.”

Another beep came, signaling the end of the allotted recording period.

He hung up the phone and tossed it onto the seat beside him.

Frank finally began to breathe easy. He dropped his speed to fifty-five mph as he continued heading north to his home on a cul-de-sac in one of thousands of nearly identical suburbs surrounding the city of Atlanta.

His neighbors had no idea what he did for a living.

But everybody who was anybody in certain circles knew that he was the best in the Southeast. He got it all—on tape, audio, and video—for people all over the country. Private dicks, the mags, sleazy divorce lawyers, jealous lovers—they all knew where to come.

If
they had the money.

But even with business being good, he could always use more fat wallets like this one.

This was a major gig, and that moron Judge Carter made it easy.

Frank had tailed him for seven weeks, and the idiot never even looked in the rearview mirror. Not even once. Oh, wait, there was the one time Carter had actually waved at him.

For the first few days Frank started out with rented cars and elaborate disguises, which of course he billed to the customer, along with the entire stakeout. The bill was never questioned. The disguises didn’t last long, though. No need.

By the end, Frank was parking his Toyota right behind Carter’s car over at his girlfriend’s apartment. No fear of detection whatsoever.

Frank had hated people like Carter his whole life, ever since kindergarten. The ones who had it all, got it all without even trying. The Haves. Carter was so drunk off his own sense of self-entitlement, so used to the world being his oyster, he never looked up from his own front zipper.

Speaking of which, he was probably out in front of the Pink Fuzzy right now still trying to get his zipper up.

If he could find it.

H
AILEY FROZE…HER MIND WRESTLING HAND-TO-HAND WITH
her vision. She was speechless…staring at the impossible…the illogical. It couldn’t be true…. It didn’t make sense.

Her silver Tiffany pen, engraved on the side, given to her by Katrine years ago after a murder trial.

She and Fincher had torn apart the courtroom looking for it…spending hours down on all fours between the pews of the courtroom, where Hailey had wandered during her closing arguments. They’d searched through all the evidence, the trial files and notes, even retracing Hailey’s footsteps back and forth to her office there in the courthouse. Finally, they gave up. Hailey remembered walking to the county parking garage that night feeling a loss, repeatedly touching her neck where the black silk cord normally hung down.

She never saw it again until now…years later in the interrogation room at the NYPD.

“Surprised, Hailey?” Kolker rolled the glinting silver back and forth gently between his thumb and fingers.

She had her back to the wall. The only strategy she had was to play him. Let him do all the talking. He was incredibly pleased with himself, barely able to contain his elation over the pen. Could he hold it in? Was Hailey wrong?

It took about thirty seconds.

“You thought you pulled it off, didn’t you. But you left
this
little calling card. You were there with Hayden when she died, Hailey, and this proves it. And I want you to know…I picked it up myself.”

He actually turned toward the mirror, his back to her as he went on.

“It didn’t take me long to realize it belonged to none other than the treating psych for both dead women. That’s no coincidence, Counselor. By trial time, believe me, we’ll come up with a way to explain your alibis. Just be glad New York got rid of the death penalty.”

So her pen had turned up after all this time…under Hayden’s body. In a single thoughtless boast, Kolker had given away a major prosecution strategy. Now she knew the strategic significance of the pen, where they’d found it, how they planned to use it against her, and, significantly, exactly who had picked it up. She knew about the hair, the article, the timing of the murders…it was no small amount of evidence…and this was just the beginning of the investigation.

Mustering every ounce of technique left in her body, she managed to keep a stoic mask in place. But now she understood the State’s case, what tied her to Hayden’s murder and, connecting the dots, to Melissa’s as well. Now she had the ammunition she needed to fight back.

But she had no choice. It would mean lying to the police. She wanted desperately to tell the truth but…they’d never believe the truth about the pen disappearing. It was a major gamble because if she were caught lying, she’d look guilty as hell. But tonight, there was no other way out. She reminded herself that Kolker couldn’t possibly know the history behind the pen. She swallowed hard and it hurt her throat.

“Hey…I’ve been looking for that. It’s my favorite. But Kolker, even coming from you, I’m shocked. This can only mean you searched my office without a warrant. I haven’t seen my pen since Hayden’s last visit. She was twisting the cord, wrapping and rewrapping the silk portion between her fingers while she talked. She played with it nearly the entire session. So it was there, in the office, but then…you came by…Kolker…did you take the pen from my office?”

The words were poison to any major investigation, accusing the cops of planting evidence, and they hung, foul-smelling in the close quarters of the interrogation room.

He was speechless. In one minute, the momentum shifted.

Realizing she had a tiny advantage, Hailey pressed on.

“Kolker, is that the only way you can crack a case, planting the pen as evidence? Even coming from you, I’m shocked.”

Sensing that he was faltering, she leveled her eyes to his and put the accusatory shoe on the other foot. “Did you go in without a warrant? Did you find it, read the engraving, and place it there under her as she lay dead? You’re the one who’s sick, Kolker, not me. It’s so much more sensational to try and pin this on me, isn’t it? A regular street thug wouldn’t do, would it? Just how far will you go to make a name for yourself?”

“I didn’t—”

Suddenly, Kolker was keenly aware that his colleagues and superiors behind the mirrored wall were watching him.

All right, Hailey, that’s enough. Keep it simple
, she warned herself.

How many times had liars done themselves in by creating an elaborate story that could be attacked from countless angles?

Learn from their mistakes…say no more…see where he goes with it.

She could see the wheels turning as it slowly started to dawn on him that the discovery of the pen wasn’t exactly the airtight piece of evidence that would clinch the case for him. In fact, there were any number of explanations why Hayden may have had the pen. She could have borrowed it, swiped it, used it, and then, unthinking, dropped it into her artist’s notebook.

“You mean that’s it? This pen is why you’re holding me? And the fact I was trying to help Melissa and Hayden?

“The
kinky
journal entries, as you so eloquently put it, Kolker, is research I’ve been doing for over a year on the psychopathy of serial killers. All of them, Gacy, Bundy, Zodiac, Boston Strangler, BTK…the notes weren’t about my patients at all, and I’ve sent the theory to over a dozen psych journals to see if they’d be interested in publishing. There are records. Try that on at trial. Oh, and they’d never get in at trial anyway because they
weren’t
in plain view on
my desk, they were in a file drawer beside my desk. You searched without a warrant…. I knew it.”

She looked him square in the face, unrelenting. “Oh…and the hair…your big
forensic evidence
. It means nothing. I hug nearly every patient when they leave each session, Kolker. I’ll have a string of patients testify to that at trial, so dig in, Kolker. They’re transfers from me to them. Or maybe they caught a hand in my barrette or touched my shoulder.”

He had lapsed into silence. Hailey didn’t let up.

“But she was clutching it…her hand was in a fist!” Kolker was limping now.

“Says you. By the time my lawyers and experts finish with your so-called crime tech, the jury will think you planted the hair just like you did the pen. That is, if they don’t see the obvious, that it’s a simple transfer. It’s not enough. And Kolker, the word ‘mitochondrial’ doesn’t scare me. It simply means DNA without skin, without the nucleus, the root attached to the hair. Big deal. Even if you have nuclear DNA with the root…so what? If a few hairs were torn from my scalp when one of them pulled away from a hug or when I pulled a sweatshirt off my head and it transferred to them…I never even felt it. Struggle? There was no struggle. It proves nothing…
nothing
, Kolker.”

She could see the wheels turning, that the magnificent dream he’d nurtured for days on end was fading. He hadn’t cracked a serial-murder case after all, not yet, anyway. He was not headed for a promotion and could forget being heralded in the press.

“You kept mementoes of the murders. I found Hayden’s poems in your office like the ones that were in her backpack the night she was murdered, and a photo of Melissa. Just like Gacy kept underwear and driver’s licenses off his victims. Killers keep them like normal people keep ticket stubs and photo albums. Explain
that
!”

Without a pause, she spoke evenly. “So you
did
search without a warrant. I thought so before, now I know for sure. Hayden gave me a stack of her poetry to show to a publisher who lives in my building. And Melissa showed me that photo because it pictured her with
her sister. She left it at my office on the coffee table and I put it in her folder to give back.

“Kolker…this isn’t a murder investigation,” she said, “it’s a frame-up so you can claim you cracked the case. Just a grab for headlines. The whole thing makes me sick. Two innocent women, murdered brutally in your own backyard, Kolker, and I’m the best you can do? Wait until the papers hear that you arrested a woman even though the victims may have been molested.”

She got him again, on pure speculation. Instead of protecting the case, he protected himself and blurted a retort.

“But there wasn’t any sperm! We don’t know if the molestations were premortem or post-, whether the attacker was a man or woman.”

“You’re not even sure there was a molestation…are you? A partially clad victim doesn’t equal rape, Kolker.”

As he started wildly searching through his papers, she dropped the bombshell.

“I refuse to be questioned any further. I want to call a lawyer…now. When I thought you were actually investigating the murders, I wanted to help, but now…” She closed in for the kill. “And I want Rube Garland.”

She had never even met Garland, but she saw his name in a news article when she Googled Kolker’s name after he showed up in her hospital room.

The story detailed Garland’s client who walked free on a murder rap because of a legal loophole. It was Jack Kolker…then just a beat cop…who had neglected to sign his name on a bag of evidence.

That bag contained hair samples taken from the victim’s bedroom, the murder scene. The DNA just so happened to match up with Garland’s client’s. The paper’s front page had a shot of Kolker storming out of the courtroom, an angry snarl on his face.

The photo was accompanied with an interview with the defense attorney, Rube Garland, in which Garland gloated over NYPD’s failure to protect the chain of custody, leaving a hole in the case and making it ripe for a defense claim of planted evidence. Hailey insinuated now, as then, Kolker screwed up DNA hair evidence.

Before Kolker could utter another word, the door to the interrogation room burst open.

Two cops, both wearing suits, walked into the room. One was short, gray, and pensive…the other tall, dark, and looking incredibly angry.

“Kolker, you’re needed upstairs.” The little gray one spoke.

Without another word, Kolker gathered his papers and left the room, throwing one last glance over his shoulder at Hailey as he left.

It was a look of unmistakable hatred, pure loathing. She had totally humiliated him in front of his whole team, the brass, too.

But it didn’t matter now. Hailey sensed it. She was headed home.

It was over…at least for now.

The two detectives handcuffed her to the table, which was bolted to the floor.

“Wait here,” the short, gray cop said, and the two of them left her there alone, unattended.

Fully aware that others might still be seated in the observation room, she said nothing and remained expressionless.

After another long wait alone, they returned.

As the taller one jangled keys and reached for her handcuffs, she saw that the short cop was holding a large plastic garbage bag containing her empty purse, wallet, cell phone, and pager. All the wallet and purse contents were loose in the bag, having been searched thoroughly.

Hailey’s ribs ached as she stood.

“Ms. Dean, you may be required to return to headquarters for questioning.” The little gray one again, short but not curt, giving no explanation as to her detainment or her release.

She expected neither.

Nobody needed to tell her why she suddenly was being released. Kolker’s interrogation had bombed miserably. The department had obviously pinned their hopes on his theory, and with the discovery of Hailey’s pen at the second murder scene, the interrogation of
Hailey Dean should have been the icing on the cake…case closed.

In their plans, the evening would have ended with drinks all around at the Irish pub around the corner, and tomorrow morning, a front-page story in the
Post
listing all their names, describing them as the elite force that stopped a cunning serial murderer who turned out to be none other than a beautiful criminal lawyer-turned-psychologist. Of course, no front-page story would be complete without photos of themselves.

But it hadn’t turned out that way.

“I’m happy to do whatever will help with the case.” They began the circuitous route out through the bowels of the building, the detectives leading the way. Once on the ground floor, the short gray one pointed toward the imposing front entry.

“A right, then a left. It’ll take you straight to the front exit. Good-night.”

She continued walking down the corridor, fighting the impulse to turn back. Just as she made the first turn to the right, she glanced quickly sideways to see them still standing there in the middle of the hallway, staring at her, clearly unhappy at the sudden turn of events during the interrogation. She turned the corner and they were out of view.

Hailey made the rest of the walk alone.

Pushing the heavy doors forward, she stepped outside. The night was dark and fresh. Lights were beginning to twinkle in thousands of buildings across the city. It was biting cold; the wind whipped around her legs and blew blonde hair away from her face.

She was out, true. But for how long? She braced her body against the cold. And it wasn’t just the freezing wind howling up the street that made her shiver.

Somewhere out there in the city, blended in with nearly eight million other people, there was someone willing to wrap his hands around the necks of two young women and strangle the life from their bodies…to pierce their backs with a four-pronged murder
weapon jutting from the spine all the way through their lungs…all in a twisted effort to frame Hailey for double murder.

Her silver pen was the key. The realization sunk in slow and heavy as she stood there on the top step of the jail. Two women were already dead at the hands of someone targeting not them, but Hailey. Would there be more? She had lied, true…but if she told Kolker the truth about the pen, she’d still be in the interrogation room instead of on the street.

Police were no help to her now; they wouldn’t accept defeat. An invisible weight settled on Hailey’s shoulders as the lights continued to blink through the misty darkness settling over the city. One thought burned into her consciousness.