The Eleventh Victim (29 page)

H
AILEY 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 drug 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.

Hanging the holster on the side of her bed, she closed the cabinet and secured the computer overlay. She slipped on the holster and weapon to keep her hands free. She walked, surefooted, gun at her side, into the kitchen and turned down the flame under the copper kettle.

As she lifted it up and over, away from the flame, something caught her eye.

There was light where there shouldn’t be: lamplight pouring from inside her home office, pooling outside the door.

Hailey never, ever left any light on in the apartment while she was gone—nothing other than the stove hood, whose glow streamed into the entrance hall as she walked in each night.

No other light, ever.

Her thoughts whirled back over the last twenty-four hours. She remembered packing up a stack of files. She remembered noting that the plants were green and growing in spite of the cold, straining toward the winter sun at the window.

She remembered checking the lock on her patient file cabinet, pulling the office door almost closed, walking out through her kitchen, and leaving for the day.

Same as every morning.

But now the door leading into her home office was fully open…and were all the lights in the room on?

Someone had been here while she was gone. They could still be here. Or out there, somewhere, watching her.

As Hailey stood there at the stove, hand on the kettle, trying to grasp what had happened, she became acutely aware that every window in her apartment was in plain view. All the shades were up their highest to let in as much daylight as possible when she was there each morning.

But now, in the dark outside, the Manhattan skyline was a million pinpoints of light, each one representing a person’s apartment or office, suspended in the night air.

If she could see them, they could see her.

Hailey gently placed the kettle on a cool burner and reached for the .38 with her trigger hand. Pulling it, she held it down against her right side, the stovetop island protecting her maneuver from prying eyes in the night. Gripping the .38, she backed up against the sink and counter and began making her way toward her office. The handgun
was now clutched firmly with both her hands, right index on the trigger, pointing down.

Keeping her back to the kitchen counters, she walked sideways across the expanse of slate. Beyond the folding doors, she could see the floor lamps on, as well as the desk lamp. The wooden cabinets discreetly concealing hundreds of patient files, as well as all her old trial files, stood there. Their drawers were ajar.

The room was empty. She couldn’t just see it, she could feel it; she knew no one was concealed in the shadows, watching her. Still, she checked. Just to be sure.

Whoever had come into her apartment was gone, leaving only the trace of lights on and cabinet door ajar.

Keeping the gun firmly in her hand and her back to the walls of the room, Hailey pulled the cabinet doors open wide. What were they looking for?

And why not ransack the apartment in the search?

She glanced at the window that faced the apartment buildings next door, with terraces growing trees some twenty floors above the earth. She could see people in lamplit windows, going about their business cooking, reading, watching TV.

Keeping the gun firmly in her right hand, Hailey reached up with her left to close the shades.

She turned back to the cabinet, where her trial files were arranged alphabetically in rows of precise horizontal lines across the first three upper shelves. On the top shelf, a few of the files appeared slightly pulled forward from the rest.

Heart pounding now, she put the gun down and began sorting through the folders, fingering back the tabs on which she had handwritten defendants’ names and charges:
Clay Rape Trial, Clemmons Drug Trafficking, Collins Arson, Cook Domestic Homicide, Dixon Weapons Violations
…

Her mind was spinning, calculating rapidly.

Something was missing. What was it?

Hailey closed her eyes and visualized the rows of files.

Then her right hand went instinctively to her throat, where the silver pen had once hung from its silken cord.

Her eyes flew open, and she felt a flash go through her body.

She knew, even before she looked…it was her last death penalty trial folder. It was gone.

The Clint Burrell Cruise file was gone.

The realization came in a sickening gush. In her mind’s eye, she again saw her attacker walk by her as she lay there on the rug, blood oozing down her temple, across her cheek, and into her mouth.

The man who beat her unconscious in her office, who crushed her ribs with the toe of his boot, kicking her over and over until a dark gray film rolled in around her…

A limp.

It was years ago, on local Atlanta Channel Eleven News. She’d noticed it first when the press closed in on the all-important perp-walk from the back of a squad car into the precinct station the night of the arrest. When she went to the jail to draw additional blood for a second DNA match, it was there. And later, she’d seen it in court when he walked in and out, surrounded by armed sheriffs.

He walked with a limp. Clint Burrell Cruise. The killer.

She felt it in her bones. He was here. Here in the city.

“…
SOON AS I GET THE LAST PAYMENT, THEY’RE ALL YOURS. NEGATIVES
included as promised.”

Eugene deleted the message and hung up the phone after listening to Hadden’s message.

Hadden…another pawn. It all fit together like he had planned. He had known it would work out from the get-go, ever since C.C. wanted to take a cart at Augusta. From there on in, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Next the glossies would be mailed and the dominoes would begin to topple one by one. The race for governor would be back to normal.

The Cruise death penalty had been reversed and the federal grant money was headed back into the pockets of his partners at the defense firm. They had already gotten the beach vote through…the reps on the floor at the Georgia House and Senate had been herded like sheep. Not one of them had bothered to ask the significance of the definition of “tree,” as in the “first tree on the beach.”

Maneuvering the change in how “tree” was defined by the Georgia Code would pocket Eugene millions of pure profit by the time the last condo sold.

It all went down smooth as silk.

Now all he had to do was wait.

Within a matter of days, if not hours, the glossies would be in the mail and on their way.

He looked out over the city from his office chair, smoothing down the crease in his cashmere pants with his hands, staring into the dark, a thousand lights blanketing the city.

There was still the matter, though, of Virginia Gunn.