The Eleventh Victim (5 page)

TWO YEARS LATER

W
AVES OF HEAT SHIMMERED OFF THE GRASS IN THE CLEARING
where she sat cross-legged in the red Georgia dirt. The sun baked the pine trees and their sap boiled over, spilling onto the trunks, making the air even heavier with the scent. Digging with a spoon from the kitchen, the girl’s skin felt as if it had been baking, too.

Suddenly, her tiny fingers tensed around the spoon handle.

Someone was coming. Something was wrong.

She sensed it before she heard faint footsteps.

Peering between slender trunks, she made out the form of her own mother.

But momentary relief gave way to apprehension…her mother was moving slowly, stealthily toward her, creeping across a smooth floor of strewn pine needles and cones.

Her mother approached with neither word nor recognition, raising a sharpened hoe over her head that the child had only seen used for planting daylilies or digging in the fields on Saturdays.

She dropped the spoon to the ground. Palms up on her knees, she saw the hoe raised up evenly, then pulling back, her mother’s face like a stone. And in one smooth, violent, powerful plunge, the woman thrust the blade forward.

At the very last moment, the child squeezed her eyes shut.

She never cried out, opening her eyes to see her mother sink without a word to her knees.

There, just inches beside them along with the little dirt pies, lay a Southern timber rattler, its head neatly chopped from its body, still coiled in fat and convulsing circles.

The girl sat still as her mother rose up from the red earth, scooped her to her feet, and without a word between them, carried her across the field and into the house.

Once inside the darkened kitchen, everything was safe again. The world was right….

Then Hailey was spinning, spinning…comforting arms on a sunny afternoon were gone and suddenly, it was dark.

The pain in her chest made her think for a moment she was having a heart attack. Her heart beat violently, her blood pumping hard, her fingertips throbbing, her ears ringing.

Somewhere in the night, a car slammed on squealing brakes and then, gunning its motor, took off down Fifty-fourth toward the East River.

Hailey Dean sat up abruptly, clutching her chest.

In the dim light, her bedroom began to materialize, pieces of furniture reassembling themselves in the darkness. Tonight, in the dark of her Manhattan apartment, it was all real.

Clutching the sheets of her bed, she remembered how her mother had saved her life that day. Her life was saved, but she hadn’t been
able to save Will’s, not all the lives that had touched her own since—all the victims whose cases she went on to prosecute.

Two years ago, she kept a promise to Leola Williams and sent her daughter’s killer to Death Row.

And then, she left. In a new city, she started a new life.

The old dark days were thousands of miles and years away.

Years of courtroom battles and an endless parade of victims looking out at her from crime-scene photos and autopsy tables at the morgue had taken their toll.

It was January in New York City, yet sweat bathed her forehead. The hair against the back of her neck was soaked and perspiration beaded across her chest. Her nightgown was twisted around her waist and tangled with the sheets.

As always, she ordered herself to be free of it all…if only her mind would let her.

It never did. Will was dead and he had been for years.

Hailey lay awake until the sun came up and the alarm went off.

She showered, then returned to the bedroom. She did her best to ignore the cardboard box on the top shelf as she pulled a couple of outfits on hangers from her closet.

Inside, her wedding gown and veil lay carefully folded between layers of crinkly tissue paper.

The dress was champagne silk, off the shoulder, simple; not too much of a train, but a train nevertheless. The veil was brocade. The two, gown and veil, should have swished gently down an aisle sprinkled with flower petals and lit by candlelight, should have been admired by hushed onlookers. They should have been memorialized in wedding photos displayed to the delight of children and grandchildren to come.

Hailey hadn’t sealed the box. But in all the years since Will’s murder, in all the years since she had finally folded her wedding gown carefully away, she never once opened the lid.

The box was always close at hand. She carried it like a treasure to law school. It was her only traveling companion when she headed to Atlanta after graduating.

She purposely chose a post in the inner city. The gritty downtown topped the charts for violent crime, thanks to the well-traveled drug courier route from Colombia to Miami to Atlanta, for distribution throughout the States. High-volume violent crime was just what Hailey wanted, despite her family’s wishes. Dodging the traffic speeding north up the freeway, their protests that the work would be too dangerous rang in her head just under the music thumping on the car stereo.

Wherever she moved, the white cardboard box went with her.

There was more, of course. Furniture, books, posters, plants, clothes, kitchen appliances, dishes…all crowded into a single U-Haul attached by a trailer hitch to the back of a Saab she bought used and drove for years. Only the box rode silently along with her. Sometimes she even buckled a seat belt across it.

The white box had taken on its own identity over the years, a reminder of another life in another time, another girl who would have grown into a very different woman.

She brushed past dozens of suits in all colors, and fresh, crisp blouses mixed in with the silks. Reaching up to a wooden peg in the closet, she took down her jeans and a denim shirt and sweater. Bending down, she picked up her cowboy boots and began to dress. For all those years, she had to wear dresses, suits, hose, and heels. No more.

Back in the bedroom, she opened her jewelry chest and grabbed her favorite earrings. She touched her hand to the back of her neck. It felt bare and she thought, briefly, of the silver pen she used to wear every day. In one of life’s grand coincidences, she had lost it in court on the final day of her final trial.

Back in the kitchen, Hailey filled the copper teakettle and set it over the flame on the stovetop before heading over to her computer to see what landed in her e-mail overnight. It whirred into action, first alerting her of today’s weather in New York and Georgia, followed by breaking news.

Spam…spam…more spam…bills…

And Fincher!

A smile crossed her face.

Every time a few days passed without hearing from him in Iraq, worry set in. For years, she gave Fincher hell about cashing a monthly paycheck for being in the Military Reserves in exchange for “playing soldier” on base every six weeks. Now those checks could cost him his life. She couldn’t even bear to think of it. He had been at her side for every jury trial, every guilty plea, every investigation—the highs and the lows. Somewhere deep inside, she believed she would somehow know, immediately sense it, if something happened to him.

The e-mail was just a few lines but enough to let her know he was still alive. She typed a quick note back about innocuous doings, the weather, news stateside, and the usual back-home local political shenanigans. There was always something, and even now she still had an ear in the courthouse. She closed with just her initials, never saying good-bye.

She meant to leave now, to spring up, toss on her coat, and head to work. Instead she clicked out of the screen and sat staring off into the patch of sky out her window.

The teakettle on Hailey’s stove whistled loudly, sending Atlanta, the courtroom, and the parade of victims back where they belonged. The past.

This was the here and now, and she was already late. Hailey hustled back to her morning routine with an eye on the clock. She had a full day of appointments ahead.

She’d lingered too long and had no time today to walk the first part of her commute, as she ordinarily did. She somehow beat out the others for a yellow cab to carry her through heavy East Side traffic the forty blocks downtown.

In the heart of Greenwich Village, the cabbie pulled up in front of the brick townhouse that was home to three small psychology practices upstairs and dental offices on the first two floors. Not a happy group of patients all around, Hailey often thought.

Chilled wind whipped around her legs as she leaned in to pay the cabbie, then darted up the steps to the red front door.

Someone had obviously arrived before her and adjusted the heat. The warm interior and the amber-colored wallpaper in the entrance hall was comforting against the cold New York winds and the gray day outside.

Reaching the third floor, Hailey saw that her
New York Post
was missing from the foot of her door. She slowed as she approached—feeling suddenly that old instinct that something was off.

Why was her office door unlocked? The paper was gone and the door stood open a fraction of an inch.

The sound below had disappeared and the old brick three-story had gone unusually quiet. Hailey placed her gloved hand on the door handle and pushed it open into the darkened foyer of her office. Stepping silently across the threshold, she heard the sound of running water in the kitchenette.

Had an intruder left it running?

Or was he still here, lurking in the shadows, watching her?

She crept through the office, glancing around to make sure it hadn’t been ransacked. Warily, she looked inside a closet, behind the couch, in the bathroom.

Only the kitchenette was left.

Hailey slipped silently toward the doorway, wondering what she would do if someone was there.

Holding her breath, Hailey poked her head around the corner—

And smiled. There was Dana, the attractive bottle-redhead who had the psych practice across the hall. Hailey had loaned her a spare key over a year ago when Dana’s restroom plumbing went on the fritz.

Hailey felt sorry for Dana—and relieved, as that would have been her own office and was actually still listed in her name. Dana had mistakenly thought it was larger, and for the same price, had rented it just before Hailey formalized in a written-lease contract the handshake deal she’d already struck with the landlord. The landlord had never updated the files, and Hailey was still listed as tenant in the front office suite.

Hailey had initially been miffed, but in the end, when the two offices turned out to be the same size, Hailey was glad she’d lost out on the other office after all. From her desk, Hailey’s view overlooked a courtyard, and one longer, narrow window in the corner of the office revealed a sliver of the street out front. Much better than staring at the building across the street, windows dark and empty, vacant for renovations.

Dana bit into a bagel soaked with butter and read Hailey’s
Post
while she waited for the coffeepot to fill beneath the tap. She was clutching Hailey’s favorite coffee mug, now branded with shiny pinkish-purplish lipstick, and looked up when Hailey came through the kitchen door.

Hailey long ago renamed Dana’s trademark shade “pinkle.” Pinkle was everywhere, on mugs, Kleenex, water glasses, soda cans, cigarette butts. She once even found pinkle on the mouth of a jug of orange juice in her office refrigerator.

Dana held up the
Post
. “This is yours. You don’t mind that I grabbed it, do you?”

“Other than a near heart attack thinking I had a break-in, you know you’re welcome to anything I have.” Hailey gave Dana a quick hug.

For all Dana’s neediness and insecurity, Hailey had really grown fond of her. She saw her not so much as needy and whiny, but as someone who goes through life lonely and deeply disappointed in love.

Watching Dana pour water into the waiting coffeemaker, Hailey realized that she herself was alone, too, but not lonely…not so much disappointed as circumspect. She didn’t want to put herself out there again, go out on a limb, risk having her world explode. She couldn’t afford the damage it could cause. It had taken years to pull herself back together. It just wasn’t worth the risk now. End of story. But which was worse? Disappointed and bitter like Dana, or emotionally shut down?

“Hey, Hailey, what are you doing later? Why don’t we go out to happy hour after work?”

“Not tonight. I had a really long week.”

“But it’s Friday! You can sleep in tomorrow morning.”

Dana’s man-hunt had been in overdrive ever since Evan, her latest boyfriend, had broken it off, claiming she “talked too much.” Dana had since been set up on three dates. All three had been miserable. Although apparently Dana had met a new guy that she was keeping on the QT. They saw each other infrequently and on short notice. He was a lawyer and Dana perceived that as promising. Hailey hoped he was as single as he claimed.

Meanwhile, she was accustomed to fending off Dana’s attempts to join forces to hunt down well-to-do single men in New York City.

“Come on, Hail, it’ll be fun.”

“I really can’t. I’ve got a full day and I didn’t sleep at all.”

“Who does when they’re alone? Let’s just go have a glass of wine. Just one.”

“That sounds so nice but I really can’t. I mean it. Hey, coffee’s ready…at least enough for a full cup.” She gestured at the still-percolating pot, which came with a brew-interrupt mechanism.

“Oh, you can pour the first cup. I’ll wait,” Dana said graciously.

“No, really…” Hailey grabbed the pot and filled Dana’s mug.

As Dana closed the door behind her, leaving a smear of butter on the inside handle, Hailey remembered her paper.

Dana took it with her.

Hailey wanted to read it, but she didn’t have time to open the door and start the whole process with Dana again. Her first patient would be here any minute. She pulled Karen Elliot’s file, then returned to the kitchenette to watch coffee trickle into the pot.

Dana, bagels, pinkle, coffee…it all melted into a world a million miles away.

Hailey stared at tiny particles of dust that floated across a shaft of morning light coming at a slant through the den’s window. Not at all the same type of golden warming light as afternoon sun, but welcome anyway. It suddenly reminded her of the golden gleam
that spilled from the antique fixture hanging in her parents’ Georgia kitchen.