The Eleventh Victim (6 page)

Hailey’s mind was drifting, rare in itself. She was not prone to daydreaming.

The three of them…sitting there at the kitchen table under the warm glow of the kitchen lamp. She could hear her parents’ voices, desperate to stop her from taking a job prosecuting a series of murders in court that would only dredge up obvious memories of Will’s violent death.

“The money they’re offering you is nothing for a lawyer with your grades,” her father said, shaking his head. “We just want you to have everything we never did. We want you to be happy, not just scraping by your whole life, sweetheart.”

“How can you just throw away a hard-earned degree?” her mother wanted to know, well aware of the big-money offers Hailey had received from high-profile Atlanta law firms.

“Money isn’t everything,” Hailey responded.

How could her parents argue with that? Those were their own words, words uttered frequently. In fact, they had preached against materialism for as long as she could remember. They had always had a happiness that money couldn’t buy; it didn’t have a price tag.

But this wasn’t really about the money for them. Hailey already knew that.

“But you’ll be going after killers, drug dealers, child molesters.” Her father looked pained. Hailey wanted to tell her father that it was too late—that nothing else could hurt her now.

“I’ll be fine. It’s what I want. I want to do something good.”

Victims and witnesses from the most disturbing and heinous violent crimes, child molestation victims too young to know their ABCs, rape victims silent and unspeaking, hate-crime victims who endured inexplicable violence, communities full of outrage over drug turf battles on their playgrounds…they all spoke through her.

With each guilty verdict, Hailey’s aching heart would ease, but just for a moment.

Then it was on to the next victim, the next case.

For ten years, from the pits of the courthouse, she spoke. With a single purpose, she grew into the most notorious prosecuting attorney in the entire southeastern United States. Her plea negotiations were brutal. Nothing but maximum time behind bars for violent crime could satisfy her.

Guilty verdicts wrung out of one jury after the next weren’t enough…she was always searching for the next case, racking up thousands of guilty pleas and over a hundred jury trials and a 100 percent win record.

It was unheard of: Hailey Dean had never…
never
…lost a single case.

The downstairs buzzer rang, signaling the arrival of one of her clients.

As she hurriedly buzzed the door open, she glanced at the blue sky beyond the window, where limbs of the courtyard gingko tugged back and forth in the wind.

Karen walked in and closed the door purposefully behind her, trying to keep her back to Hailey, who immediately spotted her reddened eyes and nose.

Obviously James, her live-in, was at it again.

Karen flung herself deep into the sofa, chestnut-brown hair falling in soft waves around her face and spilling over the collar of a bright-pink wool coat.

“It’s the usual. It never ends, Hailey, no matter what I do. I’m so beat down.”

Karen’s live-in was wearing her down to a nub, but the story wasn’t new. Not drugs, not gambling or booze. There were no angry beatings in their apartment at night. There was no “other woman.”

No. “Other
woman
” was not entirely accurate. There wasn’t just one. There were hundreds, as a matter of fact, each one more beautiful than the last, and all of them were hot for James.

Online “pen pals,” porn sites, phone sex, and strippers had dogged their relationship since it started. The harder he tried to
hide it from Karen, not “actually cheating” he said, the harder she tried to listen in on phone messages, pick through his pockets at night, and read e-mails sent to and from his super-secret screen name.

Hailey sat, feet curled under her on her red sofa, drinking tea as Karen switched topics from James’s impotency and online relationships with other women to her human resources job and her struggle to advance against her male counterparts.

The hour flew by.

“So, same time next Friday?” she asked as Karen headed for the door.

“Definitely yes. Thank you, Hailey. For everything. Bye.” Karen slipped into her coat, picked up her shoulder bag and briefcase, then reached out and hugged Hailey good-bye, as always. She still had a red nose from crying, but at least now it was topping a big smile. Karen closed the door and her steps echoed down the hall.

Hailey knew most therapists disapproved of doctor-patient hugs, but it seemed so natural she never tried to resist. Instead, she hugged back just as tightly.

Hailey made a few quick notes in her file, then checked her schedule. Karen’s session had run late, but there was still no sign of her next patient, Melissa Everett—not unusual, as Melissa often barreled in late and breathless.

She always had an excuse, but Hailey suspected the real reason Melissa ran late was that she didn’t look forward to tackling the raw pain dredged up by some of her memories. An adult victim of child molestation that had been inflicted years before, Melissa still could find no real peace.

CPA Nathan Mazzelli, whom Hailey suspected was on the take, had a late-afternoon slot. He probably needed more than a shrink. All things considered, a criminal defense attorney could soon move to the top of Mazz’s shopping list. Mazz was obsessed with a recurring dream character, an evil carnival monkey who doubled as a secret henchman for the IRS who was looking for him. Whenever Mazz thought he’d lost them, the monkey would literally jump on
his back, screeching at the top of its primate lungs to alert the government predators to his location.

The patient who followed was one of the sweetest and the loneliest…Hayden Krasinski, an incredibly talented graphic designer just over twenty years old and already worn out with the world.

Somebody sat rudely on their car horn outside. Hailey instinctively looked out the sliver of window that faced the street.

She couldn’t help but smile as she watched Karen, with the perfect form of an Olympic sprinter, aggressively pursuing a cab back to work. In her full-length neon pink coat and loaded down with a staggering briefcase and jumbo-size shoulder purse, Karen displayed serious agility and beat a guy in his early twenties to the pass, nabbing the taxi herself.

“You go, Karen,” Hailey whispered aloud, followed quickly by, “James, you big idiot.”

B
ALANCING AN ARMLOAD OF RESEARCH, LAW CLERK JIM TALLEY
knocked on the door of Judge Clarence E. Carter’s chambers.

“Come in.”

The Judge—“C.C.” to his political cohorts—eyed the stack of documents suspiciously. “Son, what is that you’ve got with you? I hope it’s the Sports section from the
Telegraph
.”

Jim exercised immense self-control in not rolling his eyes and reminded himself that a thousand third-years would give their eye teeth to get a spot with the State Supremes.

Jim might have graduated first in his class at Mercer University, one of the oldest law school in the state, but he had received the coveted appellate-court clerkship purely through connections.

Upon learning his class ranking, the judge quickly informed him that grades didn’t matter. “It’s not what you know, son. It’s who you know and how you use it. Remember that, son, and you’ll go far.”

The judge had dispensed that advice a hundred times, and Jim wholeheartedly believed it.

After all, his father was on the boards of two major corporations that contributed heavily to the judge’s campaign…a campaign that was never fully waged because of C.C.’s surprise appointment to the bench, rendering voters unnecessary. Jim happened to know that for reasons mysterious and unspoken, the judge held on to all the campaign money to create his “war chest,” as he called it.

“Sorry to say it’s not the sports page, Judge,” he told C.C. “It’s the research for that opinion pending on the docket.”

The judge looked momentarily blank.

“You know,” Jim prodded, “the one we talked about? The death penalty appeal.”

Ah. The light dawned in C.C’s eyes.

“Son, I’m going to let you handle that on your own. It’s time you took on more responsibility and I think you’re ready for it. I’ve taught you what I know on the subject. Make me proud, boy.”

Maybe Jim should have been thrilled with the idea of changing the course of legal history by writing the judge’s opinions totally unsupervised. But the truth was, he didn’t want to be responsible for a political hot potato.

Still, if Jim did as he was told, he figured the clerkship with Judge C. could set him up for an associate position over at Lange and Parker, the South’s premier law firm, the crown jewel of the Georgia Bar.

His
Mercer Law Review
cronies would be livid.

“So, Judge, we affirm, right?”

With shifting support for the death penalty, Jim thought he should at least get Carter’s okay before taking the judge’s usual hang-’em-high position and affirming the death sentence. He’d worry about finding a legal basis later.

“Son, which slimy SOB is it this time? These days you got to be a real bastard to get the chair.”

“It’s the chef. You know, the Atlanta chef that posed all those hookers after he strangled them.”

“Shit, son. He must’ve been one mean son of a bitch to get a death sentence out of a bunch of intellectual left-wing snoots and all the rest…. Well, you know who sits on Atlanta juries. They wouldn’t even give Wayne Williams the chair. He strangled how many boys…twelve, before they caught him?”

“No sir. Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one what?” It had clearly been a rhetorical question because C.C. had no idea what Jim was referring to.

“Wayne Williams allegedly murdered twenty-one little boys and teens before they got him, based on fiber evidence. But Williams still says he didn’t do it…that he was set up.”

“Set up? Son, you scare me when you talk like that. Allegedly. Allegedly, my ass. A jury convicted him.”

“So, Judge, we affirm?”

“Did you say he says he was set up? Set up by who? God? Sit in jail long enough, and they all think somebody set ’em up.”

“The chef, Judge, you want to affirm the DP on the chef, right?”

“Hell, yes, affirm it, by God,” Judge Carter bellowed, slapping his beefy hand on the desk so hard the obligatory framed family photos rattled. “You want me to lose my spot on the bench? The voters would burn down the Court if we let that one go. He’ll never see nothing but the inside of the bus on the way from Reidsville Prison to Old Sparky at Jackson.”

“Sir, just to be clear—it’s a constitutional challenge to the use of DNA without obtaining an additional warrant on each separate
murder charge. They also claim overzealous prosecution against the State. It was Hailey Dean again.”

“Son, you’re botherin’ me, now. You know I have to affirm…both the guilty verdict
and
the death penalty sentence. It ain’t the liberals keeping me on the bench, son. Remember that.”

“But the DNA—”

“I’m fine by DNA and there is no such thing as overzealous prosecution. Unless it’s against me. That’s a joke, son. Lighten up.”

Jim nodded woodenly, but managed to laugh at just the right volume and with just the right amount of heartiness.

“Yes, sir. It’s affirmed. He’s headed to Old Sparky.”

“That’s right, son. It’s between him and the Lord now. And son,” the judge added, dipping his right hand back into his top drawer, “could you bring me that Sports section? I wanna find out how the Dogs look for the weekend.”

“Will do, sir.” Jim closed the door behind him and exhaled. C.C. wouldn’t know the law if it jumped up on the bench and bit him right in the neck.

He headed down the quiet hall outside the judge’s chambers to his own office.

Well, that was done…the appeal was over. The death sentence was affirmed.

The prosecution at trial could rest easy.

“W
HAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?” CRUISE SPIT THE WORDS
through the wall of glass that separated him from Leonard.

The attorney’s lips curved into a thin smile. “Not happy to see me? What’s wrong, Clint? I thought you’d be happy. Come on, show some enthusiasm…it’s not like you’re flooded with visitors.”

If it weren’t for a wall of thick plate glass that separated them, Cruise would have made a lunge for him. As it was, all he could do was sit here, chained in shackles, waiting for his useless lawyer to say whatever he had to say and make Cruise read or sign whatever he had to read or sign.

Useless. That was what Cruise thought of Matt Leonard and his weak, pathetic performance at trial. Damn him, the way Hailey Dean walked all over him. Cruise knew the deal. Leonard wanted the celebrity of being the big-time death penalty hero, but he just couldn’t deliver. Cruise had read up on him, found out his firm was rolling in federal and state grant money for the so-called Death Penalty Project.

Cruise didn’t know exactly how much money, but he did know both Leonard and even his paralegal drove Mercedes. Thanks to Google and the penitentiary law library Internet, he also knew Leonard lived in a huge three-story on Habersham near the governor’s mansion. Leonard’s crapper was probably bigger than Cruise’s whole cell.

Damn Hailey Dean, too.

The day of the verdict, he went for her in court and made it all the way to where she stood, alone in the middle of the courtroom. Because of her, he was clubbed in the head from behind. Then, they nearly tore his arms off pulling him from the courtroom. He turned back for one last look, and saw a juror had actually made it around
the jury rail and was hugging Hailey Dean, right there at the podium. Over the juror’s shoulder though, Dean was staring straight at him, watching when they hooked the leg irons on him.

The moment the sheriffs got him alone in holding just outside the courtroom, they cursed him out and punched him over and over, right in the stomach. The walls were soundproofed, though, and Cruise knew no one in the courtroom heard a damn thing.

“This is for Hailey, you sick little perv,” one of them said, landing a punch that knocked out one of Cruise’s teeth. The beating went on.

At the end, Hailey’s investigator, Fincher Henson, sauntered back into the holding pen. The other sheriffs got real quiet when he strolled through the door, like the damned President walked in.

Cruise remembered it like it was yesterday.

“Uncuff him,” Henson said.

The cell went quiet and nobody moved. Not one sheriff so much as shifted his weight. Who the hell did he think he was…God?

Cruise would be damned to hell if he’d have given him the courtesy of looking up.

“Uncuff the son of a bitch,” Henson turned and barked at the nearest sheriff, who stepped up to Cruise, jangling the cuff keys attached to his belt.

The cuffs were unlocked and removed.

“Stand up, asshole,” Fincher growled low in his throat.

Cruise had stayed doubled over against the wall. No way would he stand on command.

“I said, stand up!”

Cruise paused for one moment before hurling a thick wad of spit on Henson’s shiny black shoes.

“I don’t give a damn if you spit on me, you little asshole. But you will
never
touch Hailey Dean again. And
this
is to make sure you don’t forget. Remember, Cruise, if you ever
do
see the light of day, which you won’t, I’ll be waiting for you.” Fincher lifted him up with one muscled arm. From the other, Cruise took a single blow to the face that had knocked him out cold.

He’d come to lying on the holding cell floor. He was soaking wet all over, covered in piss. Those assholes, each one of them, had taken turns pissing on him after Henson cold-cocked him. Henson was gone, the sheriffs were gone, and except for Cruise, the holding cells were empty.

Even now, Cruise remembered the putrid smell, drying on his skin.

One day, he’d get to her. Somehow, some way.

And he knew damn well she thought about him, just like he did her here in Reidsville. He read about her in
Atlanta Magazine
when he was in sick bay last year. About her starting over in Manhattan. And he’d bet there wasn’t one night that passed that she didn’t think of him, Clint Burrell Cruise, and the moment he had her neck in his hands.

He’d never forget his last glimpse of her.

Nor would he ever forget his last glimpse of Matt Leonard in court that day.

As they were clamping the irons on Cruise’s ankles, Leonard was sitting there looking all put out, like
he
was the one headed for the electric chair. Then, before they could even get Cruise out the door, Leonard started clearing up his papers and packing his trial files to leave, as if he were just wiping crumbs off his hands after a picnic.

Next case, next fat fee. That was all he meant to Leonard, that asshole. He was just another statistic Leonard could use to get all his federal money.

“Guess what, Matt?” he crooned through the plate-glass wall.

“What?” Leonard looked leery.

“I’m writing all the newspapers about my case. The same ones that stood in line to cover my death sentence…the same ones there on the edge of their seats in the death chamber when I’m strapped in the chair and they give me the juice.”

He casually tossed off even that last part. Never would Cruise let Leonard see him the least bit affected by the idea of Old Sparky.

No one would ever see that, see him cringe whenever he thought about the Waiting Room. Inmates were forced to stay there in the
weeks before they were electrocuted. The jail said it was for security and ease of transporting the inmate.

BS. It was to make the prisoner sit, sleep, eat, and breathe just feet away from the electric chair. To force the inmate to
really
think about what was coming.

Twisted assholes.

Cruise heard the Waiting Room was a little bigger than his regular cell on the Row.

There was one big difference: the view.

The view from the bunk in the Waiting Room made inmates refuse to eat, lose their appetites, lie on their sides on their bunk, turned away from the barred door. Visible through the bars of the Waiting Room doors was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, round-the-clock view of a wall covered with the wires, boxes, and levers that would ultimately activate the juice to run through your body and kill you.

Cruise’s stomach churned just thinking of it.

Pushing aside thoughts of Old Sparky and the sickening view from the Waiting Room, he focused instead on the matter at hand.

“You know what, Matt? I bet the papers will listen to what I have to say.”

Cruise watched Matt’s eyes narrow.

Protected by the wall of glass and the knowledge that he had nothing to lose, Cruise went on, leaning in closer to the glass toward Leonard. “They’ll listen, all right, especially if I’m willing to admit to ten of the murders.”

“Believe me, you don’t want to do that.”

“Oh, but I do.”

“You don’t.” Leonard’s face was paler than usual and his voice was so soft Cruise almost had to lean forward to hear it.

“Any letter you write to the
Telegraph
outlining the evidence,” Leonard added in a hushed tone, “will ruin your chances of reversal.”

That was bullshit, of course. Cruise knew there would never be a reversal. Leonard was blowing smoke up his ass, again.

“You know what I think, Matt?” Cruise’s voice wasn’t anywhere near a whisper. “I think you don’t want the public to know the truth about what a sorry-ass attorney you really are.”

Matt merely shrugged. But when he reached up to straighten his tie, Cruise noticed a tremor in his hand. Noticed, too, he was still twisting the same ruby ring that had his blue-blood family crest on it.

“So,” Cruise concluded, “I just thought you should know first…about me writing the papers, giving all the details to the murders. All except the last one. And if the jury was wrong about one, who’s to say they weren’t wrong about the others? I’m even thinking of adding a claim of incompetent counsel to my federal appeal. How will that look in the paper, Matt?”

“You son of a bitch, you can’t…”

“There’s a lot of things I can’t do these days, Leonard. But this isn’t one of them.”

And right there, even though he knew it wouldn’t touch him through the glass, Cruise spat right at Leonard. A big glob.

With a curse, Leonard got up and walked away without a glance backward.