Nancy Grace - Death on the D-List

Then it dawned on her exactly how he knew so much about her. She’d agreed to a profile piece in the Atlanta paper several years ago when she won her hundredth jury trial. While the article focused mostly on her courtroom victories and various killers, dope dealers, and thugs she put behind bars, it also included a few personal details she allowed them to know. They were printed in a thin panel to the side of the article, including her favorite music and books.

Kolker had done his research.

The last item in the cardboard box was a longer, thin container. When she removed the brown paper, she immediately saw it was a trademark eggshell blue box from Tiffany’s. Of course she wouldn’t accept jewelry from Kolker. But true to her inquisitive nature, she at least wanted to look inside the box.

When Hailey gently lifted the lid, her lips involuntarily parted open in surprise. There, inside on its black silk cord, lay a small, silver necklace, a tiny Tiffany’s ink pen. It wasn’t new… It was hers… Hailey’s… from long ago and another life she once had.

Hailey didn’t have to look closer to know what was engraved on the pen… It had hung lightly from its silken cord around her neck for nearly ten years. It was a gift from Katrine Dumont, whose fiancé, Phil Eastwood, was murdered. It was one of Hailey’s first murder cases as a young prosecutor.

A newly engaged young couple with their whole lives ahead of them had stepped out onto their patio to toast their new engagement. Two new parolees with long rap sheets ambushed them from behind a thick hedge surrounding the patio. Phil fought back and was immediately gunned down at point-blank range. His fiancée was dragged into the apartment and repeatedly assaulted.

Katrine was so traumatized, she was unable to testify at trial. In the end, Hailey found corroborating evidence, and even without an eyewitness, the jury convicted. After sentencing, Katrine came to see her and handed her a sky-blue velvet box. Inside was the pen, etched with the words, For Hailey, Seeking Justice, Katrine Dumont-Eastwood . For the next ten years, Hailey had worn the pen during every jury trial and often in between.

Then, as fate unfolded, Kolker discovered the silver pen years later… under the dead body of Hailey’s own patient here in New York. It had been planted underneath the body to incriminate Hailey and was a big part of why Kolker arrested her to start with.

How did he ever get it out of police property this soon? Usually it took years to retrieve evidence in criminal cases, much less a serial murder case. Kolker had to have broken rules to get it out of the evidence room for her.

Hailey took the box to her favorite chair by a window overlooking the city. Studying the CDs, the book, and the pen on its silky cord, she slowly stood and walked to the apartment’s front door, carrying the cardboard box they’d come in.

Padding down the carpeted hall in bare feet, she opened the door to the trash chute and threw the box to the foot of the tiny trash room. She wouldn’t be needing it anymore. There would be no return.

CABLE COVERAGE WAS AWFUL IN RURAL DAVIDSON COUNTY. EVEN though the county seat was Nashville, Tennessee, a major hub for the music industry, you’d never know it from the cable service. The motel room he rented by the week advertised it came with free cable. What a joke. Clint Burrell Cruise leaned forward and stared at the TV set he’d propped on a folding metal TV tray table.

But even through the bad reception, he recognized her. It was Hailey Dean. Her blonde hair was a little longer, now falling down around her shoulders. She was discussing what goes on inside the mind of a killer with the same intense demeanor she had in the courtroom. Her green eyes stared directly into the camera and she never looked away. Cruise shifted in his seat… it appeared she was looking at him straight in the eyes. The camera sat on the shot of Hailey, then music played and her face dissolved into a commercial break.

Suddenly coming face to face with Hailey Dean again, even if it was through a TV screen, was more than a small shock. Cruise had tried his best to stop thinking about Hailey Dean. It always got him nothing but trouble. Hailey Dean at the jail with a subpoena, standing there watching as his blood was drawn into tiny thin vials, blood yielding DNA to convict him for murder. Hailey in court, Hailey’s shoulders and back as she argued to a jury, Hailey Dean reading his guilty verdict out loud in court, the moment he leaped across the defense counsel table and for an instant, just an instant, circled his hands around her neck until he was clubbed and dragged away by courtroom bailiffs.

He remembered the first time he ever laid eyes on her at the Fulton County Superior Courthouse. The courtroom was jammed that morning with attorneys, witnesses and inmates in prison garb, chained together by leg irons. Cruise was chained too, to a chair bolted onto the floor of the jury box.

When the clock hit nine o’clock exactly, double doors at the rear of the courtroom swung open, and Hailey Dean blew in. She wore a black dress just above the knees, her arms covered with long sleeves. He still remembered the blonde hair against the black of her dress. Nobody had to announce who she was, she strode straight to the State’s table to remain standing. The judge entered, took the bench and the calendar clerk called Cruise’s name and case number. Hailey Dean turned to look directly at him, shackled in his chair. Holding his gaze, Hailey announced in open court that the first arraignment of the morning was for him. He’d tried his best to stand, even chained. And then she said it… that she planned to try Cruise herself and that the State intended to seek the death penalty.

During months of court appearances, there were the constant TV shots of her, sound bites at local news pressers. He watched them all. She won the trial, of course. Then after the trial, she left him abruptly, dropping out of his life like he’d meant nothing.

Until he hopped a Greyhound bus straight out of Reidsville Penitentiary and headed to New York. When he’d landed that first blow to the side of her face it felt so good. Then at the end, he’d had to leave abruptly after his lawyer ended up going after Hailey himself. Cruise always hated Matt Leonard and oddly, hated him even more now. He was glad Leonard was dead. Good riddance.

The commercial ended and The Harry Todd Show resumed. An argument seemed to ensue between Hailey and Harry Todd. From what Cruise could make of what they were saying, Hailey nailed him.

Watching her in action again, his chest tightened. Being in court with her was one of his worst recurring nightmares. And now, here she was again, gorgeous, her blonde hair framing her face, her skin perfect and her teeth naturally white and barely showing between her lips when she spoke. Cruise noticed she never cracked a smile. Some things never changed. As much as he hated Hailey Dean, he stayed glued to his seat a few feet away from the TV, until the next commercial.

The chatter in the commercial break suddenly annoyed him and he wanted to kick the screen in. In fact, he wanted to tear the whole room up, kick in the walls, lift up the furniture and send it crashing to the middle of the floor, tear down the curtains, and put his fists through the windows.

Cruise clicked the remote and the screen went black. Who the hell did she think she was? He was living in a fleabag flophouse and she was on TV. He wondered if her hair still smelled the same as it did in court. He’d gotten close enough to smell her only once.

The thought of her made his whole body tense. For the first time in months, the old feeling was back… His hands were starting to tingle. He was superhuman… again. He had the power. Cruise forced his hands into balls and stuffed them down the sides of the chair’s seat cushion. The electric sensation pulsed through his fingertips and into his palms… Even his wrists were on fire. In the dark of the penitentiary cell block, after lights out, he’d had plenty of time to think about Hailey Dean