Nancy Grace - Death on the D-List

Billy Ryan was addicted to cars. His bedroom at home at his mom and dad’s house was cluttered with stacks and stacks of Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Automobile, and Road & Track. As long as he worked and stayed in school part-time, his mom didn’t mind.

Looking out and down the alley, he spotted what he believed to be the car of his dreams, still sitting where he’d seen it earlier that evening. He glanced down at his watch. The car had been there since around 8 p.m., he was pretty sure, and now it was nearly midnight. He couldn’t see the driver’s side; it was next to the alley’s other wall, but earlier, a guy had been sitting in the passenger seat, so Billy didn’t want to get too close.

San Pietro’s closed that night as usual at 11 p.m. on the dot. Why anybody would want to eat dinner that late was beyond him, but whatever. The Hollywood types ate at all hours of the day and night.

Anyway, the car.

She was a dream. It was one of the brand-new Mercedes CLS550s. It was one of the most expensive cars in the world. He’d only read about them in magazines. It was the new color too, Alpine Rain Metallic. This baby was tricked out … somebody had taste.

But who would leave a car like this alone in an alleyway? It was just begging to be stolen! The rims alone were worth a couple of thousand. They were definitely specialty rims. He was at a distance, but if his eyes didn’t fail him, he was spotting four Revolver Chrome Wheel Rims. Wait… were they the Hyper Silvers or the ADR Emotions? Either way, they were worth thousands.

He wanted a closer look.

He was dying to check out the car. Instinctively looking both ways first, he stepped out and walked across and down the alley. The car shone in the moonlight and Billy Ryan was thrilled. That is, until he got a little closer.

Less than a foot away from the car, Billy doubled over and began vomiting violently. When he managed to stand up straight again, it didn’t last. Waves of nausea swept over him and the smell of his own puke hit his nostrils. He couldn’t stop retching.

Stumbling back from the car, he wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, leaving streaks of vomit on his pants legs. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and punched in the digits.

A female voice answered on the other end.

“You gotta hurry. There’s a woman, she’s dead. Her face is shot off.”

Billy Ryan managed to give 911 Dispatch his location just before another bout of retching began. Rescue arrived within about fifteen minutes, and LAPD was right on their heels.

The senior cops jumped from the squad car and hurried across the alleyway to the dead body, the car now opened by the rescue team. One of them went straight to Ryan, who was now sitting in the alley, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his back leaned up against the restaurant’s rear brick wall beside the trash cans. He was still puking, but much less violently. The cop didn’t seem to care about Billy puking.

“You the kid that found the body? What did the passenger look like?”

“I don’t know… All I seen was dark hair, maybe brown or black. I couldn’t really make it out.” Billy wiped vomit from his chin.

“What did the man look like? You had to see something… white, black, tall, short, mustache, beard?”

“All I saw was he had black hair. I think he might have been white, I don’t know. I saw his head from behind. I didn’t want to get too close, you know how rich people are about their cars…”

The cop looked disgusted. No help at all. He glanced down the alley at the others.

There was no use trying to resuscitate her. Half her head was gone. Blood lay in a congealed pool in the car seat and there was a spray of blood on the driver’s side front window. Whoever shot her had either reached in the passenger side door or… had been sitting in the car with her.

The rookie stayed in the squad car and ran the tag plate to the Mercedes. He should have known the dead girl was Cassie Lake. The tag was custom.

It read “I SING.”

IT WAS 6:30 P.M. HAILEY WOULD SOON PACK HER THINGS, LOCK UP HER little office overlooking the gingkos in the brownstone’s back courtyard, and catch the Number 6 train uptown to her apartment. If she was lucky, the wind would let up in time for a jog along the East River.

There had been a nineteen-year-old with an eating disorder who binged and purged nearly every day. She obsessively took notes on each bite she put into her mouth and, late at night while her parents were sleeping, she’d gorge herself on anything she could find. Whole cakes, an entire rotisserie chicken, large meat-lover’s pizzas called in to be delivered while the girl waited at the curb in front of her folks’ house, dressed in nothing but her robe and pajamas.

Then came a young Wall Street executive dealing with the loss of his younger sister in a car crash. He was overcome with guilt that he had worked so many hours the last few years and never made much time for seeing his little sister other than on holidays, if then. Now he’d never have the chance.

Hailey ended the workday with a forty-year-old woman who’d just caught her live-in cheating, again. She was trying to rationalize that the entire thing was somehow her fault and find a way to stay in the four-year relationship, holding out for marriage.

“Lori, you have to confront what’s happening.” Hailey had tried her best to encourage her to face the fear of starting over.

“But I’m afraid I’ll end up old and alone! Aren’t you?”

Hailey knew better than to bring her own loneliness into the mix. She didn’t want the session to degenerate into a sob-fest. Years had passed since Will’s murder just before their wedding and still, Hailey had no interest in another relationship.

She’d dated plenty, but it never felt right, and she always ended up breaking it off and hurting someone’s feelings. She’d concluded that maybe it was better just to be alone, and was actually pretty happy with that. She’d just let down the dentist in the office downstairs, Adam Springhurst.

They’d had nearly two dozen dates, movies, dancing, dinners, Broadway, music… They were all great. But for Hailey, it just wasn’t going anywhere. After every date, even if it had been wonderful, she felt even lonelier for Will than she had before she went out. It just wasn’t worth it, and she felt something akin to relief when she opened up a tiny bit to Adam about why she wanted to call it off. It truly wasn’t about him.

Adam took it well and was still friendly and upbeat when they bumped into each other around the neighborhood where they shared office space in the same renovated brownstone. Thank goodness.

Lori went on. “It’s been four years. I’ve been with Reggie four years.”

“ Lori, before you go down that road, let’s re-examine. You say you’ve had suspicions since year two. You’ve busted him twice before. There’s a pattern. Can’t you see it’s not about you? Do you really believe that somehow you can change him?”

“But, Hailey, don’t you know the likelihood of a woman my age getting married this late in life? It’s more likely I’ll be killed by a terrorist!” Lori dissolved into another fit of sobs.

Hailey came out of her chair and handed Lori another stack of Kleenex. “Lori, I’d love to get my hands on whoever started that saying. I’ve heard it so much, I’ve actually researched it. It is absolutely not true.”

Lori stopped sobbing, for a moment. Hailey seized the opportunity and kept talking in a low, calm voice. “It’s been thrown around as fact for so long, people actually believe it now. I think it came from some idiot at Newsweek. Probably a twenty-three-year-old man! It all springs from the theory that the more education a woman has, the longer she waits to marry. That’s it… the whole she-bang.”