Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

“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.

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.