Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

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.

Atlanta, Georgia

OUTSIDE C.C.’S SQUEAKY-CLEAN WINDOW ON THE TOP FLOOR OF the Judicial Building, the Atlanta skyline sparkled in the morning sun.

C.C. gave it only a cursory glance, winced at the sunlight, and turned back to watch his new assistant close the door behind her. He contemplated her backside, the real reason he hired her if the truth be known. Now that she was done buzzing around his desk and with her rear end completely out of his view, C.C. eased a silver flask from his desk, uncapped it, and took a long pull of pure Kentucky bourbon, followed by a second.