Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

She wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead and reached for the cup in the cupholder. She had filled it with cold tap water before leaving home early this morning, and left it in the car. Now it was hot enough to steep a tea bag in, thanks to the sun glaring off the windshield.

How she longed to get back to her house, with water views and sea breezes billowing the white sheers.

Virginia Gunn had spent her entire life on St. Simons Island, with its magical strip of coast on either side and in between, acres of live oaks decorated by nature with low-hanging, sea-green Spanish moss.

For hundreds of years, Georgia natives debated which was more beautiful, the ocean coast or the marshland, a hybrid formed of half-land, half-ocean, creating a unique habitat.

The Spanish American War’s Battle of the Bloody Marsh had been waged on the southernmost tip of the Island, not far from Virginia’s childhood home. General Oglethorpe had galloped directly into the Spanish line and attacked. Her father told ghost stories about soldiers willing to die rather than give up the Island jewel, ghosts that still haunted the Bloody Marsh, where, as a child, Virginia and her friends dug up old Spanish bullets.

Southerners also fought and died for this strip of beach at the most bitterly contested battles during the War Between the States. And Daddy personally recalled the era, during World War II, when German U-boats trolled the coastal waters. Back then, the locals, armed with shotguns, sabers, and kitchen knives, prepared to take on the hulking tubs of iron all on their own.

Now, the unsuspecting Island faced a new threat. And like her Island ancestors, Virginia was prepared to do whatever it took to save it.

So here she sat in the unbearably hot car, thirsty, hopefully checking out every customer emerging from the store and heading this way.

So far, no contenders.

The middle-aged woman in head-to-toe Lilly Pulitzer couldn’t belong to the Beetle.

The elderly man in shorts and black dress socks couldn’t either…nor the pair of high-school boys wearing madras and loafers without socks.

Virginia took a closer look at two women in their mid-to-late thirties, both with identically cropped early-Chris Evert hairstyles, both with gold wire-rimmed glasses and both with baggy hiking shorts. From where Virginia sat, the only physical difference between the two was that one wore Birkenstocks over white socks and the other topped her white socks with hemp-woven clogs. Pay dirt.

Sure enough, they started loading a cart full of groceries into the Beetle.

Virginia gratefully exited the steaming Jeep, sneaking between rows of parked cars for a few moments, then approached casually by foot. They had their heads together and were laughing, arms grazing as they put bags into the car, and Virginia deduced an intimacy indicating that they were probably more than roommates.

“Hello, there.”

They both looked up and offered surprised return greetings.

“Gorgeous day, isn’t it? Do you live here on the Island?”

Woven Clogs looked a little wary, but Birkenstocks answered, “Yes it is, and yes we do!”

“So do I. Have for years. Not a stone’s throw from the water. You know, sometimes, before the Island got so crowded, I used to see whales breaching in the sea right from my deck!”

Woven Clogs lost the wary expression in a hurry. “You did? That must have been amazing!”

“Oh, it was. It was,” she said, with just the right note of bittersweet wistfulness. “They’re such beautiful creatures, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” Birkenstocks assured her.

Woven Clogs asked, “Did you see that two-hour PBS special a few months ago?”

“Which special was that?”

“The one about an Indian tribe hunting whales once a year in the Pacific, as part of ancient Indian ritual.”

“No, I hate that I missed it…”

“It was the most horrific thing Renee and I have ever witnessed.” Birkenstocks tossed the last bag into the car and slammed the door hard, clearly incensed just thinking about it. “Those poor whales, savagely slaughtered, and for what?”

“For what?” Renee echoed, shaking her short haircut, eyes solemn behind her wire-rims.

“That’s the kind of thing that really makes a person want to stand up and take action,” Virginia said carefully. “You know…do some good to offset the bad.”

“Oh, we did, didn’t we, Dottie?” Renee asked, nodding at her partner.

“What did you do?” Leaning back on the battered VW, Virginia instinctively knew-right here in the Kroger parking lot-that she had struck gold.

“We had an epiphany, right there on our living room sofa that night after the special. We just looked at each other, and we didn’t even have to say a word. We knew what we had to do.”

“We took two full weeks of vacation time to drive north to Alaska in the VW and stage a protest.”

“All the way to Alaska? I’m stunned…”

They were perfect.

Casually, she asked Renee and Dottie, “I don’t suppose you’re free tonight? You and maybe some of your Greenpeace friends?”

New York City

WHEN THE DOWNSTAIRS DOOR BUZZED, HAILEY GLADLY SET aside the bills she’d been paying and opened the door to meet Melissa. Standing in the doorway, she could hear footsteps flying up the stairs, could feel Melissa’s stress vibrating toward her, even before she burst into view down the hall.

Her straight, dark hair, almost down to her waist, was windblown back from a face that had a delicate, almost childlike beauty. When the light hit her just right or she flashed a rare smile, it was especially evident. But Melissa’s nose was crooked, having been broken a few too many times-and her brown eyes were perpetually troubled and rimmed with the dark circles of chronic insomnia. “Sorry I’m late, Hailey-track trouble on the number four train.”

“It’s okay. Come on in. Want some coffee?”

“Definitely.”

Hailey didn’t bother to ask her how she took it. She already knew. Black.

Just like her outfit: black skirt, black boots, black leather jacket. Hailey wondered whether it was a fashion statement or a reflection of Melissa’s state of mind. Maybe both. It only accentuated her pale, drawn features.

“So how are you?” she asked when she and Melissa were settled in her office-Melissa with her coffee, which Hailey noticed she clutched in both hands, as if trying to warm them. She looked so frail sitting there, like she could barely hold the mug. Hailey hoped the coffee wouldn’t slosh over the rim and burn her.

“I’m a little better,” Melissa said. “I saw Tammy this week.”

Tammy was her half-sister, with whom she had recently reconnected.

“That’s really good. Did you talk?”

“You mean…about…anything?”

Hailey nodded. “Anything” would be Melissa’s stepfather-Tammy’s father-who had beaten and sexually abused her from the time he came into her mother’s life when Melissa was eight until she ran away at sixteen. She’d have left sooner, but she was worried about Tammy becoming the next victim.

As far as she knew, Tammy hadn’t.

“We just talked about this movie we both want to see, and her haircut-she got her hair cut. It looks good. She told me I should cut my hair too, but…” Melissa shook her head.

“You like your hair long.”

“Right.”

The better to hide behind, Hailey knew. Melissa’s hair frequently fell over her eyes and across her cheeks, begging a hand to brush it back, but she never did.

They’d come a long way in the two years Hailey had been treating her, but they had a long way to go. There were still sessions when Melissa would sit, silently rocking in her seat, hugging herself, lost in memories forced to the edges of her mind, examined only at great emotional cost.