Nancy Grace: The Eleventh Victim

“Well what was I supposed to tell the cops…that I was turning a half-and-half out behind the club and the guy got crazy on me? That sounds like a confession to me. That kind of talk will get you ninety hours in the city jail for solicitation. Plus, the man gave me the hundred. Hell, no , I didn’t tell the police.”

Cassie ground her cigarette into her plate beside the first butt and started collecting her things to leave. She was pissed. She hadn’t come here for a sermon. She grabbed her purse.

Hailey couldn’t let her go, couldn’t screw this up. Too much was riding on it. She had to smooth it over.

Because out there, somewhere, tonight maybe, he was roaming. Waiting. Looking. Every extra day Hailey spent working the case meant one more night he was free to stalk the city of Atlanta. For all she knew, he was there, outside, this very moment.

“Fincher, go to the car and call back to the precinct. Get this guy’s rap sheet.”

He stalked out sulking, knowing full well he was banished from the booth for reprimanding a woman who could end up being the State’s star witness.

“Cassie, please…” Hailey reached out and gently touched the hooker’s bony, tattooed arm. “Don’t go.”

“I don’t need this shit.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about that. We just don’t want to see another woman, or you, killed. Fincher feels the police didn’t work the case because the dead girls were hookers. Or dancers-like you, Cassie. Please. You could be saving a life. I need you. Don’t you have a little sister? Or a little girl? Would you want this to happen to her?”

Hailey pulled out a crime scene photo of one of the victims and handed it to Cassie.

Cassie paused, looking at the photo. Then, she put her purse back down beside her in the booth, got out a cigarette, and lit it up.

Thank God, a second chance.

“When did it happen, Cassie? Did you ever see him again? Just tell me what you remember.”

“It was July, last year.” She exhaled. “It was sticky hot the minute I stepped out of the back of the club and came down the steps.”

“July. Good. When in July?”

Cassie thought hard about it, as Hailey calculated…July of last year would have been nearly two years ago…when Homicide figured he’d first started the killings. Cassie must have been one of his first victims, but he had gotten put off by the vomit and quit. But by the time he geared up for his next victim, he was past backing out. The next girl wasn’t so lucky.

“You know what?” Cassie said at last. “It was probably, like, the week after the Fourth. I remember because I had made a little outfit for a special show at the club for the holiday and I wore it the next week, too. It had red, white, and blue sequins and a matching sequined choker. I wore the leotard part of the outfit again the next week but without the red tux jacket. It was that night, the night I went with him in the car. He tore the neck of it in the park.”

“Tore the neck out?” Hailey alerted to the significance.

“Yeah. Just the neck was torn.”

“What else? Just tell me what you remember…every detail. It’ll come back to you.”

Cassie shrugged. “It was late, like four a.m. I stepped out of the back of the club. He was waiting for me in his car, looking up at the door when I came out.”

“What kind of car?”

“I don’t know…it was big, but I don’t remember what kind. I thought we’d go to a hotel room or even in the car because it was so big, but he wanted it outdoors. I figured it’d be quick and at that time of night in the cul-de-sac, nobody would be around for sure, so I took him there.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

Cassie shook her head. “He never came back after that night, and up ’til then, he had been pretty regular, same seat every night for about a month. Good tips, too. Then-poof! Gone. Never came back. I told some of the other girls about it. They remembered him, but they said it, too-you know, that he never came back in the club.”

She stopped talking and got quiet, looking down at the ashtray.

“What else can you remember?” Hailey coaxed.

“Yeah…thinking back…you know, I wouldn’t have thrown up, but I had just had my dinner break. He smelled funny, like a kitchen smell, like real strong garlic. But it wasn’t his breath. It was just him . It like…came out of his pores or something.”

Hailey’s thoughts raced as they sent Cassie on her way and pulled out of the Denny’s parking lot. All they needed was a break…one break. One hint, one clue, one sign.

They finally had something…same MO, outside in a secluded area located off the strip, prostitute-victim, half-and-half, manual strangulation during the trick…a fascination with the victim’s neck…it was all too similar not to be connected.

The sheer impact of how close this woman had come to losing her life, if this was the right guy, slammed into Hailey like a tsunami.

“Fincher…stop the car.”

“What’s wrong?”

He was out there.

“Nothing. Just…” She turned, looking out the back window, and watched Cassie until she was out of sight, back in the club, safe.

Safe for tonight, at least.

Atlanta, Georgia

“LOOK, I KNOW IT SOUNDS CRAZY,” SHEILA GRAHAM TOLD HAILEY as they sat facing each other across her living room coffee table, “but I just can’t get involved in this again.”

“It doesn’t sound crazy at all, Sheila. I’ve heard it a million times. Nobody wants to get involved. But what I’m telling you is that he could get out. If I get evidence suppressed or the jury just doesn’t like the victims, for whatever reason, Clint Burrell Cruise could walk, he could get out. Then who do you think he’d want to come back to? You, that’s who.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Please, Sheila…we need you. Believe me, I know how difficult it will be for you to come face-to-face with Cruise again, after what he did to you. He almost killed you, I know that.”

Cruise-the woman’s former live-in boyfriend-had harassed her with a series of late-night, sexually obscene phone calls. Then, when she’d continued to rebuff him, he broke into her apartment, crept into her bedroom, and tried to rape her. When she’d fought back, the sex attack turned into attempted murder. He tried to strangle her there in her own bed.

If it hadn’t been for her sister, sleeping over in the guest bedroom that night and calling 911, Sheila would be dead. As it was, the sister left town and couldn’t be found after Cruise threatened to come after her.

Even in the darkened bedroom, Sheila could still make a positive ID, and a voice ID as well. Prints lifted off the back window matched Cruise’s. The case was rock solid.

It was that arrest and book-in photo that landed Cruise’s photo in the mug-shot album, where Cassie recognized him from the strip club. From Cassie’s identification, a warrant for Cruise’s blood evidence, which meant DNA at trial, was suddenly possible.

The prosecutor at the time dropped the ball and didn’t push when Sheila refused to testify against her ex-boyfriend at trial. But even though the case had to be dropped for lack of prosecution, the mug shot was still there, still there in Hailey’s fat book of photos.

“ What makes you think she’ll do it now? For somebody else? When she wouldn’t even do it for herself?” Hailey asked herself, sitting immobile on the sofa, not willing to give up just yet but knowing inside it was probably futile to try and convince her.

But without Sheila, the evidence would just be the dry testimony of scientists from the crime lab on the stand, and maybe Cassie, too, if she didn’t OD or disappear before trial.