Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

He was right. Again. She had to think faster.

“So the call, if it does exist, only proves one thing-you’re even more cold-blooded than I thought. Cold-blooded enough to stab some mixed-up, innocent kid and then before you even turn the block, you set up your own alibi.”

He was gaining ground. “And everybody knows that even a high-schooler knows how to change time and date stamps on incoming and outgoing calls. This’ll make a hell of a closing argument for the prosecutor, won’t it, Hailey Dean?”

He sat back in his chair, now relaxed, grinning into the two-way. Kolker’s moment of triumph. He was loving it.

But it didn’t last long. Watching him carefully, Hailey pulled the trump card. “No.”

The moment faded for Kolker and he turned slightly in his chair to look at her.

Her voice was cold now. “In the middle of the message, fire trucks from Sixty-seventh Street pulled out onto Third. It’s Engine 39, I’m sure. It had to have been. I could hear the ladder man over a bullhorn shouting so that they could get the big pumper truck out. I heard him telling drivers to back up so they could get out. Cars were blocking the driveway. The pumper couldn’t pull out onto the street. If the machine picked it up and I’m sure it did…it locks me in on the time. I’m clear across town, practically in the Seventies, the murder is at the other end of the island, in the Village, you said.”

He didn’t respond, but looked briefly toward the mirror as if for guidance.

“Check the message, Kolker. I know I saved it because I didn’t have time to work on the article yesterday before…”

Before you barged into my office and you brought me here…

She held her tongue, saying only, “I can play it back for you right now on remote if you want. You’ll hear the ladder captain in the background and the sirens. They’ll have a record of a fire-truck detail being sent out that night…that time. And you do know how to triangulate, right? To ping? You know, to pinpoint the exact location, sometimes down to the square block, where a cell call’s made?”

Kolker was looking down at the table between them, deep in thought.

She didn’t let up, she went for the kill. “Go ahead…ping me. And oh yes, my doorman, Ricky, saw me when I came back in.”

Hailey put her right index finger on the face of the quarter and slowly pushed it back across the tabletop toward Kolker.

“Keep it, Kolker.” Hailey stood up, preparing to leave. She’d won her way out of the jail and she knew it.

She glanced over her shoulder at the two-way mirror and nodded her head.

“Not so fast, Counselor. Your hair’s usually pulled back, right? Maybe you should have kept it back the nights of the murders, Hailey.”

She stared at him full-on. “Get to the point, Kolker.”

“I told you we have forensics. Can’t argue with the crime lab. You were on the crime scenes all right, both of them. DNA puts you there.”

“There is no way my DNA was at the crime scenes.”

“Save it. We got top-notch crime techs working Melissa’s body within the hour. Hayden’s, too. The best in the state, maybe even the country. They combed the scene, Hailey. It didn’t take them ten minutes to find long blonde hair-not one piece, Hailey, several. We’ve already had it tested, mitochondrial DNA, Hailey, maybe even some nuclear DNA, too … and they’re yours. ”

Her hair? At the scene?

“And Hailey, they weren’t just at the crime scene. They weren’t just on the body. Melissa was clutching them in her right hand. She was fighting to live…fighting with you. I think you had them doped up on some of your shrink meds…and they never saw it coming…and from someone they trusted. It’s sick. On Hayden it was caught in a bracelet she was wearing.

“And one last thing, as if we needed it. What about this? Any idea who this belongs to?” Kolker stood up, stretching his long legs. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out something shiny, something silver.

Hailey turned and froze. Hanging from his right hand, on its black silk cord was a small, silver necklace, a tiny Tiffany’s ink pen.

“Recognize this, Hailey?” Kolker asked, gloating.

She did. Of course she did.

She didn’t have to look any closer to know what was engraved: For Hailey, Seeking Justice, Katrine Dumont-Eastwood .

“We found your jewelry, your necklace from Tiffany’s. It was on the Krasinski murder scene. And it wasn’t in her pocket or sweatshirt. She didn’t just pick it up accidentally. It was under her body. And to top it off…the cord’s broken. Lose it during the struggle, Hailey?”

She had once treasured it dearly but now it dangled in Kolker’s fingers like a noose.

Atlanta, Georgia

FRANK LAGRANGE HADDEN (THE THIRD) HAD BEEN WORRIED ABOUT being able to walk, let alone run, after being folded into the crapper stall for so long.

Thanks to the burst of adrenaline shooting through his body when he sprang up and snapped the first shot, he somehow found himself sprinting through the hot breeze of the parking lot with amazing agility for someone so horribly out of shape. Tall and thin, he never exercised, spending most of his time online, parked in front of his big screen, or closeted away in his darkroom.

But once he was off the toilet, he unfolded long, thin legs and ran like hell.

His Nikes dug into the gravel and he pumped his arms furiously, weaving through hundreds of parked cars to get to his own burgundy Toyota.

Laying the camera on the passenger’s seat, Hadden cranked up, jerked the Camry into reverse, put it in drive, and took off spewing gravel. He burned rubber pulling onto the asphalt, locked the car doors, and belted himself in all while gunning the gas, surreptitiously glancing into his rearview mirror just in time to see C.C. lurch out of the club, a burly bouncer on either side of the Judge.

Damn fool.

Looking back, he could see the Judge and his two goons running through the strip club parking lot, looking for him in the wrong direction.

By now, he knew, Baby was long gone and wondering who had given “her” the two thousand dollars cash. He/she should have known that was way too much for just a Monica. But there was no way a hooker would turn down a cold two thousand dollars, and Frank knew it.

He also knew, after following this jackass for weeks, a judge no less, that there was no way he’d turn Baby down.

What a way to make a living.

His legs had fallen asleep while he’d been crouched on the toilet seat for nearly an hour, and now they felt like fiery daggers were tearing through them.

Hadden snaked through the back streets of Hispanic neighborhoods surrounding the Pink Fuzzy until he made it back to I-85.

Once there, he floored it, going north of the city, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror, just in case.

In minutes, the traffic and streetlights began to fall away. He picked up his cell and dialed the number he had been given.

No one ever answered, but he always got his payments on schedule, like clockwork.

The line was picked up by a machine, identified only by an outgoing beep.

“It’s me, Frank. I got the photos. The ones you wanted and plenty of extras. As soon as I get the last payment, they’re all yours. Negatives included, as promised.”

Another beep came, signaling the end of the allotted recording period.

He hung up the phone and tossed it onto the seat beside him.

Frank finally began to breathe easy. He dropped his speed to fifty-five mph as he continued heading north to his home on a cul-de-sac in one of thousands of nearly identical suburbs surrounding the city of Atlanta.