Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

She handled, checked, and polished every weapon. They totaled forty-three guns, ranging from a Colombian Uzi to a hooker’s twenty-two to a sawed-off shotgun with its blunt end covered in black masking tape. The knives included plenty of switchblades, but also a machete polished to a high sheen, a kangaroo knife, a Smith and Wesson boot knife, and a Puerto Rican pig sticker.

Now she stared at them all, taking stock.

At last, she reached out, and with a firm hand, chose the.38. It fit better than the others in her hand, and she’d used it more often at target practice.

Hailey shook open the chamber and peered inside.

It was loaded.

Setting it on top of the computer, she took down from a peg a specially designed shoulder holster made of black, flexible Lycra and Velcro. Leather bulked up and was easy to spot outside clothing. Not this.

Hanging the holster on the side of her bed, she closed the cabinet and secured the computer overlay. She slipped on the holster and weapon to keep her hands free. She walked, surefooted, gun at her side, into the kitchen and turned down the flame under the copper kettle.

As she lifted it up and over, away from the flame, something caught her eye.

There was light where there shouldn’t be: lamplight pouring from inside her home office, pooling outside the door.

Hailey never, ever left any light on in the apartment while she was gone-nothing other than the stove hood, whose glow streamed into the entrance hall as she walked in each night.

No other light, ever.

Her thoughts whirled back over the last twenty-four hours. She remembered packing up a stack of files. She remembered noting that the plants were green and growing in spite of the cold, straining toward the winter sun at the window.

She remembered checking the lock on her patient file cabinet, pulling the office door almost closed, walking out through her kitchen, and leaving for the day.

Same as every morning.

But now the door leading into her home office was fully open…and were all the lights in the room on?

Someone had been here while she was gone. They could still be here. Or out there, somewhere, watching her.

As Hailey stood there at the stove, hand on the kettle, trying to grasp what had happened, she became acutely aware that every window in her apartment was in plain view. All the shades were up their highest to let in as much daylight as possible when she was there each morning.

But now, in the dark outside, the Manhattan skyline was a million pinpoints of light, each one representing a person’s apartment or office, suspended in the night air.

If she could see them, they could see her.

Hailey gently placed the kettle on a cool burner and reached for the.38 with her trigger hand. Pulling it, she held it down against her right side, the stovetop island protecting her maneuver from prying eyes in the night. Gripping the.38, she backed up against the sink and counter and began making her way toward her office. The handgun was now clutched firmly with both her hands, right index on the trigger, pointing down.

Keeping her back to the kitchen counters, she walked sideways across the expanse of slate. Beyond the folding doors, she could see the floor lamps on, as well as the desk lamp. The wooden cabinets discreetly concealing hundreds of patient files, as well as all her old trial files, stood there. Their drawers were ajar.

The room was empty. She couldn’t just see it, she could feel it; she knew no one was concealed in the shadows, watching her. Still, she checked. Just to be sure.

Whoever had come into her apartment was gone, leaving only the trace of lights on and cabinet door ajar.

Keeping the gun firmly in her hand and her back to the walls of the room, Hailey pulled the cabinet doors open wide. What were they looking for?

And why not ransack the apartment in the search?

She glanced at the window that faced the apartment buildings next door, with terraces growing trees some twenty floors above the earth. She could see people in lamplit windows, going about their business cooking, reading, watching TV.

Keeping the gun firmly in her right hand, Hailey reached up with her left to close the shades.

She turned back to the cabinet, where her trial files were arranged alphabetically in rows of precise horizontal lines across the first three upper shelves. On the top shelf, a few of the files appeared slightly pulled forward from the rest.

Heart pounding now, she put the gun down and began sorting through the folders, fingering back the tabs on which she had handwritten defendants’ names and charges: Clay Rape Trial, Clemmons Drug Trafficking, Collins Arson, Cook Domestic Homicide, Dixon Weapons Violations …

Her mind was spinning, calculating rapidly.

Something was missing. What was it?

Hailey closed her eyes and visualized the rows of files.

Then her right hand went instinctively to her throat, where the silver pen had once hung from its silken cord.

Her eyes flew open, and she felt a flash go through her body.

She knew, even before she looked…it was her last death penalty trial folder. It was gone.

The Clint Burrell Cruise file was gone.

The realization came in a sickening gush. In her mind’s eye, she again saw her attacker walk by her as she lay there on the rug, blood oozing down her temple, across her cheek, and into her mouth.

The man who beat her unconscious in her office, who crushed her ribs with the toe of his boot, kicking her over and over until a dark gray film rolled in around her…

A limp.

It was years ago, on local Atlanta Channel Eleven News. She’d noticed it first when the press closed in on the all-important perp-walk from the back of a squad car into the precinct station the night of the arrest. When she went to the jail to draw additional blood for a second DNA match, it was there. And later, she’d seen it in court when he walked in and out, surrounded by armed sheriffs.

He walked with a limp. Clint Burrell Cruise. The killer.

She felt it in her bones. He was here. Here in the city.

Atlanta, Georgia

“…SOON AS I GET THE LAST PAYMENT, THEY’RE ALL YOURS. NEGATIVES included as promised.”

Eugene deleted the message and hung up the phone after listening to Hadden’s message.

Hadden…another pawn. It all fit together like he had planned. He had known it would work out from the get-go, ever since C.C. wanted to take a cart at Augusta. From there on in, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Next the glossies would be mailed and the dominoes would begin to topple one by one. The race for governor would be back to normal.

The Cruise death penalty had been reversed and the federal grant money was headed back into the pockets of his partners at the defense firm. They had already gotten the beach vote through…the reps on the floor at the Georgia House and Senate had been herded like sheep. Not one of them had bothered to ask the significance of the definition of “tree,” as in the “first tree on the beach.”

Maneuvering the change in how “tree” was defined by the Georgia Code would pocket Eugene millions of pure profit by the time the last condo sold.

It all went down smooth as silk.

Now all he had to do was wait.

Within a matter of days, if not hours, the glossies would be in the mail and on their way.

He looked out over the city from his office chair, smoothing down the crease in his cashmere pants with his hands, staring into the dark, a thousand lights blanketing the city.

There was still the matter, though, of Virginia Gunn.

New York City

SOMEONE WAS OUT THERE; SOMEONE WHO WANTED TO HURT HER.