Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

Or should she hurl it into the dark waters of the East River while out on a run?

Too predictable.

How many times had she sent divers down to retrieve a weapon? Piece of cake. She had even gone on dives herself to then explain the process to jurors in openings and closings.

It rarely took more than three hours underwater to find the knife or gun in the waterway closest to a suspect’s home or office. Or at least part of a gun. Occasionally, the perp might be wily enough to remove the barrel from his automatic, rendering it useless for cross ballistics identification purposes.

But this was no gun. It was a seamless, shiny, solid piece of steel, no way to dismantle it.

It was a four-pronged lethal weapon disguised as a kitchen implement, and it had sliced through the lungs of two of her patients…that she knew of.

The East River was out.

The blood was the thing. Simple bleach wouldn’t work. Ajax…no. Clorox…no. Laundry detergent…no. She needed something with enzymes…

Reaching far back to the rear of the cabinet, she found it: Black Swan Muriatic Acid. The stone worker had left it behind it when he laid slate in the kitchen and the cement bathroom base beneath the tiles. Muriatic, or hydrochloric, acid would be most likely to destroy DNA. For now, she lined the kitchen sink and surrounding counters with layers of plastic wrap, turned on the hot water in the kitchen faucet, and slowly washed her patients’ blood off the steel tines of the lifter.

Then she poured the cleaner from its plastic container across the sink and into it, completely immersing the lifter in pure muriatic acid. It might not be perfect, but it was the best shot she had. She did it gently, so as to cause no spatter on the sides of the sink. One swipe with Luminol would catch each drop, but this was the best she could do, tonight anyway.

After rinsing the sink and drying the lifter with paper towels, she carried the ball of twine to the bathroom sink. With her, she took the matchbook she kept in the kitchen drawer beside the gas stove and turned on the overhead shower vent. It took three matches to set the twine on fire.

She added in the paper towels, the hand towels that had wrapped the weapon and the plastic wrap from the kitchen. She watched as it was totally consumed, until there was nothing left but ashes.

On the fourth flush of the toilet, it was all gone.

Back in the kitchen, she again rinsed the entire sink with the muriatic cleanser, took out the drain stopper, unscrewed the bottom of it, and allowed the pieces to fall apart. Heading to the trash chute, she threw the pieces down, hearing them fall against the metal sides of the shaft until the sounds disappeared.

Now, the weapon. She walked through the apartment…searching. Then, in the den, her eyes focused on a mosaic lighting fixture, amber mosaics beautifully pieced together in a bowl-form, facing upward against the ceiling. Dragging over a bar stool, she stood up on it and gently placed the weapon inside the fixture. There.

She climbed down and surveyed the room.

The murder weapon, State’s Exhibit Number One against her, was completely concealed.

For now.

She sank into a chair, sitting there in the dark of her apartment.

Clint Burrell Cruise.

Here in the city.

Was he here to kill her? Or just frame her and send her to the electric chair, just like she had sent him?

She methodically searched her apartment again and found nothing more planted. But one thing was missing…her favorite hairbrush was gone from the drawer beneath her bathroom mirror. She always kept it there. That explained a lot. The “forensics” Kolker had been so thrilled about…she didn’t need to see the lab report to know that the hairs found on Melissa and Hayden were hers…straight from her own hairbrush.

She looked at the clock. It was 2 a.m.

In four hours, the morning rush would be in full swing at the Century Diner a few blocks away.

She’d be ready.

New York City

HE STILL WASN’T CRAZY ABOUT NEW YORK, BUT CRUISE COULDN’T complain about the food.

Roast Long Island duckling.

Filet mignon.

Stuffed lobster.

He was visiting the best restaurants in the world…restaurants whose chefs were once friends of his back in culinary school.

Imagine if they knew he was here, dining on their creations, all picked out of metal dumpsters behind each restaurant.

Most of it was barely touched, having been served to thin, wealthy women who frequented Manhattan’s five-star restaurants strictly for the scene. Forget the food…they couldn’t care less about the artistry behind each dish.

Most people would likely recoil at the thought of devouring the remains of food that had first been on somebody else’s plate. But they’d never eaten at Reidsville State Pen.

He was definitely eating better than he was sleeping…seeking out park benches, subway tunnels, and, when the cold was the worst, the city’s homeless shelters.

He imagined Hailey in her apartment in the sky, asleep beneath blankets on her bed.

What did she wear when she slept? A nightgown? A T-shirt? Did she have silk sheets or high-count cotton? What did she keep in her refrigerator? What was in her closet…her drawers?

All he had to do was get past the doorman and up to her apartment door. He’d been watching the service entrance and underground parking entrance. Visitors, movers, and work crews were in and out all day. He could easily slip in there…but what floor? Oh, yes, the bar directory had given him that on a silver platter.

For now, though, he’d have to settle for watching from a distance.

Tonight he was lurking on the steps of a brownstone down the block, keeping an eye on the entrance to her building, hoping she would emerge. Nobody seemed to be home. He wondered how he could get in.

He hadn’t seen her yet…but he was sure there were no other entrances than these two, and he had a bird’s eye view of both.

The wind off the East River was bitter. Soon he’d call it a night and find a place to bed down. Probably at one of the shelters, he thought, and sighed, his breath puffing out frosty in the night air… Unless he could jimmy a door or window here at the brownstone.

Then a shadow loomed behind him in the glow of the street lamp.

“Cruise.”

What the hell?

Who here knew his name?

Cruise turned around.

Stunned, he managed to ask, “What the hell are you doing here?”

He spotted the glint of a butcher knife’s blade. Cruise twisted away and it struck his arm, just inches from a vein.

Ignoring the gushing blood, he fought off the attack.

Working out daily for years in prison had made him even stronger. After throwing a brutal left jab to the throat, Cruise took off as best he could. He found a filthy rag in a garbage can and used it to stave the flow of blood from the gaping wound on his forearm. If he hadn’t turned at the last second, he’d be lying in the city’s morgue right now wearing a John Doe toe-tag.

New York City

AT 6:30 A.M., HAILEY’S HEAD SNAPPED UP FROM WHERE IT RESTED on her chest for the last two hours.

It was time for breakfast.

The walk was just a few blocks, the shorter the better, and getting there was crucial. There was absolutely no reason for them to stop her, question her, detain her. But cops didn’t always need a reason. Who would a jury believe? Two cops or her, carrying a murder weapon concealed inside her sweatshirt?

In her bedroom, she pulled on sweats and running shoes, and snapped on her plastic running watch. Over her clothes, she pulled on an extra, baggy sweatshirt. With no time to waste, she headed into the den.