Nancy Grace: The Eleventh Victim

She stifled a scream and tried to scrunch down even further onto the floor.

She couldn’t hear a thing.

Seconds passed; minutes. She could hear movement now in the waiting room she had just left… It was the metal magazine rack, she was sure, that crashed to the tile floor.

Then quiet. She strained to hear in the darkness. Nothing more, and then…

The air moved in the room and she knew. He was here.

She could feel him, lurking there in the room with her.

Silent tears flowed hotly down her cheeks.

Why? Why had it come to this? Who was he?

Nothing stirred in the room, yet she didn’t dare believe he had moved on. She could sense him, could feel him in the air. She could see nothing in the black of the room, crouched down near the floor.

All at once, he pounced from behind, heaving her up by her neck.

She screamed out in pain and fought wildly, lashing out in every direction, kicking at his knee, his crotch, anywhere she could make contact.

He gripped her neck from behind. She wrenched free and scrambled away.

He came after her with a curse. Again, his hands closed around her neck. Again she broke free and tried to claw her way to the doorway.

She didn’t make it. He picked her up and literally threw her across the room. She landed against an antique sideboard. Pain shattered her body, yet somehow she managed to stand. He was on her, strong fingers digging into her neck as he bent her forward at the waist, over the sideboard.

Suddenly, a cloud passed away from the moon outside. In the dim light filtering through the office window, Hailey looked into an ornate mirror above the sideboard and saw his shoulders and head, still shrouded in the ski mask, looming behind her.

She struggled against him. He wrenched her arm and she heard the crack of bone. Searing pain, poker hot, shot through her arm and shoulder. “What’s the matter, Counselor? Still don’t recognize me?”

With her one good arm, she managed to get hold of the mask, pulling at it. But it hit her-just before she saw his face in the dim moonlight-she knew his voice.

After all the years of courtroom practice, this was one with whom she never shared a cup of coffee, a Christmas card, a sandwich at lunch, or even a joke over the phone or in pre-trial plea negotiations. Instinctively, she had always kept her distance.

Now she understood why.

“You don’t have to do this… Stop now before you make it worse on yourself,” she gasped out. “You know they’ll get you…maybe not now, not tonight, not tomorrow-but they will.”

He held her in a vise grip as he talked, his lips against the side of her head.

“Not if they never find your body, Hailey. That’s the mistake I made with LaSondra. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that. I got a little sloppy with a cheap hooker just once…just once.”

Matt Leonard’s hands circled around her throat and squeezed. Facing the mirror, she saw her own mouth open for air, saw her eyes begin to bulge. As she watched in silent horror as her own life drained away, she saw it.

The ring with three rubies.

And just before the ring twisted inward to the palm during the struggle, she understood. In that moment, she understood the trident mark on the neck of LaSondra Williams… She understood why a man like Leonard would volunteer to take the case of Clint Burrell Cruise pro bono. Her mind flashed back to the courtroom and Cruise gnawing his nails down to the quick. He was a nail biter…he couldn’t leave fingernail marks on LaSondra’s neck. She understood it all. Leonard murdered Victim Eleven. He’d strangled LaSondra Williams and set up Cruise to take the fall for her murder.

“Don’t you see, Hailey? I have to…I have to do it.” Leonard breathed it into her hair. “Cruise is out. When I went looking for him, I heard he came to find you. Only you could put it together, only you, Hailey. Only you.”

His fingers dug into her skin, the rubies tearing at her throat.

“I knew the deal with Cruise’s MO-can’t keep a secret in APD Homicide. So I set it up to look like Cruise’s work and took the case pro bono. Brilliant. I knew he’d take the fall. Until the feds nailed your detective for stealing from dopers, and caught on tape, too! Good cop, Hailey. Too bad he was the one that found the murder weapon. But the reversal wasn’t all bad, Hailey. My firm needed the money we started losing after the Cruise conviction. But then Cruise headed up here. I knew once he found you, between you two, you’d put the pieces together. Once you got my Internal Affairs file from APD. There’s no other way, Hailey. Go out with a little dignity. Let me remember you that way…”

In one last spurt of strength, Hailey pushed backward, and they both went sprawling on the floor.

Hailey began crawling again, trying to get to the door.

Leonard grabbed her again by the back of the hips and jerked her back. She flailed, reaching-reaching for anything.

Her fingers wrapped around something and squeezed, and in the moment, she didn’t even know what she had.

She heard a whirring sound just as she sunk the object into Leonard’s neck, hot blood spurting onto her face and shoulder.

The dentist’s drill.

Two things she hated most in the world…a sleazy defense attorney and a whining dentist’s drill…united at last. It was her final thought before she slumped forward.

New York City

“HAILEY! HAILEY, WHAT HAPPENED?”

From far away, she heard Dana’s familiar voice mingled with the buzz of others blending together through the haze.

Forcing her eyes open, she saw daylight. She was looking up, surrounded by faces. She recognized a few-one of the dental hygienists, and the receptionist, and Adam, and…

Dana…mascara streaked down her cheeks.

“Hailey…I don’t understand. What were you doing here with Greg? Did you kill him, Hailey? He’s dead. My God…he’s just lying there, dead.”

Confused, Hailey followed her gaze and saw a sheet-covered figure on the floor not far from where she lay.

It came back to her in a flash.

Leonard…Leonard attacked her, and she…

“Did you kill Greg, Hailey?” Dana asked again.

Greg ?

What was she talking about?

“Easy, there, Ms. Dean,” said a paramedic who was kneeling beside her. “Don’t move just yet. You’re pretty banged up.”

“I can’t believe Greg is dead,” Dana sobbed.

That wasn’t Greg.

It was Leonard. Leonard had-

Suddenly, the truth hit.

It had been him all along, Hailey realized.

Posing as Dana’s new boyfriend, infiltrating her life so that he could get close to Hailey. He must have slipped her keys away from Dana and made a copy, setting him free to come and go from her apartment when she wasn’t there.

From across the street and half a block up, Cruise stood jammed inside a doorway…watching. He’d been here ever since circling back and tracking Hailey from her apartment to her office. He’d been waiting for the two of them to come out. But now, an ambulance and police had arrived. He naturally shrunk further into the shadow of the door frame. It didn’t make sense. Why was Leonard here? Why the attack the night before? What did he have to do with Hailey? He didn’t know now, but he’d find out. And he’d be back.

Cruise turned on his heel as yet another squad car pulled up, and no one noticed a man with a limp and a hat riding low on his face, slowly blending into the crowded street and fading away.

“Step back, please. I need to speak to Ms. Dean. Excuse me. Excuse me. NYPD.”

Hailey recognized Kolker’s voice even before the crowd parted and she saw him there, badge in hand.