Nancy Grace: The Eleventh Victim

“Looks like you took quite a tumble, Hailey Dean,” he said-but not unkindly. He knelt beside her. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“Later,” she murmured.

“I just need you to know-”

“She said later.” It was Adam who stepped in.

Adam, too, who squeezed her hand and said, “Hailey, you’re damned lucky to be alive, you know that? If the office cleaning lady hadn’t come in and found you when she did…”

In time, she knew, it would all make sense.

For now, he was right. She was just lucky to be alive. But purposefully releasing Adam’s hand, she motioned Kolker over and down, close to her face so he could hear. The crowd parted, and he knelt down beside her. Her throat hurt so terribly as she tried to speak, but couldn’t. She looked straight into Kolker’s eyes.

“I just want you to know, Hailey…I’m sorry.”

Atlanta, Georgia

THE SUN WAS SHINING DOWN WARM ON LEOLA’S FRONT PORCH. Ivy and plants surrounded it, dozens of hanging baskets placed across the top of the porch created a canopy overhead. A single tear made its way down her wrinkled face as she sat alone, rocking. In her lap was today’s Atlanta Telegraph . A gentle breeze breathed across the porch, barely rustling the paper’s headline.

The detective’s taillights disappeared around the corner as they drove off. He’d been there a long time, trying to explain how attorney Leonard had taken Cruise’s case to cover up a murder of his own, the murder of LaSondra. Leonard’s history with prostitutes was apparently well known among the APD brass; his police file was full of brutality incidents with hookers as well as others. But nobody knew it continued after he was pushed off the force. After he became respectable, a lawyer.

Leola sat perfectly still there on the porch for a while, feeling the sunlight hot on wooden planks beneath her feet. She sat down in a rocker and opened up the front page of the Telegraph .

Finally, her little girl could sleep. Years ago, Leola had given up on the hopes and dreams she had for her girl, but at least now LaSondra could sleep in peace. Leola glanced down at the headlines.

CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST CRUISE IN WILLIAMS MURDER

Well, all right, it wasn’t so much the headline that mattered. It wasn’t even the topic of the article or the fact that her daughter hadn’t been murdered by Cruise, but by his defense attorney-who couldn’t hurt anyone else, ever again, because he was dead.

Miss Hailey Dean herself did the deed.

Thanks to her, the papers weren’t calling Leola’s baby girl all those awful names anymore.

Leola Williams reread her favorite phrase in the article.

“ LaSondra Williams, an aspiring dancer from Atlanta… ”

Oh how she could dance. When she was little, Leola would put on a record and the minute the music started, LaSondra would twirl around and around, arms outstretched, calling out to Leola, “Mama! Mama! Look! Look at me, Mama! I’m a dancer, Mama. Can I be a dancer when I grow up?”

“Yes, baby, you’re my sweet ballerina girl,” she would say.

A good girl. Her LaSondra.

Leola set the newspaper aside, not noticing the other front-page headlines below the fold.

LOCAL BUSINESSMAN DIES IN FREAK ACCIDENT; BUILDING PROJECT CURTAILED AFTER SITE NAMED HISTORICAL SLAVE BURIAL GROUND

Humming to herself, Leola closed her eyes and said a silent prayer in her head.

God bless Miss Hailey Dean, and make her well, wherever she was.

New York City

THE SHEETS WERE COOL WHEN SHE LAY DOWN.

She was so tired, her body ached.

Not one light was on inside the apartment, but the window was cracked open with the shade pulled nearly all the way down. Gray-white light from First Avenue filtered in under the shade, and she could hear the tires of cabs whiz by, slicing through the rain on the asphalt.

She no longer knew what time it was, but it was late in the night…so late that other sounds were gone. No voices or activity, no horns, even-just the wheels turning in the rain.

She was hungry, but so bone tired she didn’t have the energy to make it to the kitchen and look in the fridge.

She just lay there, drifting, floating.

Leonard’s face appeared in her mind, contorted with rage just before she’d killed him. She blamed herself for not fitting the pieces together sooner. Of course Leonard had learned all the details of the serial murders from his cronies who graduated to APD Homicide long after Leonard was forced out. They still hung out at Manuel’s Tavern, the local cops’ bar, practically every week. Details like the baker’s twine and the poultry-lifter were never leaked to the press or the general public, so naturally investigators believed the same killer murdered LaSondra. Now, APD was launching investigations on other unsolved prostitute homicides with Leonard in mind.

And now Leonard’s Internal Affairs file had been made public, including that when he was investigating a string of burglaries, he held on to burglars’ lock-picking tools. Her office and apartment were easy pickings, and he’d gotten most of his information from his new and unwitting girlfriend, Dana, and maybe even Hailey’s keys as well. He’d been wooing Dana for weeks, milking her for information and spying on the two women from the abandoned building across from Dana’s office. He first thought it was Hailey’s.

After his attempted frame-up and attack on Hailey, it had all gone public. When his sixth wife learned of the multiple incidents of brutality on hookers and suspects he’d arrested, she appeared devastated, for about five minutes. His house and law practice were already up for sale, and Leonard was buried in a non-denominational cemetery near the interstate.

Even now, Hailey could feel his hands tighten around her throat. She forced her thoughts back further. To something pleasant. She was somewhere, maybe as a child? At home in front of the old black-and-white? Maybe it was in law school at the end of hours and hours of grueling study? Or was it after a long day in court?

She couldn’t name the time or place, but the TV had just finished the American anthem… She knew what it was now: It was WMAZ, the old Channel Thirteen of her youth.

It was fuzzy and static. At the end of the U.S. anthem every night, the broadcast signed off with Ray Charles singing, rocking side-to-side at his piano to the beat in his head. He sang it soft and sweet… Georgia .

Her heart felt like it would burst with longing…but for what?

The lyrics came rushing through her head…loving arms reaching out…moonlight pouring through tall pine trees. The rain outside began coming down in torrents…but now, in the half-dream, it was pouring down onto the hard red dirt of home.

“…Georgia on my mind…”

The pine smell filling her up, before she had ever seen an autopsy photo or smelled a bloody crime scene or looked through a microscope to compare markings on bullets dug out of a body. Before she ever stood sweating through her bra in front of a jury or read an indictment out loud in front of a waiting panel to commence a trial…before she saw it all, felt it all, became old with the knowledge.

Back when it was all bright and shiny, too bright to even touch or look at.

She would fly out of LaGuardia in the morning. First thing, before the shops opened or the Post hit her door.

She’d leave early, early when the street was hers alone and fifty cabs would race straight toward her arm held up in the dark of morning. She’d book the flight from the back of the cab.