Death On the Dlist (2010) (21 page)

IT WAS HOT AND DARK AND THE SHEETS WERE TWISTED AROUND HAILEY’S WAIST
like ropes. There at her bedroom door stood a figure, partially shrouded behind the door frame, only the left half of the body, head to toe, visible. The intruder was silent, seemingly content for the moment just to stare across the room at her as she lay sleeping.

Although the intruder made no sound or movement whatsoever, the feeling she was not alone woke Hailey with a start, and she sat straight up in the bed, instinctively reaching for the .38 she kept in the shoulder holster hanging on the bedpost beside her pillow. She tried her best to peer through the dark of the room, lit only by dim, milky moonlight filtering in from behind the bedroom window shade.

Hailey saw her standing there. Hayden Krasinski. She stood staring without blinking. Her face was pale white but blue around the mouth and her eyes bulged out of the sockets as a result of a strangling death. Her neck looked shrunken halfway between her jaw and her clavicle, the result of a powerful ligature strangulation.

On the front center of the old hooded sweatshirt she wore so often was a huge blossom of dark red blood that had seeped through her clothes, the result of a searing, double-pronged stab wound to the back. She had been left to die over a year ago, face-down in slushy ice of a Manhattan back alley, and blood from the stab wound that punctured her lungs, staining not only her T-shirt and sweatshirt but the ice lying beneath her.

And here she was at 1 a.m. in Hailey’s apartment, high above the city. How did she get in? Hailey had locked up tight and set the alarm, a new feature in her apartment she’d added after Atlanta defense attorney Matt Leonard had come after her. Not to mention his client, Clint Burrell Cruise. Hailey convinced a jury to send him to death row for the murders of eleven young female prostitutes, but between a bad cop and a bad judge, the case was reversed on appeal and Cruise walked. He was last spotted in New York City.

Hayden just stared, her blue lips twisted into a curve. First smiling, she then opened her mouth to speak, but at that precise moment, a gush of blood came pouring out, a result of the piercing of the lungs, the blood involuntarily pushing upward through the throat and out the mouth. Hayden looked shocked, alarmed, afraid when the blood poured out of her mouth and downward onto her sweatshirt, leaving a wide, deep-red trail from the neck of the sweatshirt down.

She looked up from her shirt to Hailey and began to scream . . . a bloodcurdling scream. Hailey leaped out of the bed and ran toward the door, to Hayden, and just as she got there . . . Hayden dematerialized, simply vanishing, particle by particle, into the dark of the apartment.

Hailey stood rooted to the floor, not moving an inch. Her mouth seemed locked open, her heart beating wildly in her chest, sweat pouring down the front and back of her neck and into the white T-shirt she’d worn to bed that night.

It took several minutes for Hailey to understand what had happened.

It was a dream. It had to be a dream. Hayden and Melissa, both her longtime patients, both murdered in a plot to discredit and frame Hailey Dean. Matt Leonard had, in fact, murdered the eleventh hooker and let his own client, Clint Burrell Cruise, take the fall. Only Hailey had access to all the files and all the facts of the murders, and although she might have failed to put together the pieces, Leonard believed otherwise.

So he’d come after her. Her clients were the collateral damage. It was all Hailey’s fault, or at least she believed it was, on nights like these. This wasn’t the first time she’d had nightmares where she was visited by Hayden or Melissa, although she always prayed each visit would be the last.

There was no way she could go to sleep now, icy chill replacing the heated spikes flashing through her body just moments ago. She trudged toward the kitchen, .38 held down and close to her right side. She wanted to check the apartment . . . just to make sure.

The lights were still burning brightly all across Manhattan, and the dark sky rose above it. There were a million points of light sprinkled across the high-rises and office buildings. The Crown Building, Chrysler Building, Citigroup Center’s sloping peak, and of course, the spike of the Empire State Building, were all lit up in the night for tourists and residents alike to adore. Looking down onto the city somehow gave her comfort tonight.

Hailey switched on an eye of her gas stove and put on the kettle to brew a cup of tea. Heading back to her bedroom, she picked up the notebook she was keeping on the serial killings . . . the “murdered D-Listers,” as Kolker called them.

Once in her bedroom, she settled back into her bed with her hot tea, propping herself up against pillows. Opening her notebook, she clicked on her bedroom TV. A few days before, she’d spotted Malone’s golf pro at a charity event Leather Stockton also attended. Not much, but it was something. Earlier that evening, she’d been reviewing clips again for Kolker. They were a mélange of various appearances the three women had made. Hailey stared at the screen, sipping her tea. Her blue pen rested in the center fold of the notebook, inviting her to start work.

She watched the first thirty minutes of one of the Prentiss Love DVDs without making a single note. There were award speeches, red carpet events, interviews about various projects, especially her gig on
Celebrity Closets.

The next DVD was of Prentiss’s funeral. It was pure Hollywood. Several blowup head shots that must have each stood eight feet tall hung by nearly invisible strands from the top of the auditorium where the public service was held. They were stunning. The place was packed with special friends and family sitting in reserved seating up front.

They’d all filed in one by one or in little knots of two or three. There was a little bit of a stir when Prentiss’s yoga instructor came in with his boyfriend. Apparently, all her entourage knew she had a huge crush on him and had invested quite a bit of money in his studio as well as his plan to build a “yoga empire.” No one, not even Prentiss, knew he had a boyfriend. No doubt Prentiss Love’s investment decisions would have been far different if she had known that tiny detail. An argument broke out between one of Prentiss’s girlfriends and the yoga instructor, and the boyfriend intervened.

It wasn’t pretty.

Anyway, after that bumpy start, the service got under way. Hailey watched the whole thing intently, but found nothing of merit to report back.

She got up and headed to the kitchen to heat up more water. Brushing past her doorjamb, Hailey got a chill. In her mind’s eye, Hayden had just been standing there. Hailey’s eyes burned and tears welled up in them.

Had it all been her fault? Would they have been alive if it hadn’t been for their connection to her, Hailey Dean?

Climbing back into bed, she clicked the remote to start the next DVD, then took a sip of tea, holding the cup with both hands. She could hear the wind blowing outside her window high up in the sky.

The old, familiar ache was spreading from her chest up to her throat, and it felt like she’d swallowed a huge lump. No matter how hard she tried to get away from the pain of Will’s murder, it just kept coming back. As a psychologist, her mind told her that the new wave of grief she was feeling was simply an aftershock from the murders of Hayden and Melissa, her patients.

Her heart didn’t care why, it just hurt.

Leaving Atlanta and her career as a felony prosecutor had seemed like such a great idea at the time, and for a few years here in Manhattan, it actually seemed to have worked. But now, not only was the pain over her patients’ deaths dredging up the old grief from Will’s death, she was alone . . . completely alone. Again.

Hailey swallowed hard to try to get rid of the lump in her throat. She wiped her eyes and face, now wet with tears, with the edge of the bed sheet, and took a sip from the cup of tea she’d been clutching.

She stood up. Walking over to her bedroom closet, she opened it with one hand, still holding the tea in the other. She carefully set it down on the closet floor. There in the corner. There it was. Hailey just looked at the white cardboard box. She didn’t need to open it to see what was inside. She just wanted to look and see that the box was still there. She knew what was inside.

Her wedding dress, still beautiful and pristine, still made of silk the color of champagne. With the gown would be her veil, both gently folded away between layers of crinkly tissue paper, and placed in the white cardboard box. She’d never sealed the box, just in case she wanted to take them out and look at them just once in a while. But she never let herself do that. It would be too risky.

It always seemed to end up there in the corner of her closet, not far away at all. The white cardboard box had taken on its own identity over the years, and although she never lifted the lid, she carried it like a treasure . . . a reminder of another life and another time, a fresh-faced girl who grew old too young.

She used every ounce of self-control to step away from the closet, to shift her thoughts away from Will and Melissa and Hayden, and attempted to focus on the stack of DVDs still left to sort through. She headed back to the bed and the remote, rewinding the part that had already played while she was thinking of Will, and not Prentiss Love, Leather Stockton, or Fallon Malone.

She started with the raw footage of the
Harry Todd
shoot. Tony had gotten all of it for her, including the parts that never made air. She saw the tour of Fallon’s apartment, and it was just as beautiful and jaw-dropping as the day Hailey saw it herself. Fallon spent a lot of time standing on the front staircase landing, directly in front of the towering Penley portrait of herself. It was magnificent and Fallon worked it to her best advantage.

Then there was a segment where Sookie positioned Fallon in the kitchen as if the actress were whipping up a homemade dish. Trying their best to get a flattering shot of Malone, Hailey glimpsed Tony Russo and Sookie several times in the background hovering over the shoot. But after much fidgeting with lighting and positioning and such, the segment fell flat when Fallon admitted she had no idea how to light her gas stove.

The viewers weren’t stupid. Fallon Malone was not the Betty Crocker type. The minutes dragged by and Hailey learned nothing new. The wind was howling outside, screaming up and down the avenues, and gusting off the street all the way up to Hailey’s apartment windows.

She pushed a different DVD into the player and tried her best to focus on Prentiss Love as she thanked a group, mostly men, at what appeared to be a memorabilia event. Love seemed entirely genuine when she spoke out to the crowd. There was no doubt in Hailey’s mind that she loved her fans.

They may have been the only ones who really loved her back. Prentiss had been notoriously unlucky in love.

She was absolutely beautiful, standing there at a mike stand almost as tall as she was, dressed in a gorgeous white halter dress, her hair falling in long waves around her heart-shaped face.

Multiple posters of Prentiss hung behind her . . . shots from her latest CDs, publicity photos, you name it. In each one she was more stunning than in the last. Beside her sat a desk at which she could sit and sign photos, autograph books or ticket stubs, or basically whatever memento with which the fan approached her. The footage was date-stamped nearly two years before a single bullet seared through Prentiss Love’s mouth and face.

The camera panned out at the enthusiastic crowd, most of whom looked as if they were hanging on her every word. They were mostly twenty- to thirty-something-year-old white males. They all looked, lovesick, at the object of their desire, Prentiss Love.

It was then that she saw it. The camera operator had gone out into the crowd when Prentiss stopped speaking and made herself comfortable at the desk to start the signings. One guy after the next spoke into the camera about how he’d always loved Prentiss Love and couldn’t wait to get her signature. Each one, three in all, had a story about Love that was basically just a variation on the same theme . . . adoration. But it was there, in the background.

A man standing on the outskirts of the crowd, not really noticing the camera at all, staring intently up at the stage where Prentiss Love sat happily signing away, schmoozing with her fans for $25 an autograph.

Although he wasn’t speaking into the camera himself, there was no mistaking him, standing there. He wasn’t in the line for an autograph, just standing at a distance, never averting his gaze from Prentiss Love.

It was Scott Anderson.

FRANCIS LAY BELLY-DOWN ON THE LIVING ROOM FLOOR BEHIND HIS
mother’s sofa. Right now, it was the only thing between him and the Feds at his front door.

The rug at the foot of the sofa smelled of something . . . what was it? He’d never been quite this close to the fake Oriental rug before, certainly not close enough to get a good whiff of it.
What was it?

From his vantage point, looking through the legs of the sofa and across the floor, Francis had a perfect view of a tiny slice of light between the floor and the front door. Staring hard, he was convinced he detected movement outside on the front porch.

Then he heard it. Muffled voices. The jig was up. The Feds were on his front porch. His mother had always said this would happen. Crazy old bat.

What would he tell them? He’d used various computers all over town, actually, all over the country to stay in touch with his lady loves. And he’d used so many different names. He had multiple screen names and all of them only knew him as “Jonathon.” He’d never divulged his real name. Names didn’t matter to Francis . . . Only feelings mattered.

The multiple screen names should throw the Feds off to some degree . . . but Francis knew he’d left a track a mile wide. Flowers, gifts, candy, Valentine’s Day cards, birthday cards, Christmas gifts, you name it . . . It could all be traced back to Francis, or at least to Jonathon, anyway. They’d nail him. He knew they would.

Cards, flowers, candy . . . What did that prove?
Nothing!

Without the murder weapon, they had nothing! Nothing but evidence that Francis was in love . . . granted, with several different women . . . but in love all the same. What would they bring before a jury? A Valentine card?

Francis thought of his guns . . . all of them stashed away over at Crestlawn Sacred Grounds . . . just yards away from his mother’s plot. They’d never find them. Without that, absent an eyewitness or a confession, what would they have?

Although the murders were nothing but a blurry vision in Francis’s mind, actually more of a big, black blank, he was absolutely sure he would not have been so careless as to have eyewitnesses. And no way were the Feds getting a confession out of him.

In fact, he’d already turned down and dog-eared the number to his old public defender’s office in the yellow pages. He’d even gone so far as to write the
Miranda
warnings in ink on the inside of his left arm from just beneath his wrist nearly to the inside bend of his elbow.

He’d also written the lawyer’s number directly beneath
Miranda
in case the Feds used the phone book to beat him. The Feds were famous for beating people with phone books.

The voices rose on the porch.

Didn’t they have to knock first?

Probably not. Francis was pretty sure that good manners were not mandated in the Constitution. They may even have gotten a “no-knock” proviso in his arrest warrant so they could beat the door down with a battering ram if they wanted to. Nothing could stop them.

Francis just had to stay strong and not confess. Stay calm. Stay cool. Keep it together.

Plus, in all reality . . . How could he give a confession? He couldn’t remember anything.

It was all his damn mother’s fault. If she hadn’t forced, or tricked, all the mind-altering drugs into his system, he wouldn’t be having blackout spells in the first place. Much less days upon days where he couldn’t remember a thing.

How the hell did he put all those miles on his car? Francis had figured it out the night before. There were nearly exactly enough miles on his mom’s Saturn to prove he’d driven to each one of the murder locations. And it would only take a cursory look at his Chevron gas card to prove he’d visited them all numerous times in the past.

Plus, Francis had cashed his disability checks from the government at banks all around the country. So, bottom line, he’d definitely left a paper trail connecting him to countless locations where the ladies had been for one reason or another.

Concerts, appearances, walks on the red carpet, Francis had been to all of them. Granted, he’d always stayed in the background; he wasn’t there to upstage them in their moments of glory. He was just there for support.

He’d even managed to get several shots of himself with each of the ladies. True, they were usually far in the background while he held his cell phone camera out in front of him, taking the shot at arm’s length, but they were in the photos together for sure. Those photos were some of Francis’s most sacred treasures, next to Leather Stockton’s underwear of course, and he’d be damned if he’d erase them off his cell phone memory, Feds or no Feds.

Some things a man just had to fight for.

Oh, yes. His mother was probably looking down at him right now, shaking her finger disapprovingly. She’d always told him women would get him in trouble. With him lying on the floor hiding behind the sofa so the Feds wouldn’t pick up on even the slightest movement inside the house, Francis just knew that she’d be saying,
“See? I told you so!”

Just then, the spooks on the front porch slipped something under Francis’s front door.

Oh, hell! What was it? Was it some type of psychotropic drug that would make him talk and tell all about his relationships with the three dead celebrities?

Francis could definitely detect a strange odor. There was no way out now. Wasn’t it illegal to use sodium pentothal to get the truth out of a suspect? Wasn’t that only in injectable form? Could it be reduced to a powder? Was that what they’d slipped under his front door? If so, were they all outside on the front porch wearing gas masks so they, themselves, would not be affected by the truth-telling powder . . . just Francis alone?

It was suddenly stronger. He felt dizzy. Damn the Feds to hell and back.

Francis crawled around the edge of the sofa. From across the expanse of the living room floor to the front door, maybe twenty feet or so, he spied the packet slipped under the front door. Straining his eyes in the dim light filtering in from outside, he could barely make it out.

He inched closer. The floor was hard against his elbows as he made his way completely around the sofa.

It wasn’t sodium pentothal after all. It was a thin copy of both
Awake!
and
The Watchtowe
r magazines, religious weeklies distributed liberally by the Jehovah’s Witnesses spreading the word.

Why wouldn’t they leave him alone?

Then all at once it hit him. He recognized the smell. It was emanating from the carpet at the foot of the sofa from years and years of exposure to odors wafting out of the kitchen.

It was his mother’s favorite dish, veal and peppers.

Oh, how he hated her. Her
and
her damn veal and peppers.