The Eleventh Victim (26 page)

H
AILEY LOOKED UP AND SMILED BRIGHTLY WHEN KOLKER ENTERED
the room, face red and notebook pressed tightly under his left armpit.

“Hi, Lieutenant.”

He eyed her suspiciously when he caught her smiling over at him, leaning back casually against the two-way. He was all prepared to be the “bad cop.” A good mood was too weird and it threw him off.

“Hailey.” He nodded curtly, pulled out a chair, sat down, and crossed his legs ankle to knee. “Sit down.”

Hailey walked over to the conference table, pulled her chair in a little too close to Kolker, straight into his personal space, and sat,
knowing he’d feel it was too awkward to pull his chair away from her.

“Feel like talking?”

“Sure.” She didn’t move a muscle, keeping her hands loosely clasped together in her lap.

“Mind if I use a recorder?” He took it casually out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the table in the tight space she’d left between them.

Hailey knew it was a well-practiced move, keeping it all very nonchalant.

“Go ahead,” she said. “But shouldn’t I be read my rights again?”

“Excuse me?”

“A substantial amount of time has passed since you last read them and I’m now in official custody, aren’t I? Might not hold up in court, you know.” She was practically quoting straight from police manuals used in cadet training all over the country, reminding him that she knew the rules and had played the game as many or more times than he had.

He rankled. “Of course, Counselor.” Sarcasm dripped off each word.

She held the smile.

He flicked on the recorder, took out the standard Miranda card all cops carried, and started reading it out loud. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be held against you…”

Halfway through the reading, she made eye contact with him and held it hard.

As if challenged to a duel, Kolker quit reading, slipped the card back into his wallet, and continued reciting Miranda by heart.

They squared off and the questioning began.

“So Hailey, how long had you treated Melissa and Hayden…and was it purely professional?” He asked it suddenly, with a smile.

Interesting. Was he switching to the good cop routine? Did he think she was crazy? That maybe she’d forgotten all the crap he’d put her through at the hospital?

She hadn’t.

He went on. “And when I was in your office, I noticed some papers on your desk. They were in plain view, I couldn’t help but see them. They’re about murder victims, stabbing victims to be exact…written by someone who gets a thrill out of it.”

“Well, Kolker, sorry I waited for you to get all set up with the recorder here and get all the way through Miranda, but maybe I shouldn’t talk without a lawyer.” She knew she could bring it all to a screeching halt by demanding a lawyer
now.
But the truth was, the lawyer might not show until the morning, and the overnight delay would give the cops enough time to trump up probable cause to rifle through her home and office—that is if they hadn’t already. Plus, it always looks bad to lawyer up when you claim you’re innocent. Like you have something to hide…which most suspects did.

He looked confused.

Encouraged by the reaction, she went on, “Frankly, I’m concerned about the way this investigation is being handled. You questioned me at the hospital before you read me my rights, and they had me on meds, meaning everything we discussed in my hospital room and office would be fruit of the poisonous tree. Much less a search. It’ll be suppressed in court, of course. And it’s not just your word against mine. Remember my colleague, Dana? She was present the whole time and will swear under oath that no rights were read before you questioned me.”

A scarlet pattern began to creep up his neck, spidering out of his shirt to blotch his face.

She pressed on. “Kolker, you are familiar with the fruit of the poisonous tree, aren’t you? You know, any evidence that flows from illegal beginnings is no good. I mean, they do run you guys through a little Crim Pro class here before they dump you out on the street…don’t they?”

Kolker might be screwed legally and know it, but that didn’t stop him from continuing the interview while he still had her on his turf, still banged up, and still minus a defense lawyer.

“Good try, Dean, but the evidence isn’t based
only
on what you said to me. The facts surrounding the deaths of Melissa Everett and
Hayden Krasinski point directly to you. You’re the common link, Hailey, between two dead bodies. Not only that…there’s the forensics I mentioned. Yep, you’re locked in pretty tight on this one. And remember those eleven decomposed hookers, back home, Hailey? The last case you ever tried? Remember you were the big hero back then? Same exact MO.

“Four-pronged stab wounds, Hailey. Both Melissa and Hayden. You stabbed first, then posed the strangulation once they were down. Yeah, I checked it out, Dean. Lots of people down there say the case drove you kind of crazy…said I should have seen you in court. I hear you tried the case like you were possessed.”

Hailey remained carefully expressionless, but Kolker knew he hit a raw nerve.

The memories of the eleven dead women in Atlanta rose up in her mind’s eye, and she thought of her own clients, Hayden and Melissa, dying the same death. She could feel the sweat on the back of her neck making her hair wet underneath, but the rest of the loose blonde hair covered it.

She had to make it out of this stifling hole. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to work the case on the outside to build a defense and figure out who was responsible. Surely something Melissa or Hayden had said over all those months would give her a clue that the two murders were somehow linked.

“Female victims, right?” Kolker said. “All in their twenties, staged manual strangulation, four-pronged stab wound from a gourmet poultry knife, wallet and driver’s license intact, partially clothed, always with dirt and mud smeared on their faces, and of course, the fancy baker’s twine on every victim. It’s sick. What, you want to swoop in and be a hero again? Wanna talk about it, Hailey?”

His eyes bored straight into her as he struck a match on the bottom of his shoe and lit a cigarette.

“You could do it, all right. You could pull it off. We know you work out. We know you work out every night, running, weights, the whole thing. You’re strong. With the element of surprise on your side…not to mention the element of trust you had with your
patients…listening to all their problems day in, day out. Picking out just the right ones…the weakest ones. Probably had ’em doped up on Prozac, lithium, sedatives, all arranged by you…. Oh, yeah, you could do it…no doubt about it. Did you sock them in the head with something first, Hailey, just to stun them before you gave it to them with the poultry knife? And those journal entries of yours about stabbings…
twisted
!”

Hailey reached down deep. She was a lawyer…. He wasn’t. So hit where he was soft…legalities of the arrest.

“Poultry-lifter, Kolker, not poultry knife. And, nice job…but you know I’m right about the interview being suppressed as poisonous fruit. You screwed up, Kolker. Now it’ll all be thrown out of court, and you know it. But forget about that for today. You’ve got
plenty
of time ahead to worry about your case getting thrown out. There’s something else even
more
rudimentary.”

Sitting there, she discovered for the first time that Kolker had a tic…in his right eye. It was twitching now, and she knew she had done it. In the space of five short minutes alone in the conference room together…he was
pissed.

Kolker snapped off the recorder.

She kept on. “It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure this out, but it seems to me the first thing you should do in a
murder
investigation, much less a
double-murder
investigation, is establish times of death. Of course, that’s after determining cause of death, I assume
at least that’s
been done.”

She paused, desperately wanting a glass of water. The verbal sparring was wearing her down and her mouth was dry.

“But hold on a minute, Lieutenant…didn’t somebody mention there was a crack on the head? Or have you even had the morgue check for head abrasion under the hair? So is it strangulation, stabbing, or blow to the head? Better get that straight before you start comparing MOs from other unrelated cases, no matter how much you want to nail me for this.”

Kolker’s face twisted. She had obviously hit upon something with the possibility of blows to the head as the actual causes of
death. Plus, in the Atlanta murders, strangulation
and
stabbing were causes of death, each lethal enough to cause the death in and of itself. Here, from what she was hearing, one of the wounds was postmortem.

The strangulations here could actually have been staged postmortem, in some sick game. The killer could have posed the bodies as if they’d died by strangulation, or even have strangled them after they were dead, just for the thrill of it.

And then there were the unmistakable puncture wounds to the back….

Her head was spinning. If a blow to the head was the true cause of death, it would only be worse for Hailey, since a crack to the head with a blunt object would take much less upper-body strength than manual strangulation. The same for stabbing.

What was the true cause of death? She’d bet he wasn’t even sure yet….

It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was throwing a wrench in Kolker’s preconceived theory. That was the only prize for Hailey right now…keeping him off balance. And the times of death…there was a weakness here. She sensed it.

“But back to the time of death,” she said, trying her best to wheedle information out of him so she’d have something to go on in her own defense. “I mean, that
is
step one, wouldn’t you say? Time of death?”

“For your information, we have officially set the time of death for Hayden Krasinski at eight thirty p.m. Melissa Everett died at nine fifteen p.m. the preceding Wednesday. Nice touch playing dumb, Dean, as if you didn’t already know. So while we’re on that topic—”

She cut in coolly. “I’ll continue the interview as long as you keep the recorder going. The trial judge might not like it when she finds out you turned it off.”

The twitch in his right eye went crazy, and Kolker punched the recorder’s red “On” button again.

They both knew it was highly inappropriate to tape only portions of a police interview. If the case made it to a courtroom, such
a practice would lead to successful motions to suppress the entire discussion, thrown out on claims police had edited or tampered with the defendant’s statement.

Score two for Hailey.

Sweat appeared on Kolker’s upper lip, and his collar showed dark, damp areas where it met the skin of his neck.

“Where were you at nine fifteen last Wednesday night, Ms. Dean?” he asked crisply. “Or do you need a lawyer to dream up an alibi for you?”

Wednesday…nine fifteen…Where
was
she?

Where
was
she on that night, for God’s sake?

Her mind stretched to the limit, but she couldn’t remember.

Then it hit. She leaned forward from the waist, as if she was making sure the recorder picked it up, heavy on the drama for the benefit of the peanut gallery watching from behind the two-way mirror.

“Get this, Kolker. I don’t need a defense lawyer to protect me from you because I don’t need protection. I don’t need a defense lawyer at trial because there will be no trial. And I certainly don’t need a defense lawyer to dream up an alibi…because I know exactly where I was. Check it out. I was at the New York Sports Club on Third Avenue at Fortieth Street. I showed my club ID, the computer read it and logged it. There should be a computer record to verify it.”

“Nice try, but I checked you out…. I know your drill. You’re just like clockwork…always the same thing, every night of your lonely little life. When it’s nice, you run the East River, when it’s not, you run the treadmill and lift weights at the gym. Out running alone doesn’t amount to an alibi. And for all I know you could have left that night right after you signed in, just to create an alibi. Would have been a decent story, too. But sorry, no good, Counselor.”

Damn…he had done his homework. Who the hell had told him her workout schedule?

Then the truth hit. Who else could it be but Dana?

Hailey could just see her, drinking in every drop of attention Kolker or any half-decent-looking man was willing to feed her. Dana could talk forever and apparently had.

But it wasn’t over
yet
.

“Well,
normally
, that would be correct. If you did your homework instead of listening to office gossip, you’d already know Wednesday night was a little different. Change up in the routine.” She paused for effect, just long enough to get him nervous.

Leaning back into the tape recorder, she went on. “Wednesday night, when I signed in at the Sports Club the weather was bad. Too cold for me, anyway. Check it out, Kolker…call the Weather Channel. And as for the treadmill, that particular night management was redoing the treadmill room to install individual televisions on each machine. I couldn’t use the treadmill, so I signed into an aerobics class—probably two dozen witnesses, maybe more. I got stuck in the very front row and I didn’t know the steps, plus my ribs ached, so I’m sure they’ll all remember me.”

Kolker looked as if he had taken a punch to the gut. If she was telling the truth, and her steady gaze straight into his eyes suggested she was, his “airtight” case against her was falling apart in front of his eyes.

“It was a funk-aerobics class…and it went from eight thirty until ten o’clock that night. Then I took a shower. And, Kolker, I walked out of the building that night with the instructor. I was there when she locked the glass doors in the front of the club. Check the security camera in the gym lobby. You’ll see me, but you’d better hurry. In case you didn’t know, banks, convenience stores, ATM machines…those cameras tape over every seven to eleven days
at best
.”