‘Eleventh Victim’ a novel debut for Nancy Grace

New York Times best-selling author Nancy Grace draws from her own life and career in her debut novel, “The Eleventh Victim,” the first book in a new thriller series. The following is an excerpt.

Chapter 1: Atlanta, Georgia
The piercing eruption of a telephone startled Special Prosecutor Hailey Dean, still at her desk late on a Friday night preparing for a Monday-morning trial.

It was probably Fincher, her longtime investigator and sometime bodyguard. Together, they worked felony investigations from inner-city housing projects to this latest, which involved one of North Atlanta’s elite country clubs.

“District Attorney’s Office, Hailey Dean speaking,” she said absently into the receiver.

The silence that greeted Hailey on the other end of the telephone line caught her attention.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

Realizing what was likely coming next, Hailey quickly reached for a notepad.

“Hello?” she repeated and waited for the recorded announcement that the call was from the prison. After she accepted the call, which she always did, an inmate would come on the line to offer information in exchange for a full dismissal of his own charges or, at the least, a lighter sentence or a transfer to a better facility.

As if a dismissal would ever happen. No way would Hailey go to hell to get witnesses to put a devil in jail ... she said so up front to each and every snitch. Still, she’d talk, listening carefully, turning their tips into evidence in court — if she believed them. Then it would become necessary, like it or not, to cut some kind of deal.

She had never broken a deal, and so far, her snitches in turn had displayed a certain degree of decency. Not one had ever backed down on the stand, even when things got tense in the courtroom or behind jailhouse bars, where her informants lived day to day with the very defendants against whom they were testifying.

In fact, Hailey often trusted her rats more than her fellow attorneys, whom she routinely fed with a long-handled spoon, keeping them safely at arm’s length.

“Hello,” she repeated into the phone, wondering if the call got dropped by the prison switchboard. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Silence.

Just as she reached to hang up, she heard a faint, “Miss Hailey?”

An older, Southern woman was on the other end of the line, she realized — a woman who still functioned under the rules left over from the fifties that demanded a respectful “Miss.”

“Yes, hello?”

Still nothing.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” she asked, trying not to sound impatient, but she had a lot of work to do before she got out of here. “The DA’s office is closed right now ...”

“Excuse me for calling so late. This is Mrs. Leola Williams.” Williams ... Leola Williams ...

Hailey’s mind whirred like a computer trying to place the name.

“LaSondra was my first baby girl.”

Ah. Connection.

Leola Williams as in LaSondra Williams.

Otherwise known as Victim Eleven.

Hailey instinctively started taking notes on the pad, neatly writing “V Eleven” across the top of the page and underlining it. Eleven women across Atlanta, all in their twenties, had been raped, sodomized, and strangled. As the coup de grâce, each woman was stabbed with a deadly, signature four-prong weapon, piercing the lower back, moving upward through the lungs.

More in books Susie Essman offers up hilarious health advice  ‘K2’: Anatomy of a deadly climbing expedition Slideshow: Children of war

LaSondra Williams was the final woman they knew of to die at the hands of a ruthless serial killer who evaded the Atlanta Homicide Division for well over a year, striking with no real pattern, but always the same MO. It had taken a long time for cops to even connect victims One through Seven, mainly because the victims were prostitutes.

Most of the city’s residents dismissed the murders as the price streetwalkers paid to make a living. Even as the body count rose, there was little pressure on police to stop the killing and solve the murders.

The corpses of young women slowly piled up, necks mangled and torsos ripped, left in open fields behind strip bars, cocktail lounges, crack holes, and flop houses.

MORE FROM TODAY BOOKS: FICTION

10 years later, ‘Nanny Returns’ to new problems

10 years later, ‘Nanny Returns’ to new problems Paranormal romance plays in ‘The Seven Rays’ ‘Viagra Diaries’ explores dating among 60+ set Al Roker’s new mystery novel asks, who did it? Alex Cross is back in Patterson’s latest thriller Lupica’s latest book: ‘Million-Dollar Throw’ Grisham back in ‘Ford County’ for short stories Richard Belzer: ‘I Am Not a Psychic!’ Author Adriana Trigiani forays into teen fiction ‘206 Bones’: A captivating new crime novel   Add Today Books: Fiction headlines to your news reader: