Murder in the Courthouse

by Nancy Grace

  “Yeah, we’re all pretty torn up about it. Elle was a nice lady. Always had a smile every morning, same thing every afternoon when she left work. Never had a bad word to say about a soul.” The night sheriff looked somber.

  “Yeah. We heard she was pretty popular around the courthouse . . .” Finch egged him on and as a result, got a sharp jab to his right side as he bent over to strap his .38 back into his ankle holster.

  “Not a word . . . not a word . . .” Hailey hissed it low into his ear. She didn’t want to pass along pure conjecture about Eleanor Odom’s “popularity.” Luckily, the night sheriff didn’t catch her exchange with Fincher.

  “Elle always organized Christmas parties, the annual walk-a-thon for needy kids, Toys for Tots . . . the works.” He reminisced out loud but in a lowered voice, still looking downcast.

  “We, as a matter of fact,” Finch replied, “were in the cafeteria when she had her stroke, heart attack, whatever it was, poor lady, and we walked out without going back to where Hailey left her sweater and notes on a bench to save our seats during lunch. Mind if we go up and get them?”

  “What courtroom was it?” the sheriff asked, still sitting in his chair, magazine now folded shut in his lap.

  “Hmm. Let me see . . . what courtroom was it, Hailey?”

  “Judge Alverson’s. Luther Alverson, seventh floor.”

  “Right. The Todd Adams trial? You guys on that one?” The sheriff’s eyes sparked with interest.

  “Yep. I made the collar on Adams in Atlanta and Hailey’s here as an expert witness.”

  “For the defense? You’re a witness for the defense? You’re the lady prosecutor from Atlanta, right?”

  “Was a lady prosecutor in Atlanta. Was.”

  “Never lost a case, right? Read about you. You’re a witness for the defense now? I hear DelVecchio pays his witnesses pretty good.”

  Hailey bristled. “I’m a witness for the state. There are some things money can’t buy, officer.”

  He looked embarrassed. “Right. I shoulda known you wouldn’t turn coat. I just thought, you know, once somebody’s out of the system, they can turn all that time in the trenches around for a lot of money, right?”

  Hailey relented. “Right.” She threw him a bone, a little smile.

  “So, we’ll head up to the courtroom if that’s OK with you.” Fincher switched gears, tactfully, for once in his life.

  “Well, yeah, about that. The courtroom’s been cleared and locked. If you left anything in there, it’s in lost and found now. It’s right over there across the lobby in the clerk’s office. I’m right out here, so it’s still unlocked. I can’t leave my post; just walk through those double doors and go straight back through the cubicles. You’ll see a sign on the wall. Everything left in courtrooms or elsewhere will be in that big bin under a sign. You can’t miss it.”

  “OK.” Finch nodded his head.

  “They usually won’t let you back there without a courthouse employee, but seeing as you’re law enforcement, I guess I don’t need to escort you. Just don’t steal anything or it’ll be my hide.”

  “OK, thanks, man. We promise not to steal a thing.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff.” Hailey echoed Finch over her shoulder as they headed past austere-looking portraits of decades of past sitting Chatham County judges and across the lobby toward the central elevator bank. Veering left, they came to a set of double doors with a placard reading “Clerk’s Office” overhead.

  Fincher pushed through and Hailey followed him into a large open office area full of at least sixty cubicles in neat rows divided by carpeted footpaths. More placard signs hung down from a particleboard ceiling, dividing the open area into clerks, sheriff intake, transport, marriage licenses, and certified documents. Each section housed multiple cubicles.

  At the far end of the room, just as the night sheriff said, was a big sign reading “Lost and Found” over a huge bin. Arrows pointed down toward the bin. They headed toward it through the maze of cubes, passing row after row of work stations; each, in its own way, a thumbprint, a snapshot of the occupant’s life.

  Photos, certificates, trophies, and mini-posters adorned every cube. Most of the cubes had nameplates on them on the top corners of the partitions. It brought back memories of Hailey’s courthouse days in a rush . . . all these people, so different yet so alike, working for the justice system. Each one a cog in a big, big wheel.

  “Oh my stars, look at this, Finch. It’s Alton Turner’s cube. Look, it’s neat as a pin, just like I thought it would be.” Finch walked back to where Hailey stood, staring at Turner’s workspace, her hands lightly resting on the wheeled office chair pushed under the desktop.

  While the space was inordinately neat, several photos were thumbtacked to the dividing partitions making walls of a sort around Turner’s space. There were several shots of Turner with other sheriffs, at the shooting range, a softball team, a bowling team, too. Men and women law enforcement officers standing together, smiling at the camera. Looking closely at the smiling faces, Hailey saw the woman in the center holding a team softball trophy next to Alton Turner was none other than Eleanor Odom.

  Next to his keyboard was a tickler file of prisoners to be transported to various courtrooms, filed day by day. Beside that was a larger framed photo of Turner and his mom standing in front of the Grand Canyon. Even if Hailey hadn’t seen the oil painting in Alton’s home, anyone could see their connection. Her eyes, chin, and nose matched Alton’s exactly. In this shot, Alton had his arm around his mom’s shoulders protectively. They were smiling at the camera, squinting into the sunshine. Another was a shot of her, bust up, taken by a professional photographer that could have easily come from the church directory, like the one over Alton’s mantle.

  “Look at this. He’s across the path from Eleanor Odom.” Finch pointed right behind them. Hailey turned around to see two cubicles apparently merged into one large cube. Multiple photos of Eleanor were plastered to its walls. Her in what looked to be a glamour shot, at a Christmas party dressed in a black velvet mini with black heels and a tiny matching clutch, her hair done in a Farrah Fawcett-style’do. Roller skating with a tall, mustached guy Hailey immediately recognized as the suntanned sheriff crying in the cafeteria hallway.

  Another showed her jogging, clearly in a race of some sort, crossing the finish line with other courthouse personnel, including Deputy Marks from the cafeteria. A huge bouquet of long-stemmed pink roses stood in a clear crystal vase to the left of her keyboard, the tiny rectangular card still stuck in a tall plastic fork emerging from between delicate pink blooms. It read, “Lots of love, B.R.”

  Looking at it carefully, Hailey and Finch exchanged glances. “Guess we know who sent that. B.R. isn’t much of a secret. It’s her married judge, Bill Regard, right, Hailey?” Finch gazed back at the flowers.

  “Yep.” Hailey acknowledged his find. “I bet dating a married man is a lonely life. A life you fill up with bowling and softball.”

  “And toy drives,” Finch added.

  “Yep, toy drives.”

  They stood a moment looking at the display. “Hey look, Hailey. Her email’s still up.”

  “Finch, get out of her business! The woman’s dead.” But even as she spoke, Hailey craned over to see the list of emails up on the screen.

  “Check out all these emails from Alton Turner!” Finch exclaimed.

  “That doesn’t mean anything, they worked together, practically on top of each other.” As she said the words, she spotted what Fincher meant. At least twenty to thirty emails, one after the next, from Turner. They had been opened.

  “But Turner’s been dead for two days now. She was just reading them?”

  “Well,” Hailey began, “. . . I think she was re-reading them. Look.” Hailey clicked open one of the emails. “See, she opened this one yesterday, Monday, when she got to work. Look at the date, he sent these the morning before he died.”

  “So she was re-reading them just before she went up to the c
afeteria then. What do they say?”

  “Finch, I don’t think we should read her . . .”

  “OK. In this one, he’s just saying they should get a sandwich for lunch. That’s innocent enough. But look, now he’s telling her she’s making a bad decision. It’s got to be about the judge. And look, Hailey, here he is asking her if she wants to see a movie. I think he had a crush on her.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t?” Hailey countered. “She’s young, she’s beautiful, she jogs, plays softball . . .”

  “She runs the toy drive and dates a married judge plus one court reporter and three sheriffs that we know of . . .”

  “You made your point! I get it! I’m going to stop spying on a dead woman and get my sweater and bag, I hope.” Hailey turned and headed down the row toward the lost and found bin and looked in.

  It was surprisingly full of items left behind throughout the courthouse . . . jackets; a backpack; a little black beaded shoulder bag just big enough for a few items; several lined notepads covered in scribbled writing, probably lawyers’ notes; a kid’s green LeapFrog computer; and a brown leather briefcase.

  And sure enough, there it was, right on top of the pile of forgotten belongings. Hailey’s sweater was neatly folded and placed on her old canvas bag.

  “See? Somebody turned it in. There are still good people in this world.” Hailey called over her shoulder as she bent over to get her things.

  “Finch! Get out of her email!” He was still standing at Elle’s space when Hailey turned around.

  “I’m not in her email anymore! I’m at another cubicle looking at alligators!”

  “What? Did you just say you’re looking at alligators?”

  “Yep. Alligators. I’m at the cubicle next to hers. Look at this inmate transport guy’s space! All these postcards and pictures of all sorts of wild animals. And here’s an old one of Steve Irwin. And here’s one of that other wild animal guy . . . Jack Hanna.”

  Hailey paused briefly, looking at all the exotic animals and photo safari shots. By the huge stack of inmate transport sheets next to his computer screen, he clearly was not afraid of handling dangerous animals.

  “Can we go get dinner now?” Hailey asked in mock desperation. “As much as I love spying on county clerks and transport officers, I’m starved.”

  “OK, Hailey girl. Let’s go get pizza.”

  “Again, Fincher. I never agreed to another pizza night. What about a salad bar? Have you ever even heard of that? They’re awesome . . . lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cheese . . . you know . . . healthy?”

  The two headed back through the double doors and into the cavernous courthouse lobby. Nodding at the night sheriff, Hailey held up her canvas bag and sweater, showing him she found her things. They pushed through the side door out onto the courthouse steps and into fresh air, away from the ghosts of the dead and their now-empty cubicles full of memories. The sky over them just barely hinted at nighttime approaching.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dinner turned out to be a compromise. Not pizza, not a salad bar . . . but Mexican. Fincher chowed down on a huge basket of chips and salsa, two cheesy beef burritos, and a bowl that, according to Hailey, looked like a vat of cheese sauce. It was titled on the menu as Queso Divertido, or cheesy fun. Hailey went with the Veggie Lover’s Delight with avocado.

  After, Hailey drove her rental car straight back to the hotel where the state was putting her up. It wasn’t luxurious by any means, but it had a double window that looked past Savannah’s famed River Street and out onto the side bend of the Savannah River.

  By night, the water was black and silver ripples mirrored the lights of River Street along its edges. Huge ships, barges, and yachts floated past under the stars. There were container ships from faraway ports gliding by in the dark with writing on their sides foreign to Hailey.

  After a hot bath, toothpaste, and makeup remover, Hailey sat in the dark on the edge of the king bed situated against the center of the bedroom wall. Hotel drapes still drawn open, she sat motionless, thinking, legs drawn up under her, watching the dark water and the watercraft passing by on the swelling waters of the Intracoastal Waterway that could take a ship all the way up the Eastern Seaboard.

  Rowdy voices drifting up from far below her window on the eleventh floor of the River Street Hyatt broke her train of thought. Restless, Hailey paced past the walnut cabinet housing a flat-screen TV. Reaching into her canvas bag, she pulled out her Todd Adams trial notes and her iPad resting in its eggshell-blue case.

  Turning on the iPad, she started by poring over searches of Todd Adams, Julie Love, their wedding, and the trial. She rarely found an entry she hadn’t already read.

  Staring at the screen’s effervescent glow, just for the heck of it, she plugged in the name Chase Billings. Wow, Hailey had no idea about his history. “Sharpshooter of the Year” eight years in a row, “Rookie of the Year,” and number one in his class at the police academy. He received the Sheriff’s Medal of Valor for storming into an ongoing bank robbery in full SWAT gear, taking down the three thugs inside the bank, and, before it was all done, shooting out the tires of the getaway car. Then there was the National Sheriff’s Star.

  Three years before that, he was awarded the Medal for Heroism for chasing down a white van driven by a child predator during a high-speed chase. Billings managed somehow to get the nine-year-old little girl out unharmed and take down the perp. Just to top it all off, he graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

  Hailey cleared the screen. Billings never once let on.

  She clicked off Chase Billings and tapped in the words “Eleanor Odom” and “Chatham County.” Dozens of hits immediately presented themselves.

  Just as the night deputy said, there she was . . . Committee Chairman of Toys for Tots for the past four years running, walk-a-thons, charity runs, you name it, Eleanor Odom did it. The fourth or fifth entry down had a link to Eleanor Odom’s Facebook page. Clicking on the link, a virtual encyclopedia of her life revealed itself. Literally hundreds of photos of Eleanor with friends, at dinner, and with pets all came into view on the screen glowing in the dark of Hailey’s hotel room.

  Posts about jogging, the courthouse, cases, trials, fundraisers . . . it was all there. Her life was an open book. Or was it?

  Hailey noticed that while there were plenty of sheriffs peppered throughout the photos, there wasn’t a single one of Judge Bill Regard. Hailey looked him up.

  The judge’s online profile revealed a distinguished-looking guy in his mid-to-late thirties, handsome with dark hair brushed straight back from his face and deep brown eyes that practically crackled with intelligence, even in a photo. He was dressed in his long black judicial robes and seated in front of a wall containing shelves of law books Hailey immediately recognized as the OCGA, the Official Code of Georgia, Annotated.

  Other photos showed Regard getting sworn in, his wife, a petite brunette with her hair in a short bob dressed startlingly similar to Jackie Onassis, and their three children. Two boys and a girl stood beside their mother. All three resembled Bill Regard.

  Hailey clicked back to Eleanor’s Facebook page to make sure not a single picture of Bill Regard appeared. Hailey wondered if Deputy Marks was right. Had she secretly been in love with Regard? And what must that be like? For Regard to mourn in complete secrecy?

  The memory of the years of mourning Will’s death flooded over her . . . the weeks of no appetite whatsoever . . . the very smell of food would make her nauseated. Crying in the shower, the pain of hearing songs on the radio or even the low buzz of voices on TV. Not being able to even speak Will’s name—that would have been unbearable. If Marks was in fact right, that’s what Judge Regard was going through at this very moment.

  Eleanor Odom had lots and lots of “friends.” Hailey started scrolling down more than 400 so-called Facebook friends, recognizing several court personnel. And there, of course, was Alton Turner, decked out in full Chatham County Sheriff
regalia.

  She had lots and lots of friends . . . but were they really friends? Did any of them ever tell her, as a friend, to stop the courthouse romance with a married man? A judge at that? In the public eye? Hailey thought back to the thin, pale wife, the Jackie O look-alike. Did Mrs. Bill Regard know her husband was cheating? Was that what she was thinking about as she held the Bible for her husband to take his oath as judge?

  Hailey minimized Eleanor’s Facebook screen and went to Google. Dozens of articles popped up before she’d even finished typing the words “Judge Bill Regard Chatham County.” Regard had been a crackerjack trial lawyer before he took the bench, a former death-penalty prosecutor for the state’s attorney general’s office.

  That, in itself, was a rare achievement. Only the best and the brightest were typically entrusted to handle death-penalty cases and the AG was very selective when it came to their trial lawyers. He appeared to be a Democratic Party darling and was rumored to be up for the next available spot on the Georgia Supreme Court . . . or more. Some articles suggested that Regard was considering a run at the Georgia governor’s mansion.

  Wow. The governor’s mansion. It was absolutely gorgeous—a 24,000-square-foot red brick Greek revival palace rising at the crest of a gently sloping hill. The entire eighteen acres of lawn was absolute perfection, adorned by abundantly blooming pink, purple, and white azalea bushes, dogwoods, cherry trees, and plenty of tall pine trees that never seemed to drop a single pinecone on the green carpet below.

  The interior was gorgeous but comfortable looking. Ostentatious would never do, but the mansion was the ultimate in classical, muted design, not over the top, but clearly steeped in good taste and expert interior design. It was just a few miles northwest of downtown Atlanta. Hailey had been there several times for law enforcement galas.

  Hailey sat on her hotel bed, staring at her iPad. If Bill Regard ever hoped to move himself and his family into that mansion someday, it could never come to light that he had an affair with a calendar clerk behind his wife’s back.