Murder in the Courthouse

by Nancy Grace

  “Badgering!” The prosecutor finally stood up and yelled out his objection. “He’s badgering the state’s witnesses and he’s been doing it all morning!”

  “Well, counsel for the state didn’t object until now,” DelVecchio responded in his most smarmy tone. He gave a look like he had no idea he’d done anything wrong. And actually, he was right. The lead prosecutor hadn’t objected until now.

  “He’s right, counsel. This is your first objection. I can’t rule if you don’t object. But I will rule now and sustain the objection. You’re badgering. Repeat, objection sustained,” Judge Alverson repeated his ruling from the bench, looking sternly at DelVecchio, who didn’t appear the least bit bothered.

  At the judge’s stern remonstration, the courtroom quieted back down, the next direct exam ended, and DelVecchio launched what promised to be a scathing cross-exam of Rosario Delgado, the lady Julie Love Adams hired to help her do heavy chores in the last month of her pregnancy. She was slight and pale, her brunette hair barely streaked at the temples with gray, her dark eyes underscored by faint purple shadows.

  Delgado began again, describing the moment Todd Adams got the call from Julie’s mom that she hadn’t seen or heard from Julie since they’d gone shopping the day before. Julie’s mom had called Todd Adams while the cleaning lady was there in the kitchen.

  The poor lady looked absolutely petrified on the stand. DelVecchio looked at her like a hawk examining a mouse cowering under a bush far below him.

  “So, ma’am,” DelVecchio paused for dramatic effect, “were you lying the first time when you said Todd Adams did not shed a tear or seem upset when he learned Julie Love was missing or the second time when you said you didn’t know for sure? Which was the lie?”

  “Badgering! Objection! He’s doing it again!” His face red, the prosecutor leaped from his seat. Finally, after two weeks of timidity, he’d woken up and started objecting.

  Once again, murmurs spread across the courtroom. All the local news networks had been having a field day and the story had gone national, exploding ratings through the roof over Adams’s demeanor.

  It was no secret. It had been on every TV screen in America. Todd Adams tried, but he never cried. He was spotted shopping at a strip mall with his high school girlfriend almost immediately after Julie went missing, he didn’t speak at Julie’s memorial, and he was caught talking about Julie Love in the past tense within seventy-two hours after she disappeared. That was long before her body washed up on Tybee Island, a fact that threw TV pundits into overdrive.

  “It’s behavioral evidence. It’s not hard evidence, direct evidence like an eyewitness or DNA, it’s more circumstantial. The law says it carries the same weight as direct, but I always thought it was really stronger. It gives the jury clues, so to speak,” said Hailey.

  “Hmm.” Finch loathed the flamboyant defense lawyer and all his drama. “I don’t care what you call it, I still don’t like the way DelVecchio treats the witnesses. I hope the jury feels the same way.”

  Finch had his arms crossed, staring at the back of Todd Adams’s head. But in the jury box, none of them looked the least bit concerned for the maid. They all appeared to be watching a TV series with no connection at all.

  “Me either. And it looks like the state’s too weak to fight back. They’re really rolling over.”

  “They’re just sitting there.”

  “But just watch, Finch. DelVecchio seems to have a free rein and nobody’s stopping him. And Alverson won’t jump in to save a state’s witness if they’re not even objecting. But like I said, just watch. Give him enough rope, DelVecchio will hang himself. Or at least trip on it.”

  DelVecchio tore the state’s witness into ribbons. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The Adams’s maid, hired by Julie Love but paid for by Todd Adams’s mom and dad, was in tears. Already a tiny woman, she seemed to be shrinking smaller and smaller on the stand under DelVecchio’s brutal cross-exam.

  DelVecchio paused for effect after his last series of questions, delving into the maid and her husband’s financial woes. They lived with their four children in a two-bedroom apartment on the far end of Savannah. They’d already lost the family car, and now both she and her husband took the bus to work. Two months before they’d declared bankruptcy.

  “Irrelevant,” the prosecutor broke in feebly, not even standing when he spoke.

  “Not true, Your Honor. I have every right under the law to cross-examine on the witness’s possible pecuniary interest in the outcome of this case.” DelVecchio was ready.

  “That’s true, Mr. DelVecchio. You do have a right to cross-examine on a pecuniary interest, but are you trying to say she’s taking a bribe from the state?” The judge spoke, obviously very concerned about an allegation of bribery rearing its head in the middle of a death penalty case—a highly publicized one at that.

  “No, I was not, Your Honor. But now that you mention it . . . maybe she did!” DelVecchio couldn’t hide his glee.

  The state did nothing. They just sat there and took it. On the other side of the courtroom, DelVecchio actually seemed to be licking his lips in excitement. He reminded Hailey of a vampire about to suck his victim’s blood.

  Just then, a short man in the back of the courtroom stood up, his hat in his hands. He looked distraught. Hailey turned at the movement behind her. He had to be Rosario’s husband.

  The man wearing worn jeans and a plaid shirt tucked in, his baseball cap under his arm, was wringing his hands. He stood alone in the sea of seated onlookers, clearly wanting to speak. No one paid him any attention whatsoever, because all eyes were glued on DelVecchio.

  “Mr. DelVecchio! That’s an extremely serious allegation. Do you have any evidence to support such a claim?”

  For one brief moment DelVecchio paused and the judge interjected. “Mrs. Delgado, you were describing Mr. Adams’s reaction there in the kitchen of their home when he received the call telling him his wife, Julie Love Adams, was missing. Did you say he cried?”

  “No. He didn’t! I saw it with my own eyes. He never cried. And when I fell to my knees there on the kitchen floor, sir . . . I prayed. I looked up. His eyes were open and he had half a smile on his lips . . . just on . . . on the corners, judge. I saw him. I remember it ’til I go to my grave, God help me.”

  “Stop! You’re lying! That’s not the question I asked you. Nonresponsive! I object! Your Honor! I insist she be reprimanded!” DelVecchio started to blow and right in front of the jury.

  The little woman on the stand sat up in her seat before the judge could rule. She looked at DelVecchio. “He never cried . . . he never prayed for Miss Julie and the baby to come home . . . I don’t care what his lawyer tries to make me say! I saw him with my own eyes, as God is my witness.”

  Reporters rushed again from the courtroom to report the latest climax in court. Rosario Delgado’s husband sat back down as Judge Luther Alverson banged his gavel repeatedly, calling for order, finally sending the jury out and calling for a recess.

  “OK. I didn’t see that coming. What do you think now?” Finch turned to Hailey.

  “I think the state has to come up with more than the fact he never cried. Cause of death would help. Forensics linking Adams to the body would help. But Rosario Delgado’s a pretty good start. Hey, let’s get out of here. Want to go outside?”

  “Yeah, let’s go.” Finch stood up.

  “And no talking about the case ’til we’re clear of the courthouse. You never know who might be on the elevator with you. Could be a juror, or worse, a defense team minion.” Hailey lowered her voice and spoke sideways to Finch as they pushed through the swinging doors in the back of the courtroom.

  In fact, the elevator was packed. Hailey could only see the backs of heads. She and Finch remained silent through the lobby and past the metal detectors.

  “Hey, I’m ducking into the men’s room in the lobby. I held it the whole morning session and I gotta go! Meet you outside at the corner.” Finch threaded his wa
y toward the public bathrooms and water fountains in the far corner.

  “OK!” Hailey called after him and headed out into the sunlight and the fresh air blowing off the Savannah River.

  Before she could make it down more than a few steps from the courthouse, she was jostled sideways by three men. They seemed to come out of nowhere.

  One was short, very round in the middle, his gut straining against a thin T-shirt. His dark, greasy hair hung almost shoulder length, matching the stubble across his cheeks and chin. An LA Lakers baseball cap was jammed low over his face. Hailey noticed that in sharp contrast to his unkempt top half, he was sporting perfectly pristine Nike Air Yeezy Customs. Being a runner, Hailey had seen them before. They had to ring in at over two grand.

  The greasy one seemed to be ordering around a taller, skinny one with pale dirty blonde hair parted straight down the middle. He was attempting to grow a goatee of sorts, but the hair had sprouted in thin patches, like sprigs of grass that hadn’t quite grown together to form a lawn just yet. A camera slung around his neck, he was holding a Sony camcorder in the palm of his right hand, thumb on the ready.

  The third one, a taller white male in his forties, stepped through the other two, who slid to either side without being told. He was obviously the boss and when his face came into view, Hailey recognized him immediately.

  It was none other than Mike Walker with Snoop magazine. Hailey had dealings with him in the past over the murder of a B-list actress found shot dead in some rich guy’s pool house. Walker had the cool good looks other women seemed to love—a chiseled jaw, steely blue eyes—and was by no means an idiot. In fact, he was brilliant at his game. He was the ringmaster, the reporter every tabloid reporter wanted to be. There was no story he couldn’t crack and he apparently felt no compunction whether his target was a politician, a king, an actor, or a garbage collector. Whatever sold copy was both his prize and his prey.

  Walker’s good looks aside, Hailey had always fed him with a long-handled spoon. He covered several of her trials but became a little too involved in her investigation of a string of murders, starting with the actress in the pool house.

  Hailey did her homework on Walker and found out that he first did a stint in the air force in Japan, shooting to fame as the youngest-ever foreign correspondent for International News Service, the precursor for United Press International. He hit the headlines as an NBC foreign correspondent. After a few years, he chased down a huge paycheck as a star writer with Snoop. With Walker as a lead reporter and columnist, Snoop quickly rose to the top as the single largest circulation magazine in the country, over 17 million readers weekly.

  Hailey had landed on Snoop’s front page when she cracked the murders of a string of fading female stars a while back. True, time had passed, but Hailey remembered the moment, standing in the grocery store checkout line, when she spotted her own face emblazoned across the front of the mag. She was pictured with blood smeared down her left cheek, her arm in a sling, and a bandage on her shoulder.

  In the cover photo, Hailey was being helped by a plainclothes cop down the steps of the mammoth GNE building in New York City. Much larger color photos of dead actresses Prentiss Love, Fallon Malone, Leather Stockton, and Cassie Lee were superimposed beside the bloody shot of Hailey.

  Hailey cracked the case and nearly died in the process.

  And here he was again. Wherever this guy showed up, people dropped dead like flies. Mike Walker emerged between his compatriots with the same movie star smile, the same calm demeanor, as usual, dressed nattily and beaming, fresh as a daisy even on a blistering hot day. His hair was perfectly combed, having been clearly set in place with a light spray, and if his teeth had been any whiter, they’d sparkle.

  “Dear Hailey Dean! What an unexpected thrill! To meet you here on the courthouse steps!” Walker said it with a flourish.

  Translation? He’d been watching for days to nail down her pattern, sent his lackeys to the courtroom to spy, then stalked her to these very steps.

  “Hi, Mike. How are you?” Hailey returned the smile, holding out her hand to his already extended toward her. But instead of shaking it, he took a step backward down the courthouse steps and in a mini-bow, lowered his upper half to plant a warm kiss on her hand, grazing her knuckles and lingering a tiny bit.

  Quite the showman. And charming. Like a snake.

  Masking her surprise, it all rushed back, in an instant, to her mind’s eye. Briefly a while back, Hailey had considered him a possible suspect in the D-list murders, but not for long. She could never sort out a decent motive, but, of course, motives for murder were as varied and illogical as the sands on the beach. Did Walker somehow suspect her suspicions way back then? If he did know, he didn’t let on.

  Just then, a new mass of people churned out of the center doors of the old building. Among them, Hailey spied Tish Adams along with the rest of the Todd Adams defense team pushing through the front doors at the top of the steps.

  One of DelVecchio’s flunkies held the massive door for Tish so she could maneuver her oxygen tank over the door’s threshold. Oxygen tank and all, Tish Adams did manage, in the hustle and bustle, to shoot a distinctly disapproving scowl directly at Walker’s sidekick, now thrusting a microphone under Hailey’s nose. But in the blink of an eye, Tish Adams blended into the flock that seemed to herd itself down the steps to the sidewalk, then melting into hundreds of fleet-footed pedestrians.

  “So, Hailey. Is it safe for me to assume you’re here to crack a case? Which one is it? The mild-mannered sheriff’s deputy severed practically in half or the lovely young court clerk who dropped dead in the cafeteria? I hear it was poison?”

  Hailey tried her dead-level best to keep a pleasant expression plastered across her face and hide both surprise and irritation. But . . . how did it leak from the ME’s office . . . again?

  “Poison? Who said poison?” Hailey responded, looking genuinely alarmed. “I’m sure the courthouse cafeteria won’t like the sound of that! Better watch out, Mike Walker. You don’t want Snoop in a lawsuit for slander and defamation, do you?”

  For a split second, Walker’s eyes widened in an expression of shock, but immediately he resumed his usual affable look of complete and innocent inquiry.

  “That will never happen! We at Snoop have the utmost respect for the truth!” He feigned mock injury and quickly shifted gears. “But, seriously, Hailey, are you here to crack the case? Locals need your help? If the NYPD needed a sharpshooter, what about the Savannah PD? They’re up to their belly buttons in dead bodies? Right? Get it? Alton Turner’s belly button? It’s gone!” Walker actually started laughing, his blue eyes sparkling with merriment at his own joke, made at Turner’s expense.

  Hailey gave a small smile but refused to laugh along. Instead, she tried to continue through clusters of people down the granite steps.

  “So Hailey, who poisoned Elle Odom? A lover? A boyfriend? A jealous wife? I know you’re on the case, Hailey! Come on, don’t deny it!”

  Hailey kept walking. He was hitting way too close to home. How did he do it? Was he just guessing? Posing provocative questions to turn into a headline? She laughed it off in front of Walker and his henchmen, but a tingle crept down her neck to her spine.

  No one but her, Finch, and Billings knew. How did Mike Walker know Elle Odom’s real cause of death?

  Walker wouldn’t let up. Now he was raising his voice, calling after her to get her to turn around.

  “So Hailey, you always order the fried shrimp like your buddies Finch and Billings?”

  Hailey paused just for a moment. Had he been following her? And worse, she hadn’t spotted him. She knew better than to ask him outright because it would cause a scene, and Mike Walker would never divulge how he got information. She was certain of that.

  “Sure! Come and join us next time.” Hailey turned and called it back over her shoulder, just in time to see a camera flash in her eyes. They got a photo.

  The flash was bright, but as she stepped
away, Hailey was sure she saw the guy from the airplane, the one who hit on her, mingled in the crowd pouring out of the courthouse. What was he doing at the courthouse? She held up her hand to wave, but he turned quickly and headed the other way. Hailey got one last glimpse of his blue jeans, his one-of-a-kind boots, and the back of his head before he disappeared. She kept nudging down the steps because somewhere Finch was waiting on her.

  The crowd seemed to close in on her and at just five feet one inch, Hailey couldn’t see over the heads of all the people knotted up around the courthouse. She couldn’t shake the feeling about Walker. He always came across so innocent, so benevolent. But if that were true, how had he climbed the ranks to make it to the top of a very cutthroat industry?

  Hailey remembered the gleam in his eye when he tossed off the joke about Alton Turner being severed in half. Had it actually been merriment? Or something more sinister? Real glee over a gruesome murder and the simultaneous surge in magazine sales and clicks online?

  Hailey managed to break away and, winding through the crowd, made her way across the street. Something, she didn’t know quite what, made her turn back to find Walker in the crowd. Quickly scanning the whole area, she spotted him.

  Disturbingly, he was still standing exactly where she left him on the courthouse steps, his two henchmen behind him. Mike Walker was staring directly at Hailey, and he wasn’t smiling.

  Standing alone there at the corner, she glanced briefly through the plate-glass window of Lombardi’s, a high-end Italian restaurant catering to the courthouse’s well-heeled clients and defense attorneys who could afford it for lunch. Near the front was a larger party. Hailey immediately recognized them as the Adams defense team. They were all smiling, even laughing. At that precise moment, a waiter in a white apron walked over and displayed a bottle of wine. They were celebrating, Hailey guessed, the slam-dunk cross-exams DelVecchio just performed in court.