by Nancy Grace
Miracles do happen.
Heading back to the main entrance of Gator World, which was coincidentally a huge gaping gator mouth complete with all its teeth, crafted of vibrant green polyethylene plastic, Cecil flashed his admission ticket from earlier that morning. Now he had plenty of time to check out the Gator Museum, look around the park some more, and maybe have another gator-on-a-stick and a frozen gator treat.
Oops. Just then he remembered the brown plastic carry tote full of frozen gator meat and yes, a dozen or so small, dark brown plastic bottles of “performance enhancers” he’d left on the floor of the aisle just before he ducked out.
He hoped the redhead didn’t find them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Every time Hailey looked up at Finch, he gave her an “I can’t believe you came to court when you could have a concussion” look. He almost seemed mad at her, but she knew better. She knew he was just worried.
But seriously, other than her body being sore, she hardly felt a thing now. But the question did keep running through her mind . . . what exactly happened out there at the corner of the courthouse? She was 100 percent sure at the time she’d felt a stiff push on her shoulder. Was she wrong?
She replayed the whole thing over and over in her mind. She actually wanted to believe she was wrong. Hailey didn’t fool herself, she knew she had enemies. But she still wanted to think no one would do such a thing, actually push her in front of a skidding bus weighing in at over fifteen tons.
Rewinding the accident in her own mind came to an abrupt halt when the bailiff strode into the courtroom. He entered from a side door leading from the judge’s chambers.
“Hear ye, hear ye. Court is in session, the Honorable Luther Alverson on the bench. Please rise.”
Everyone stood up as the judge swept onto the bench, his black robe billowing out behind him. Alverson immediately took hold of his gavel and banged it sharply on a flat wooden block.
“Court’s in session. Call the next witness.”
The lead male prosecutor turned to the audience in the well and called out loudly, “The state calls Mrs. Tish Adams.”
Loud gasps rippled across the crowd of legal eagles and court watchers. All eyes turned on Tish Adams, seated with her husband on the front row directly behind her son and his fleet of defense attorneys.
She remained seated on the inner edge of the row closest to the aisle, visibly clutching the top of her oxygen tank with her left hand, her right hand pressed to her chest. Her expression was stricken.
“Objection!” DelVecchio leaped to his feet, pounding his fist on the counsel table before him.
“On what grounds, Mr. DelVecchio?” Alverson asked it calmly, again refusing to be goaded into a mistrial, much less intimidated by a showboating defense lawyer.
“Your Honor . . . she’s the defendant’s mother!”
“Mr. DelVecchio, is she of sound mind?” Alverson’s demeanor was unflappable.
“Yes, Your Honor! Of course she is!”
“Is she in any way implicated in a related criminal matter so as to allow her to refuse to take the stand and exercise her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent?”
Another loud gasp spread across the crowd at the judge’s question.
“Absolutely not! Your Honor, this poor woman has never so much as jaywalked! She is absolutely shrouded in decency, broken with grief over her son’s plight, a pillar of the Savannah community!”
“The court so notes she has never jaywalked. At least not in this jurisdiction.” Alverson was having none of it. “And is she of sound body, Mr. DelVecchio?”
“Well, Your Honor, now that you mention it . . . Mrs. Adams does suffer from a serious pulmonary . . .”
“Mr. DelVecchio!”
“. . . a lung defect, so to speak . . .” DelVecchio went on. Stupidly.
“Mr. DelVecchio! Let me remind you that while you do not originate from this jurisdiction, you remain an officer of the court and if, if Mr. DelVecchio, it appears to this court that you are obfuscating the truth regarding Mrs. Adams’s ability to take the stand, I will not hesitate to hold you in contempt and house you overnight in the Chatham County Jail. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” For once, DelVecchio was silent. For a man who was used to five-star treatment, the thought of a night in the same accommodations as his client was too much for him.
“Then I ask you again, Mr. DelVecchio, is there any reason the state may not call Mrs. Adams to the stand?”
“But Your Honor . . . she’s the defendant’s mother . . .” It was DelVecchio’s last resort, having run out of all other rounds to keep Tish Adams off the stand. “Plus . . . she’s a defense witness.”
“Mr. DelVecchio, do not trifle with this court. Witnesses are not pawns in a chess game . . . they do not belong to one side or another. If Mrs. Adams is not infirm in mind or body and has no legal reason to refuse to testify, she can and will be called to the stand.”
“We will appeal, Your Honor! For a certificate of immediate review by the state appeals court!”
“Fine, Mr. DelVecchio. You do that. But in the meantime, no more delays. This trial will proceed. Mrs. Adams, please take the stand.”
No one moved a hair.
“Now, Mrs. Adams.”
DelVecchio sat down, defeated, momentarily anyway, beside his client, Todd Adams. Adams’s eyes were trained on his mother. Tish Adams slowly rose from her seat and stood momentarily, her hands gripping the wooden rail in front of her, staring at the judge.
Stepping out into the aisle, she relocated one hand from the bench back to the top of her portable oxygen tank, the other hand enabling her to lean heavily on a metal cane. The jury watched, all eyes on Tish as she walked slowly but steadily, dragging the rolling oxygen tank along with her, toward the witness stand. Passing her son seated at the counsel table flanked by his lawyers, she imparted an all-loving look at the boy-turned-man she’d nurtured his whole life, now on trial for murder one.
Tish Adams was showing her age now. Instead of the calculating socialite she’d been at the beginning of Todd’s trial, she was now slightly bent over, walking with the use of the quad-cane, a black metallic cane with a four-point, claw-like base.
Her face was gaunt, although she’d carefully applied makeup that morning. Forget about whose party she and her family were invited to during the Savannah social season, forget the debutante ball committees and the high-society fundraisers she chaired . . . now it was all about survival . . . hers and her son’s . . . and taking the next step to the stand. The entire courtroom was hushed as every eye was trained on Tish Adams.
Each step seemed a labor. Twice on her way to the wooden steps leading up to the stand, she had to stop to inhale as deeply as she could from the clear plastic continuous-flow nasal cannula that wrapped across her face under her nose to hinge like upside-down sunglasses over her ears.
She made it up the two low wooden steps to the mini-landing where the steps turned right and upward to the raised wooden chair situated directly beside the judge’s high bench, positioning the witness between the judge and the jury during testimony. She seemed to struggle to get the oxygen tank up the two steps, although it couldn’t have weighed more than seven or eight pounds.
She slowly approached the witness chair, but then, turning to face the courtroom, a scream rose up from a woman in the jury box as Tish Adams’s eyes rolled back in her head. Crumbling before their eyes, Tish dived face forward down the low stairs in front of her, careening off the wooden rail and tumbling down onto the floor into a heap in front of the jury box.
The oxygen tank’s plastic tubing apparatus was tangled around her neck, hair, and face, the cane beside her. Todd Adams sprang up from his seat, and immediately he was tackled by bailiffs to keep him at the counsel table. But few noticed Todd Adams, focusing instead on his mom on the floor.
Was Tish Adams dead?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tish Adams lay there, complet
ely unmoving, her limbs twisted at awkward angles.
Everyone in the well was on their feet, staring right along with the jury. The bailiffs bent down on the floor with Tish, and the judge had rounded from behind his bench and knelt on the floor beside her body. EMTs appeared out of nowhere.
The bailiffs turned her over gently. Her face was pale and her mouth hung open as if unhinged at the jaws. Reaching down, one of them quickly took her pulse at the neck.
“She’s got a pulse . . . it’s steady . . . hold on . . .”
Straining while watching his lips, Hailey could just barely make out the low words of the EMT. So she was alive. A female EMT pulled out a tiny vial of smelling salts, ammonium carbonate. Waving it under Tish’s nose, she reacted immediately. Anyone would . . . Hailey knew the human body reacts aggressively to the ammonia when it irritates the lung and nostril membranes, triggering a knife-sharp inhalation reflex. Tish’s eyes fluttered open and she coughed, sputtering, gasping for air . . . but alive.
“Send out the jury, bailiff,” the judge spoke in a low voice, but firmly. Two bailiffs approached the jury and led them from the jury box into the jury deliberations room adjoining the courtroom.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I believe this is the perfect time for a coffee break in the cafeteria,” Alverson called to their backs as the jurors filed into their room. “Bailiffs, please attend to the jurors on the county expense. Thank you.” The jurors could be led out another door in the room out into a narrow hallway that opened into the main hallway outside the huge courtroom. A few glanced back at Tish Adams, still supine on the courtroom floor, being tended to by the EMTs.
As the door closed behind the jury, the judge returned to Tish. “Mrs. Adams, how do you feel?”
“Judge, I . . . I . . . I just couldn’t seem to catch my breath . . . I don’t know exactly what happened.”
“We will arrange for you to be transported immediately to the hospital . . .” Alverson went on.
“No! Please, Judge . . . no! Both my parents, both of them, Todd’s grandparents, died in the Savannah Hospital. Please . . . one of Mr. DelVecchio’s assistants can take me straight to my doctor’s office.” She looked up at him imploringly, tears filling her eyes.
Watching her, Hailey realized Tish Adams was really just a shell of herself, practically wasting away as the trial progressed over the last weeks.
“Yes, Your Honor. We can do that right now.” DelVecchio turned to two of his flunkies who looked at each other as if they’d been ordered to eat spaghetti off the bathroom floor. But they quickly masked their resentment at being ordered out of the courtroom action and approached Tish solicitously.
The EMTs helped her to her feet and untangled the oxygen tubing from her neck and hair. Thanking them weakly, Tish managed to smooth down her clothes and walk gingerly, an EMT and a defense flunky on either side of her, past Todd Adams at the defense table and slowly, slowly from the courtroom.
Just as she approached the swinging oak doors leading into the outer vestibule, she turned. “Son, don’t worry about your mother. I’ll be fine. I’ll be back here with you tomorrow, Lord help me.” Smiling at him, she mouthed a gentle kiss his way.
Adams, turned around in his seat, watched the huge doors swing shut behind her. No one in the courtroom moved an inch. There was total and complete silence.
“Court’s in recess for the day. Lawyers report to my chambers immediately.”
A loud buzz filled the courtroom as the press jumped from their seats and ran out to begin broadcasting the sudden turn of events from the courthouse steps. Print reporters followed on their heels, pulling out spiral notebooks, pencils, laptops, and iPads as they practically jogged through the swinging doors.
In a matter of moments, the courtroom was all but empty. Hailey and Finch sat stock-still then looked at each other without a word.
“Before this trial is over, another woman will end up dead . . . Adams’s own mother.” Finch finally broke his silence. “He’ll be the death of her, for sure. I just know it.”
Hailey couldn’t disagree. Her head suddenly pounded . . . a dull ache where she’d landed on the curb. She had acted as if it was just a simple fall, but now the ache was spreading across the top of her head, as if a machine was gripping her skull in a crushing vise. She inhaled quickly, and then the pain seemed to subside, followed by a dull ache.
The bus . . . she’d almost forgotten in court. But sitting there, her mind shifted back to the hot street outside, turning it over and over in her mind like a Rubik’s Cube.
Standing up, she headed out of the courtroom with Finch a few steps ahead of her. Again, she was trying to make the facts fit together in a neat pattern. But she couldn’t.
She’d been standing on the corner. She remembered the heat coming up off the pavement, mixed with gas fumes from cars stalled at the red light. A wave of people came from the other side of the street, and she remembered seeing several of them half-jogging to beat the light.
She’d been squinting back at the courthouse, scanning the front steps, looking for Finch. She hadn’t been aware, really, of any of the people standing around her, pressing in on her along with all the others waiting to cross.
And then it happened. The stiff arm pushing her forward. Then all she knew was the hot asphalt, the roaring sound of traffic, the insane screeching of the tires, and the squeal of hydraulic brakes.
Everything was swimming in gray and black when she came to, drenched with sweat with people standing over her, some kneeling around her, some trying to ask her questions. At first, their voices and their words didn’t make any sense, but then, slowly, it seemed like she settled back into her own skin and her own senses . . . like she had been out of her body and returned without knowing where she’d gone.
By now, Finch had gotten ahead of her and was all the way down the wide hall leading toward the elevator bank. She spotted him mingling with two of Billings’s detectives. “Hailey . . . you coming?” Finch called out to her.
She had to breathe . . . to think. Hailey headed straight across the hall to the ladies’ room as if she didn’t hear or see any of them.
Maybe Finch and Billings were right, after all. Not that she wanted to go to the ER because she was absolutely sure she was fine . . . but maybe she could have listened to someone else, for once, and not come back to court. Tish Adams’s testimony would have been irrelevant to Hailey’s opinion on the case anyway. Hailey could’ve just gone back to her hotel and chilled . . . put her feet up for once.
She shut the ladies’ room door behind her. She was finally alone. It was cool and quiet and dark in the smooth tiled bathroom. She could feel the pounding in her head, the ringing in her ears subsiding, at last.
It was completely quiet, finally. No lawyers, no Tish, no Todd Adams, no questions, nothing. The street . . . the sun . . . the bus.
She didn’t trip . . . she knew it. She didn’t trip at all. But she recalled glancing at the crowd crossing over on her right . . . surely she would have recognized someone . . . someone who wanted to kill her.
But she hadn’t.
A random kill in the shadow of the courthouse? Even the thought of it railed against every statistic she knew regarding the manner and assessment of homicides . . . it screamed unlikely. So then what? She tripped? No, she hadn’t. She fell? No, she didn’t. She imagined the whole thing?
Hailey paused. Had she finally reached her limit? One dead body after the next. A never-ending parade of homicides, murders, crime scenes, autopsies, ballistics, the rank, musky smell of human blood. Was the so-called “avenging angel,” as the press once called her, totally shot? Frayed? Over? Was it even possible Hailey Dean was over and didn’t even realize it?
Closing her eyes, Hailey leaned, bone-tired in mind and body, against the wall. But as quickly as she relaxed against the cool tiles, she gasped out loud, instinctively pushing off the wall as if she’d touched a hot stove. A sharp pain in her shoulder smarted.
Cur
iosity led her over toward three mirrors placed neatly above three sinks in a row. Hailey pulled her shirt down over her arm and there it was . . . a bluish-black bruise just inside the right camisole strap on the back of shoulder.
The words coursed back and forth across her brain, ping-ponging off the inside of her skull, “I was pushed . . . somebody tried to kill me . . . somebody wants me dead.”
But who? And why?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Just when Cecil thought life couldn’t get any better, it did. He took a big bite of another gator-on-a-stick dripping with ketchup. He couldn’t resist. After the morning Feeding Frenzy, he spent plenty of time in the Gator Museum boning up on gator facts, particularly the gator’s uncanny night vision, because at this very moment, he was heading over to the Croc-N-Gator Night Time Adventure.
Or so the pamphlet said.
He reported to the south end of the parking lot just as instructed and couldn’t help but notice multiple signs warning no pets followed by exclamation marks. Cecil could only imagine . . .
His train of thought was interrupted by the faint sound of music. Cecil spotted a tall, extremely pale, pimply teenage boy staring at an iPhone from which thumping, metallic music Cecil had never heard before emanated. The teen stared at the tiny screen as if it were the most fascinating and the most intriguing thing he had ever encountered. Cecil wondered briefly how whatever was on the screen could be more exciting than snapping gators.
Kids. The kid was dressed in khaki shorts that came down to mid-calf and a green polo shirt bearing the Gator World logo. Barely glancing away from his iPhone to examine Cecil’s gold-trimmed certificate, he passed off a large plastic bucket with a metal handle, a flashlight, and a mini-container of bug spray.
It was starting to get dark. The sun was just barely showing over the trees in the distance.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks. Which way?”
Still staring at his iPhone behind the card table, the kid pointed across the parking lot. Cecil spotted for the first time an arch of sorts, made of what looked to be the trunks from palm trees. Hanging from two chains in the upper center of the arch was a wooden sign with the words “Croc-N-Gator Night Time Adventure” in black letters creating a burned-looking effect.