Murder in the Courthouse (23 page)

“
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.

Hailey suddenly had a flashback to many years before, to a scene in a book she'd read in junior high. It was her older sister's book, required reading for eleventh grade. Always starved for something new to read, Hailey filched it virtually the very moment her sister finished and laid it down. It was
Animal Farm
by George Orwell.

In Hailey's mind, DelVecchio's group looked exactly like Orwell's pigs, feasting and plotting against the other animals. Lips slick with grease from the food and horribly obese from their gluttony, the pigs were all seated around a table with the finest food and drink while Boxer and the other animals ate grain from their troughs.

It was stifling hot here on the corner. The tall buildings blocked the cooling breeze off the river. On the corner of the busy intersection in front of the courthouse, with her hand shielding her eyes, Hailey scanned the streets for Finch. Where had he gotten off to?

Hailey stood at the edge of the curb, holding her right hand over her eyes to somewhat block the bright sun overhead. Heat was rising up off the street in waves along with fumes and emissions from the heavy downtown traffic. The light turned green and the cars and trucks gunned their engines, impatient. At precisely that moment, it happened.

A hand, or an arm—maybe an elbow or shoulder—it all happened so fast she wasn't sure which, but someone, or something, pushed her hard from behind. Hailey tumbled forward.

She was off kilter with one hand over her eyes and the other clutching her notebook, iPad, and papers to her chest. She was vaguely aware of them all flying out of her arms and into the air in front of her. For a split second they seemed to hang suspended in the air, and she felt frozen for just that moment . . . in midair.

Then, she saw them crash down onto the street. Somewhere in her mind, Hailey heard the high-pitched screech of brakes, but it was too late. Her body catapulted onto the asphalt in the middle of oncoming traffic. Trying desperately to block her fall, she couldn't quite pull it off.

A swell of oncoming traffic surrounded her, rushing forward like a huge, honking robotic mechanical monster. Landing hard on both bare knees, her palms stung on hot, filthy pavement that somehow, in the wavy heat, looked like it was crawling, slithering underneath the cars and trucks.

For a split second, Hailey looked up just long enough to see the front grill of a huge lime green and white Chatham Area Transit bus bearing down onto her.

Her scream was drowned out by the CAT bus engine, the traffic, the crowd. There was nothing but the motor shrieking and the heat as the massive body of the bus careened sideways in traffic, directly toward Hailey and then, in a screeching, skidding burst, collided.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“O
K. Great seeing you, Finch! See you back at the crime lab, man!”

“Sure thing, Kelly. Great to see you, too.” Fincher had been waylaid outside the men's room by the head of the Georgia Crime Lab Ballistics Division, Kelly Piper.

Usually a man of very few words unless he was on the witness stand, Piper had chewed Finch's ear off about the intricacies involved in the gangland murder case that brought him all the way from his digs at the crime lab in Atlanta to Savannah that morning.

Finch scanned the front steps. A full hour had passed. No Hailey. He headed back in the courthouse lobby. Had she come back for him? He checked outside the bathrooms and again, no sign of her.

Maybe she left something in the courtroom again. Finch headed up the elevator back to the Adams trial. Entering the courtroom, he saw testimony had resumed. He was sure Hailey would be back any minute. Over her cold, dead body would Hailey Dean ever miss a word of testimony.

The defense had taken over. Again. The judge looked peeved and the state's attorneys were hunched forward over their notes at their counsel table.

The prosecutors were no match for a flamboyant performer like DelVecchio. He was prancing back and forth in front of the judge's bench like a Lipizzaner stallion, whose jumps and maneuvers displayed the highest classical dressage. He was having a field day.

Fincher felt sick. Where was Hailey? She couldn't miss this. He glanced back over heads and shoulders toward the swinging doors at the back of the courtroom. DelVecchio's voice cracked like a whip. Finch jerked his attention back to the front of the room.

“So let me understand more clearly, Dr. Richards. An errant fishing line, plastic, nylon, or otherwise. Could that be responsible for Julie Love's strangulation? Is it
possible
?”

“You mean if a nine-months pregnant mom was out swimming in the choppy waters of the Savannah River and she encountered a fishing line? Are you serious?”

Dr. Richards was clearly not in agreement with DelVecchio's theory as to how Julie had mysteriously obtained ligature marks around her neck. The defense went livid, sputtering and red in the face. He was clearly not used to a government employee, even a medical doctor, fighting back.

“Your Honor, again, I must cut off the witness and ask that you direct Dr. Richards to answer only the question I ask him and not elaborate any further. No musings. I am the lawyer and he is on cross-examination! I have a right under the Constitution for a thorough and sifting cross-examination in order to protect the rights of my client, Mr. Adams. And in so doing . . .”

“Mr. DelVecchio, we've all read the Constitution. That's enough, counsel. Save the speeches. Sustained.” The Honorable Judge Luther Alverson, wearing an extremely pained expression, turned toward the Chatham County Medical Examiner, now visibly sweating along his brow and mustache line.

“Dr. Richards,” Alverson began wearily, “you have testified in my courtroom many, many times. Defense counsel DelVecchio is correct as a matter of a black-and-white reading of the law. I now direct you to answer his question.”

“But, Judge Alverson, I don't want to be responsible for misleading this jury . . .” The medical examiner looked distraught.

“I understand, Doctor. But under the law you may not explain or elaborate upon cross-examination. The jury will decide the truth of the matter. Proceed, counsel.”

DelVecchio rubbed his hands together in delight. Fincher imagined a filthy fly poised over a laden dinner table.

“Again, for the record, Dr. Richards.” DelVecchio turned with a flourish toward the jury and, leaning over the jury rail, looking directly at the jurors, he repeated his earlier-thwarted grand finale.

“Dr. Richards, how long have you been the chief medical examiner here in Chatham County?”

“Twenty-two years,” Richards answered in a flat tone, averting his gaze completely away from DelVecchio. He looked like a POW held hostage by DelVecchio, who in return flashed his bejeweled fingers in a dramatic backward pointing motion at the doctor, never once breaking eye contact with the jurors, who sat transfixed by the debacle.

“And isn't it true, Dr. Richards, that it is
possible
that poor Julie Love Adams could have sustained ligature strangulation markings around her neck from a wayward fishing line as her body floated in the Savannah River? Isn't it possible?”

“It's possible,” Richards answered, staring numbly. He obviously still had a little fight left in him though, as he began to add, “But practically imposs . . .”

“
Objection!
Unresponsive!” DelVecchio bellowed it so as to drown out the doctor. “Let the record reflect Dr. Richards responded
it is possible
the ligature strangulation markings around Julie Love Adams's neck came from a dislodged fishing line, netting, or otherwise!”