Murder in the Courthouse. Nancy Grace
hit a sore spot and felt bad about it. “You hungry?” Switching subjects, Fincher hoisted up her bag over his shoulder with one smooth pull.
“Who’s paying?” Hailey flashed a smile.
“The county, baby girl! I got a per diem! Fifty bucks a day!”
“Fifty dollars? Let’s go crazy! Pizza or cafeteria?” On county salaries, those two had always been their favorites.
“Pizza. We can even splurge and get a salad.”
“Man, Fincher, you sure know how to live!”
The two headed out, side by side, through the automatic door at the front of the Savannah airport and toward the parking deck.
“You’re driving the county Crown Vic, I hope?”
“You know it. Nothing like a county-issue Crown Victoria.”
“Hey, they’re not much on style, but they’ve got good air conditioners. Don’t knock it.”
“I’d never knock the Crown Vic! We solved a lot of cases in that old brown Crown Victoria.”
“Tell it, Fincher. We sure did.”
“We sure did, Hailey.”
With their years together hanging between them in the air, they crossed the asphalt lanes in front of passenger pickup, across a concrete island loaded with flowers, and on toward the decks.
Fincher was carrying his police radio in one hand, and the low and monotonous staccato of numbers being called out by police dispatch was the only sound piercing the hot afternoon air. But the shadows were already lengthening; the Savannah sun was just now tipping down toward the horizon. It would be dark soon.
“Mom, I swear, I didn’t do it. I didn’t murder her. It wasn’t like that at all. I told you what . . .”
“Hush. Shhhhh.” She looked around her sharply. “I told you to never mention that . . . that incident again . . . never.”
Looking deep into her son’s eyes, she held his hand across the table. The trial was set to start tomorrow morning.
Normally, inmates were strictly disallowed to be alone with anyone other than their lawyers, but in this case, the rules had somehow been bent a little. Todd Adams was the most high-profile defendant ever housed at the old Chatham County Jail. So when Adams’s mother showed up along with his lawyer, who kept a deep tan year-round and had a penchant for wearing sunglasses indoors and out, the jailhouse guards always gave her a few minutes alone with her son . . . without lawyers hovering around and talking incessantly as lawyers are known to do.
The very last thing this jail needed was a celebrity lawyer like Mikey DelVecchio calling a press conference to complain about jail conditions. That would lead to an “investigative report” on some news magazine show, and the county sheriff’s goose would be cooked.
The jail had frequent “incidents” it tried its best to keep on the down low. Just the other day, a murder suspect, “Ninja” Hassan DeMay, nearly beat one of the guards to death. DeMay was allegedly angry over marinara sauce on his chili mac dinner and unleashed on a rookie guard.
Then yesterday a shakedown uncovered a deadly homemade shank, fashioned from weather stripping and the cellophane wrapped around food trays. The aluminum metal stripping had been sharpened to a jagged point by scratching it against the concrete floor.
Just the kinds of things Mikey DelVecchio need not know anything about. Ever since he represented some Hollywood starlet on a shoplifting charge, he’d been in the news, celebrity treatment all around.
And even though the star got convicted . . . no matter. DelVecchio went on to represent another Hollywood A-Lister on DUI, then another for going on a drunk and naked rampage in a fancy New York hotel room with a hooker, then a doped-up pop star. Even when he lost, somehow, the convictions never stuck to DelVecchio, just the “glamour.”
Nobody knew exactly how, but likely thanks to Snoop vaulting the story to national headlines, Todd Adams’s family lassoed DelVecchio into representing their son. The word was that whenever DelVecchio flew into town, he holed up at a five-star hotel, ate and drank like a king, charged it all to Adams’s family, and went to his room with two or three girls on his elbows.
Everybody in Savannah seemed to “know” Adams did it. Julie was a hometown favorite. She was the public high school’s homecoming queen and everybody remembered it. She was sweet and beautiful and the talk had been, for quite a long time, that Adams ran around on her. But nobody would ever dream of hurting Julie’s feelings by even alluding to her husband’s unfaithfulness.
Now he was here, in the Chatham County Jail. And with a lawyer like Mikey DelVecchio, nobody could touch him. He got the kid-glove treatment . . . special food, private cell, magazines, books, extra TV time, and perks like this—long visits alone with his mom in one of the inmate-lawyer conference rooms.
“Shhh, baby. No need to go through it all again. I know what happened. I’m your mother . . . I believe you.”
“But Mom, why would I kill anybody, much less Julie. She was . . . amazing . . .”
“She was, she was! We all know that, and we all know you would never, never have intentionally harmed her. Why, nobody doubts that you loved Julie!”
“I did, Mom, I did!”
“And the jury is going to see that!”
“I mean Mom, they don’t have any proof I ever . . .”
“No! Don’t say another word. You’ve already told me everything I need to know. And I believe you, son! So not another word.”
Adams’s mother looked over her shoulder and quickly glanced around the room, convinced they’d be overheard. Sheriffs were the worst, always listening, nosy . . . busybodies, no doubt about it. Didn’t they have lives of their own? It was none of their business what went on between her and her boy.
“And son? No more outbursts.” Tish Adams spoke in an urgent whisper. She cut her eyes toward the guards. “After what happened the other day, we can’t afford another slipup . . . No matter how badly you feel about Julie’s accident, it wasn’t your fault. You absolutely cannot continue droning on and on back here about it. It will be misconstrued! For instance, that horrible prosecutor could take what you said the other day, no matter how innocent, and twist it and turn it and use it against you! You’ve got to be quiet back here! And no talking to cellmates anymore! Haven’t I told you about that? And these . . . these guards . . . they’re not your friends!”
Glancing sideways, she was convinced the guard to her left was listening. He’d done it before. He practically had an antenna on the top of his head, craning his neck toward Todd and herself as far as it could physically stretch.
“But Mom . . . I’m not talking about what happened to Julie . . .”
“Didn’t you hear me tell you last time to shut up . . . these walls have ears . . . are you blind?” Again, Tish jerked her head toward the guards at the door.
“Mom, I’m not talking about Julie now, I’m talking about Cynthia.”
His mom stared at him blankly. “Cynthia, Mom . . . Cindy. Remember her from high school? She was in the baton corps? Remember before every football game they’d run out on the field . . . one time she had a baton with fire on the ends and she . . .”
“Stop it! For Pete’s sake . . . stop it! Yes, I remember the baton with fire on the ends. And yes of course I remember her, Wallace and Helen Gresham’s daughter from the Country Club. She would have been a much better match for you than Julie Love. I tried to tell you Julie was all wrong for you. Yes . . . what about Cynthia? She always wore that little royal blue sequined short set for the dance routines. Too