Murder in the Courthouse

by Nancy Grace

  That sort of story might play in other parts of the country where the cheater would make a carefully guarded statement, with his wife standing beside him in prescription-drug stoicism as her husband claimed a “sex addiction.” He’d then go somewhere posh like Horizons Malibu Rehab and be back cheating again in four to six weeks. But in the Bible Belt, not just cheating—but cheating and humiliating your wife—was the kiss of death.

  If this came out about Elle, Regard’s goose was cooked.

  Hailey started to navigate out of the online maze of Eleanor Odom’s life, but she paused briefly to look at an absolutely perfect-looking roast turkey. Just barely showing over the top of the evenly browned bird was Elle’s smiling face, proud of the big bird she’d basted and cooked to perfection. In the background, Hailey could just make out a Thanksgiving pilgrim decoration in the center of a table set for eight.

  Hailey clicked through. Eleanor Odom was quite the cook, sharing dozens and dozens of food postings, maybe close to a hundred or so. Many of them showed her cooking in what appeared to be a small apartment kitchen. Several of the dishes were photographed at various stages of preparation with a gorgeous shot at the end. One was a steamed lobster, completely done and perfectly pink, garnished and sitting staged on the same table as the turkey, but this time set for two.

  But for who?

  Hailey rummaged through a myriad of recipes, amazed Eleanor had taken the time to post so many. What sort of a woman spends hours and hours not just preparing food, but posing the dishes and taking pictures of them to post online?

  There was a beautiful shot of ruby red rhubarb and deep purplish-green kale in two colanders beside the sink. Hailey clicked on a gorgeous peach salad with prosciutto, plum, and amaretto tarts, a blue and white dish of bourbon-poached peaches posed on an antique linen tablecloth. Eleanor had each recipe detailed beside each photo. Hailey paused to read “Eleanor’s Delicious Banana Nut Bread Without the Nuts!” The next was a photo of Eleanor in a Christmas sweater with “My Favorite Fruitcake, Fruity Not Nutty!” A different set of postings covered cooking organically, avoiding foods treated with pesticides, and intricate recipes for pastries like napoleons and éclairs.

  The time and planning it must have taken to prepare, pose, photograph, then post the photogenic dishes. They were, each and every one, absolutely perfect. Had it become sort of an obsession for Eleanor Odom? Something to fill her time? But then there were softball games, charity functions, work. She didn’t need time-fillers.

  Or maybe it was Eleanor’s desire to create something perfect, something beautiful, something that she alone could control . . . including its outcome. Was she obsessed not just with the preparation of food, but with creating the perfect family home . . . minus the family? The family she’d never be able to have with a married judge?

  Exhausted and feeing like she knew way too much about Eleanor Odom now, Hailey turned off the iPad and pulled back the covers on her bed. Settling in, she pulled the blankets over her. Lying on the bed looking out and up through the window, she had an entirely different view. Instead of the black water of the Savannah River, she saw an even deeper black, velvety sky with stars twinkling down through her hotel room window.

  Unbidden, photos of Eleanor Odom drifted through her mind. So happy, so vibrant, so alive. The last glimpse Hailey had of her, her face was purple and sweaty as she died on the cafeteria floor. Hailey felt a deep swell of sadness for the woman she hadn’t even known. The woman smiling over a roasted turkey, holding a team softball trophy, in love, sadly, with a married man. The woman who probably never even knew Alton Turner adored her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was 10:30 AM and the courtroom was packed. Hailey sat with her notebook and pen in hand, she and Fincher touching shoulders, three rows back behind prosecutors. The courtroom never failed to remind Hailey of a wedding: No matter how large or small the ceremony was, lavish or simple, guests invariably sat on either the bride’s or the groom’s “side.” Guests would only be seated otherwise if there were no seats on the “right” side.

  Julie Love’s blood family, relatives, and friends sat, like Hailey and Finch, behind the prosecution. Todd Adams’s family, supporters, and the press sat on the defense’s side of the huge, old courtroom.

  Once or twice, Hailey spotted Tish Adams casting a quick, surreptitious glance across the center aisle dividing the sides. Hailey caught her looking over, usually, at Julie’s mother and once at Hailey herself. When she locked eyes with Hailey, Tish Adams quickly looked away.

  Opening statements had commenced at nine o’clock sharp under Luther Alverson’s watchful eye. He stared down from the bench, rarely interrupting, but listening carefully. His law clerk, Walter Lovell, according to a desk placard sitting at a solid wood desk to the side of the judge’s bench, was a slight, pale young man with a bushy moustache, a high forehead, and pale blue eyes. Lovell also seemed to listen to every single syllable uttered in the courtroom, likely as an aide to Alverson. The judge would do nothing to jeopardize these proceedings.

  The state’s opening had lasted exactly an hour, and, afraid they’d lose their places, neither Hailey nor Fincher left the room for a break before Mikey DelVecchio began opening for the defense. Not a word was spoken as the lead prosecutor, following his opening, returned to his seat at the counsel table closest to the jury box and sat down, clearly spent of energy.

  The courtroom was completely hushed. A long silence ensued. From behind them, Hailey could see Julie Love’s father place a protective arm around her mom’s shoulders, as if to protect her from what was about to happen.

  And he was right.

  “Mr. DelVecchio? Are you ready to proceed with opening statement for the defense?” Alverson was not about to allow defense delays this early in the ball game.

  “Yes, sir. I am.” DelVecchio stood up from his chair, pushing it back as he did. He didn’t make a move away from the defense counsel table, but stood there, stock-still, his back erect, perusing the jurors from twenty to thirty feet away.

  “Julie Love Adams slept around!” DelVecchio practically shouted it like a battle cry.

  Gasps erupted throughout the courtroom and a single, audible cry, quickly stifled, tore from the throat of Julie’s mother. She quickly covered her face in her husband’s shoulder. At the same instant, the man seated in a wheelchair beside the father, obviously Julie’s younger brother, Brent, grabbed his dad’s other shoulder to keep him seated when he made to spring to his feet in defense of his dead daughter.

  “Order! Order in the court!” Alverson beat his gavel on hardwood from the bench. Simultaneously the prosecutor leaped to his feet and yelled, “Objection!”

  “They can’t do that!” Hailey whispered into Finch’s ear as he leaned over. “You can’t bring in the victim’s reputation unless it’s, say, for self-defense and the victim’s known to be pugnacious or carry a gun . . .”

  “Objection, Your Honor! A victim’s reputation is inadmissible unless it goes to self-defense!” The prosecutor blurted it out as he continued to stand, now on the defense. He had controlled the courtroom up until now, but in the last fifteen seconds DelVecchio took over.

  “It must be a ploy,” Hailey whispered again into Finch’s ear. “The state won’t throw out the jury over this and it’s not grounds for a mistrial unless it’s directed at the defendant. So what’s his game? Poisoning the jury against Julie?”

  Another sob escaped Julie’s mom. The judge looked over at her as a friend behind her handed her Kleenex across her pew.

  “I’m sorry, Judge Alverson, but this is our defense.” DelVecchio said it in his most sanctimonious tone, as if he hated blurting out that Julie was a tramp . . . but that he had to. Hailey knew that, of course, nothing could please DelVecchio more than destroying Julie’s memory, if it meant saving his client and gaining national attention for getting another defendant off on murder one.

  “Excuse me, counsel. Are you telling me Mr. Adams’s defense to a charg
e of murder one is that his pregnant wife committed adultery?”

  Hailey winced. Every time the charge was repeated in front of the jury made it less explosive. Pretty soon the words “Julie Love Adams” and “affairs” and/or “sex” wouldn’t seem so incendiary. They would have heard it so often, they’d be numb.

  “Yes, Your Honor. It is. We intend to prove that Julie Adams had so many sex affairs behind her husband’s back that any number of men may have killed her. And as for being pregnant . . . I mean, who knows who the biological father may have been?”

  At that, Julie’s father sprang from his seat, heading straight for DelVecchio and Todd Adams. Full of rage, he leaped over the three-foot-tall partition between the gallery and the well, where lawyers and defendants sat before the jury.

  Sheriffs rushed from the paneled walls around them, closing in on Julie’s dad, Malcolm Love, Sr. When they reached him, grabbing him by either shoulder, he first tensed as if he would put up a fight, but glancing back at his wife still seated in the pew they had shared, her head bowed toward her lap, her face buried in a white hanky, he relented. His body relaxed and he let the sheriffs take him by either elbow, one on each side of him and one behind him.

  The courtroom was in an uproar, everyone talking at once, press frantically taking notes, thrilled at the turn of events and now talking openly to each other. Several sprang from their seats and out the back door of the courtroom to position themselves on the front courthouse steps for impromptu stand-ups for local news . . . all about how the defense had branded Julie Love, the dead mother-to-be, as an unfaithful wife who was ready, willing, and able to fall into bed behind her husband’s back.

  All this churning as the sheriffs pulled Malcolm Love out of the courtroom by his armpits. Hailey could barely hear the whoosh of the double wooden doors at the back of the courtroom amid all the chatter.

  She leaned toward Fincher again. “So now the burden’s shifted. He did it, all in just one sentence.”

  “Did what, Hailey?”

  “He changed the game. DelVecchio just changed the game. It’s not about him proving Adams is innocent. Now it’s about the state proving Julie wasn’t sleeping around. Disgusting.”

  “I can’t believe they’d do this to her. The guy kills her, kills the baby, and now his lawyer drags her name through the mud,” Fincher whispered back into Hailey’s ear.

  “Order! Order!” Pounding his gavel on the wooden block, the judge called out again from his bench, his voice carrying to the very back of the courtroom.

  Bailiffs appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Six of them assumed sentinel positions at the edges of the pews on both sides and two more stood at the defense counsel table. One stood staring out into the pews full of people directly between Todd Adams and the spectators. The other sheriff stood facing Todd Adams, positioned between Adams and the judge.

  Todd Adams was twisting in his seat, first to one lawyer and then to the next as DelVecchio stood, poised as if posing for a full-length portrait to be painted of himself. He was positioned directly to the left of Adams, between him and the jury.

  Soaking up the attention and seemingly unaware of the disruption he’d caused, DelVecchio stood unmoved. But the commotion seemed to be gaining momentum.

  “Order! I said order in the court!” Luther Alverson rose from his seat behind the bench. More bailiffs poured into the courtroom, now lining up between the pews and the walls.

  Julie’s mother, Dana, let out a moan, quickly holding her damp hanky to her mouth to stifle further anguish. All eyes turned to her, including the jurors. Not to be outdone, Tish Adams rose from her seat to stand directly behind the wooden railing separating her from her son, as if she were guarding him.

  “Bailiff, send out the jury. It’s time for our morning break.” Alverson ordered his chief bailiff to get the jury out of the room before they were so tainted there would be no way they could listen impartially to the evidence that was to come from the witness stand. Alverson didn’t want to start from scratch and handpick a new jury. The state agreed.

  DelVecchio would see a mistrial as a victory. And he’d be right. It cost time and money for the state to try a death penalty case, much less import jurors from another county, footing the bill for their room and board. It would be a phenomenal loss if they had to start all over.

  DelVecchio couldn’t have possibly looked more pleased with himself. He stood, looking solicitously at the jury as they stalked from the courtroom and into the jury room. The looks they were shooting both DelVecchio and the defendant, Todd Adams, could have killed. They apparently didn’t take kindly to the slur on Julie’s memory.

  But DelVecchio didn’t seem to mind at all. He had planted the seed in their minds. The seed of doubt that all was not as it appeared . . . that Julie was not who she purported to be . . . that she was not the loving and innocent wife the state portrayed . . . not the expectant mother who wanted nothing more than to give birth to baby Lily and start the family she’d always dreamed of with the only man she’d ever loved . . . Todd Adams.

  Could she have been someone totally different? The tiny seed was indeed planted. Now all DelVecchio had to do was nurture it over the next few weeks, water it with innuendo, fertilize it with insinuations, caress it with suggestion, and then . . . watch it bloom into a hung jury or better yet . . . an outright acquittal.

  “I’ll have the lawyers back for motions in thirty minutes,” Judge Luther Alverson announced before he stood to the bailiff’s banging of a gavel onto a block.

  “Court’s in recess. The judge is off the bench!” The bailiff called it out loudly into the courtroom.

  There was a moment’s silence and then a flurry of noise and activity as everyone began to stir, preparing to leave the courtroom for a break. Papers shuffling, books closing, computers being shut down and closed as spectators stood and began merging into the center aisle leading out the huge doors in the back of the courtroom.

  “Well, I guess that’s that.” Hailey looked over at Finch.

  “Yep. That’s that. End of court.”

  “For now, anyway.” Hailey returned her gaze to the now-empty bench. Counsel tables were abandoned too. All the lawyers had filed out through an innocuous-looking side door that, like the holding cell door adjacent to the courtroom, blended right into the wood paneling. You’d really have to know it was there to even notice it. Located beside the judge’s massive bench, between the bench and the far corner rail of the jury box, it led directly to the judge’s offices and chambers. He used it to enter and exit the courtroom quickly.

  “Hailey, what do you mean . . . for now?”

  “Oh, I just mean that because of the uproar, the defense will certainly ask for a mistrial now.”

  “A mistrial?” Finch looked shocked.

  “Yes, a mistrial,” Hailey answered back relatively calmly, given the fact that if a mistrial was granted, the trial would have to start all over again. She had missed four days of work already, was away from home, work, and patients who were extremely needy, and, to top it all off, was footing the bulk of the bill for her trip since the state levels of per diem were pretty sparse.

  “A mistrial? This early in the game? It’s just opening statements, for Pete’s sake!” Exasperated, Finch didn’t even bother keeping his voice down. At the sound of his raised voice, a few court watchers turned to look back at them as they inched out of the courtroom along with the crowd.

  “I said the defense would seek a mistrial . . . not that they’d get it! They’ll use anything, any ruse to put the state out, even if temporarily. Alverson is no idiot, Fincher. He didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.”

  At that comment, Fincher began to smile again.

  “The law is, if the defense brings about the error at trial, not the state, the defense can’t then ask for a mistrial or really even have grounds to object.”

  “But what would they have objected to, Hailey?”

  “Malcolm Love making a move toward Todd Adams
, for starters. Add on Dana Love sobbing out loud, Tish Adams jumping from her seat to stand guard over her son, gasps, cries, and commotion . . . that sort of thing.” Hailey answered him fairly routinely. She didn’t let it show the least bit she was deeply upset the whole trial might just be headed down the tubes.

  “But . . . but . . .” Finch looked angry again.

  “I know . . . but. But it was DelVecchio’s fault to start with. He made an outrageous comment that ignited a reaction in court. So it’s his fault and he won’t get a mistrial declared.”

  “Man, that was close.” Finch looked a little dazed at all the legal mumbo jumbo.

  “Well, DelVecchio got what he wanted. If that’s his defense, that Julie slept around, even during pregnancy, he will have to put more than just his word for it in evidence. Since I doubt it’s true and there are no real lovers, who will testify to it? Todd Adams himself? Does that mean the defendant will take the stand? I hope so . . . the state will carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey on cross.”

  She went on. “In the meantime, the jurors are probably pretty miffed at what he said about Julie, but he planted the seed . . . the tiny seed of doubt that somebody else may have had motive for murder.”

  “Some other man?”

  “Yep,” Hailey answered. “Some other man that didn’t want to be found out. So that’s his defense. Or at least one of them. DelVecchio’s no rookie either and since there probably aren’t any real lovers, he’ll come up with something else to throw against the wall . . . see if it sticks.”

  “Like what?” Fincher’s curiosity was up.

  “Maybe . . . that it wasn’t murder at all? That Julie died by accident and ended up in the water? I’m just guessing . . .” Hailey’s eyes narrowed.

  “Like what accident? That she went out boating nine months into her pregnancy?” Finch was really up in arms now, but that was part of what made him such a great detective way back when, when they were partners in court.

  “Finch, you should know by now, the defense doesn’t have to make sense! It just has to snag up one juror . . . just one . . . and the defense wins. They take home all the marbles.”