Murder in the Courthouse

by Nancy Grace

  “So anyone could reach down, get the almond milk, and slip it into the milk canisters? What about cameras? Any surveillance?”

  “Yep. Thank you for reminding me. There are two cameras where all the food is stored, one camera trained on the register lines, and two cameras trained on the tables in general. Nobody knows yet whether the coffee bar was in the surveillance shot that day. Does that answer all your questions?”

  “Almost. Last question. When are you going to pull the surveillance video?”

  “Hailey. I may look like a hick. I might walk like a hick. I might even talk like a hick. But once in a while, I do manage to think like a lawman. I ordered it right after you ran out on me at Williams Seafood. It’s coming in this week.” The smile on his face was real, not sarcastic.

  “I never said you’re a hick! Never!”

  “Well, maybe I just added two and two. You have been living in Manhattan for several years now. I know how those folks feel about all of us below the Mason-Dixon Line . . .”

  “Well, then, you can’t add. Don’t forget, I grew up on red clay, drinking well water.”

  “Ha. OK. I won’t forget it.”

  The waiter appeared again. He stood lingering at the corner of the table and finally spoke, clearing his throat first. “Lieutenant, it’s on the house. To thank you. I don’t know if you remember, but we were robbed at gunpoint last year. You got the guys. They’re doing twenty at Reidsville right now. Thanks to you. My fiancée was working that night. The man held a gun in her face. I owe you, man.”

  “I remember, it was uh . . . Henry Hamilton. That was his name,” Billings answered and smiled. “He was a piece of work. A mean SOB, too. Career criminal. His brother too. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill anybody.”

  “That’s right! Henry Hamilton! I can’t believe you remembered his name.”

  “Yep. They stick with me for some reason. Don’t know if that’s good or bad. But anyway, thanks for the offer, but you don’t owe me a thing. It’s my job.”

  Billings stood up and laid down several twenty-dollar bills on the table. “Thanks anyway, man.”

  The waiter smiled. “Maybe next time.”

  “Maybe. Have a good evening.”

  Hailey and Billings walked out into the cooling air.

  “Hey, let’s walk back to your hotel.”

  “But what about your car?” Hailey asked.

  “It’ll be fine where it’s parked. I’ll walk back and get it. I want to stretch my legs.”

  “Me too. We can walk past everything on River Street. I want to send my dad some of those pralines I was smelling before we went running. He loves them.”

  “They’re in Macon, right? About an hour or so south of Atlanta?”

  “Yep. An hour and a half.” They walked along a narrow sidewalk, looking through all the windows into the brightly lit shops full of candles, souvenirs, bake shops, ice cream parlors, clothing boutiques, and sea-town treasures.

  “I bet they’re proud of you.”

  “I hope so.” Not really wanting to talk about herself, Hailey changed the subject. “You know what’s funny?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I love window shopping but hate actually shopping. I’d rather try a murder case than go into a shopping mall.” Billings let out a laugh. He put his hand on her shoulder and steered her into River Street Sweets, where at that very moment, the candy makers were pouring out hot caramel mixed with pecans. The smell was incredible.

  “This is the place if you want pralines for your dad.”

  “Oh my stars. It smells so good! My mom will kill me. My dad has to keep his sugar down, so he never gets any at all. But he loves it! Two pounds of the pralines, please. With pecans. Thanks.”

  “Obviously, you’re not that worried about your mom getting mad.”

  “I’ll risk it. Plus, I won’t be there when he opens it! I’ll be here!”

  A bell on the door tinkled as they left and they strolled the streets for the next few hours. They finally reached the lobby of her hotel.

  “Thanks for the Cajun. It was awesome.”

  “Hailey, the pleasure was all mine. I’ll see you in court.” And with that, he smiled, nodded his head good night, turned on his heels, and walked off into the night.

  And he didn’t even turn around once. Hailey knew because she watched practically without blinking until Billings disappeared totally around a bend in the street.

  Hmm. He didn’t even try to kiss her good night this time. Not even a peck on the cheek. She surprised herself . . . she actually felt miffed.

  Shaking it off, Hailey headed up the elevator to her room. She found it all nice and clean with the pillows fluffed up. One light was on beside the bed and she could see the dark night above the river outside.

  Her legs were aching, so she headed straight for a hot bath. She thought briefly of ordering hot tea but was afraid the tiny bit of caffeine would keep her awake. She turned off the bedside lamp and sank into the pillows, not bothering to pull the curtains, choosing instead to look out into the dark.

  What a day. She wished Finch had stuck around so she could tell him all about what she’d uncovered, but his family needed time with him, too.

  Tired to the bone, a niggling thought came to mind that sleep would, once again, elude her. Hailey pulled out her iPad to read herself to sleep. Lying there in the dark, she thought of the bittersweet Waving Girl.

  Out of nowhere, but somehow linked in Hailey’s subconscious, the image of Eunah Mabry came to mind. Hailey remembered Eunah’s face, alternately full of loathing for Elle Odom and then wistful longing whenever Bill Regard’s name was mentioned.

  On a whim, Hailey went to Google, her fingers deftly entering the name “Willard Fulton Eugene Mabry.” It only took a few seconds for Google to respond. Hailey’s iPad screen lit up in the darkened bedroom and she immediately sat up in the bed to read the first entry.

  “Aspiring Supreme Court Judge Willard Fulton Eugene Mabry Dead by Apparent Suicide.” Hailey quickly scanned the article.

  “Judge Willard Mabry found dead in the family’s boat docked at the Savannah River Marina. This, following a bitter divorce amid claims of the judge’s alleged infidelity with a courthouse employee named in Mrs. Jane Fickling Mabry’s divorce documents as a Miss Elizabeth Collins . . .”

  Hailey sat stock-still there on her hotel bed in the dark room, letting the whole thing sink in. Moonlight poured in through the curtains. Just outside was the Savannah River and not far away, the marina where Eunah Mabry’s father committed suicide when his wife left him. The root of the divorce was his affair with a courthouse employee, Elizabeth Collins, according to the Savannah Morning News.

  All the pieces were fitting together . . . no photos of Eunah Mabry’s mother, hero worship of her dad, her father’s suicide, drinking herself to sleep as the child victim of divorce and scandal, and then, unrequited love for very married Judge Bill Regard. And now . . . she was reliving all those emotions again. Because of Judge Bill Regard. Or possibly in Eunah Mabry’s mind . . . because of Eleanor Odom.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The courtroom was tense. It was already dark outside and the night was visible through tall windows flanking the old, giant courtroom. Newer courtrooms were small and compact, the architects jamming as many onto one floor as possible. Not here in the old Chatham County Superior Courthouse.

  The jury had been deliberating for two days now, starting at eight-thirty in the morning and now, day two, into the night. Already, the jury deliberations room buzzer had sounded three times so far.

  Each time, it caused a free-for-all in the courtroom . . . reporters ducking to their seats, cranking up their laptops and iPads, each preparing to be the messenger that got the verdict out first. Three times so far. But each time, the buzzer had simply signaled a jury question or request. Once was for a copy of the jury charges. Hailey took that as a bad sign for the state. What about premeditated murder couldn’t they understand?r />
  The second buzz was a question about the jury charge on credibility, who to believe. The jurors were instructed that if they disbelieved a witness in any part of their testimony, under law they could throw out the troubling portion of the testimony or all of the witness’s testimony.

  On the other hand, the judge instructed the jury they were to make all witnesses “speak the truth,” impugning perjury onto no one. In other words, to try and reconcile the testimony of all the witnesses.

  The third request was for the jury to have a TV and DVD player rolled into the jury deliberations room so that they could watch the police interrogation of Todd Adams. That is, until he stopped cooperating with police and demanded a lawyer. Hailey surmised the question on credibility related to whether Todd Adams was telling the truth. It was hard to tell, because he took the Fifth, refused to testify in front of the jury. It would have been deadly to his case to undergo cross-examination, even by the weakest of prosecutors. So all the jury had to go on was his police interrogation tape.

  There were several problems with his story to the police. In one sitting, he contradicted his own alibi, first stating he was at work at the time Julie went missing, and then later insisting he was fishing and then at his mom and dad’s house.

  But later, when Tish Adams had gotten through her COPD spell and taken the stand the next day, she explained away the inconsistencies in her son’s story by telling the jury very plainly that he’d called her on his way home from fishing. That Todd Adams simply stopped by his office to pick up some papers after fishing and en route to her home.

  And home to her he came, she said. Home for supper, as a matter of fact, because, as Tish Adams indelicately put it, “Julie Love never was much of a cook to start with, and marriage with a child on the way didn’t change that.”

  Tish Adams then topped it off by giving a wry, knowing smile to the jurors and Hailey was quite surprised to see two of the older lady jurors smiling back at Tish, clearly commiserating about unfortunate daughters-in-law.

  Hailey also stole a glance at Todd Adams when his mom threw the unnecessary barb at Julie Love, now dead. She could see his jaw clenched, the muscles along his jawbone working.

  But the tide turned in the courtroom when the state put up its very last witness. It was the end of a very long courtroom day. The air conditioning was on the blink and started and stopped in fits. The courtroom was warm and the judge had ordered the windows opened to let in what breeze there was to be had. It was nearly four o’clock when the state called its last witness, Dana Love, Julie Love Adams’s mother.

  Suddenly, all the fanning and the loud sighs, the wriggling and whispered complaints about the heat ceased automatically. Dana Love stood up in her spot on the first pew behind the prosecution. She looked so much thinner than when the trial had started. Dark shadows were smudged under her eyes. She looked pale.

  Today she wore a beautiful yellow suit jacket and skirt with a string of pearls at her neck. Dana Love had once pinned thin sky-blue and pink ribbons curled together on her lapel in memory of Julie and baby Lily, before DelVecchio insisted they be removed, claiming the delicate ribbons were “unconstitutional.”

  Love made her way slowly, almost regally, to the stand. Passing between the two counsel tables, she paused long enough to direct a look that mirrored pure heartbreak and numbing hurt straight at Todd Adams. Adams met her gaze briefly, and then cast his eyes down in his lap, hanging his head low.

  Did the jury see that? If a picture was truly worth a thousand words, then that was the single snap Hailey hoped they’d remember . . . Todd Adams looking down, unable to hold Dana’s steady gaze. Why? Hailey could only attribute that particular reaction to guilt and shame.

  Her testimony started out matter-of-factly, going through Julie’s birth, her childhood, high school then college, her daughter’s wedding to Todd Adams, and, ultimately, Julie Love’s difficult pregnancy and her disappearance. She outlined the fears Julie had about Todd Adams’s possible affairs and, once again, the Christmas photo of Todd Adams with his girlfriend in the strapless red satin dress flashed up on a giant overhead monitor.

  Dana Love visibly winced at the sight of the photo. “Did Julie know about this woman?”

  “Cindy Gresham? Know about her? They went to the same high school together, so in that sense, yes. If you mean did Julie know Todd was cheating with Cynthia during their marriage? No . . . I don’t think so. Julie always believed everything Todd ever told her, without fail.”

  “Objection! Facts not in evidence! This affair hasn’t been proven! It’s an insult to my client’s character, Your Honor! I must object and have it stricken from the record immediately . . .”

  “Sit down, Mr. DelVecchio. Motive for murder, while not required under the law, may be presented. Do I need to remind you that Ms. Gresham has come before the jury and testified under oath that she was in fact having an affair with your client during his marriage?” The judge looked at DelVecchio as if he were no more than a gnat buzzing around his head at a barbecue.

  “But, Your Honor! My client never confirmed it! It takes not one, but two to tango, Judge!” DelVecchio wouldn’t let it go. Hailey smiled . . . now he was making such a stink he was actually drawing more attention to the affair than if he had just sat there and gritted his teeth in silence.

  “Overruled.”

  The prosecutor had Dana Love go through the seemingly normal day Julie had gone missing. They had talked on the phone that morning. Julie’s legs were swollen from the pregnancy; baby Lily was due any day. The two had planned to go to a doctor’s appointment, then shop for baby clothes later that afternoon after lunch.

  As it turned out, mother and daughter went to the doctor’s appointment and shopped, but Julie passed on lunch. She’d said, according to Dana, that she was exhausted and wanted to go home and lie down. Julie had driven away, out of the parking lot of Babies-R-Us with a back seat full of bags stuffed with pink onesies, little baby socks that looked like ballet slippers, and even tiny pink ribbons for when baby Lily finally got hair.

  Dana never saw Julie alive again.

  She testified about the day the doorbell rang. When she answered it, there were two SPD detectives standing there. They didn’t smile when Dana opened the screen door for them. She knew right then. Julie would never come home. She was dead.

  They’d sat in the home’s little living room, Dana clutching a handkerchief, her husband’s arm around her shoulder . . . and they told her. A woman’s body had washed ashore Tybee Island. Hours later, a tiny baby girl who looked like a shiny pink baby doll in a store had followed her mommy in the next tide.

  Dana Love’s voice was dead as she remembered the funeral. The two were buried together, with Julie Love gently cradling her baby’s remains in her own dead arms inside the coffin.

  When her testimony ended, a silence fell on the courtroom like a spell. Even DelVecchio was not brazen enough to follow with cross. The judge sent the jury out and they had shuffled without a sound from their seats and into their adjoining room.

  Out of the jury’s hearing, DelVecchio announced there would be no cross of Dana Love. Newbies in the audience may have believed his decision was out of respect for Dana Love. But Hailey knew better. He had to know that if he were perceived as attacking Julie’s mother, it would only work against his client. For once, DelVecchio voluntarily sat down and shut up without being ordered to. It was a first and, very likely, a last in Mikey DelVecchio’s career.

  Dana Love was the state’s last witness. The defense responded with a string of experts to refute that Julie Love had been killed at all.

  They relied on the fact that there was so little of Julie’s body left, cause of death could not be determined. They argued that plastic twine tied around the bones that had once been Julie Love’s ankles could have become entwined around her in the water . . . twine possibly from a commercial fishing boat.

  Ignoring Adams’s multiple affairs during the marriage—including the on
e in which he was engaged at the time of Julie’s death—was the only way to address the appearance and testimony of Cynthia Gresham, just one of the so-called “other women.” The defense skillfully argued that a cheater does not a murderer make.

  DelVecchio carefully avoided pressing too much with his assertion Julie was not murdered at all . . . that being, if she wasn’t murdered . . . how did she die and end up at the bottom of the Savannah River, washing up on nearby Tybee Island? When Dana had called Julie later on, there was no answer. That was highly unusual. After church the next day, Dana and Malcolm drove over to check on her. Julie’s car was there, but when Dana went in with her key she discovered Julie wasn’t home. Her dog, Daisy, was gone too, but her leash was still hanging by the front door where Julie kept it handy for walks.

  They’d left a message on the front door, assuming she was out walking Daisy. It was only much later, suppertime, around 6 PM, that they’d circled back and called Todd on his cell and, still, no one would answer the home phone. Todd said he got home to find Julie and the dog gone.

  At night? It was fast getting dark. Dana knew in her bones something was horribly wrong and it was she, Dana, who called the police, not Julie’s husband, Todd Adams. So if all this was true as Todd Adams claimed . . . then what happened?

  A nine months pregnant woman was kidnapped from a park two blocks from her house by a stranger, an unknown assailant, and bound at the feet and likely the hands, and thrown into the river? A chunk of cement washing ashore along with her body? Discovered missing by her husband who never called police? Not likely. Statistically almost impossible.

  Neither Dana nor Julie’s father ID’d the bodies. Police used DNA from Julie’s toothbrush to make the identification in order to spare them the pain. There wasn’t much left of Julie’s body after being underwater for so long.