Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

This one was neither young nor old and clearly this was not his first crime scene. He walked up, sized up the whole scene carefully without a word, and then, without acknowledging the rest of them, he turned directly to Trimble.

Keeping a steady gaze on the dead body, he directed his question toward the cop. “So, what do we know, Trimble?” His tone was cool but not cold, businesslike but not impersonal.

“Well, Lieutenant, open and shut. Looks like the poor schmuck caught himself under his own garage door. It ain’t an easy way to go, but it’s pretty obvious.”

The lieutenant looked between Trimble and the body and then, at Hailey and Fincher.

Instinctively, Hailey held out her right hand. “Hi. I’m Hailey Dean, formerly of the Fulton District Attorney’s Special Prosecutors Division, inner-city Atlanta.”

After a beat a little too long, he held out his own and gave Hailey’s hand a warm, firm grasp. “Lieutenant Chase Billings. Good to meet you. I’ve heard of you, Hailey. What brings you here?”

“I’m here on the Todd Adams trial…”

“I’m here for the trial too, but as a witness. I arrested Adams in Atlanta and transported him to Savannah,” Fincher chimed in.

“Well, you deserve a medal for the collar on Adams. He did it all right. Julie Love was a sweetheart. Hope they don’t blow it at trial.” Billings smiled. “But what I meant was, how did you two end up here, on Randolph Drive?”

“To tell you the truth, we heard the 63 and I knew the address. We thought we might be able to help.” Fincher looked back at the guy lying there on his garage floor.

“I’m surprised. Lots of off-duty lawmen… and ladies,” he smiled at Hailey, “would run the other way.”

Now Hailey’s concern she was intruding began to evaporate. The four of them stepped closer to Alton, lying there, and looked down on his face. It still bore a look of shock, almost surprise, Hailey thought.

Billings’s brow furrowed. “Let me understand your theory. So Alton Turner accidentally kills himself on the way to work this morning with a garage door. That’s funny… he was a very particular kind of guy, if you know what I mean. He kept a desk job… sharpened his pencils, crossed his t’s and dotted his i’s. Very particular, methodical. Probably read the owner’s manual over and over. Wonder how this happened.”

Not to be outdone, Trimble jumped in. “Just what I said! Yep. That’s the way Turner always was, all right. Very particular-like. Must’ve just got caught under it or something. Just an accident, you know? Probably wasn’t paying attention. Had his mind on his coffee cup, I guess.”

Lieutenant Billings didn’t respond, but instead pulled a spiral notebook out of his jacket and started writing with a yellow number-two pencil that had been stuck down in the spirals. He was intent on his own notes when Trimble piped up again.

“Guess you won’t be needing homicide backup. Or the medical examiner’s people. It’s pretty cut-and-dried. Somehow, Turner screwed up.” Trimble took out his radio and held it to his lips to call off further backup. “Trimble to dispatch, Trimble to dispatch…”

Hailey couldn’t hold back another moment. This was all a colossal mistake. Hailey interrupted Trimble before he could say another word. “Don’t call off the ME. It’s not an accident. Alton Turner didn’t screw up.”

Shoulder radio to his chin mid-sentence, Trimble seemed to freeze with his mouth still half-open. Billings stopped scribbling in his spiral notebook, and all three scrutinized her as if she just sprouted three heads.

“What’d she say? Not an accident? I just don’t see, Lieutenant Billings, how Cailee Dean…”

“It’s Hailey. My name’s Hailey Dean.” Hailey kept her cool.

“OK. If you say so… Hailey Dean. How can somebody who knows absolutely nothing about this case or this neighborhood or Savannah in general , march onto an active death scene and just announce to me, a seasoned police veteran, that this is not an accident ?” Little flecks of spittle flying off his lips when he spoke, Trimble was indignant at the suggestion his accident theory could be wrong.

Hailey ignored Trimble’s outburst. Looking toward the body, her voice was steady. “This was no malfunction. Accident’s all wrong.” Hailey stepped around to the other side of the body when she saw it.

“It” being blood. Not the thick, dark red pool, coagulating, surrounding Turner’s mutilated body. “It” confirmed what her gut had already told her.

“Look. Look at this.” Several feet away from Alton Turner’s head, his eyes seemingly staring at the ceiling, Hailey bent down, squatting at the side of Alton’s car. Whipping out the silver pen that hung on a cord around her neck, stuck down her bra for safekeeping, she gestured toward the car, pointing but not touching.

“This blood. On the tire of his car. Check out the hubcap. See it?” Hailey pointed toward the hubcap, keeping a few inches away so as not to compromise the evidence.

“So what? So there’s blood on the tire. It spattered or something…” Trimble’s voice trailed off as he struggled to comprehend her point.

“It’s not spatter. There’s no spatter pattern here or on the garage floor around him. If it had been spatter from the impact of the garage door severing his torso, we’d see spatter elsewhere as well… not just on the car’s tire. And look at it. It’s not a spatter mark. It’s a smear. Big difference.”

She was met with blank stares.

“My point is, gentlemen, he didn’t just ‘get caught’ under a garage door. That’s not what happened. You, yourself, Lieutenant Billings, said he’s a very particular guy, probably read the manual over and over. That’s what you said, right?”

“Right. I did say that.”

“No accident happened here.” Hailey stated matter-of-factly and looked Billings in the eyes. “Whatever did happen started right here, near the tire… not under that garage door.” She gestured toward the two halves of Alton Turner.

“Look at the blood pattern close to the car… here… away from the garage door. That pool of blood wasn’t the first mortal wound. That’s just a bleed out. The first serious wound was here. He ended up under the garage door. You have the blood on the tire and a concentration of blood on the cement here. Something happened to Alton Turner, something awful. And it started here.”

The three came over and stood behind her, looking down at the tire.

“Please, Lieutenant. You know it, I know it… blood evidence never lies. Call in the ME before we lose more evidence. It’s hot out here. The body forensics are being destroyed with every tick of the clock.” Hailey looked up from the tire where she was still kneeling.

“She’s right. Trimble, radio the ME. Pronto.” Billings directed Trimble over his shoulder.

“Will do.” Trimble looked miffed, but he did as he was told. Stepping away a few feet, he turned to the side and spoke into his shoulder radio.

“But still, he could have just tripped, fallen, hit his head on the tire…” Trimble wasn’t ready to give in and continued a steady stream of hypothesizing over his shoulder aimed in their direction.

“Then why would there be blood over here and his body all the way over there?” Hailey pointed to the distance between the bloody tire and the body. “It’s a good eight to ten feet away.”

“He stumbled?” Fincher interjected.

“Maybe. Maybe he did. And if he did stumble, why? But my guess is, he didn’t.”

“What did you say you did back at Fulton, Hailey?” Billings wondered out loud.

“She was Chief Special Prosecutor. Ten years. Never lost a case. Over a hundred cases at trial.” Fincher answered for her and did so with much more bravado than she would have.