Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

The loud scraping of cafeteria chairs against the tiled floor mingled with the scream sent a tingling chill down Hailey’s back as she and Fincher jerked their heads toward the center of the room. A female sheriff leaped from her seat and like the juror, let out an ear-piercing scream.

For one discrete moment, the cafeteria went totally quiet as everyone froze in their places, some with forks poised in their hands, midair.

But Hailey and Finch jumped up from their table and began darting between chairs, closing the distance between their seats by the windows to the source of the screams in just seconds.

Breaking through knots of onlookers gathered tightly around the source of the scream, they spotted what the female sheriff and lady juror saw.

There on the cafeteria floor. It was her… her arms and legs sprawled out at odd angles. The honey-blonde.

Stacks of papers she just carried down the ramp to the cafeteria were strewn on the floor around her. Her fork and spoon still rested neatly on top of a folded, white paper napkin, but the contents of her lunch, once on her plastic tray, were splattered across her chair and onto the floor. A fruit salad, sweet potato chips, and remains of a veggie plate were hurled onto the tile floor. Lying nearby was a to-go cup of coffee. Checks in black marker were made beside the words “Morning Blend,” “Black,” and “Half-Decaf.”

From where she stood, Hailey saw bright pink lipstick on the white Styrofoam rim of the cup. It barely remained on her lips, but it matched the lipstick the calendar clerk was wearing.

The woman lying on the floor looked very little like the smiling, statuesque blonde that Hailey had just spotted leading jurors toward their prepaid county lunches. Now she was splayed on the floor, her wrap dress askew, mascara and black eyeliner smeared across her face.

Her eyes were wide open, protruding grotesquely from their sockets. Tears, still wet on her face, mixed with eyeliner and made dark rivulets down her cheeks. But that was the least of it.

Her peaches and cream complexion was now almost entirely purple. With a sudden convulsion, her body went rigid, her lips unmistakably turning blue before their eyes.

“Elle! Elle! What’s wrong?” The male sheriff who had been leading the jurors along with her to their lunch knelt down beside her. “Eleanor! Say something!”

Jerking off his deputy’s hat, he quickly bent over the clerk and tried to administer CPR. Hailey and Finch immediately knelt beside him, Hailey grasping the woman’s wrist for a pulse, Finch calling for help on his investigators’ radio. Several people standing around whipped out cell phones to dial 911.

The sheriff’s CPR effort was clumsy but even had it not been, Hailey could see around his shoulder that when he tried to clear her airway for mouth to mouth, the woman’s tongue had swelled to the point where he could do nothing. Elle was either dead or dying.

In moments, courthouse EMTs swarmed the cafeteria. Banging doors and loud voices broke through the cluster of people standing around. But by the time the EMTs arrived, Elle was in full respiratory arrest.

Their first maneuver was to run a tube down her throat so they could push air to Elle’s lungs. It wasn’t easy. The first several efforts failed because her throat had closed up. There was absolutely nowhere to slide the tube. The EMTs injected her with several syringes full of clear liquid that seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

But they didn’t stop. They never stopped trying. Not for a second. Even after Elle was clearly dead there on the floor, they kept frantically trying to revive her.

The sound of ambulance sirens and police cars screamed from outside, down on the street, reaching up the sides of the old building and through the windows. But by the time paramedics ran from their emergency vehicles to the elevators and took the elevators to the cafeteria, courthouse EMTs and the sheriff who tried to save her were sitting on the floor distraught or standing disconsolately, some crying.

She was dead. They couldn’t save her. Two of the paramedics quickly knelt beside her to give it another try, complete with chest compressions and then a defib paddle.

Ripping open her wrap dress, they tore off a gold costume necklace that dangled just beneath the base of her throat to apply adhesive electrodes to her chest. One of the paramedics connected electrodes to the defibrillator and Hailey was vaguely aware of the other one screaming for everyone to clear the room.

The adhesive solid-gel electrodes, while easier to use in a non-hospital setting, tend to burn the skin. Once the electrodes were applied in an anterior-apex scheme with the first electrode placed on the right, below her collarbone, and the other over the apex of the heart, on the left side, the electrical surge went through her body.

The crowd remaining barely breathed. They all stood tensed, staring at Elle on the floor, praying and hoping against hope the jolt of electricity would bring her back.

Nothing. The smell of singeing flesh rose in the air as the paramedic called for another round. Still kneeling beside the woman, Hailey looked away.

The EMTs and deputies stood silent until the lead paramedic broke the silence. “What happened? Heart attack?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. One minute we were all sitting here having lunch, talking. The next, she grabbed her throat, she tried to stand up. She seemed to sway a little and she fell onto the table, everything went flying and… and… I tried CPR… but she… she turned purple and I… I…” The sheriff, Deputy Marks, had to stop speaking in an effort to compose himself.

From the corner of her eye, Hailey noticed a pale woman in a knee-length plaid skirt slip through the double doors to the cafeteria. Her starched white blouse was tucked in tightly and buttoned up all the way to the collar.

Her thin, fine hair was mousy brown and parted straight down the middle. Wispy bangs coming just halfway down her forehead indicated the strong possibility of a home haircut over the bathroom sink of the old bowl cut variety. While she evidently wore no makeup whatsoever, Hailey could make out pale hazel eyes. Hanging around her neck was a blue lanyard with a Chatham County ID card bearing her name and picture.

The woman’s eyes darted around the cafeteria from left to right, then left again until they rested on Deputy Marks, now sitting at a two-top. He was being consoled by one of the pink-faced little old ladies who worked over steaming food in the lunch line. Keeping to the edge of the room, she walked crablike, in a sort of side step, back against the outer tables over to Marks.

“What happened, Deputy Marks? Is it true? Is she… dead?”

He didn’t move, but looked up at her from his seat at the table. “Yes, Eunah. It’s true. I can’t believe it. I can’t take it in. Elle’s passed away… she’s… she’s dead.” The tears began again as he held a bandanna to his eyes to mop his face.

“Oh, Deputy Marks, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry to hear…”

“Get away from me, Eunah!” Marks abruptly pushed away from the table and stood up, his voice raised. “Don’t act like you’re sorry, Eunah Mabry. You hated her. Nothing could have made you happier than to find out she’s dead. And over what? A married man. Who cares if he’s a judge? Go ahead and admit it. The whole courthouse knows about it. Now that she’s dead, you won’t be happy until his wife leaves him and Bill Regard’s thrown off the bench!”

“How… how d-d-dare you! ” She sputtered the words out, stammering, searching for the right denial. “That is absolutely not true! The judge is happily married… no matter what that… woman’s … scheming designs were on him! And I… I never so much as had a dinner with the judge!”