Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

Once past a bottleneck of court watchers at the doors in the back of the room, they finally got out. “Let’s take the stairs, I can see a line for the elevator from here.” Finch pointed to a door marked “stairs, fire exit” at the other end of a long hall.

“OK.” They turned away from the others, opened the fire exit door, which fortunately did not alarm, and headed down a long flight of concrete stairs to the lobby level.

Emerging into the lobby, they found it packed with people-cops, witnesses, county employees-all headed in different directions. Going past the clerk’s office and then around the metal detectors, they exited, pushing though the giant doors and onto the front steps of the old courthouse.

“It’s gorgeous out here! Let’s eat outside!” Hailey said it first, inhaling a deep lungful of warm air. It smelled a little like honeysuckle with just a touch of salt water.

“OK. Good idea. County cafeteria’s out. Food court’s out. Let me think… eat outside… eat outside…” Finch rambled to himself.

“Hey, guys!” A man’s deep voice made them turn to see Chase Billings bounding up the steps toward them.

“Hi, Billings!” Hailey and Fincher said at the same time.

“How’s the trial? Todd Adams guilty yet?” He gave a wide grin that showed off a perfectly white smile.

Hailey realized that in the entire time they’d worked the Alton Turner crime scene, she’d never seen Billings smile. In fact, she only remembered his first name was Chase because she’d read it off his uniform. No one had called him anything other than Lieutenant the night Turner’s body was found.

“Ha. Not yet!” Hailey returned the smile.

“Where you guys headed?” Billings asked.

“Lunch. Somewhere outside. Want to come? Know of anywhere we can sit outside?” Finch answered.

“Sure! Let’s go. I know this place off the old U.S. highway. Williams Seafood. It’s between here and Tybee Island.”

Hailey’s face lit up. “Oh yeah. Williams Seafood. I remember that. Didn’t it…”

“… burn down? Yep. It did. Arson, I heard it rumored. Never proved. But they rebuilt.”

“Arson? Wow. Who knew? And hey, you gotta stop finishing my sentences for me!” Hailey laughed. All three of them headed toward the parking garage.

“I’ll try. How’s the trial? I’ve been working the Turner case like crazy. Mind if we go through it over lunch?” Billings asked, still smiling.

“Aha! I knew you had an ulterior motive other than shrimp and oysters for lunch!” Hailey laughed back at him.

“Hey! We don’t have to talk about Alton Turner. I’d love to take you guys to lunch. No murder talk. It’s the least I can do since we missed our romantic dinner the other night, Hailey.”

Romantic dinner? She and Finch both skipped a beat, pausing ever so slightly as they made their way to the rental car.

“Dinner?” Hailey asked. No one, specifically Billings, had ever mentioned a “romantic” dinner to her. Had she missed something?

“Yeah. I texted you about grabbing dinner and going through the Turner notes.”

“Right.” Hailey remembered now. Billings had texted that day in the cafeteria, just before Elle collapsed. But “romantic” had not been part of the message. She looked at Billings standing before her. At six four with light brown hair brushed over to one side and deep blue eyes, Hailey could imagine many a woman falling for him. Something about those blue eyes… they reminded Hailey of Will.

Billings spoke, interrupting her thoughts. She shook it off quickly and put his looks firmly out of her mind.

“Hailey, I can’t seem to turn it off. Like turning off the hot and cold water spigots. Alton Turner… he’s just in my head… you know? You know how that is?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hailey answered. “I know how that is. Do I ever.” Leaving the bright sunshine and entering the darkened parking deck, her eyes blinked involuntarily.

“Want to ride in the cruiser?”

Hailey recognized Billings’s squad car parked just a few spots away from her rental.

“Sure. Maybe we won’t get pulled over if we speed,” Hailey answered over her shoulder.

“Speaking of dead bodies, Billings, did you hear about Eleanor Odom, the clerk who died in the cafeteria?” Finch cut in.

“I didn’t know we were speaking of dead bodies…” Hailey gave Finch another playful jab, this time in the arm. The bicep was rock-hard and as big as a Virginia ham from all the weight lifting and working out.

“Hailey, come on… you and I are always talking about dead bodies… even when we’re not…”

“True,” Hailey conceded.

“Yeah,” Billings answered. “I heard about Elle. Nice lady. I knew her. She played on the county softball team and the bowling team too. Always brought brownies or something like that to every game.”

“It was awful. So full of life one moment, dead lying there on the cafeteria floor the next.” Hailey slid into the front passenger seat after Finch took the whole back to himself.

Billings reversed out of the spot, driving the short distance to the employee exit. He swiped a plastic card over a black pad at the parking gate and within minutes, the high-rise buildings of downtown Savannah, Forsyth Park and its famous fountain, the crowds, the courthouse, and the Todd Adams murder trial all melted away.

Heading out toward the old U.S. highway, buildings were magically replaced by tall pine trees, live oaks, azaleas, camellias, and magnificent magnolias bursting with sweet-smelling blooms. Hailey rolled down her window to take it all in. Looking out the window and upward, she saw the canopy of trees above them, draped in a veil of Spanish moss.

The conversation lulled as they drove along, Billings’s left arm laying across the driver’s window, also rolled down. Even Fincher was uncharacteristically quiet in the back seat, taking in the gorgeous scenery.

And now, she could smell the marsh. Vibrant green and flooded with water at high tide, the tide was out and areas normally underwater were now revealed. The marsh laid bare was full of soft, brown mud and countless birds flying low, searching for an easy meal. The low tide of the marsh had its own pungent smell, and Hailey inhaled it all deeply.

Just beyond the marshes, there it was, old Williams Seafood. Getting out of the county cruiser, Hailey slammed the car door shut behind her and headed across the sandy parking lot to a table under a big umbrella on the outdoor patio. A sign read “Try Our Cheese Grits!” That was exactly what she intended to do.

“I was thinking about Elle last night.” Hailey picked up the conversation where they’d left off. “I looked her up on Facebook for the heck of it.” Hailey didn’t mention she looked up Billings, too.

“And?” Billings dropped into a seat beside her.

“Great gourmet cook by the looks of it, jogged, loved softball, bowling, beautiful, unmarried…”

“Yep. All true. I guess she was single. Never thought of that before. Didn’t she have a boyfriend? Come to think of it, she was always alone.” Billings perused the menu the waitress just handed him, studying it as if he hadn’t been to the place a hundred times before. Hailey looked over in the corner and saw an elderly man dressed in all white bearing a striking resemblance to the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, Colonel Sanders, making his way from booth to booth to table.

“Who’s that?” she asked, nodding her head toward the man in the white suit, white shoes, and white shirt.

“It’s old man Williams. He always gets decked out in all white and works the crowd.”

“Hmm. OK. So back to Elle Odom, what was the official COD? The cause of death? What did the ME say?” Hailey studied the menu too, homing in on the fried shrimp and cheese grits.