Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

“Mr. DelVecchio! That’s an extremely serious allegation. Do you have any evidence to support such a claim?”

For one brief moment DelVecchio paused and the judge interjected. “Mrs. Delgado, you were describing Mr. Adams’s reaction there in the kitchen of their home when he received the call telling him his wife, Julie Love Adams, was missing. Did you say he cried?”

“No. He didn’t! I saw it with my own eyes. He never cried. And when I fell to my knees there on the kitchen floor, sir… I prayed. I looked up. His eyes were open and he had half a smile on his lips… just on… on the corners, judge. I saw him. I remember it ’til I go to my grave, God help me.”

“Stop! You’re lying! That’s not the question I asked you. Nonresponsive! I object! Your Honor! I insist she be reprimanded!” DelVecchio started to blow and right in front of the jury.

The little woman on the stand sat up in her seat before the judge could rule. She looked at DelVecchio. “He never cried… he never prayed for Miss Julie and the baby to come home… I don’t care what his lawyer tries to make me say! I saw him with my own eyes, as God is my witness.”

Reporters rushed again from the courtroom to report the latest climax in court. Rosario Delgado’s husband sat back down as Judge Luther Alverson banged his gavel repeatedly, calling for order, finally sending the jury out and calling for a recess.

“OK. I didn’t see that coming. What do you think now?” Finch turned to Hailey.

“I think the state has to come up with more than the fact he never cried. Cause of death would help. Forensics linking Adams to the body would help. But Rosario Delgado’s a pretty good start. Hey, let’s get out of here. Want to go outside?”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Finch stood up.

“And no talking about the case ’til we’re clear of the courthouse. You never know who might be on the elevator with you. Could be a juror, or worse, a defense team minion.” Hailey lowered her voice and spoke sideways to Finch as they pushed through the swinging doors in the back of the courtroom.

In fact, the elevator was packed. Hailey could only see the backs of heads. She and Finch remained silent through the lobby and past the metal detectors.

“Hey, I’m ducking into the men’s room in the lobby. I held it the whole morning session and I gotta go! Meet you outside at the corner.” Finch threaded his way toward the public bathrooms and water fountains in the far corner.

“OK!” Hailey called after him and headed out into the sunlight and the fresh air blowing off the Savannah River.

Before she could make it down more than a few steps from the courthouse, she was jostled sideways by three men. They seemed to come out of nowhere.

One was short, very round in the middle, his gut straining against a thin T-shirt. His dark, greasy hair hung almost shoulder length, matching the stubble across his cheeks and chin. An LA Lakers baseball cap was jammed low over his face. Hailey noticed that in sharp contrast to his unkempt top half, he was sporting perfectly pristine Nike Air Yeezy Customs. Being a runner, Hailey had seen them before. They had to ring in at over two grand.

The greasy one seemed to be ordering around a taller, skinny one with pale dirty blonde hair parted straight down the middle. He was attempting to grow a goatee of sorts, but the hair had sprouted in thin patches, like sprigs of grass that hadn’t quite grown together to form a lawn just yet. A camera slung around his neck, he was holding a Sony camcorder in the palm of his right hand, thumb on the ready.

The third one, a taller white male in his forties, stepped through the other two, who slid to either side without being told. He was obviously the boss and when his face came into view, Hailey recognized him immediately.

It was none other than Mike Walker with Snoop magazine. Hailey had dealings with him in the past over the murder of a B-list actress found shot dead in some rich guy’s pool house. Walker had the cool good looks other women seemed to love-a chiseled jaw, steely blue eyes-and was by no means an idiot. In fact, he was brilliant at his game. He was the ringmaster, the reporter every tabloid reporter wanted to be. There was no story he couldn’t crack and he apparently felt no compunction whether his target was a politician, a king, an actor, or a garbage collector. Whatever sold copy was both his prize and his prey.

Walker’s good looks aside, Hailey had always fed him with a long-handled spoon. He covered several of her trials but became a little too involved in her investigation of a string of murders, starting with the actress in the pool house.

Hailey did her homework on Walker and found out that he first did a stint in the air force in Japan, shooting to fame as the youngest-ever foreign correspondent for International News Service, the precursor for United Press International. He hit the headlines as an NBC foreign correspondent. After a few years, he chased down a huge paycheck as a star writer with Snoop . With Walker as a lead reporter and columnist, Snoop quickly rose to the top as the single largest circulation magazine in the country, over 17 million readers weekly.

Hailey had landed on Snoop ’s front page when she cracked the murders of a string of fading female stars a while back. True, time had passed, but Hailey remembered the moment, standing in the grocery store checkout line, when she spotted her own face emblazoned across the front of the mag. She was pictured with blood smeared down her left cheek, her arm in a sling, and a bandage on her shoulder.

In the cover photo, Hailey was being helped by a plainclothes cop down the steps of the mammoth GNE building in New York City. Much larger color photos of dead actresses Prentiss Love, Fallon Malone, Leather Stockton, and Cassie Lee were superimposed beside the bloody shot of Hailey.

Hailey cracked the case and nearly died in the process.

And here he was again. Wherever this guy showed up, people dropped dead like flies. Mike Walker emerged between his compatriots with the same movie star smile, the same calm demeanor, as usual, dressed nattily and beaming, fresh as a daisy even on a blistering hot day. His hair was perfectly combed, having been clearly set in place with a light spray, and if his teeth had been any whiter, they’d sparkle.

“ Dear Hailey Dean! What an unexpected thrill! To meet you here on the courthouse steps!” Walker said it with a flourish.

Translation? He’d been watching for days to nail down her pattern, sent his lackeys to the courtroom to spy, then stalked her to these very steps.

“Hi, Mike. How are you?” Hailey returned the smile, holding out her hand to his already extended toward her. But instead of shaking it, he took a step backward down the courthouse steps and in a mini-bow, lowered his upper half to plant a warm kiss on her hand, grazing her knuckles and lingering a tiny bit.

Quite the showman. And charming. Like a snake.

Masking her surprise, it all rushed back, in an instant, to her mind’s eye. Briefly a while back, Hailey had considered him a possible suspect in the D-list murders, but not for long. She could never sort out a decent motive, but, of course, motives for murder were as varied and illogical as the sands on the beach. Did Walker somehow suspect her suspicions way back then? If he did know, he didn’t let on.

Just then, a new mass of people churned out of the center doors of the old building. Among them, Hailey spied Tish Adams along with the rest of the Todd Adams defense team pushing through the front doors at the top of the steps.

One of DelVecchio’s flunkies held the massive door for Tish so she could maneuver her oxygen tank over the door’s threshold. Oxygen tank and all, Tish Adams did manage, in the hustle and bustle, to shoot a distinctly disapproving scowl directly at Walker’s sidekick, now thrusting a microphone under Hailey’s nose. But in the blink of an eye, Tish Adams blended into the flock that seemed to herd itself down the steps to the sidewalk, then melting into hundreds of fleet-footed pedestrians.