Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

“Fine, Mr. DelVecchio. You do that. But in the meantime, no more delays. This trial will proceed. Mrs. Adams, please take the stand.”

No one moved a hair.

“ Now , Mrs. Adams.”

DelVecchio sat down, defeated, momentarily anyway, beside his client, Todd Adams. Adams’s eyes were trained on his mother. Tish Adams slowly rose from her seat and stood momentarily, her hands gripping the wooden rail in front of her, staring at the judge.

Stepping out into the aisle, she relocated one hand from the bench back to the top of her portable oxygen tank, the other hand enabling her to lean heavily on a metal cane. The jury watched, all eyes on Tish as she walked slowly but steadily, dragging the rolling oxygen tank along with her, toward the witness stand. Passing her son seated at the counsel table flanked by his lawyers, she imparted an all-loving look at the boy-turned-man she’d nurtured his whole life, now on trial for murder one.

Tish Adams was showing her age now. Instead of the calculating socialite she’d been at the beginning of Todd’s trial, she was now slightly bent over, walking with the use of the quad-cane, a black metallic cane with a four-point, claw-like base.

Her face was gaunt, although she’d carefully applied makeup that morning. Forget about whose party she and her family were invited to during the Savannah social season, forget the debutante ball committees and the high-society fundraisers she chaired… now it was all about survival… hers and her son’s… and taking the next step to the stand. The entire courtroom was hushed as every eye was trained on Tish Adams.

Each step seemed a labor. Twice on her way to the wooden steps leading up to the stand, she had to stop to inhale as deeply as she could from the clear plastic continuous-flow nasal cannula that wrapped across her face under her nose to hinge like upside-down sunglasses over her ears.

She made it up the two low wooden steps to the mini-landing where the steps turned right and upward to the raised wooden chair situated directly beside the judge’s high bench, positioning the witness between the judge and the jury during testimony. She seemed to struggle to get the oxygen tank up the two steps, although it couldn’t have weighed more than seven or eight pounds.

She slowly approached the witness chair, but then, turning to face the courtroom, a scream rose up from a woman in the jury box as Tish Adams’s eyes rolled back in her head. Crumbling before their eyes, Tish dived face forward down the low stairs in front of her, careening off the wooden rail and tumbling down onto the floor into a heap in front of the jury box.

The oxygen tank’s plastic tubing apparatus was tangled around her neck, hair, and face, the cane beside her. Todd Adams sprang up from his seat, and immediately he was tackled by bailiffs to keep him at the counsel table. But few noticed Todd Adams, focusing instead on his mom on the floor.

Was Tish Adams dead?

Tish Adams lay there, completely unmoving, her limbs twisted at awkward angles.

Everyone in the well was on their feet, staring right along with the jury. The bailiffs bent down on the floor with Tish, and the judge had rounded from behind his bench and knelt on the floor beside her body. EMTs appeared out of nowhere.

The bailiffs turned her over gently. Her face was pale and her mouth hung open as if unhinged at the jaws. Reaching down, one of them quickly took her pulse at the neck.

“She’s got a pulse… it’s steady… hold on…”

Straining while watching his lips, Hailey could just barely make out the low words of the EMT. So she was alive. A female EMT pulled out a tiny vial of smelling salts, ammonium carbonate. Waving it under Tish’s nose, she reacted immediately. Anyone would… Hailey knew the human body reacts aggressively to the ammonia when it irritates the lung and nostril membranes, triggering a knife-sharp inhalation reflex. Tish’s eyes fluttered open and she coughed, sputtering, gasping for air… but alive.

“Send out the jury, bailiff,” the judge spoke in a low voice, but firmly. Two bailiffs approached the jury and led them from the jury box into the jury deliberations room adjoining the courtroom.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I believe this is the perfect time for a coffee break in the cafeteria,” Alverson called to their backs as the jurors filed into their room. “Bailiffs, please attend to the jurors on the county expense. Thank you.” The jurors could be led out another door in the room out into a narrow hallway that opened into the main hallway outside the huge courtroom. A few glanced back at Tish Adams, still supine on the courtroom floor, being tended to by the EMTs.

As the door closed behind the jury, the judge returned to Tish. “Mrs. Adams, how do you feel?”

“Judge, I… I… I just couldn’t seem to catch my breath… I don’t know exactly what happened.”

“We will arrange for you to be transported immediately to the hospital…” Alverson went on.

“No! Please, Judge… no! Both my parents, both of them, Todd’s grandparents, died in the Savannah Hospital. Please… one of Mr. DelVecchio’s assistants can take me straight to my doctor’s office.” She looked up at him imploringly, tears filling her eyes.

Watching her, Hailey realized Tish Adams was really just a shell of herself, practically wasting away as the trial progressed over the last weeks.

“Yes, Your Honor. We can do that right now.” DelVecchio turned to two of his flunkies who looked at each other as if they’d been ordered to eat spaghetti off the bathroom floor. But they quickly masked their resentment at being ordered out of the courtroom action and approached Tish solicitously.

The EMTs helped her to her feet and untangled the oxygen tubing from her neck and hair. Thanking them weakly, Tish managed to smooth down her clothes and walk gingerly, an EMT and a defense flunky on either side of her, past Todd Adams at the defense table and slowly, slowly from the courtroom.

Just as she approached the swinging oak doors leading into the outer vestibule, she turned. “Son, don’t worry about your mother. I’ll be fine. I’ll be back here with you tomorrow, Lord help me.” Smiling at him, she mouthed a gentle kiss his way.

Adams, turned around in his seat, watched the huge doors swing shut behind her. No one in the courtroom moved an inch. There was total and complete silence.

“Court’s in recess for the day. Lawyers report to my chambers immediately.”

A loud buzz filled the courtroom as the press jumped from their seats and ran out to begin broadcasting the sudden turn of events from the courthouse steps. Print reporters followed on their heels, pulling out spiral notebooks, pencils, laptops, and iPads as they practically jogged through the swinging doors.

In a matter of moments, the courtroom was all but empty. Hailey and Finch sat stock-still then looked at each other without a word.

“Before this trial is over, another woman will end up dead… Adams’s own mother.” Finch finally broke his silence. “He’ll be the death of her, for sure. I just know it.”

Hailey couldn’t disagree. Her head suddenly pounded… a dull ache where she’d landed on the curb. She had acted as if it was just a simple fall, but now the ache was spreading across the top of her head, as if a machine was gripping her skull in a crushing vise. She inhaled quickly, and then the pain seemed to subside, followed by a dull ache.

The bus… she’d almost forgotten in court. But sitting there, her mind shifted back to the hot street outside, turning it over and over in her mind like a Rubik’s Cube.

Standing up, she headed out of the courtroom with Finch a few steps ahead of her. Again, she was trying to make the facts fit together in a neat pattern. But she couldn’t.