Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

She’d been standing on the corner. She remembered the heat coming up off the pavement, mixed with gas fumes from cars stalled at the red light. A wave of people came from the other side of the street, and she remembered seeing several of them half-jogging to beat the light.

She’d been squinting back at the courthouse, scanning the front steps, looking for Finch. She hadn’t been aware, really, of any of the people standing around her, pressing in on her along with all the others waiting to cross.

And then it happened. The stiff arm pushing her forward. Then all she knew was the hot asphalt, the roaring sound of traffic, the insane screeching of the tires, and the squeal of hydraulic brakes.

Everything was swimming in gray and black when she came to, drenched with sweat with people standing over her, some kneeling around her, some trying to ask her questions. At first, their voices and their words didn’t make any sense, but then, slowly, it seemed like she settled back into her own skin and her own senses… like she had been out of her body and returned without knowing where she’d gone.

By now, Finch had gotten ahead of her and was all the way down the wide hall leading toward the elevator bank. She spotted him mingling with two of Billings’s detectives. “Hailey… you coming?” Finch called out to her.

She had to breathe… to think. Hailey headed straight across the hall to the ladies’ room as if she didn’t hear or see any of them.

Maybe Finch and Billings were right, after all. Not that she wanted to go to the ER because she was absolutely sure she was fine… but maybe she could have listened to someone else, for once, and not come back to court. Tish Adams’s testimony would have been irrelevant to Hailey’s opinion on the case anyway. Hailey could’ve just gone back to her hotel and chilled… put her feet up for once.

She shut the ladies’ room door behind her. She was finally alone. It was cool and quiet and dark in the smooth tiled bathroom. She could feel the pounding in her head, the ringing in her ears subsiding, at last.

It was completely quiet, finally. No lawyers, no Tish, no Todd Adams, no questions, nothing. The street… the sun… the bus.

She didn’t trip… she knew it. She didn’t trip at all. But she recalled glancing at the crowd crossing over on her right… surely she would have recognized someone… someone who wanted to kill her.

But she hadn’t.

A random kill in the shadow of the courthouse? Even the thought of it railed against every statistic she knew regarding the manner and assessment of homicides… it screamed unlikely . So then what? She tripped? No, she hadn’t. She fell? No, she didn’t. She imagined the whole thing?

Hailey paused. Had she finally reached her limit? One dead body after the next. A never-ending parade of homicides, murders, crime scenes, autopsies, ballistics, the rank, musky smell of human blood. Was the so-called “avenging angel,” as the press once called her, totally shot? Frayed? Over? Was it even possible Hailey Dean was over and didn’t even realize it?

Closing her eyes, Hailey leaned, bone-tired in mind and body, against the wall. But as quickly as she relaxed against the cool tiles, she gasped out loud, instinctively pushing off the wall as if she’d touched a hot stove. A sharp pain in her shoulder smarted.

Curiosity led her over toward three mirrors placed neatly above three sinks in a row. Hailey pulled her shirt down over her arm and there it was… a bluish-black bruise just inside the right camisole strap on the back of shoulder.

The words coursed back and forth across her brain, ping-ponging off the inside of her skull, “I was pushed… somebody tried to kill me… somebody wants me dead.”

But who? And why?

Just when Cecil thought life couldn’t get any better, it did. He took a big bite of another gator-on-a-stick dripping with ketchup. He couldn’t resist. After the morning Feeding Frenzy, he spent plenty of time in the Gator Museum boning up on gator facts, particularly the gator’s uncanny night vision, because at this very moment, he was heading over to the Croc-N-Gator Night Time Adventure.

Or so the pamphlet said.

He reported to the south end of the parking lot just as instructed and couldn’t help but notice multiple signs warning no pets followed by exclamation marks. Cecil could only imagine…

His train of thought was interrupted by the faint sound of music. Cecil spotted a tall, extremely pale, pimply teenage boy staring at an iPhone from which thumping, metallic music Cecil had never heard before emanated. The teen stared at the tiny screen as if it were the most fascinating and the most intriguing thing he had ever encountered. Cecil wondered briefly how whatever was on the screen could be more exciting than snapping gators.

Kids. The kid was dressed in khaki shorts that came down to mid-calf and a green polo shirt bearing the Gator World logo. Barely glancing away from his iPhone to examine Cecil’s gold-trimmed certificate, he passed off a large plastic bucket with a metal handle, a flashlight, and a mini-container of bug spray.

It was starting to get dark. The sun was just barely showing over the trees in the distance.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks. Which way?”

Still staring at his iPhone behind the card table, the kid pointed across the parking lot. Cecil spotted for the first time an arch of sorts, made of what looked to be the trunks from palm trees. Hanging from two chains in the upper center of the arch was a wooden sign with the words “Croc-N-Gator Night Time Adventure” in black letters creating a burned-looking effect.

Passing under the arch, Cecil clutched his flashlight and a fresh bucket of raw chicken. Drenching himself in bug spray, he tossed the can into a metal trash can just beside the arches. He followed a path with tiki torches on either side separating the smooth dirt path from the dense foliage surrounding it.

Palm trees, huge palmettos, and sprawling water oaks were draped with hanging sheets of Spanish moss, all growing so thick he couldn’t see past them. It was hard to believe all this was right beside the hot asphalt parking lot, now cooling down as the sun set and the moon rose, both sharing the night sky for a brief time. The cicadas hummed rhythmically on either side of him and as loud as they were, he couldn’t spot a single one of them.

Where were the others? The pamphlet said there had to be at least five in a group for the Night Time Adventure. As he kept walking, a cool breeze crossed his face and dried the perspiration there. Finally, it was cooling down.

Rounding another curve in the path, a long wooden boardwalk came into view that stretched way out onto what was rapidly becoming dark water. It looked to be maybe eighty or ninety feet straight ahead, then broke off into four different paths like spokes of a wheel.

Standing at the end of the old wooden pier holding his bait bucket, Cecil felt a chill run up his spine. It was completely quiet now except for the hum of the cicadas. He looked up to see the moon, full in all its glory rising up overhead. It was a lonely moon tonight, though. No stars had yet appeared.

The palm trees silhouetted against the sky as the very last bit of sunlight disappeared and the deep, deep dark blue turned into velvety black. It was absolutely incredible.

Still waiting for the others to show, Cecil ventured out onto the boardwalk resting on thick, sturdy beams that obviously went deep, deep into the muddy goo beneath the dark water. Stomping on the boardwalk itself, just for good measure, Cecil determined that yes, it was safe. After all, he’d checked, and there had never been a single accident at the Gator World Croc-N-Gator Night Time Adventure. Not even one.