Читать книгу Murder in the Courthouse - Nancy Grace - Страница 11

CHAPTER ONE

“Come on, Hailey. It’s just three weeks. You’re already gonna be there to take the stand as an expert witness . . . right? So why does one more day or so matter? And you don’t really have to prepare, do you Hailey? I mean . . . I never prepare. I mean . . . what is it this time . . . battered woman syndrome? Fiber evidence? No . . . I remember . . . you do a criminal profile and wow the jury . . . right? You know it like the back of your hand. You’ve tried a hundred of those cases. You don’t even have to prepare . . . am I right? You’ll have plenty of time to do the Harry Todd Show!”

Veteran TV producer Tony Russo was hell-bent on nabbing ratings by sucking the Love story dry, mining every salacious detail he could. It was all for the glory of the Harry Todd Show. It was Russo who first “discovered” Hailey, which apparently gave him license to badger her to appear on the show.

“I do have to prepare because every set of facts is different. You know that! I’m glad you’re not on the jury. You stay put right where you are, cooking up stories to get numbers for the network.”

“Whatever. Like I was saying, why not kill two birds with one stone? This trial is what you’re all about! Don’t you see that? A new mother, Hailey, a new mother and her baby. How can you turn your back on a little baby? And get this . . . they’re both dead! Dead, Hailey! Dead, dead, dead!”

“Will you please stop talking about them like that? I don’t like it.”

“Murdered. And the guy’s gonna get away with it. Is that what you want?”

It wasn’t what Hailey Dean wanted at all.

His words kept ringing in her ears as her flight touched down at SAV, the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. It had taken a lot to get her out of Manhattan, to leave her tiny apartment in the sky, and crowbar her away from her psych patients.

As a friend of the prosecutor, Hailey agreed to fly down and testify, or at least consult for the state, regarding Julie Love Adams’s relationship with her husband and what may have affected Julie’s decision to stay in the marriage. She would also profile the defendant, Todd Adams; specifically, his behavior just before and immediately after the disappearance of Julie. It was all part of the psychology that would prove Julie’s murder.

Criminal profiling, as much of an art as a science, draws on psychology and statistics combined with the profiler’s experience, knowledge, and, frankly, good old intuition. Profiling had been around since London’s Jack the Ripper.

“Behavioral evidence” was one of Hailey’s specialties and had been a marquee element in nearly all of her homicide prosecutions. She could pick apart a killer’s behavior, reactions, and responses, or lack thereof, like no other. Behavioral evidence analysis skyrocketed Hailey to become one of the most successful, and hated, prosecutors in the South . . . possibly the country.

Profiling often dealt with what was known but not spoken. In polite Savannah, the wealthy elite hobnob at the oldest country club in town, and “check in” regularly at offices set up by great-grandparents. The Julie Love Adams case had been one of their most salacious topics since Julie first went missing. But there was never mention nor, of course, understanding of the mind of a killer. No juicy conversations addressed warning signals before or clues left behind. It was all just gossip to get them through another bridge game, garden club, or round of golf.

But behavior like affairs, money problems, alcohol, gambling, domestic abuse . . . none of that would ever be discussed by clusters of ladies at the Savannah Country Club in the quiet carpeted areas off their powder rooms. Pink-faced matrons “glistening” delicately in their morning spin classes would remain silent on the issue, and forget about it coming up in the men’s locker room. No way.

The Adamses were third-generation members of “the Club.” Todd’s father and his grandfather before him had both sat on the board. Hardly a weekend passed without the parents meeting friends for cocktails and dinner there or the whole clan showing up in their Sunday best to man their usual table in the center of the club’s casual dining area near a huge stone fireplace for the predictable fare at Sunday brunch.

For a few weeks after Julie went missing, the Adams continued their regular club visits, but after a while, it was painfully obvious the place was buzzing with gossip about Todd and Julie, so Sunday brunches came to a halt. It was Burger King before 10:30 AM now for the Adamses, a small coffee and folded eggs.

And how they resented it.

Julie Love Adams was murdered, her body weighted down and dumped in deep, swirling, muddy waters. She managed to wash up ashore on Tybee Island along with a chunk of cement block. Her baby ultimately detached from her uterus in the salty ocean water and followed her mommy in the next tide.

The two were buried together in one grave, with Julie Love holding her baby’s remains in her arms inside the coffin.

Of course, the casket was closed because there was nothing but bones, hair, and soft tissue left of Julie. No one within Savannah’s upper crust discussed it openly.

But they would now.

It would be plastered across the airwaves.

Russo tried his best to convince Hailey that the “liberal media machine” would drown out the voices of the two victims with TV talking heads chanting “innocent till proven guilty” over and over. They’d be whining about the so-called power of the state and making the same old claims that police trumped up murder charges and planted evidence. Maybe pundits would even take potshots at the pregnant victim. Nothing was sacred when TV ratings were at stake . . . Hailey had learned that the hard way.

What if one juror listened?

But Hailey knew the truth. Julie and her unborn baby girl were brutally murdered. Extremely faint markings on what was left of neck tissue arguably suggested ligature strangulation. But it was only that . . . arguable.

Cause of death was officially ruled “undetermined” by the Chatham Medical Examiner because by the time her body washed ashore off Savannah’s South Channel, Julie Love was mostly just a skeleton.

But as fate would have it, a portion of the thick, protective layer of her uterus remained intact long enough to largely protect her unborn baby. The tiny fetus that would have been baby Lily washed up on the same sandy shore with the very next Atlantic tide, looking almost exactly like a bright and shiny, plastic and naked, store-bought baby doll.

The sight of little Lily brought homicide investigators to tears, and the photos taken that day would likely have the same impact on a jury. Not only that, there was plastic twine tangled around Julie’s ankles, and the cement block that washed ashore was the same type block found in Todd Adams’s garage.

Not entirely damning, in light of the fact it was also the same type of cement block found at every Lowe’s or Home Depot you cared to stop at, four of them in metro-Savannah alone. The twine was explained away as having tangled onto Julie’s dead body after being set free from some unwitting fisherman’s boat.

Hailey heard about the story when the pregnant twenty-eight-year-old first went missing. Julie was home alone decorating the Christmas tree when she reportedly took her little King Charles Spaniel for a walk to a local park. Then, the nine months pregnant mom just “disappeared.”

Her husband said he’d gone fishing off the tip of Tybee Island and was away all day. Months and months of investigation ensued and, predictably, a string of Todd Adams’s affairs came to light. But the cops didn’t find it on their own.

The tabloids beat the cops to the punch by digging up the truth about Todd Adams and his multiple sleazy affairs. Mike Walker with Snoop magazine and the even more ubiquitous Snoop.com, racked up two million clicks in the first thirty-six hours after posting. Walker actually ended up doing a lot of the police’s legwork for them.

Walker’s salacious headlines instantly translated into millions of dollars of sales. Gorgeous shots of Julie as a high school cheerleader appeared out of nowhere, wedding photos, photos of her in the baby’s soon-to-be nursery, of Julie at Christmas parties and at home in front of the couple’s Christmas tree, her tummy announcing the imminent birth of baby Lily.

The night before Julie Love went missing, she attended a neighborhood Christmas party by herself, then decorated the family tree all alone. It was later revealed her husband went to a Christmas party of his own . . . with a bleached-blonde girlfriend poured into a tight, red satin strapless cocktail dress. To top it all off, Todd Adams had his left hand planted on the blonde’s backside in the picture.

Only after Snoop dug up the Christmas party photo were police pushed to name a suspect. And they did. Amid press conferences, interviews, and banner headlines, Todd Adams was finally arrested on two counts of murder one. Now, he faced the Georgia death penalty and Old Sparky, Georgia’s fabled, and notorious, electric chair.

That one scandalous tidbit, the photo of Todd Adams posed with his hand on another woman’s rear end in front of a Christmas tree, juxtaposed with a shot of Julie Love pregnant and alone the very same night, galvanized women across the country. For that reason, the jury had to be handpicked in another county, then bused into Savannah for the trial.

Why is the plane still just sitting here? Hailey had already taken off her jacket and opened a newspaper she found in the seat pouch in front of her. The pilot of the commuter plane, a cramped regional jet, cut the AC for some barbaric reason. It was stifling hot. Sitting in her seat out on a hot tarmac, Hailey felt perspiration on her chest melting down into her bra.

Looking out the tiny window of her puddle jumper from Atlanta, waves of heat radiating up off the runway and in the distance, she spotted palm trees intermixed with live oaks planted around the airport. Over decades they’d grown into enormous giants, their branches hanging heavily with Spanish moss, giving them an eerie, almost supernatural, appearance.

Quite the contrast from New York’s LaGuardia, where she had taken off that morning. Trapped at 40,000 feet up in the air, Hailey read and reread articles about the double murder, making notes in the margins so she could use them later when testifying, provided the judge let her testimony in evidence. The state had to lay the proper legal and factual foundation first.

Prosecutors flew her down and were putting her up for the government rate at the Savannah Hyatt, on the Savannah River. Farther downtown was the Chatham County Courthouse.

Then, there was the possibility she’d discuss the trial on air following her testimony. She still wasn’t sure whether she would, but if it would help sway the public, and possibly even the jury, it was an opportunity she wasn’t sure she could pass up.

It would only be a few weeks. Hailey could manage her psych practice over the phone and via Skype. She told herself it would be great to be back home again, or at least a few hours’ drive away. She hadn’t been in Savannah in a while and the truth was, the Julie Love Adams case struck a chord with Hailey from the very first time she’d read about it.

What type of person could take the lives of his own wife and baby? Then wrap a mom-to-be in a tarp and dump the two of them in the choppy waters of the Atlantic? And then go on a date with his new lover that very night like nothing ever happened?

The last bit of advice Tony Russo blasted into his cell before Hailey took off from LaGuardia hung in the air. “Remember! Most important! I don’t care who you talk to or what you find out, never, ever refer to ‘Global News & Entertainment.’ We’re not that anymore. We’re GNE. The suits will scream if you even breathe the words ‘Global News & Entertainment.’ ”

“Well, if you’re not Global News & Entertainment, then why would I say GNE? GNE stands for Global News & Entertainment.”

“No it doesn’t! Not anymore!”

“Then what is GNE? What does it stand for?”

“Nothing! It stands for absolutely nothing!”

Hailey had paused to let that thought sink in. He went on in a high-pitched voice. “We rebranded! That’s just it . . . GNE! That’s the new name of the network. They thought Global News & Entertainment was too long and boring. So now we’re just GNE.”

“You think four words is too long?” Hailey almost started laughing out loud.

“Yes! It’s absolutely too long! And it’s so boring it makes my head hurt! Maybe not for you, Hailey, but four unnecessary words in TV world . . . it’s way too long! It’s practically a novel! Just remember . . . try to wrap your head around this . . . it stands for nothing . . . GNE stands for absolutely nothing.”

When he realized Hailey wasn’t responding, he went on. “You know, like the Game Show Network is no longer the Game Show Network. It’s just GSN now.”

“Right. GSN stands for Game Show Network and I’ve never seen it. What is it?”

“It doesn’t matter and it is no longer the Game Show Network! It’s GSN! That’s all! Just like GNE is just GNE . . . nothing more!”

Hailey didn’t get the reasoning behind the name “change” or the “rebranding.” “You mean you’re not embarrassed that the letters for your company stand for nothing? They don’t mean anything at all?”

“We’re not a company. We’re TV, we don’t have to stand for anything.”

“Listen, I’m in Savannah to catch a killer, not be in a TV studio, so I can’t promise anything, but if I can get out of court, I’m happy to.”

“I take that as an unequivocal yes! Love ya! Bye!” He clicked off.

Hailey resumed rereading the medical examiner’s report, but after just a few words, her eyes filled with tears. “. . . with no evidence of tool marks on the skeletal remains, it is unlikely a saw or butcher knife was used to cut up the body.” Hailey imagined mother and child-in-womb floating in the cool currents of the Atlantic until washing ashore. As awful as it was, Hailey made herself read on, years of courtroom training allowing her to block out the real-life implications of what she was reading and, instead, home in on words she could use as hard evidence.

Hailey looked out the window into the clouds. Funny how a dead body works. Hailey’s tears spilled over the rims of her eyes, trickling down one cheek. Nobody cared if she cried, sitting here tucked away in seat 11A, between the windows and the sky.

Hailey was wrong.

“Man problems? Husband being an a-hole?” Seeing the tears spill, the guy sitting next to her finally had an in. The seats were so tight in coach, he was practically in her lap and tried to spark up various conversations with Hailey ever since he’d grabbed her carry-on to hoist it into the overhead compartment.

Hailey had thanked him politely for the help but extricated herself from what was obviously a pass. But now he had another “in.” He’d spotted a tear. Quickly wiping her eyes with the little square napkin a Delta attendant placed beneath her hot tea, she answered, “No, I don’t have a husband. I never married.”

Poor choice of words. His eyes lit up, and now, her in-flight partner seemed to get a second wind.

“Not married? A beautiful young girl like you? I’m in shock! I can’t believe it! What . . . are the men in New York City blind as bats? Or just plain crazy?”

“You know I flew from New York?” Hailey’s antennae went up.

“Well, ma’am. My name is Cloud Sims and I hail from Nebraska, transplanted a few years ago to Manhattan. I was there at the same gate as you this morning. Delta gate number one. So why’s a pretty lady like you crying?” Just then, he tried his best to cross his long legs and managed to kick Hailey with the sharp toe of one of his elaborate cowboy boots.

Hailey was tempted to rattle off the medical examiner’s autopsy report verbatim, but that didn’t seem right. “Oh, I’m just getting ready for a trial and the facts of the case are a little upsetting.”

“A trial? Are you a lawyer? Wow! Brains and beauty! You know . . . I always wanted to go to law school . . .”

He was off. Hailey let him talk. It was easier than having a real conversation about why tears had spilled . . . because the autopsy report had stirred up too many memories of another autopsy report.

Will’s autopsy. Her fiancé . . . Will. Now, suddenly, here he was again in her mind. His blue eyes sparkling, the straight white teeth behind a beautiful smile, laughing, talking, so alive.

Will was in college studying geology. His world ended and Hailey’s exploded in one single moment—he was mugged for his wallet and shot five times in his face, neck, and head. It was just before their wedding, and from that moment she existed as a shell of herself . . . pining for a life . . . and a love . . . she could never get back.

Then there was the trial . . . a hazy, awful blur, but Hailey went every day. Ditching her lifelong plan to open a counseling center in the inner city, instead, she went to law school. To put away the bad guys. And one by one, killers, rapist, drug lords, child molesters, the jailhouse population grew to hate her almost as much as she hated them. But after ten years of crusading on behalf of crime victims, she was saturated with it all: the autopsies, the crime scenes, the packed courtrooms . . . and she took off. To Manhattan, to start over fresh, hanging her counseling shingle at a little brownstone in the Village near NYU. The clients started pouring in, and ever since, she’d tried to put Will’s murder and all the years in the trenches fighting violent crime behind her.

“. . . and that’s when I said, ‘Good-bye Omaha and hello New York City!’ What about you . . . what did you tell me your name was, pretty lady?”

“Hailey. Now let’s see, Nebraska. That’s the Cornhusker State, right?” She answered as brightly as she could without revealing she had no idea what he’d been saying. That would be rude.

That was all it took. Off he went again, this guy could go on forever. Staring out at the clouds just outside coach seat 11A, she wondered if Will was out there watching her flight, maybe protecting it as it shot across the top of the sky.

Now sitting on the tarmac, the heat was boring through the metal shell of the plane. Finally, a little bell rang twice, like a doorbell, and everyone stood simultaneously to squeeze into the aisle and out the front door of the jet.

Hailey stood, too. Taking the bag Cloud handed down to her with his big, white smile, she merely said, “Thank you.” She knew he wanted to stop for a drink after they deplaned, but the memory of Will was too fresh, so she simply merged into the long line of passengers crowding the tiny aisle.

As much as she’d tried to escape a lifetime of homicide, murder weapons, state’s exhibits, and courtroom maneuvering, walking up the jetport . . . here she was. Again.

Looking through the glassed walls of the terminal out at the blue sky and waving palm trees, Hailey felt a familiar feeling . . . a spring in her step. Yep . . . here she was again. And all in all . . . it felt pretty good.