Murder in the Courthouse (24 page)

“So reflected.” Alverson looked as though he could use an antacid.

Faring no better, the state's prosecutor looked like he'd just been dealt a knockout punch. Huge, swelling sweat stains darkened the armpits of his navy suit, the perspiration long ago having leaked through antiperspirant, pit hair, a short-sleeved white T-shirt, a dress shirt, and the dark suit. He'd bought it on sale at Jos. A. Bank and was convinced it looked like it was from Brooks Brothers.

Leaning forward and peering between backs, heads, and shoulders, Garland Fincher could barely spot Julie Love's mom and dad seated in the front row behind the state's table. Her father sat stiffly upright with his arm protectively around his wife. His skin beneath his short-sleeved dress shirt was worn and suntanned from years working outdoors on construction sites.

Julie's mom, on the other hand, was bent forward, her face downcast. She was holding a white handkerchief to her eyes with both hands. Although her shoulders heaved occasionally, she made not a sound as she cried silently into her husband's hanky out of fear she'd be ejected from court over an emotional display. The prosecutors had warned her of this before the trial had started.

The pink and sky-blue ribbon she'd worn on her blouse in honor of Julie and baby Lily had been confiscated by the bailiffs. They apologized profusely, explaining DelVecchio had objected to a display of support for the state in front of jurors. The state getting trounced at every turn by DelVecchio wasn't helping. And now, the Chatham County Medical Examiner was being crushed right before her eyes.

Fincher could see Dana Love's shoulders shaking. Thunder raging inside him, he glanced across the aisle at the defense supporters. They were taking up the first three rows behind Adams's team. Tish Adams and her husband led the pack and Fincher looked over just in time to see Tish turn toward the jury, a triumphant gleam in her eye. The satisfied look of a winner rubbing it in to the losing team was hard to miss.

“The state requests a recess.” The defense attack on the ME had been so thorough, the lead prosecutor didn't bother to stand when he addressed the court.

“So granted.” Alverson rose and left through the door beside his bench.

As he left, Finch stood up with the rest of the courtroom and headed toward the exit. Whipping out his cell phone, he immediately called Hailey as soon as he got out into the hall.

After several rings, it went straight to voicemail. That was weird. She'd have to be dead to not pick up a call. Especially during a trial.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

S
canning the front sidewalk, no Hailey. Sauntering down the wide granite steps as if he owned the place, Finch looked both ways and then reached into his pocket and glanced at his cell phone to make sure she hadn't called while he was on the elevator.

No good. Not a single call in the last five minutes, anyway.

As he headed toward the parking garage, people that normally moved with the flow of pedestrian traffic suddenly became a human wall, knotted tightly at one corner. Making his way through, he saw why.

Hailey was lying on the sidewalk across the street, surrounded by paramedics. Holding his hand high in the air, hailing traffic to stop, he broke into a full-on run across the street.

Fighting through the group around her, he wedged the paramedics to either side, and kneeled down. “Hailey! Hailey! Can you hear me?”

She didn't answer.

For once, Finch couldn't speak. His mind cycled through all the years he and Hailey had been inseparable. Fighting the bad guys, hitting the streets, casing crime scenes, days at the shooting range, martial arts defense, long days in court, lunches and dinners, driving the city of Atlanta, learning all of its secrets. They were a team that couldn't be stopped.

She'd seen him and his wife through the births of their two children and was godmother to both. She Skyped throughout his deployment in Iraq. She rode along in the ambulance when he was shot in the arm by a doper at a crime scene. She was always there for him, and now she lay at his feet on a hot Savannah sidewalk. He never envisioned this.

With a jolt, Garland Fincher found his voice. And it wasn't pretty. Rounding on the EMTs, he snarled, teeth clenched, “What happened? Does she have a pulse?”

“Well . . . we really don't know for sure . . .” The tallest one scratched the side of his head as another kneeled alongside Finch with her fingertips to Hailey's jugular vein with a look of intense concentration on her face.

A dark purplish bruise was manifesting on Hailey's right jaw and blood was seeping from a gash above her right eye into her blonde hair. The EMT's hands now moved deftly from jugular to eyelids, where she gently lifted Hailey's lids.

Instead of focusing upward and on them all standing over her with her usual piercing gaze, the green irises around Hailey's pupils were rolled back in her head. Seeing that, Finch felt his stomach churn and he lashed out.

Edging even closer to Hailey's body, he roughly elbowed the EMT to the side when she tried to nudge him back away.

“Give her some room, man,” one of the EMTs yelled into the air above his head.

“Hell no, I'm not giving anybody any room until my trial partner wakes up.” He reached to her neck with his own hand to find a pulse. “She could be dying here . . . if she doesn't pull through this, so help me, you'll have me to answer to. And you mean to tell me you don't know what happened to her? Did a car hit her? Was she coldcocked in the face?”

His voice was now raised . . . he was no longer asking . . . he was bellowing. More onlookers gathered around.

“Nobody saw a thing? Are you for real? Are you people serious? Aren't you people trained, for Pete's sake? They just handing out the EMT uniforms to anybody who asks for one?”

He didn't wait for an answer. “What do you mean you don't know what happened to her? With all these rubberneckers standing around, you haven't asked one . . .”

“Finch.”

When he looked back down, he was staring into two green pools. Her eyes were open. A weak smile played at one corner of her mouth.

He grabbed her up under her shoulders, hugging her but trying not to hurt her back or arms in case any bones were broken. “Hailey, what happened? Are you all right?”

“I'm not sure exactly. I was standing on the sidewalk, actually, looking for you across the crosswalk . . . and then, I was out in the street . . . a green bus . . .”

“That was me, lady. I'm so sorry.” All of them, Hailey, Finch, and the EMTs, collectively turned to look at a short, thin man standing at the edge of the group. He was twisting a green Chatham Area Transit cap in his hands. His eyes were brimming over with tears.

In one fluid movement, Finch gently disengaged with Hailey, stood, and advanced menacingly on the slight, pale man who was obviously the driver of the bus that had struck her.

“You're sorry?
Sorry?
Is that all you've got to say?” Finch pushed through the group and grabbed the little guy, literally lifting him off the ground by his collar and holding him just inches from his own angry face.

“I swear, mister, she just came outta nowhere. I was looking straight at the street, I was slowing down because we were heading into a crosswalk . . . I didn't want to hit nobody . . . I swear it. It was like one second she wasn't there and the next second there she was. She just kind of lurched out right in front of the bus . . . I'm so sorry lady . . . I'm so sorry you got that shiner . . . I'm gonna lose my job . . .”

With that, the waterworks started and tears streamed down the guy's face. He tried to wipe his nose with his hat.

“Sorry? You're
gonna
be sorry if it's the last thing I . . .”

“Finch.
Somebody pushed me
.” Hailey had fought into a sitting position on the sidewalk, holding out her arm in a nonverbal appeal for Finch to let the guy go.

Not ready to let go, Finch turned to look at Hailey while still holding the bus driver by the front of his collar.

“
Pushed you?
Hailey, are you sure?”

“Finch, I'm positive. It was a sharp push, and it was right in the middle of my back. He pushed really hard . . . I'm almost positive . . . it was definitely somebody's hand and it was definitely intentional.”

By now, sirens were screaming and cops were pulling up. Out of nowhere, Chase Billings materialized, cutting through the crowd gathering around Hailey and Finch. Bending down on one knee, Billings asked the same thing.

“Hailey, what happened? Are you all right?”

“I was just telling Finch, Billings, somebody gave me a pretty hard shove. I'm sure of it. The last thing I saw was the bus barreling down on me. I dove away from it, and I hit my head on something, I guess the curb?”

“Yep. It's the curb . . . there's some blood right here where she hit her head.” One of the EMTs was bent down examining the concrete curb just a few feet away.

“Hailey. Did you get a look at the guy?”

There was a long pause. “Finch, I didn't. It all happened so fast . . . I . . . I just shot out into the street and the bus was right there and I dove. That's really all I remember. If the bus driver hadn't been watching, I'd be dead right now.”

Finch finally relaxed his grip on the bus driver.

“Let's get you to the hospital,” the lead EMT broke in.

“No! I want to get back in the courtroom! I have to . . .” Hailey was struggling to get to her feet. Billings held out his hand to help her up.

“Hailey, you have to. You at least need an x-ray. Just to make sure . . .” Billings broke in.

“I don't
have
to do anything. I'm not missing the afternoon session.” She was polite but firm and clearly digging in on this one.

“Hailey . . . this is not the right time to be muleheaded . . .” Finch started in.

But looking her in the face, Billings could see it was a lost cause. She wasn't going anywhere but back into the courtroom. He turned his focus to Fincher.

“Finch, she's right. Nobody can physically
make
her go to the ER. You'll stay with her, right? Any dizziness, nausea . . . it could be a concussion.”

“You know I will. I can't make her do a thing, though.”

“FYI,
I can hear you
. . . I'm sitting right here!” Hailey looked at the two of them accusingly.

“I guess she
is
OK.” Billings grinned.

“Yep. Sure sounds like it!” Finch grinned too, obvious relief flooding his face.

Billings turned to the two sheriffs standing at his elbow. “Guys, work the crowd for witnesses. Order the crossing surveillance video. Get the bus driver's statement. I'll get a statement from Hailey later. Thanks.”

“OK. Look, thanks for rushing over . . .” Hailey looked up into his face, mustering a weak smile.

“I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but here, and, listen, watch out for speeding buses.”

“Very funny,” she said it sarcastically, but delivered it with a smile.

Billings turned and headed back across the street. Hailey watched until he disappeared, blending into all the foot traffic outside the courthouse. She glanced back up at Finch, only to spot a completely dumbfounded look on his face.

“What?” Hailey asked him. “What is it?”

“What's with him?
‘I wouldn't want to be anywhere but here'
. . . What does
that
mean?”

Hailey paused. Looking back toward where he'd melted into the courthouse throng, she murmured, “I don't know, exactly, what that means.”

She wobbled a little and grabbed the arm he held out.

“Sure you're OK, Hailey?”

“I'm positive. Thanks for asking that, but you can stop. I promise to let you know if I feel lethargic, dizzy, nauseous, itchy, scratchy, hungry, sweaty, or basically anything else.”

“Always the funny one. Where to?” he asked, stalling just a little to make sure she was stable on her feet.

“The courthouse. Where else?”

“You're kidding. You get run down by a bus and you want to go back for the afternoon session? Seriously?”

“Technically, I did not get run down by a bus. I fell out into the street in front of a bus, but the bus didn't hit me. I bumped my own head on the curb . . . and I'm absolutely fine. Nothing and nobody's going to stop me from hearing Todd Adams's mom on the stand.”

Finch just stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language.

“Don't look at me like that. I'm going back in that courtroom and I'm going right now come hell or high water, Garland Fincher.”

After one more hard look at her, his gaze lingering on the rapidly forming bruises, one on her chin and the other circling the cut above her right eye, he shook his head. And off they went.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T
he Feeding Frenzy Thrill was totally awesome. Nearly three hundred snarling, snapping gators jumping over one another, attacking each other, competing for food. Cecil would never forget it as long as he lived . . . the noise, the splashing, the hissing, the insane chomping of giant, lethal jaws. It was gators galore! In fact, he got so close to the gators, he could see long, gooey strings of saliva draping from tooth to tooth inside their huge mouths.

A stern voice kept reverberating in his head as he threw chunk after chunk of raw meat into the murky water. The voice insisted that feeding gators from twenty or thirty feet away on a boarded pier violated every law of nature and, of course, the regs of zoos, parks, and humankind in general.

Rules such as A, Don't feed alligators. They are mega-carnivores and you, the pathetic, tiny person, are likely to lose an arm at the very least. Plus, feeding them like they're sheep at a petting zoo makes the gators even bolder, encourages the monster meat-eaters to seek out people, and trains them to associate humans with food.