Murder in the Courthouse (6 page)

Keeping one hand firmly on the wheel, he reached down to his ankle and with one quick snap of Velcro, handed her a .38.

“You still hate guns, Hailey?”

“I don't know what you mean by that.” Hailey tensed, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead.

“Every time you see a gun, you think about Will. Just like in the courtroom. The sight of a gun still makes you sick . . . right? I bet you haven't dated one guy more than five times up in Manhattan. Have you? I knew moving to New York and getting out of the business wouldn't change anything. Different place, same Hailey Dean . . .”

She didn't answer, raising her window, looking out as the houses passed, watching street signs knowing Randolph would pop up at any minute.

“This is it. 3443 Randolph.”

He was right. Hailey clicked the safety belt and, bending forward at the waist, slipped on the holster made especially for her. Adjusting it over and around quickly, sliding the .38 into place, Hailey unlocked the car door and stepped out into waves of heat.

CHAPTER SIX

H
ailey felt the old, odd energy in her right hand . . . her gun hand. It felt like a snake inside her was coiled and ready to strike.

Where was the dead body?

Passing a WSAV news crew pressing a microphone toward a redhead dressed in spandex, Finch and Hailey walked steadily up the driveway. They found a lone officer bent down on his knees, inspecting two legs protruding from underneath the garage door. For one bizarre moment, Hailey felt like Dorothy inspecting an anonymous set of legs so totally out of place, neatly peeking out.

Pushing all thoughts of Oz aside, she stepped forward. This was no movie in Technicolor. This was the real thing, a dead body. And that body was decomposing literally by the minute in the Savannah heat.

The officer walked over to the corner of the door and started fiddling with a handle. Apparently, nothing was budging.

“Hi, officer.” Finch held out his right hand to one of the officers standing on the driveway. “I'm Garland Fincher from the Fulton District Attorney's Office here for the Todd Adams trial. We were driving in from the airport and we heard the call. Came to see if you needed any help.”

Finch spotted the other cop glance at Hailey. “And this is a former ADA, Hailey Dean.”

But the three turned quickly at the sound of another two squad cars careening into the front yard, one after the next. Hailey actually thought for a moment they'd have a pileup right there on the front lawn.

A third car, unmarked but also sporting a quickly rotating blue light popped onto the front dash, arrived just behind them. Plainclothes detectives emerged.

“Hi, everybody.” One of the sheriffs approached and said it calmly, like he was reading a quasi-interesting story out of the Savannah paper over the breakfast table. He didn't seem to be the least bit ruffled by the pair of human legs on the paved driveway two feet from his own.

“You guys don't seem in too much of a hurry to get him out from under there.” Fincher said it in a casual way, not at all accusatory.

“Well. He's dead. Plain and simple. No two ways about it. First thing I did after securing the scene was feel his ankle. Cold as a brick. So, no rush. No rush at all. Plus, I can't get the darn door up. Probably need some sort of a tool. Maybe if I jam some hedge clippers in the lift, that'll do it.” This guy made Hailey think of Barney Fife. And not in a good way.

Hailey stepped back off the neat cement drive and onto the manicured grass, perfectly edged. She looked not down at the pair of legs, but higher up the garage door.

“Hey, guys. What's this?” Hailey stepped over the legs, careful to avoid the pool of blood in which they were lying, and pointed to a hole in the garage door.

“I don't know. Oh yeah, Trimble's the name.” Barney Fife stuck out his right hand to Fincher first, then Hailey.

“Well, don't get the hedge clippers just yet. You may not need them. I don't have a garage door where I live, but I think this is one of those emergency-release mechanisms.”

“Huh? I never heard of that.” Trimble looked stumped. Fincher was quiet, likely because he hadn't either, but didn't want to admit it to Hailey.

“I don't get it. What's your point? What does it mean to us?” Trimble seemed good-natured, but obviously felt Hailey's observation was a waste of time.

“A lot of people get them for these door openers just in case the electricity goes out, so they'll always be able to get in or out of the garage. It's kind of a lock you install directly onto the door.” Hailey pointed up as she talked.

“Maybe I'm crazy, but I still don't get it. This baby's as tight as a drum.” Trimble stared up at the garage door.

“If we can make it work . . . I think the way it functions is that a cable, a cord, is attached to the door opener emergency-release lever, and when you unlock this thing, you can pull the cable and it releases the drivetrain belt.”

“I'm game.” Trimble looked at Fincher, clearly expecting him and Hailey to give it a try. He looked over at the EMTs. “Hey guys, no need for a saw, I got it all figured out. No rush. It's Alton Turner and he's DOA anyway.”

Trimble obviously wasn't the oversensitive type.

None of the cops made a move, so Fincher stepped up. “OK. Here we go.” Picking up one of the bricks edging the driveway, he gave a mighty heave and knocked the lock off the door. Hailey was right. When Finch grabbed the lock mechanism itself and pulled, the door released.

And there he was, lying there . . . Alton Turner . . . the other half, finally revealed. After an initial, instinctive recoil upon seeing a dead human body, the detectives immediately started to circle it, staying a guarded few feet away. A camera started flashing.

A black standard-issue Saturn pulled into the driveway. When the driver's door opened, out stepped what was obviously an undercover detective. He was definitely a cop. No question about it. He had that look, easily identifiable by fellow cops and, ironically, criminals alike. To a trained eye, undercover cops stood out. The younger officers were buff and muscled from beating the streets day and night. The older cops were pale and soft, parked at desk jobs and counting the days until retirement.

This one was neither young nor old and clearly this was not his first crime scene. He walked up, sized up the whole scene carefully without a word, and then, without acknowledging the rest of them, he turned directly to Trimble.

Keeping a steady gaze on the dead body, he directed his question toward the cop. “So, what do we know, Trimble?” His tone was cool but not cold, businesslike but not impersonal.

“Well, Lieutenant, open and shut. Looks like the poor schmuck caught himself under his own garage door. It ain't an easy way to go, but it's pretty obvious.”

The lieutenant looked between Trimble and the body and then, at Hailey and Fincher.

Instinctively, Hailey held out her right hand. “Hi. I'm Hailey Dean, formerly of the Fulton District Attorney's Special Prosecutors Division, inner-city Atlanta.”

After a beat a little too long, he held out his own and gave Hailey's hand a warm, firm grasp. “Lieutenant Chase Billings. Good to meet you. I've heard of you, Hailey. What brings you here?”

“I'm here on the Todd Adams trial . . .”

“I'm here for the trial too, but as a witness. I arrested Adams in Atlanta and transported him to Savannah,” Fincher chimed in.

“Well, you deserve a medal for the collar on Adams. He did it all right. Julie Love was a sweetheart. Hope they don't blow it at trial.” Billings smiled. “But what I meant was, how did you two end up here, on Randolph Drive?”

“To tell you the truth, we heard the 63 and I knew the address. We thought we might be able to help.” Fincher looked back at the guy lying there on his garage floor.

“I'm surprised. Lots of off-duty lawmen . . . and ladies,” he smiled at Hailey, “would run the other way.”

Now Hailey's concern she was intruding began to evaporate. The four of them stepped closer to Alton, lying there, and looked down on his face. It still bore a look of shock, almost surprise, Hailey thought.

Billings's brow furrowed. “Let me understand your theory. So Alton Turner accidentally kills himself on the way to work this morning with a garage door. That's funny . . . he was a very particular kind of guy, if you know what I mean. He kept a desk job . . . sharpened his pencils, crossed his t's and dotted his i's. Very particular, methodical. Probably read the owner's manual over and over. Wonder how this happened.”

Not to be outdone, Trimble jumped in. “Just what I said! Yep. That's the way Turner always was, all right. Very particular-like. Must've just got caught under it or something. Just an accident, you know? Probably wasn't paying attention. Had his mind on his coffee cup, I guess.”

Lieutenant Billings didn't respond, but instead pulled a spiral notebook out of his jacket and started writing with a yellow number-two pencil that had been stuck down in the spirals. He was intent on his own notes when Trimble piped up again.

“Guess you won't be needing homicide backup. Or the medical examiner's people. It's pretty cut-and-dried. Somehow, Turner screwed up.” Trimble took out his radio and held it to his lips to call off further backup. “Trimble to dispatch, Trimble to dispatch . . .”

Hailey couldn't hold back another moment. This was all a colossal mistake. Hailey interrupted Trimble before he could say another word.
“Don't call off the ME. It's not an accident. Alton Turner didn't screw up.”

Shoulder radio to his chin mid-sentence, Trimble seemed to freeze with his mouth still half-open. Billings stopped scribbling in his spiral notebook, and all three scrutinized her as if she just sprouted three heads.

“What'd she say? Not an accident? I just don't see, Lieutenant Billings, how Cailee Dean . . .”

“It's Hailey. My name's Hailey Dean.” Hailey kept her cool.

“OK. If you say so . . .
Hailey
Dean. How can somebody who knows absolutely nothing about this case or this neighborhood or
Savannah in general
, march onto an active death scene and just announce to me, a seasoned police veteran, that this is
not an accident
?” Little flecks of spittle flying off his lips when he spoke, Trimble was indignant at the suggestion his accident theory could be wrong.

Hailey ignored Trimble's outburst. Looking toward the body, her voice was steady. “This was no malfunction. Accident's all wrong.” Hailey stepped around to the other side of the body when she saw it.

“It” being blood. Not the thick, dark red pool, coagulating, surrounding Turner's mutilated body. “It” confirmed what her gut had already told her.

“Look. Look at this.” Several feet away from Alton Turner's head, his eyes seemingly staring at the ceiling, Hailey bent down, squatting at the side of Alton's car. Whipping out the silver pen that hung on a cord around her neck, stuck down her bra for safekeeping, she gestured toward the car, pointing but not touching.

“This blood. On the tire of his car. Check out the hubcap. See it?” Hailey pointed toward the hubcap, keeping a few inches away so as not to compromise the evidence.

“So what? So there's blood on the tire. It spattered or something . . .” Trimble's voice trailed off as he struggled to comprehend her point.

“It's not spatter. There's no spatter pattern here or on the garage floor around him. If it had been spatter from the impact of the garage door severing his torso, we'd see spatter elsewhere as well . . . not just on the car's tire. And look at it. It's not a spatter mark. It's a smear. Big difference.”

She was met with blank stares.

“My point is, gentlemen, he didn't just ‘get caught' under a garage door. That's not what happened. You, yourself, Lieutenant Billings, said he's a very particular guy, probably read the manual over and over. That's what you said, right?”

“Right. I did say that.”

“No accident happened here.” Hailey stated matter-of-factly and looked Billings in the eyes. “Whatever
did
happen started right here, near the tire . . . not under that garage door.” She gestured toward the two halves of Alton Turner.

“Look at the blood pattern close to the car . . . here . . . away from the garage door. That pool of blood wasn't the first mortal wound. That's just a bleed out. The first serious wound was here. He
ended up
under the garage door. You have the blood on the tire and a concentration of blood on the cement here. Something happened to Alton Turner, something awful. And it started here.”

The three came over and stood behind her, looking down at the tire.

“Please, Lieutenant. You know it, I know it . . . blood evidence never lies. Call in the ME before we lose more evidence. It's hot out
here. The body forensics are being destroyed with every tick of the clock.” Hailey looked up from the tire where she was still kneeling.

“She's right. Trimble, radio the ME. Pronto.” Billings directed Trimble over his shoulder.

“Will do.” Trimble looked miffed, but he did as he was told. Stepping away a few feet, he turned to the side and spoke into his shoulder radio.

“But still, he could have just tripped, fallen, hit his head on the tire . . .” Trimble wasn't ready to give in and continued a steady stream of hypothesizing over his shoulder aimed in their direction.

“Then why would there be blood over here and his body all the way over there?” Hailey pointed to the distance between the bloody tire and the body. “It's a good eight to ten feet away.”

“He stumbled?” Fincher interjected.

“Maybe. Maybe he did. And if he did stumble, why? But my guess is, he didn't.”

“What did you say you did back at Fulton, Hailey?” Billings wondered out loud.