Free Murder in the Courthouse by Nancy Grace Page A

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    That somebody was Alton Turner. And he had done so proudly and with dedication, rarely taking a day off and doing whatever had to be done, never believing that any task, no matter how lowly, was beneath him.
    Wherever he went, Alton proudly wore baseball hats, Windbreakers, T-shirts, and sometimes all three at once, all emblazoned with the green and gold Chatham County Sheriff’s logo. He was always the first one at Chatham County Sheriff charity events, cookouts, and softball games, although he never swung a bat nor caught a grounder. He was proud to be a lawman . . . even though he rarely left his tiny cream-colored cubicle at the Chatham County Courthouse.
    From his beloved cube, Alton directed the transfer of inmates from the county jail to the courthouse, inputting inmate names, cell blocks, and arrest warrants then connecting them to indictment numbers. The right indictment numbers then had to be funneled to the correct courtrooms, making sure that each and every one of the thousands of accused felons made it to the right place bright and early come Monday morning trial and arraignment calendars.
    It wasn’t exciting to many, but to Alton it was. As he was a lawman of sorts, the courthouse was Alton’s life.
    From what Hailey read just before turning off the bedside light in her hotel room, Alton had never married and remained devoted to his only other surviving relative, the elderly sister of his “beloved mother,” his Aunt René.
    Hailey’s first stop this morning was for a cup of hot tea in the courthouse cafeteria. She could easily overhear several sheriffs at the next table talking about Turner. He had worshipped his mother and bragged to her endlessly about every capture, arrest, and trial as if they’d all been his own. Not in a self-aggrandizing way, he was simply proud to be part of the team and wanted her to be proud of her “boy,” although Alton had been pushing forty.
    Hailey stared down into her cup of tea. She’d tucked her own tea bag of Irish breakfast into her bra that morning so she’d have it once she got to the courthouse. It was her favorite brand but very hard to find. It was easy to score a bag of English breakfast, but Irish was another matter altogether. It was steaming hot and practically white with skim milk, just how she liked it.
    It sounded like Alton Turner wouldn’t hurt a fly. Staring down at her tea bag floating in its cup, Hailey couldn’t help but wonder who could have murdered him in such a brutal way. The pain must have been excruciating.
    Hailey caught a glimpse at a plain round clock above the cashier in the cafeteria. Court would start in a little over thirty minutes and she wanted a good seat. Gulping down the rest of her tea and giving a nod to the sheriffs seated next to her, she made her way to the courthouse bank of elevators and up to the Todd Adams murder trial.
    And here she sat, soaking it in. State courtrooms almost universally had the same feel to them, the same smell, the same sounds, and the same vibe. Just being here made her miss her days as a felony prosecutor intensely. Homesick for her other life, waves of what might have been washed over her.
    What might have been .
    Her days fighting drug lords, rapists, child molesters, and killers had left her with an edge . . . quite an edge, as a matter of fact. Ten years in the pit of the Atlanta Fulton County Courthouse, waging war on the bad guys, had forever changed her.
    But the reality was she’d never be the fresh-faced girl she was before . . . long before she became a felony prosecutor. Or even a law student for that matter . . . before another killer shattered her dreams. The murder of her fiancé, Will, just before their wedding, had left Hailey Dean broken . . . a shell of what she was and even now . . . a shell of what she could have been. What she should have been .
    As one of the top litigators in the South, she developed a reputation as