Free Murder in the Courthouse by Nancy Grace Page B

the most ruthless and hard-hearted prosecutor to have ever walked the courthouse halls. And she didn’t mind it a single bit.
    But a part of her was sealed off forever. That part of her was her heart.
    After nearly twenty minutes of waiting, the swinging doors in the courtroom opened and in walked a fleet of state lawyers, most of them carrying binders, files, and law books. The two men took seats at the state’s counsel table, closest to the jury. The two women, dressed in austere gray and navy blue, sat behind them.
    No female lead counsel, Hailey thought. Not unusual. Any further thoughts as to gender bias evaporated into thin air when a side door of the courtroom opened from inside.
    Out strode two huge, muscled Chatham County Sheriff’s officers, shoulder to shoulder. Behind them came two white, male attorneys. By the look of them, she assumed they were part of the defense team. The cut of their suits and the shine on their Italian leather loafers indicated a far bigger paycheck than a state prosecutor could ever pull in. The two were followed by a gaggle of underlings—paralegals,an investigator, a jury consultant by the looks of her, and two skinny law student types, apparently “interning” under the tutelage of famed defense attorney Michael P. “Mikey” DelVecchio.
    Their hair was slicked back with some sort of gel that glistened in hard spikes under the courtroom lighting. They spoke quietly to each other, their heads slightly turned inward, DelVecchio with a smile on his lips. And then, at the end of the defense procession, with his head up, shoulders thrown back, muscled chest puffed forward, and looking like he was walking onto a football field to run a touchdown, came the defendant. Todd Adams.
    His dark hair was smooth and shiny and clearly just trimmed for the big day. His suit was blue and tailored, fit him perfectly, and contrasted subtly against the light blue of a crisp, starched Oxford button-down shirt and crimson red silk tie. Adams flashed a perfectly aligned, bright white smile at his family, who settled in to take over the entire first row behind the defense counsel table.
    Hailey watched and absorbed the interaction between Adams and his parents, his mom in particular. The two held a long gaze. Looking at Mrs. Adams, it was clear: She adored him, loved him, and, most important, believed him.
    A rush of papers and sudden movement at the front of the courtroom was followed by a half a dozen minions rushing in. Then, in came the judge. Sharp-faced and gray-headed, Luther Alverson insisted on presiding over more jury trials than any other judge in the courthouse.
    At eighty-four, he was also the oldest judge in the courthouse. So old in fact, he predated the state regulations on mandatory retirement. In order to prove himself still up to the task, he demanded that any and all Chatham assistant district attorneys and public defenders assigned to his court must go on trial every other week. His calendar was rarely backed up, and when a case went on his trial calendar, there would be no last-minute haggling, no eleventh-hour guilty pleas, no cheap deals.
    Everyone stood as the judge seated himself with the simultaneous pounding of his gavel with three loud strikes. “Court’s in session. The Honorable Luther Alverson presiding.”
    Like in a church at the end of a hymn, everyone sat back down in their seats in unison. The calendar clerk’s seat was positioned directly beside the judge’s bench. The clerk stood to read directly from the grand jury indictment, calling out the indictment number, a series of letters and numbers that had significance only to court employees, followed by the announcement “ State v. Todd Adams .”
    As her son’s name was read out loud, Tish Adams burst into tears, drawing every eye in the courtroom off her son and onto herself. Hailey immediately checked Julie Love’s mother, also seated in the front row but on