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 alclass="underline" 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.