Red Means Run

by Brad Smith

  Virgil watched them drive off, apparently heading for the sixth hole. Joe Brady had said that Mickey Dupree had been killed in a sand trap on number seven. The golfers drove a short distance, then got out and teed off. The fairway they hit onto ran away from the boundary fence, down a hollow, and around to the right. Virgil wondered then if the next hole would angle back toward him. He looked far to his right and saw another green in the distance, partially hidden by a stand of pine trees. He started toward it and when he got close he could see through the pine needles the number on the flag. Seven. The green was no more than a hundred yards from the fence, with the evergreens serving as a buffer between the two.

  A little farther along he was surprised to see a gate in the wrought-iron fence. The opening was six feet, wide enough for a cart to pass through. A worn path ran through the pine trees to the gate, and outside the fence, on the edge of the ravine, were large mounds of grass clippings, apparently dumped there by the course workers. There was a latch on the gate but no lock.

  Virgil stayed out of sight until the two golfers played both the sixth and seventh holes. It was raining harder now, and he was soaked to the skin, his feet sloshing in his work boots.

  When they were gone, he went through the gate and walked over to the green. There were two sand traps alongside, one in the front right, and the other at the rear. Virgil didn’t know which trap the lawyer had died in, and he couldn’t say what good the information might do him, even if he did.

  In fact, he hadn’t the slightest notion what he expected to find today. When he’d left the farm a couple of hours earlier, it had seemed like a good idea, visiting the scene of the crime. It was what someone in a detective novel would do. Now, standing there, with his boots full, his shirt soaked, and his hair dripping wet beneath his Mud Hens cap, he wondered what the gumshoe in the novel would do next. What would Sam Spade see that Virgil didn’t? From the proximity of hole number seven to the fence line, and the cover the pine trees provided, it made sense to assume that the killer had entered the golf course from the direction of the park, but Virgil had to reason that the cops had already come to that conclusion. Forget Sam Spade, even Joe Brady would be able to figure that one out.

  Virgil walked around the green and then stopped by the front bunker. He imagined Mickey Dupree lying there. A golf club shaft through the heart, Brady had said. Dupree had been a big man, six feet tall or more, and quite heavy. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to do, to walk up to a man that size and drive a steel rod into his heart. Unless it was from behind. But Brady would have specified if it had been from behind. It’s the type of thing he would have harped on: the equivalent of shooting a man in the back, a cowardly act.

  Virgil heard the sound of another approaching motor, this one louder than the golf cart. He stood and walked into the pines and waited until he saw a Gator driving up the fairway, a man behind the wheel wearing a pith helmet and work cover-alls. Virgil decided he had seen enough, and before the man got too close, he turned and went out through the gate and down into the gully.

  When he got back to the truck he removed his boots and his wet socks and drove off in his bare feet. He went back to the highway and was headed for the thruway when he realized he didn’t know where he was heading. He didn’t want to risk going back to the farm so soon after the scrap at Hopman’s place. He didn’t think Hopman had recognized him but couldn’t be sure. The man wasn’t bright, but it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. Virgil could spend the night in the woods behind the farm again, but he wasn’t looking forward to that, not in the pouring rain. He’d be forced to sleep in the truck and that held little appeal.

  He stayed on the highway and drove west until he came to a town, a crossroads really, that had a motel and a corner store. He bought himself a six-pack of Budweiser in the corner store and took a room for the night at the motel. The registration form at the front desk required that he list his occupation. Despite the logo on the truck, Virgil knew he didn’t look much like a veterinary doctor in his drenched state. So he put down “farrier.”

  It was close enough, he figured.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Claire sat in the front row and watched as Miller Boddington made his way into the courtroom through the side entrance. With him was his new lawyer, the man named Rafael, a West Coast bohemian of about sixty-five with shoulder-length gray hair, the mane expensively cut and quite lovely, if you liked that sort of thing. Claire didn’t. Long hair on adult males was for people in heavy metal rock bands, or who thought they were Jesus. She might be willing to make an exception for Jesus himself, if he were to show up. Everybody else should get a haircut.

  But it was Boddington himself who held her eye. He was wearing a white linen suit and a matching fedora. The last time she had seen him in this courtroom, he’d been wearing blue jeans and Tony Lama boots. But back then he had been a horseman, and now he was a newly minted vintner. A little man in constant flux. Claire wondered how a guy the size of an average thirteen-year-old managed to find such haberdashery.

  Judge Santiago turned out to be a woman, which Claire hoped was a positive development. During preliminary discussions regarding jury selection for the upcoming trial, it had been determined that women were more intolerant of animal cruelty than were men.

  Claire had spent the previous evening at home, going over her notes. She’d had difficulty concentrating, as her mind kept returning to Virgil Cain’s farm. She hoped she wasn’t missing out on a chance to catch him. Given the incident the night before at Hopman’s—if he actually was the assailant, and she’d wager a month’s pay that he was—she was confident he wasn’t straying all that far afield. But then her mind would play the devil’s advocate, and she would worry that the fight at Hopman’s might have convinced him it was finally time to hit the road. She’d gone to bed with the notion but was too wound up to sleep. When she finally nodded off, it seemed her alarm was ringing within minutes. Time to go to court.

  When Alex Daniels walked in, he stopped for a moment by Claire’s side.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Claire said. “Be nice if I knew what for.”

  “You and me both.”

  Boddington’s case was first up on the docket and after Judge Santiago was announced and seated, the real estate lawyer Rafael from San Francisco stood and humbly introduced himself. He went on to ask in advance the court’s forgiveness for any naïveté he might display during the proceedings, as he was somewhat out of his element—although, he hastened to add, he was indeed licensed to practice in the state of New York— and had been in possession of the facts of the case for only a few short days. Lawyers were always referring to short days, Claire thought, watching him. Unless they were referring to time spent on a case. Those were invariably long days, and nights as well, especially when converted into billable hours. Rafael concluded his little soliloquy by thanking Judge Santiago, apparently for allowing him to babble.

  And then he filed a motion that all charges against Miller Boddington be withdrawn.

  “Your honor,” he said, “I have spent many long hours examining these papers, and it has become abundantly clear to me that this is the most blatant violation of the Sixth Amendment I have ever seen.”

  Claire wondered just how often Rafael ran afoul of the Sixth when doing property searches out in wine country. Daniels, at the prosecution table, turned to glance at her, his eyebrows raised.

  “Twenty-five months!” Rafael thundered then, his voice soaring like that of a TV preacher. “And in that time we haven’t even made it through the discovery phase. What in the world is going on here? This thing has cost my client an enormous amount of money and, more to the point, it has cost his personal reputation more than we could ever calculate. He has wanted from day one—”

  “Your honor,” Daniels interrupted, getting to his feet. “I see now why my friend made a point of establishing his unfamiliarity with the facts. That turns out to be an understatement. Yes,
this case has been on the books for twenty-five months, but the blame for that snail-like pace can be laid entirely at the feet of the accused. If your honor would take a look at the court’s history of this matter, she will see that on virtually every occasion, the continuances granted were at the request of Mr. Boddington’s lawyer.”

  “Yes!” Rafael said emphatically. Holding his forefinger in the air, as if testing the wind, he walked toward the bench. “However, these continuances were not in compliance with Mr. Boddington’s wishes. They were forced upon him, in each and every instance, by his legal representation at the time.”

  Daniels came forward now as well. “If my friend is in agreement that the delays were all perpetrated by Mr. Boddington’s counsel, I have a question, your honor.” He smiled. “What does that have to do with us?”

  “I must raise a point,” Rafael said before Santiago could reply. He addressed Daniels now. “Have you served as prosecutor on this matter from the start, sir?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “I thought not. So is there a chance that you are not as familiar with the facts of the case as you lead us to believe?”

  “I’ve been on it for ten months,” Daniels said. “You’ve been involved for ten minutes. Do you wish to pursue that argument?” He paused. “As I said, what does this have to do with us?”

  Santiago seemed inclined to agree. She looked at Rafael.

  “Mr. Rafael?”

  “It has everything to do with you, Mr. Daniels,” Rafael said. Careful not to go after Santiago, Claire noted. “This court has acted as an enabler for Michael Dupree. Now we are all aware of the tragedy that has since befallen Mr. Dupree, but that cannot stand in the way of what has happened here. Let not one tragedy give birth to another. The Sixth Amendment clearly states under length of delay—that a delay of a year or more—”

  “I think we are all aware of the guarantees of the amendment,” Santiago said.

  “Of course,” Rafael said, bowing slightly. The guy was an act.

  “Not to waste the court’s time then. But I suggest that my client has been prepared to answer to these charges from day one. And yet his representation, for reasons which I fear will remain unknown to us, was loath to do so. My client is a layman, a winemaker by trade, and he is unfamiliar with this business of courtroom procedure. He trusted his counsel to do the right thing, but, more to the point, he trusted this court to do the right thing. Why did this court not hold Michael Dupree to task? Why did this court deny my client his right to a speedy trial?”

  Santiago turned to Daniels. “I wasn’t here, Mr. Daniels. So I’m going to ask you to field that one.”

  “Mr. Boddington’s lawyer asked for and received nine continuances over the twenty-five-month period,” Daniels said.

  “His reasons were varied, but they had one thing in common: in each instance the presiding judge asked Mr. Boddington if he was in agreement with his lawyer’s request. And each time Mr. Boddington said yes. And I submit that even a . . . layman winemaker . . . knows the difference between yes and no.”

  Santiago took a moment and then actually released a sigh of resignation. Watching her, Claire suspected that she’d had no notion of what she was getting into, filling in for Harrison for the day. She was probably thinking it would be a nice road trip upstate, a few minor rulings, perhaps a quiet dinner along the river, and then back to the city.

  “All right,” she decided. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to go over these continuances, one by one. I suggest you two sit down and get comfortable.”

  Claire stayed for fifteen minutes or so. Her presence wasn’t required; the details for the remands were painstakingly transcribed in the court records. After listening for a while, she went looking for a cup of coffee.

  Instead she found Joe Brady, hurrying up the stairs to the second-floor lobby. He had just arrived from Canada, he told her, and came straight to the courthouse.

  “You bring me any maple syrup?” Claire asked.

  “Huh?”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She saw now that he hadn’t shaved. She could smell his body odor as well.

  “I have a trial starting,” he said. “The dentist with the DUI. I didn’t even have time to stop at the house.”

  “You’ve got more time than you think,” Claire said. “Miller Boddington’s in there with a spanking-new lawyer and they’re trying to have everything tossed.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said.” Claire started for the stairs. There was a coffee shop on the main floor.

  Joe followed. “Don’t you want to hear what I found out up north?”

  “Oh yeah,” Claire said without stopping. “Did you bring Cain back?”

  “No. But they’re getting close.”

  Claire smiled. Joe tagged along but didn’t say anything else until Claire got her coffee and they were seated at a table.

  “You were saying they’re getting close,” she said.

  “They figure he’s in Quebec, somewhere around Three Rivers. He has history there. In fact, that’s where he did time for attempted murder.”

  “I thought it was aggravated assault.”

  “The original charge was attempted murder.”

  “But the conviction wasn’t,” Claire said. “Did you find out what was behind that?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  “Why not?” Claire asked. “Aren’t you kind of curious why he beat that guy up? I mean, there must have been a reason.”

  Joe snorted in dismissal. “I’m not concerned with what he did in another country years ago. I’m concerned with what he did here. And you should be too.”

  “I am very concerned,” Claire said. “My sleep is suffering.”

  “Anyway,” Joe said, “these guys always return to their old stomping grounds. They have the provincial police on it, and the Mounties too. He’ll turn up, or someone will roll over on him.”

  “Somebody always does,” Claire said. She sipped her coffee and looked around the little shop. Joe’s aroma was getting to her.

  He exhaled heavily, trying to get her attention. “You don’t seem real interested in this.”

  “No?” she asked. “I guess my mind’s on Boddington and his new lawyer. I think he might be wearing hair extensions.”

  “Boddington?”

  “The lawyer.” Claire had another drink. “Hey, I hope the Mounties get Cain. If they catch him, we don’t have to.”

  “This guy killed two people, Claire. In cold blood, in our backyard.”

  “Somebody killed two people. Let’s give the guy his day in court.”

  “Don’t start that shit.”

  “Two people that you hated, Joe.” Claire decided that if she had to sit there with him, she wasn’t going to pretend to enjoy it.

  “I don’t hate anybody.”

  “No?” Claire asked. “You didn’t hate Mickey Dupree? I sat in that courtroom upstairs and listened to him call you an imbecile. On the stand. In front of a judge and a jury and the whole wide world of the media.”

  “I didn’t like the man,” Joe said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m glad that he’s dead. And I’ll tell you something else—I think Alan Comstock killed that girl. But I didn’t want him dead either. I believe in the system. Even when it fails, I still believe in it.”

  “Then how come you’ve already convicted Cain?”

  “I haven’t,” Joe said and got to his feet. “But the courts will. Who else had reason to do this, Claire? Who else wanted both those guys dead? Answer that for me.”

  “I don’t know, Joe.”

  “I’m going to get some breakfast. I’ve been driving all night. You’ve gotten awful negative over the last couple years, Claire. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

  She watched him walk away. What’s wrong with me isn’t the issue here, Joe.

  When she went back into the courtroom they were still slogging through the court’s history with Miller Boddin
gton. The man himself was seated at the defendant’s table, his legs crossed, the new fedora on his knee. He was looking very confident, Claire thought, but then she had never seen him looking otherwise. He had a detachment about him, something he had perfected long ago, Claire suspected, a defense mechanism that allowed him to give the impression that he knew a lot more than he did. But to Claire he was a skinny little prick of five foot four who had never accomplished anything of merit in his life, save being born to an absentee father who had left him roughly half a billion dollars when he died. The old man had been in the banking business in Texas, pre-Enron, and had he not died in a plane crash off the coast of Belize, he probably would have been indicted with the rest of that bunch when everything turned to shit in the ’90s. If he had, then maybe the courts and the investors would have taken him down and there would have been no fortune for Miller to inherit. Without the money, it was likely that Miller wouldn’t be wearing that smug look today.

  When the record was finally read in full, it was a quarter past noon. Rafael then performed another star turn as the indignant constitutionalist, and Alex Daniels responded by detailing how his office had been attempting to get Mickey Dupree to commit to a trial date for two years. Judge Santiago adjourned for lunch, saying she would make a ruling later that day.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, she dismissed all the charges against Miller Boddington.

  Claire was back in the courtroom at the time and didn’t even wait for the judge to finish talking. She went back to the station and started going through her messages. Alex Daniels walked in ten minutes later.

  “What the hell just happened?” he asked, sitting down. Claire looked at him. “You here again? People are going to start to talk.”