“I understand the defendant has lived in foreign countries before?”
“That is correct, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Clay, you are to turn over your passport to the Court and not to leave the State of Alabama.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Rusty said.
Starr tossed his pen down on his table. The look of pure hate came over his face. His jaw muscles popped out from gritting his teeth. He held his breath. His face turned a bluish red. He gave a long, loud sigh. Then he looked over at his assistant, like his assistant was to blame for this.
“Preliminary hearing is set for the second Monday morning in June at nine am,” the Judge said.
Rusty looked over at Starr. Now, he was just grabbing up his briefcase and smiling and chatting on to his assistant, like this didn’t have anything at all to do with an innocent man’s life. Finally, the man glanced around to get one last look at Rusty. Rusty gave it to him with all his might.
If looks could kill, Jeffrey Starr would have been a dead man, and he knew it.
And Rusty knew one thing for sure: Jeffrey Starr was the enemy.
Chapter 17
At three o’clock that afternoon Rusty walked into The Redneck Detective Agency. He locked the door behind him.
Everything was in place. He walked around, looked in the drawers, checked to find his .38 still stuffed down in the couch. Jeffrey Starr had been very thorough in confiscating all this printouts and his computer at his house, but hadn’t had time to take care of details--like even finding out about his office.
Rusty was tempted to use his office computer. To Google everything he could on Jeffrey Starr. To try to find out who lived at the address of the babe Dr. Compton had gone off with at the time Rusty had made those incriminating looks at his 450 Mercedes.
But it might just be a matter of time until they had a warrant to take everything in his office for evidence. Then they would find out about all his Googling on Elmore Leonard. He’d have another murder change on his hands.
Rusty couldn’t stand it any longer. He went over and dialed the number.
On the third ring: “Hello.”
“Jenny, this is Rusty. Listen, the phone I’m using is probably tapped.”
“They told me not to talk to you.”
“Who’s they?”
“Robert’s attorneys.”
“Listen, I would prefer to tell this to your face. But I just want you to know that I didn’t kill him. I had nothing to do with it. I would never do anything like that. And I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“Yeah, Ray came over here and gave me your message.”
“Yeah, well. I just wanted you to hear it come out of my own mouth.”
“Thank you, Rusty. And I believe you.”
Thank God. “As stupid as this sounds, Jenny. I didn’t do it. Which means somebody else did. But instead of the police trying to find out who did it, they are busy looking for more evidence to pile onto their case against me.”
“Okay, Rusty. Look, I have things to do. The funeral is in the morning at eleven.”
“God bless you, Jenny.”
“You, too, Rusty.”
Rusty gave a sigh of relief. She believed him. He could tell. You don’t marry and divorce a woman three times and not be able to tell when she was lying to you and in Jenny’s case--it was never.
He locked up, walked down the steps and around to the back of his building. He tapped lightly on an alley door. Shortly, it was unlocked and opened. Rusty stepped in.
Perry locked the door back.
“Thanks for coming in the back, Rusty,” Perry said. “I figured it was best to try to get you into my office unseen. The press is going to make a circus out of this.”
They walked on to Perry’s office and Perry offered coffee, but Rusty declined. Perry sat at his desk. Rusty opposite him.
“It’s all circumstantial,” Rusty stated. He was ready to get right to the meat of the matter.
“What they have are doozies though. Whether you agree or not, they got motive, opportunity, means. They got it all. That doesn’t mean we can’t take them apart and win over the jury.”
“The jury? You think they’ll have enough at the preliminary trial to take it to a jury?”
“Look, Rusty. Jeffrey Starr left a quarter of a million dollar a year job in one of the most powerful firms in Huntsville to run and become the District Attorney. He plans on being the State Attorney by the time he’s thirty-five and on up to bigger things from there. You saw how he had someone arrested not twenty-four hours after one of the state’s most outstanding surgeons was mysteriously killed.”
“Yeah, I sort of saw and experienced that first hand.”
“Yeah, well, he’s going to take this as far as he can. He’s not going to offer any plea bargaining, anything. He’s going to get his money’s worth of advertising out of this.”
“Wait. Plea bargaining. I’m not going to plea bargain. I’m not going to jail. I’m innocent.”
“Rusty, we have a lot of work to do. If he strengthens up his case, he could even campaign for the death sentence if you’re found guilty.”
Then it hit Rusty. Perry thought he had done it. Maybe everybody thought he had done it. If his own lawyer thought he had done it, how was he going to convince twelve fine citizens?
“This is bullshit,” Rusty said.
“I’m not saying anything about justice. I’m telling you the reality of the situation, Rusty. If this was being tried in Travertine County with six people from Dolopia and six people from Clear Springs, we might have a different situation on our hands.”
“How much is this going to cost?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean how much are you going to charge me for this defense?”
“I don’t know. It’s a lot of work. I’m going to farm out a lot of leg work. I get two hundred fifty dollars an hour and I just tack on any bills I get. I can’t really say.”
“I want a ball park figure. If this drags out…”
“Like it probably will.”
“What kind of money can I expect to pay?”
“Just ball park, Rusty. I would say anywhere from fifty to a little over a hundred thousand dollars.”
“A hundred thousand dollars! I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Well, you have assets.”
Rusty had played along in this game of which he was a pawn. Until Perry said those magic words--you have assets. Then it all became perfectly clear to Rusty. You are in a bloodsucking game that will take your assets, take your money, take your liberty and destroy your name. In the words of Rusty’s riverman father--Never bet on another man’s game.
Well, it was high time Rusty not only changed the rules but the game he was playing--or being played in.
“You know what, Perry. I’m not paying a goddamn penny. I didn’t do this and I’m not going to pay for it. If I’m found Not Guilty by a jury of my peers is the State of Alabama going to pay my attorney bill?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I’m not paying a penny.”
“Well, Rusty.” Perry looked at him like he was a stupid redneck and then shook his head. “We don’t have much time here, but you need to take a couple days, step back and think about the situation you are in.”
The bastard thought he was guilty and figured he would end up with the building they were sitting in. The building that belonged to Rusty.
And he thought he knew Perry? Perry all the while lurking, waiting just for the right time to get not only all his rent money back but the whole piece of real estate. Rusty had told Melvin he needed read the Art of War. Rusty was the one who needed to crack that book open again.
“I don’t need to step back,” Rusty said. “I don’t need to think about it. I’m not paying that kind of money.”
“Rusty, you just made five million dollar bail. Not many people can do that. You own this building and you own land and a house on the river. It’s going
to be impossible for you to convince the court that you need an attorney appointed for you.”
“I’m not going to ask them for shit.”
“I can’t do this for free, Rusty.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Rusty just happened to have his bank book in his back pocket. He plopped it up on Perry’s desk. “What do I owe you?”
“We haven’t started yet.”
“Yes, we’ve started and ended. And this has nothing to do with our landlord-tenant relationship. This is just about this murder case. I’m going to walk out that door in about two minutes and when I walk out, I don’t want to owe you a penny.”
Perry threw up his hands. “Nothing, Rusty. You don’t owe me a thing. I haven’t done anything for you.”
“Yeah, you have.” Perry was a smart one. He didn’t want Rusty to go up on the rent and he didn’t want to move. “You went all the way over to Huntsville when I was arrested and you came over there for my arraignment and you just said you charged two hundred and fifty an hour.”
“Okay, you want to play it that way, Rusty. Call it two hundred fifty dollars.”
Rusty wrote out a check, signed it, and laid it on Perry’s desk. Perry had done very well by not charging Rusty travel time. That would have pissed Rusty off.
When Rusty stood up, Perry said, “I’m not cashing that check. You go off a couple days and get some rest, Rusty.”
“I got all the rest I need. Cash the check, because I want a receipt.”
Rusty walked out Perry’s office door, then through reception, where two reporters gathered around Brenda, Perry’s receptionist, didn’t even notice him, didn’t even look at him.
Rusty walked straight from Perry’s office the block to Melvin Waters’ office.
“I got a deal for you, Melvin.”
Melvin stared at Rusty. Melvin’s body language said Melvin was on the defensive, that he suspected Rusty was a little crazy, that perhaps I’ve-got-a-deal-for-you meant some multilevel marketing scheme he wanted to involve Melvin with.
Rusty, shouldn’t you let the deals rest a while? Get your priorities straight. You have just been arrested for murder.
“I’m listening,” Melvin said.
“I was just arrested for murder.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“I want you to represent me.”
“I thought Perry was your attorney?”
“Not any more. But here’s the deal. I didn’t murder anybody.”
“All right. I believe you.”
“That’s more than I can say for my former lawyer. But here’s the deal. You represent me. I don’t pay you one single penny.” Rusty held up his hand. “Here’s what you get out of it. This is about to be a media circus. I don’t even know if I can go back to my own house or not for the reporters. So, you get about a million dollars of free advertising out of it. You could get your ass on Channel News 19, 31, and 48 every night if you want. You just have to think up some bullshit to tell them. Because this case is bullshit. And how do you fight bullshit?”
“With bullshit?”
“Right. And despite any of the media exposure, just me walking away from Perry and coming to you, will sort of get you into the boy’s club here in Dolopia. Not to flatter myself. But in a few weeks you should have more work than you can handle. Enough to hire on a receptionist and paralegal anyway.”
Melvin stuck out his hand. “It’s a deal.”
They shook on it. Melvin had a rough, hard hand, like he moonlighted as a frame carpenter. Not to mentioned he’d canoed down the Missouri. The feel of his hand, his build, the way he moved--he was probably a martial artist. He probably went home every night and ran his hands into rice or pebbles to keep them tough.
“Oh, and by the way, Melvin. I don’t expect this to go beyond a preliminary trial.” Rusty didn’t even know what a preliminary trial was a couple days ago and here he was spouting off this legalese.
“I’ll do what I can to make that happen.”
“Believe me, I will, too, Melvin, I will, too.”
“Come on back and let’s talk.”
Rusty told Melvin everything--everything except the Katfish King hiring him to find his stolen catfish. There would be a time for that. Rusty felt he owed it to tell his ex-brother-in-law Sammy first. Some order of things you just had to respect.
Chapter 18
Rusty Clay’s place measured over an acre. Except the water’s edge, the whole lot was enclosed in hog-wire fence with two strands of barb-wire at the top of the locust fence posts. Land access was with a wood plank double gate. The gate usually stayed open, but since his arrest two days ago, Rusty and Ray kept it closed.
Now, there were enough fifty-five gallon drums around his yard to float Clear Springs right down the Elk River. Ray piled a bunch of them in front of the wooden entrance gate. The fact one of those TV vans with their antennae wasn’t able to get through the low branches of the overgrown river roads helped. But still the reporters came, but all they got were pictures and a lot of barking from Ray’s hound dog Brett.
When Rusty drove up from Waters, Ray used a hand lift to roll a pallet of barrels out of the way. Rusty drove his pickup and parked near his front porch. Ray’s old hound dog Brett--Ray named him Brett because he looked just like Tony Brett he had gone to high school with--stood up and gave a couple of deep barks before he saw it was Rusty. He lay back down and went to sleep.
Rusty went in and took off his city clothes and put on some well-worn jeans, t-shirt, worn khaki long sleeve and some dock shoes. He grabbed his cellphone. When he came out of his bedroom, Ray waited for him at the kitchen table. Rusty didn’t sit. He stood there and told him about firing Perry and hiring Waters. Ray liked that idea. And said he would commence to build some floating docks back there in Rusty’s workshop until some great idea of how to get Rusty out of this mess hit him.
Ray said, “Shit, Rusty, looks like with this DNA shit, they could just find you innocent some way. Take all those blown up pieces of Mercedes, run ‘em through the laboratory and say naw, naw, Rusty didn’t do it.”
“One of these days, Ray, they just going to put a camera down at the scene of a crime and click in the date and it’ll show them what happened.”
“They already do that. That’s how they got you on tape checking out Compton’s car.”
“No. I mean just run it to when there wasn’t a camera there or back to any date before there was this computer technology. I’m talking science fiction stuff here. I don’t know if time travel is possible or not but time-looking might be. I think that will be the first step.”
“That’s scary stuff. You’re a deep thinker there, Rusty, to be a river rat.”
“That’s what makes me so dangerous.”
“That is your Twilight Zone stuff, Rusty. Did you see that on The Twilight Zone?”
“Naw. I made it up. You were always into the opposite of what I was.”
“Outer Limits.”
“The Beatles.”
“I was an Elvis man.”
“Gallant Men forever.”
“Combat.”
“Johnson.”
“Mercury.”
“Chevy.”
“Ford.”
“Sometimes a man has to choose sides.”
“We the last of a dying breed.”
Rusty walked down to his boathouse. He called Gloria’ cell. She answered, “Rusty!” He told her to assume all his phone lines were tapped, but that he needed to come down to the marina and see her. She told she was at her house to come on.
Gloria had the nicest house and nicest lot on the river. It was up on the hillside, had three levels and practically all the front was French glass door and windows. To Rusty, it looked like some French villa stuck into the side of the mountain on the French Riviera. Not that he’d ever been to the French Riviera, but he could image.
He drove his skiff to her dock. He walked up the steep slate-rock steps landscaped into the hillside and went right to
Gloria’s front French door. She stood there waiting for him and opened the door. She wore one of her knee length skirts and blouses, like she had been uptown doing some business.
She said, “Hey, handsome. What you up to?”
Rusty said he was just cruising along the Elk Riviera. Being in Gloria’s presence brought some kind of calm to him, made him feel everything was going to be all right. He told her right off about hiring Waters. She nodded and said that might just be a good move.
“What I came by was to ask, Gloria, is do you mind if I go see Al?”
“Why should I mind if you go see Al?”
“Well, y’all just got divorced and I didn’t want to go behind your back and be cohorting with him without your knowledge.”
“Good, Lord. I don’t care. But what do you need with him?”
“They confiscated my computers. I thought I could do some research on his.”
“Al would probably be thrilled, but you can knock yourself out on mine if you want.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want my research to be able to be traced to me.”
“Well, research on Al’s computers can’t be traced to anybody. Believe me. That was the sort of stuff that spooked me about him. One time he erased a bank overdraft charge on one of my accounts. Don’t ask me how. That’s all too weird for my simple Elk River life. But, yeah, go get what you need from him with my blessing.”
“Thanks, Gloria.”
Gloria grabbed him by the arm and led him to the kitchen. “Thanks for signing the bond, Gloria.”
“You’re welcome, honey. What are friends for?”
“I didn’t know you had that kind of money?”
She reached into the refrigerator got two small bottles of Coke, twisted the tops off and handed Rusty one. “I don’t,” she said. “It’s just all this property I own on the river is worth a fortune now.” She took a sip of Coke. “Come on. We can talk while I get dressed. I got to put on my marina duds and get back to the café.”
He followed her up the stairs. She talked all the way. “The damn catfish hadn’t laid their eggs yet. They should be in their holes and the grabbling going on by now. I’m wading ass deep in Grabblers, RVers, big-tittied young women and every hardcore redneck from Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. And those RVers from Mississippi are starting to pull their redneck stunts.”
The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) Page 8