Richard Stevenson - Death Vows

“Where’s Bill?” Radziwill said.

“Bill Moore?”

“He’s not here, and I thought he might be with you.”

“He’s not.”

At ten to nine, a comely, auburn-haired woman in a dark suit and a briefcase that made her list to the right strode in accompanied by a younger woman with her own leather satchel, and they headed for the defense table.

“That’s Ramona,” Radziwill said. “She’ll give Thorny a run for his money. What a jerk he is. This is the DA who once indicted an old lady in Stockbridge for breaking wind in church.”

I said, “Was she convicted?”

But Radziwill’s attention was now focused on the arrival of the man himself. Thorne Cornwallis and his entourage entered the back of the room with the thuggish invincibility of a presidential convoy of black SUVs, though in fact it was just four guys in dark suits. Cornwallis was a squat man with cold gray eyes and a bad hairpiece, who looked as if he might be happiest standing on a concrete balcony watching his ICBMs roll by. His claque stood while he seated himself at the prosecutor’s table. One of them opened the DA’s water bottle, then screwed the cap back on lightly.

Barry Fields was led in by two bailiffs. He was wearing his own clothes, but he was shackled and seemed dazed. He did not look at us or anyone else in the room, but as Fields eased into a seat beside Ramona Furst, he suddenly came to life and began to talk animatedly to his lawyer. Furst listened and then wrote rapidly on a pad.

Trooper Toomey ambled in and joined the prosecutors. I asked Radziwill who the other suits were beside and behind Cornwallis, but he didn’t know. One, he thought, must be an assistant DA, and the others were “CPCU guys.” Radziwill said the CPCU was the DA’s investigative arm, the Crime Prevention and Control Unit. He said, “It sounds East German, but they’re local.”

Just after nine, Judge John B. Groesbeck made the Mamelike entrance that protocol required, casually instructed everyone to have a seat, and got down to business. Cornwallis was the first to speak, and said the commonwealth was charging Barry Fields with first-degree murder. Cornwallis larded his gaudy presentation with inflammatory adjectives – he called the crime heinous but pronounced it heen-ee-us – and reeled off the awful events we had all heard about. He offered no additional evidence, however, that Fields was the shooter. It was all circumstantial and centered on the assault in Guido’s, Fields’ lack of an alibi that night, and then his running away and hiding.

Fields sat stiffly through the accusations and didn’t visibly react until Cornwallis said, “Your honor, given the brutal nature of the crime, the commonwealth is asking for a dangerousness hearing in order to show that Mr. Fields should remain in custody until trial.”

At this, Fields leaped to his feet and shouted, “Judge, there’s a harmless old lady back there in shackles!”

Furst tugged at Fields’ arm to get him to sit down and shut up, but by then the bailiffs were moving toward him fast.

Fields ignored them and continued to shout. “Myra Greene is eighty-nine years old! They’ve got her back there in chains! I don’t care what you do with me, but…”

Judge Groesbeck was instructing Fields to sit down, his lawyer was standing now and pleading with him to cooperate, and the bailiffs had Fields by the arms and were struggling with him and glancing at the judge for guidance.

Cornwallis threw up his hands and said, “Need I say more? This unstable man must not be released on bond.”

“He’s going to indict Myra!” Fields yelled. “Judge, you know Myra! This is insane!”

A grim-faced middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses, Judge Groesbeck banged his gavel repeatedly, and when Fields refused again to be seated, the judge ordered the bailiffs to take him back to the lockup. Fields was led away, not resisting, but still shouting about Myra Greene’s incarceration.

With Barry out of the room, the judge looked through some papers and said, “Might the defendant be referring to this matter of aiding a fugitive that I’m to hear next? It seems that way.” He looked from Cornwallis to Furst and back again. Furst sat shaking her head.

“That would appear to be the case, your honor.” Cornwallis said. “Myra Greene aided Barry Fields in his flight from the law. This is, as your honor knows well, a class-B felony. We intend to prosecute Mrs. Greene, and her arraignment is on the docket for this morning.”

The judge said, “And you’ve got her back there in the lockup? This eighty-nine-year-old woman?”

“Judge, the commonwealth does not, of course, plan to oppose bail for Mrs. Greene. We don’t see her as a serious flight risk.”

“No,” the judge said. “Myra Greene on the lam I would have a hard time imagining.”

Now Ramona Furst asked to speak. She said she believed that Fields was understandably upset to see his good friend needlessly in chains, and she was sure he would observe courtroom decorum after Mrs. Greene was released.

“Are you suggesting that your client should determine the court’s schedule?” the judge asked.

“No, your honor. I’m only trying to do what will work for the court and for all of us.”

The judge considered this and said, “Mrs. Greene’s case is another matter. I have to say, I’m amazed that it seemed necessary for this eighty-nine-year-old woman to be dragged in here as if she were Khalid Sheik Mohammed. But your client, Ms. Furst, is another case. His recent actions, from his flight to his outburst just now, show that he is not rational and is not in control of himself. So I am granting the commonwealth’s request for a dangerousness hearing before I consider any bail request. I’ll order that hearing for Monday morning. Meanwhile, Mr. Fields will remain in custody at the County House of Correction. For the record, how will Mr. Fields plead?”

“Not guilty, your honor.”

“Monday morning at nine, then,” the judge said and gestured for Furst to move on.

I wanted to see what kind of horrors Cornwallis had in mind for Myra Greene, but I needed to talk to Furst, and I followed her and her assistant out the door and onto the courthouse steps while Radziwill and Josh stayed behind. A ragtag mob of print and television newshounds came at her, and I stood aside while Furst declared Fields innocent and the victim of a prosecution based on no evidence at all. She said Fields’ flight and courtroom behavior were the actions not of an irrational man but of a rational and justifiably angry young man, and she was sure that the court would agree with her on Monday.

As Furst turned to go back inside, I got her attention and told her I was the investigator Bill Moore had hired.

Furst said, “Where is Bill, anyway? Do you have any idea? I can’t get hold of him.”

“I don’t know, but we should talk. I’ve been on this for twenty-four hours, and I’m spinning my wheels.”

“I’m not getting a whole lot of traction either,” Furst said, “thanks in part to a client who won’t tell me anything about anybody. He does insist that he didn’t shoot Jim Sturdivant, which I happen to believe. But we need to do three things, Donald. Show that Barry could not have done the crime, which won’t be easy with no alibi. Show that Barry had no motive for shooting Sturdivant – some bullshit argument over Sturdivant hiring you to investigate Barry doesn’t cut it. And, if we can, show who had a better motive for killing Sturdivant. As I see it, that last part’ll be your job. Are you up to it?”

“Sure,” I said, responding more to an organized, attractive and assured woman’s sense of clear mission than to any sense that I had any clue as to what to do next.