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The rain that had threatened all day finally retreated without delivering asingle drop; the heavy clouds scattered to the east and the late afternoonsun breached the tall windows in the office, banking off the bookshelveson the wall opposite where Mickey Dupree sat, leaning back in his chair,his feet up on the desk, his passive expression belying the impatiencelingering within. On top of the bookshelves was gathered the usualbrica- brac one might find in a law office—commendations from variouscommunity groups, letters of gratitude from prominent clients,declarations attesting to this accomplishment or that. Among theseinsignificant items was a framed certificate stating that Mickey hadscored a hole in one on the sixteenth hole at the Burr Oak Golf andCountry Club. Glancing at it now served only to remind him that he wasat this minute supposed to be teeing off at the course, rather than sittingidly waiting for Chuck and Sally Fairchild to arrive.The certificate in its walnut frame was coated with a thin layer of dust,as were the other items there. Mickey noticed the dust only when the sunhit the window at a certain angle late in the day, at an hour when he wasusually finishing his second Rusty Nail at Harry’s Pub, and he alwaysmade a note to tell the cleaning woman to take care of it, invariablyforgetting about it by the following day. He’d made the hole in one inSeptember 1989, and it had been his first and only ace to date. The yearitself had held a number of firsts for Mickey, and a more sentimentalindividual might from time to time give pause to the memory of them.Mickey was not a man to fall victim to such whimsy, but if he were, hewould recall that 1989 was the year in which he married his first wife—the former Margaret Louise Jensen—a few months after Margaret’sfather made him junior partner in his firm. He also bought his first newcar that year— a Mercedes coupe that seated just two and, as such,Margaret insisted, was entirely impractical for a couple with a child duein the fall. Mickey ignored her, an act that did not fall into the categoryof firsts.There were other firsts that year of varying degrees of significance, butonly one could Mickey accurately say changed the course of his life, orat least of his career. It was in 1989 that he first successfully defended aclient in a capital murder case. The accused was Ronnie Dillard, adrunkard and layabout and sometime cokehead who robbed and shot adealer from White Plains and was found a few hours later in a stupor in amotel room outside of Coxsackie, cocaine scattered around the bathroomand the murder weapon lying on the pillow, inches from Ronnie’smuddled head.Looking back, Mickey had no business getting an acquittal for the royalmess known as Ronnie Dillard. But the local cops who found Dillard,after being tipped off by the motel’s owner, bungled the arrest and the
 
subsequent investigation in a number of ways, first denying the suspecthis Miranda rights, then neglecting to secure the room before theforensics unit arrived. The coup de grâce, however, came during theactual trial, when the district attorney produced a gun designated as themurder weapon, along with a damning ballistics report. Ronnie Dillard,in a rare observant moment, noticed that the front sight was intact on theSmith & Wesson presented as evidence, whereas the one on his ownrevolver had been filed off. At Mickey’s request, the unit performed anew ballistics test, which showed that the prosecution had the wronggun. It was later determined that the revolvers had been switched, quiteaccidentally, in the evidence room at the police station, and that the realmurder weapon had since disappeared, probably taken home by a copwho’d taken a fancy to it, unaware of its role in the case. By that time itno longer mattered, as Ronnie Dillard was a free man, back on the streetand headed for whatever slippery slope his moronic nature had in storefor him.And with that Mickey Dupree had his first murder acquittal. Since then,he’d added seven more to his credit, the most recent coming just tendays ago with the exoneration of Alan Comstock. He’d become the go-to guy in upstate New York when it came to murder one.However, Mickey was more than just the lawyer who had won eightcapital murder cases, he was the lawyer who had never lost one.Now he sat impatiently waiting for his meeting with the Fairchilds, ameeting he really didn’t want, about a capital murder case he didn’twant. The fact that the couple was keeping him from the stag nine atBurr Oak did nothing to improve his disposition.Mickey had joined the old country club in 1987 and had managed toremain a member of good standing ever since. With the notableexception of the seventh hole, he loved everything about the club and theextended privileges that membership provided. Located a few milessouth of Kingston, the course was fifteen minutes away from his home.The food in the clubhouse was good, if not inspiring, and the staff wascordial but rarely fawning. The course itself was kept in immaculatecondition and had been rated one of the top twenty in the state forseveral years running. Not long at sixty-one hundred yards, it wasnevertheless a difficult test of a demanding game. Built in 1927 by adipsomaniac Scotsman named McDougal, and then redesigned in the1960s by Robert Trent Jones, it was a gorgeous layout, a meanderingold-style course that featured hundreds of ancient hardwoods—hugesugar maples, black walnuts, ironwoods, and the white oaks that gavethe place its name. Stands of pine and spruce had been integrated intothe landscape over the decades. Gibson’s Creek tumbled down from theWhite Mountains and crisscrossed the course in several spots, eventually
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