False Convictions (28 page)

Jake stood up, too, and looked at his watch. If he hurried, he could catch the 7:05 flight back. He shook Don’s hand and said,
“Sorry I had to bring up the marker.”

Don narrowed his eyes. “There’s a woman in all this.”

“Sort of.”

“That’s okay,” Don said. “Now all I’ve got left is seven years on my mortgage.”

Jake put a fifty-dollar bill down on the table and followed his friend out of the restaurant into the steady flow of weary
travelers. As Jake headed for the gates, Don peeled off toward the baggage claim, then turned back.

“Jake?” he said, nodding at the file Jake held. “These guys may be below the radar with what they’re into these days, but
if they catch you poking around, don’t forget who they are.”

“Some Italian American businessmen,” Jake said with half a wave.

Don shook his head. “That’s what I’m saying. They’re more than that. It’s a different playground, but trust me, they’re using
the same toys.”

W
HEN CASEY emerged from the courthouse into a light drizzle, the mob of reporters shrieked and screamed their questions at
her. In the frenzy, she made out Dwayne Hubbard’s name over and over, something about befriending a killer. Marty helped fight
them back and packed her into his Volvo coupe. Several camera lenses bumped against the window, and by the time Marty made
it around to the driver’s side, his glasses sat crooked on his face.

“They’re insane,” Casey said.

Marty started his car and blared the horn, backing slowly out of their spot.

“You’re surprised?” Marty asked, glancing over.

“It was an arraignment,” Casey said. “Not a hanging.”

“Dwayne killed her,” Marty said.

“It was twenty years ago,” Casey said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Not Cassandra Thornton,” Marty said. “The fiancée. The girl from the press conference. They found her butchered, her eyes
gouged out. That’s what they were saying.”

Casey stared at him as they accelerated down the street, leaving the swarm behind, the knot in her stomach tightening. “I
heard the butcher part, not the fiancée. You’re not sure?”

Marty fished the cell phone out of his pocket as he turned for the Holiday Inn.

“I know a cop,” he said, opening the phone with one hand and hitting a speed dial key.

“Clarence? It’s me, Marty. Is it true the Hubbard guy killed his fiancée?”

Casey watched Marty’s face tighten.

“No shit,” Marty said into the phone. “That’s what I thought. It was? Okay. Thanks.”

Marty snapped the phone shut and nodded. “He did it. And there’s no sign of him anywhere. Evidently, she took about eight
thousand dollars out of the bank yesterday afternoon. Told people it was for their honeymoon. She was taking him on a cruise.
First class. Nice guy, huh?”

“I don’t believe it,” Casey said, scowling. “Take me. Show me.”

“I can’t—”

“You’re the one with connections, Marty,” Casey said. “That’s all I’ve heard since I got here.”

Marty looked hurt, but he opened his phone and dialed, then browbeat his cop friend, Clarence, with a ferocity that surprised
Casey and made her think Marty might be a good lawyer after all, especially when the cop gave in.

“Not bad, right?” Marty said, flashing an eager look and spinning the wheel to make a U-turn.

Casey said nothing as they passed the prison and turned down into a side street of broken and rotting homes, their lines sagging
like the faces of old people, their windows jagged like broken teeth.

“I don’t see the tape,” Casey said as Marty pulled over onto a crumbling curb.

“We can’t go in the front,” Marty said, climbing out and heading off between two dilapidated houses.

Casey hustled to keep up, stepping over piles of dog crap that lay in the grit amid crushed empty cans of malt liquor and
shattered beer bottles. Marty forced open a bent and rusty gate. They passed by an abandoned aboveground pool, its sides bowed
and its seams cracked with rust. The fence had been trampled into the weeds where they made their crossing into another neglected
yard and under some yellow tape.

A uniformed cop appeared in the back door and waved frantically for them to hurry. They stepped into a rancid back room where
unwashed laundry lay in a pile on the filthy linoleum.

“In there,” the cop said, stepping through the kitchen, over an upside-down saucepan and pointing down a hallway.

The cop looked at his watch, then at Marty, and said, “Five minutes.”

He disappeared and they heard the front door open and close.

Marty looked at Casey, his face losing color. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Casey shook her head, pushing past him, aware of the handprints on the faded refrigerator, the dirty dishes on the table,
and an open can of something on the counter growing a beard of green mold. The scarlet shag rug in the hallway had been trampled
flat down the middle long ago. Casey passed a dirty bathroom, its mirror broken and decked out with racing oil stickers.

Sheets from the bed had been stripped for evidence, leaving the mattress naked and bloodstained. The spray of blood on the
pink walls could have been artwork, color coordinated to match the long shag rug, and in a way, it was. On each wall stared
an unblinking eye, Dwayne Hubbard’s signature.

C
ASEY LEFT through the back and staggered across the lawn. She climbed into Marty’s car and rode in silence, staring straight
ahead without saying a word. She made it to the streetlight just before her hotel, then her nerve gave out, and she dropped
her face into her hands.

“Hey,” Marty said, patting her shoulder as he stepped on the gas. “This isn’t your fault. Oh, boy. There’s more of them outside
the hotel.”

“Will you go in and get my things for me?” Casey asked without removing her face from her hands.

“Sure. I can go around to the back and they won’t see you.”

Casey fished the key out of her purse and handed it to him without looking. “Thanks, Marty. Two-sixteen.”

Marty got out and Casey breathed deep, thinking back to the other disasters of her past, including her marriage, and wondering
if it was something about her or just bad luck. She could still see her mother wiping the flour from a pie crust on her apron
and bending over to look at a wasp sting on Casey’s cheek, telling her that she just looked for trouble. Casey remembered
the words hurting more than the sting. And even though Casey didn’t feel that way about herself, the echo of her mother’s
words had never found rest inside Casey’s mind.

She shook her head and pounded a fist on the dashboard. She didn’t look for trouble. Trouble found her. She never looked for
it. Never.

Marty rejoined her, tossing her bags into the backseat and sliding in behind the wheel.

“Where to?” he asked. “There’s a couple nice places in Skaneateles, away from the mobs.”

“Skaneateles?” Casey said. “No. Just take me to the airport, Marty.”

Marty’s face dropped. “The—you’re not going to just run from this?”

“Why?”

Marty’s face colored. “They’ll keep saying things.”

“Who cares?” Casey said, weary from it all.

“Your reputation,” Marty said. “Your… image.”

“Image. Right,” Casey said, directing her eyes straight ahead. “Airport.”

Marty’s phone rang and he answered it with one hand still on the wheel. “Uncle Christopher? Yes. I am.”

Casey could hear the punctuated sounds of Marty’s uncle, yelling on the other end of the line. Marty rolled his lips inward
and clamped down until the shouting ended.

“I’m going to the airport,” Marty said quietly, “then I’ll come get them.”

Shouting erupted again.

“I understand,” Marty said, his face pale. “No, don’t do that. I’ll come right now.”

Marty hung up the phone and glanced at Casey. “Can you give me ten minutes?”

Casey held up a finger and called her travel agent in Dallas to book the next flight out.

“My flight’s not until 8:40,” Casey said, hanging up. “We should be fine, right? To stop?”

“Yes,” Marty said, his face expressionless and staring straight ahead.

Casey rode for a minute, watching the faded landmarks as Marty made a series of turns that took them back toward the center
of town.

“So you want to tell me?” Casey asked.

Marty took a deep breath and let it out slow. “That was my uncle.”

“I figured,” Casey said, “and he’s not happy that you’re helping me.”

“He told me I couldn’t,” Marty said. “Like he was pulling some lever.”

“He is your boss.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Marty said. “I can hang my own shingle just like anyone else.”

“You going to quit?”

“No,” Marty said. “He fired me. He gave me ten minutes to get my things or he said I’d find them in a box on the sidewalk.”

Casey paused, then said, “Sorry.”

Marty slowly nodded his head, swerved to the side of the road, and threw open the car door. He removed his glasses and began
cleaning them furiously on his shirttail before he leaned out and retched, spilling a stream of vomit onto the edge of the
road. When he leaned back into the car and replaced his glasses, he wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of a wrist and
apologized to her.

“It’s okay,” she said as they pulled back out onto the road.

Casey sat in the car in front of the Barrone law offices while Marty ran in. When he came out, he carried two boxes, both
of which he dumped into the trunk.

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Casey said.

“Yeah, well,” Marty said, starting the engine and pulling away from the curb fast enough to swerve into the oncoming lane
and set off a series of horn blasts, “I was starting a novel.”

Despite Casey’s pleas, Marty insisted on staying with her as she worked her way though the check-in process at the airport,
waiting patiently beside her while the TSA agents went through her luggage. Upstairs, security had only one line going, and
it snaked through the terminal all the way to the mouth of the walk bridge that led to the parking garage. Casey looked at
her watch, counted the people in front of her, and came up with an estimate of how long it would take to get through the line.

“Your ten minutes cost me,” she said. “They shut the doors, like, twenty minutes before the flight these days.”

“You’ll make it,” Marty said. “There’s only a couple gates. It’s not like Atlanta. It took me half an hour one time to get
to my gate once I passed through security there.”

Casey nodded and moved slowly forward. Her phone vibrated and she saw another number she didn’t recognize. She powered it
down and stuck it into her briefcase. Her voice mail had already been overloaded, some from concerned friends like Stacy and
Sharon and José but mostly from reporters eager for a scoop. How they got Casey’s number she couldn’t imagine. She considered
calling Stacy back, just to check in, but pushed the idea from her mind. She just needed to get home, to her own couch, with
her own balcony overlooking the narrow Venetian canal. Maybe a longneck bottle of Budweiser in her hand.

She was next in line to have her ID checked when a stampede of travelers gushed through the double doors on the exit side
of the glass partition. Marty finally said good-bye and that he’d call her as things progressed, but he remained standing
off to the side, evidently intent on seeing her all the way in. Casey was loading her computer into a plastic tub when the
profile of Jake Carlson’s face caught her eye.

“Jake,” she said, waving and patting the plastic divider. “Jake.”

J
AKE POINTED at the cell phone he held, then at Casey, then waved for her to come back. She gathered her things, disrupting
the flow of the line and apologizing as she worked her way against the flow and ducked under the elastic rail. Jake kissed
her cheek and hugged her excitedly.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Jake asked.

“Too much,” Casey said. “I shut it off.”

“Where were you going?”

“Home.”

“And leave this lovely little town?”

“I got your message,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d get back. I need to put some distance between me and that place. I can
still smell the urine from the woman in my cell. I think it’s on my clothes.”

Jake sniffed. “No. Come on. You can’t go. See what I’ve got. It’s going to take some doing, but we’re going to tie Graham
in so tight with these mafia thugs that
he’ll
be the front-page story. Believe it or not, the FBI has an active investigation going on the guy.”

“I’d believe anything,” she said.

“Hi,” Marty said, appearing from behind them and extending a hand to Jake.

“Marty got fired,” Casey said. “He’s been great.”

“Your own uncle?” Jake said.

Marty shrugged. “He was an asshole, anyway.”

“I bet,” Jake said. “I saw you on TV at the DC airport.”

“My luggage,” Casey said.

“The TSA won’t leave with it if you’re not on the plane,” Jake said. “Don’t worry. Come on.”

They got Casey’s luggage back at the TSA bag check, then took the walk bridge to the garage while Jake told them about a mobster
named Niko Todora, John Napoli’s patron, and a man who’d gone from the underworld to legitimate businessman.

“So, where to?” Casey asked.

“Buffalo,” Jake said. “I’ve got a list of all the names and companies. We’ve got to find the link to Graham. We’ve got to
prove he’s tied in with these guys and they’re all trying to sink Patricia Rivers because of those gas leases. Once we do
that, his whole story about you falls apart.”

“No sweat,” Casey said. “What’s your plan?”

“People,” Jake said. “They can’t help talking. We get a disgruntled employee or someone who got screwed on a deal and we drill
down. There’s got to be a money trail somewhere. There always is.”

“Follow the money,” Casey said. “Great. I never heard that before.”

“I can help,” Marty said.

“Of course,” Jake said, stopping in back of his rental Cadillac to open the trunk and load Casey’s bags.