False Convictions Read online

  “And Johnny Rockets is the food gas-guzzlers prefer most?” Casey asked.

  Graham grinned. “See? That’s why you’re the lawyer I want. You take it all, condense it down into something simple yet powerful, and bam, just like an uppercut.”

  “I didn’t mean to come out swinging,” she said.

  “You’re fine.”

  The waitress appeared in a paper hat and slapped a stack of complimentary nickels down on the table for the jukebox.

  “Just a salad for me with some grilled chicken,” Casey said. “And water with lemon.”

  Graham ordered a couple burgers with fries and waited for the waitress to leave before he said, “I guess that’s how you stay in such great shape. What else do you do? Run?”

  “I used to do thirty miles a week,” she said. “I’m working my way back right now. Do you run?”

  “Run, bike, swim,” he said. “I train for the Ironman.”

  “The real one?” Casey asked. “Out in Hawaii?”

  “I never won one,” he said. “But as long as I stay in the top ten percent, I feel pretty good about it.”

  “That’s amazing,” she said. “How do you find the time with all you do?”

  Graham shrugged. “I try not to sleep too much. I have a lot of energy.”

  “I read that,” she said. “All you do, and now this Freedom Project?”

  “You have to give back,” he said. “My ex-wife taught me that.”

  “How so?”

  “She never did.”

  “I had one of those,” she said, watching the waitress set a plate of fries down in front of him and squirt a smiley face of ketchup onto a separate small plate.

  “I heard,” he said.

  “What else have you heard?”

  “I know you’re passionate,” he said, holding up a French fry.

  “I am.”

  “Passionate enough to take on a couple cases for the Freedom Project?” he asked, smearing the smile off the plate’s face. “Some people say about half our cases are lost causes.”

  “The ones that aren’t deserve attention,” she said. “It’s not too far from what I do, giving people a chance in a legal system that’s rigged for the rich, but why me? A million dollars a year for my clinic is a lot of money.”

  “Part of it is to give back,” he said. “I’m making the Project a top priority in my philanthropic portfolio. Part of it is good business, too. I’ll be honest. There’s a deal behind everything I do. I think we need someone with your profile. People like a celebrity. My million-dollar annuity for your clinic will pay for itself with the publicity you’ll bring to the Freedom Project. Publicity means donations. It’s simple. A lot of people know who Casey Jordan is.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing,” Casey said, inclining her head as the waitress set down their food.

  “It’s all true?” he asked, biting into his cheeseburger. “You know?”

  “Oh, shit,” Casey said. “You’re not going to ask me about-”

  “I rented it on Netflix,” he said. “Funny, you don’t look like Susan Lucci.”

  “I didn’t make a nickel off that.”

  “She was good.”

  “With all the gloss that a Lifetime movie of the week can offer.”

  “Can you say the line? You know, the line?”

  “Screw you,” Casey said.

  Graham smiled.

  “There’s just one other thing,” Casey said, picking up her fork. “You didn’t say where I’ll have to go. The last big case I heard the Project won was in Philadelphia. I love the cause and the funding, but I can’t be too far away from my work here. That would defeat the whole purpose.”

  Graham wiped his mouth on a napkin and asked, “How far is too far?”

  “How far would you want me?”

  “What about Abilene?”

  “I could do that,” Casey said, taking a bite.

  “Good, then you won’t mind Auburn.”

  “Auburn, as in Alabama? Way too far,” Casey said, setting down her fork.

  “Auburn, New York,” Graham said, filling his mouth with more cheeseburger.

  “I guess you didn’t hear me. I said close.”

  “Abilene is, what, three hours away?” he asked, smiling through his food.

  “Yes.”

  “So is Auburn, New York.”

  Casey scrunched up her face.

  “You can use my Citation X as much as you need it,” Graham said, swallowing and leaning toward her. “The fastest nonmilitary jet in the world. You’ll be there in less than three hours. Easier than Abilene. And I know you’re going to want to help this person. Dwayne Hubbard is his name. Twenty years he’s been in jail, and the Project is convinced he’s completely innocent.”

  “What do you think?” Casey asked.

  “I don’t waste time,” Graham said. “Besides, I like him. He looks like that kid from that old sitcom. You know, with the squeaky voice and high pants.” Graham snapped his fingers. “Say, maybe he could play Dwayne in the movie!”

  4

  WHEN CASEY RETURNED to her condo in an upscale little neighborhood just off the highway, she found José sitting on her balcony overlooking the small canal and drinking a beer. He’d propped his cowboy boots up on the railing and sat tilted back in a pair of dark jeans and a red button-down shirt with black piping as dark as his own hair. Casey took a beer of her own from the fridge and sat down in the metal rocker beside him, curling up her legs against the cool night air. The brick building across the water, with its own wrought-iron terraces and flower boxes, and the arching stone footbridge always hinted of Venice to Casey.

  “Word on the street is I got competition with wings,” José said.

  Casey took a pull on her beer and said, “Not like you to worry about the competition.”

  “Not worried,” José said, studying the stars beyond the canyon of brick, “just doing an assessment of the situation. Private jet’s a little heavy for my budget.”

  “I don’t know what the hell Stacy said, but there’s no situation,” Casey said. “Just an opportunity for the clinic. I might even be able to pay you for all that work for a change.”

  “Nah,” José said, shaking his head. “When I help it cleans my soul from the shit I do to pay the bills. Half of it would go to my bitch from hell ex-wife, anyway. Save the money for your girls and beware of billionaires bearing gifts.”

  “You had a few tonight.”

  “This is the first one.”

  “Sorry,” Casey said. “I just didn’t expect the first thing to see you with is a beer in your hand.”

  “It’s a process,” José said, putting down the half-empty beer on the clay-tiled floor. “You know, billionaires got that way for a reason. You gotta screw a lot of folks to get that much money.”

  “Money doesn’t make a person evil,” Casey said, “especially if you give it away to good causes, kind of like you. You know where we ate? Johnny Rockets. You’d like him.”

  “I’m a Pollo Loco kind of guy,” José said. “If he’s wanting to give you a million dollars, I’ll bet he wants something back.”

  “That’s bullshit, José,” Casey said. “What, are we in kindergarten?”

  José stretched out his legs. “I am an ex-cop. I know things.”

  There was silence for several moments.

  José smiled at her and reached for her hand. She could smell his breath and the beer wasn’t his first by far.

  Casey stood and picked up his now-empty bottle from the table. Walking into the kitchen, she said, “We agreed to give it a rest.”

  “Well,” José said, slapping his knees as he rose, “I got work early, anyway. I’m putting a tail on a trophy wife who forgot where her bread’s buttered. These Dallas women are a hoot.”

  “So what’s up?” Casey asked, walking him to the door and slipping her hand into his coat pocket for his keys.

  José didn’t notice.

  “Just wanted to say
hello.”

  “Waiting up until you’re sure I made it home safe?”

  “I’ve learned with you to expect nothing but be ready for every possibility,” he said, turning to her. Even slightly drunk, the smile was endearing.

  “You mean, spending the night?” she asked, arching an eyebrow, her hand on the doorknob.

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “How ’bout a ride home instead?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can get your car tomorrow.”

  “I could stay and-”

  “Get your ass in my car.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ***

  The jet hit a bank of thunderclouds that rocked them sideways. Silverware and bottles shuddered in the galley. Robert Graham talked casually on the phone and snacked on a package of trail mix, sweeping the crumbs from time to time from the front of his faded yellow polo shirt. When he saw her face, he pinned the phone down with his chin and reached across the aisle to pat her hand. She dug her fingers into the armrests and offered him a curt nod.

  They cleared the clouds and kept going up. When they finally leveled off, the air-show screen told her they were eight miles high. After a time, the leather, the polished wood, and the brass fittings allowed her to forget where she was and focus on the file Graham had handed her when she boarded the plane.

  After reading for a while she looked up and said, “Dwayne Hubbard was the son of a murderer?”

  Graham nodded and said, “The dad caved a guy’s head in with a tire iron and did twenty years for it. That’s how Dwayne knew Auburn. The mom went back and forth on where she collected her welfare check. She and Dwayne would live in Harlem for a while, then they’d move up to Auburn to visit Dad. They went back and forth his whole childhood. Sometimes she worked. Most of the time she latched on to whatever man could pay the light bill, and still Dwayne did well in school.”

  “The police report says he admitted that he came back to see the girl. She was his girlfriend?” Casey asked.

  Graham leaned across the aisle and pointed to a place on the photocopy of the sloppy, handwritten report. “No, see, he means a different girl. The girl he came to see was in the Auburn Residential Center. It’s a state detention center for teenage girls.”

  Casey flipped through the papers and said, “But I don’t see anything from her.”

  “Exactly,” Graham said. “She ran away not long after the murder, never testified to validate Dwayne’s alibi. Never even gave a statement.”

  “But he did know the actual victim, too?”

  Graham shrugged. “Dwayne spent part of his sophomore year up there. Everyone who went to the local high school knew her. She was a bombshell.”

  Casey looked at the picture from the newspaper and said, “I don’t know about bombshell, but I get the picture: a black man and a white girl. She’s alone in the house, taking a bath, and she gets brutally raped and stabbed. An ugly picture when painted in the courtroom, but nothing you can say is outright racist.”

  “What about that other guy? The guy Hubbard says he stabbed?” Graham said. “No one ever found him. Don’t you think a competent lawyer would have scoured the bushes to find the guy, create some doubt?”

  “It’s a one in ten blood type and it matched the victim’s,” Casey said, tilting her head. “I see what you’re saying, but…”

  “How about how quick it went down?” Graham said, pointing at the file. “The jury barely got lunch out of the deal. They got their instructions at eleven and brought back a guilty verdict by two. The whole trial took less than two days.”

  “Well, there wasn’t much evidence to present,” Casey said.

  “Like the defense wasn’t really working it,” Graham said.

  Casey said nothing but glanced at the perfunctory appeals put together by a court-appointed lawyer, one where the appellate court affirmed the conviction and the second where the highest New York State court, the court of appeals, refused to review the case. Finally, she closed the file and clucked her tongue.

  “Why?” Casey asked.

  “Why, what?”

  “Why this case? I mean, aside from the girlfriend who dropped out of the picture, I don’t see what’s so compelling,” Casey said. “Even if he did visit the girlfriend, he still could have killed that girl. The detention center is right down the road from the crime scene, and it sounds like the blood on his knife was a match.”

  “Or was it?” Graham said, frowning. “It’s the mother who convinced me this was worth taking a hard look at. You should have seen her face.”

  “The welfare mom?” Casey asked, picking a piece of lint off her blue pin-striped blazer.

  “Not everyone is as lucky as us,” Graham said.

  “Hey, I ate my share of ketchup sandwiches growing up,” Casey said. “No one handed me a dime. It took me three years in private practice before I could pay off my school loans.”

  “I guess you had to hear her passion,” Graham said. “She swears he’s innocent.”

  “What mother doesn’t?”

  “Don’t forget the racial component,” Graham said. “Like you said, maybe it’s not outright racism, but it has that undertone. That’s what got the board’s attention.”

  “The Freedom Project’s board?” Casey asked.

  “You don’t think this is just me going off on some wild goose chase, do you?” Graham asked. “Every case we take on has to be approved, to avoid emotional overindulgence. We don’t think it’s a coincidence that the girlfriend from downstate with an uncle who’s a cop drops out of the picture.”

  “Why didn’t Hubbard’s lawyer just subpoena her?” Casey asked.

  “Exactly,” Graham said.

  Casey looked at the file. “Still, it seems pretty thin to be flying halfway across the country for.”

  Graham shrugged. “If you’re right, we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we? Get the evidence, have it tested for a DNA match, and if the blood on Hubbard’s knife matches the victim’s, then I was wrong and you’ve got one of your two commitments down in a couple of days. It’s a simple thing for us, and think what if. What if Hubbard’s telling the truth? How can we not free the man? That’s what we do.”

  Casey pinched her lips, shook her head, and said, “It’s your money.”

  5

  CASEY RODE IN THE BACK of a big pewter Lexus sedan driven by a man whose thick rolls of neck sprouted a bristly bullet-shaped head. Graham introduced their driver as Ralph Cardinale, an associate in the Rochester business offices of Graham Funding. When Ralph loaded the luggage, Casey was certain she detected a prosthetic leg beneath his dark slacks.

  “Whatever you need while you’re up here,” Graham said, turning around in his seat to face Casey, “you just let Ralph know. Nothing will be more important to him than that while you’re working on this case.”

  Ralph glanced at her in the mirror and offered the smile of a big dog, eager to please. She couldn’t yet be sure if the dull light in his eyes spoke for a lack of intelligence or an abundance of brutality, but his manners were substantial if rough cut. She guessed ex-military and wondered about the leg.

  Casey peered out the window. A gray watercolor swirled in the sky. Light rain fell sporadically, muting the green brilliance of grass, fields, and woods. They rolled into Auburn past the Wal-Mart and all the usual suspects of a commercial strip that had replaced Main Street America from coast to coast. Sagging homes with leprous paint lined the streets along with staggered light poles bleached like bones. In a way, it reminded Casey of home. Not Dallas with its skyscrapers, oil money, and black-tie balls, not even Austin where she’d spent her college days and her early years in the district attorney’s office, but of West Texas, where she grew up. A tired and dusty place whose better days would never return. A place she’d grown up determined to get out of.

  They passed a broken and boarded restaurant and the Holiday Inn before taking a right, crossing a bridge, some railroad tracks, and pulling to
a stop across the wide street from the prison.

  Ralph stayed in the car while Casey followed Graham across the faded crosswalk, her heels clicking as she hustled to stay under his umbrella. They entered what looked like a castle gate with stone turrets rising up nearly as high as the concrete walls beyond. Inside, uniformed guards worked amid a clutter of old wooden desks, telephones, and papers behind a scratched Plexiglas barrier, while more guards, administrative staff, cops, and lawyers in shabby suits filtered past, showing IDs and passing through the metal detectors.

  After the formalities, a bored woman in a pale blue uniform shirt led Casey and Graham into the administrative building and to a battered room whose dirty windows gave away nothing beyond the bars. Wooden chairs sat scattered around a rectangular gunmetal table. They sat to wait.

  “Ralph seems nice,” Casey said, studying Graham’s face.

  “If you’re on his side, he is,” Graham said.

  “Special Forces or something?” Casey asked.

  “Military police. Lost his lower leg in the first Gulf war. Got his business degree at University of Rochester. Top of his class. Very good school. I hired him before he could leave the room.”

  “Seems like a heavy pedigree for a driver,” Casey said.

  “I told you this is important to me,” Graham said. “If you ask him to get you coffee, he’ll do it. He understands chain of command. But if you need help accessing people, or getting to some information you can’t Google, Ralph’s your man.”

  “I have my own investigator if it’s necessary,” Casey said.

  Graham studied her, then said, “Ralph will keep an eye on you, too.”

  “What? Like a bodyguard?” Casey said, wrinkling her face.

  “This place can be a rough little town,” Graham said. “Five hundred of the worst criminals in the state inside these walls, and lots of their family and friends like to come visit. Sometimes they stay. Think of Ralph as a big Doberman on the front porch.”

  “Nice doggie,” Casey said. “And anyway, what about his leg?”