Tim Green - False Convictions

Five miles later, they ended back at the hotel. Sweaty and winded, Casey passed on Jake’s invitation to breakfast and wished him luck with his interview.

“I’m supposed to fly out after I finish with Graham,” Jake said, still breathing hard, “but I was thinking maybe I’d hang around and see how things shake out. Would that be okay with you?”

“It’s a free country,” Casey said.

“All you have to do is say the word and I’m as good as back on Long Island,” Jake said.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, wiping the sweat from her face with her bare hands. “The whole hospital idea was yours. You’re in on this with me as much as you want to be.”

“Good,” Jake said, clearing his throat. “Look, I’ve been around. This could be something or nothing. But maybe we could do another dinner?”

“Only if you throw in another run,” she said, patting her stomach.

Jake touched her shoulder lightly, wished her luck of her own, and said good-bye. Casey watched him walk away before she headed upstairs. After a shower and some coffee, she went over her notes again before allowing Ralph to drive her to the courthouse.

“The problem is narrowing it down,” Ralph said without taking his eyes from the road. “I got a person to do it, but they came up with over seven thousand white BMWs on the road in 1989. It’s a matter of pulling the ones from this area and they have to go through the list one at a time. We’ll get it eventually, but this guy’s been in the can, what? Twenty years?”

“Be nice if it didn’t get to twenty-one, though, right?” Casey said.

Ralph’s eyebrows lifted for a second and he gave a slight nod.

“You found Cassandra Thornton’s people pretty fast, I’ll tell you that,” Casey said, tapping the folder Ralph had delivered to her at the law offices around nine the previous evening. “Nice work.”

He pulled over in front of the old limestone courthouse. “I’ll be in that spot across the street.”

As she made her way up the steps, Casey looked back at Ralph, who sat watching her with a blank face from the pewter Lexus.

The judge’s chambers had high ceilings. The dark-stained oak had faded under years of neglect. It smelled of aging books and moldy paper, but the high window behind Kollar’s desk shone across the room onto a wall busy with a framed collection of butterflies, brilliant with color. Casey stared for a minute, then turned toward Kollar, trying to reconcile the collection with the granite-faced judge.

“These are beautiful,” Casey said, turning back to the specimens. “This blue is electric.”

“A lot of people use ethyl acetate in their kill jars,” Kollar said. “Cyanide makes them squeamish-the way the little suckers thrash around a bit-but it’s the best way to keep the colors bright.”

Casey looked at the judge for a deeper meaning before she shook hands with the hospital’s lawyer, William Flynn, a tall, angular man in a tan suit with thinning brown hair and gold-rimmed glasses. She handed both the lawyer and the judge copies of the brief she had prepared, then sat in the other leather-upholstered wooden chair facing Kollar’s desk. The big judge folded his hands and used them as a resting place for his chin. The judge asked Flynn to present his argument first, flipping open the hospital lawyer’s brief.

“Judge, as much as we’d like to help Ms. Jordan, giving out these samples would be an egregious invasion of privacy, plain and simple,” Flynn said in an even voice so full of confidence that it bordered on condescension.

Kollar looked at him and nodded.

“State law is very clear that outside a subpoena in a criminal proceeding, the medical information of a patient is sacrosanct,” Flynn said, pointing to his brief. “The case law supporting patient privacy laws is extant, but the court of appeals decision in Marley v. New York is the most commonly accepted authority.”

The judge compressed his lips as if this were common knowledge.

Flynn held up a hand, looked at Casey, and said, “I’m sure Ms. Jordan will argue that this is a form of criminal proceeding, but I have to point out that case law is clear on that as well. Her client has already been tried and convicted. He has exhausted all avenues of appeal provided for by the state, so his standing isn’t one of the accused. He’s guilty. He’s a prisoner of the state serving a life sentence. The only rights he has are the recent rulings that compel the state to provide any evidence used in the case against him. What Ms. Jordan is asking for is simply and obviously not state’s evidence. It is the private property of a hospital patient. I’m afraid the law is cut and dry.”

JAKE ATE BREAKFAST alone and allowed his sweat from the run to dry. His phone chirped and he read the text message from his son, Sam. Sam wanted to know if he could go right from camp to visit with a friend in the Hamptons for a few days. Jake answered with a text of his own, giving him permission and resisting the temptation to ask Sam why in the world he couldn’t come home for a few days first, but didn’t because Sam had a tough time making friends. He also wanted to ask why Sam didn’t give him more notice, because he already knew the answer. Sam didn’t like to plan things and, he claimed, neither did his friends. Sam being away would allow Jake to return from his Rochester interview with Graham and take Casey up on dinner. He wasn’t sure, but he had the feeling-if he didn’t rush it-something might be there between them.

Jake changed into a suit and headed out. Robert Graham kept his Rochester offices outside the city in a nondescript two-story office building just down the main road from the big shopping mall in Palmyra. A savings bank occupied the ground floor of the white building surrounded by parking lots and locust trees. Jake parked in the shade next to the rented van belonging to Dora and her crew and bypassed the glass doors of the bank to enter a side door marked Graham Funding by a modest black-and-white sign. In the small entryway, as he waited for a private elevator, Jake spied the surveillance camera in the corner. He tried the fire door to the stairs, but it was locked, so he waited for the elevator. Inside the car, Jake stared into a second camera until the door rumbled open and he stepped into a small lobby. Behind a panel of glass sat a pretty young receptionist with bright red lipstick and short dark hair. When she got up, her black tailored pantsuit gave away her excellent shape.

She smiled at Jake, obviously expecting him. Jake heard a hum and the muffled clank of a heavy metal bolt before the receptionist swung open the door, greeting him with a sultry look and a thin cool hand.

“I’ve seen your show,” she said. “This is all very exciting. Can I get you something?”

Jake cleared his throat and said, “Just my crew. Thank you, though.”

“They’re in Mr. Graham’s office. Right this way,” she said, leading him around a corner and down a brightly lit hallway to a very large corner office looking out into the trees.

A big cherry desk sat in the corner facing the leather furniture, stained-glass lamps, and Oriental rugs. Books and Remington sculptures lined the shelves that framed the spaces taken up by richly painted seascapes blazing with three-masted battleships. Jake looked but saw not a single photograph of loved ones, their absence making the space feel sterile.

Dora smiled up at him from her monitor and motioned impatiently for him to come see.

“No water? Nothing at all?” the receptionist asked him, barely whispering and toying with her gold hoop earring.

Jake looked at her a moment, his eyes distracted by the red smudges across the face of her pearl-white teeth. “No, I’m good, but thanks.”