Tim Green - False Convictions

Casey held up a hand. “Ralph’s not my boss and he’s not yours. Please. Go home. I’ll call if I need anything.”

“Like a ride to the courthouse tomorrow?” Marty asked.

“If I need it,” Casey said, thinking Jake was sure to be back. “Good night, Marty. Thank you.”

Marty hung his head and turned to go.

“Marty,” she said, and he spun on a dime. “Thanks for your help with the hospital brief.”

“I thought I was bothering you,” Marty said, wrinkling his nose.

“You asked some good questions,” she said, “and that’s what a good lawyer does.”

Marty blushed and thanked her and walked away. She watched him go, then finished up with her team on the phone, snapping it shut before turning her thoughts to Jake. When the phone suddenly rang, she snatched it up without looking at the number.

“Hi,” she said warmly.

“Holy shit, they fucking tried to kill me.”

“Jake?” Casey said, puzzled by the busy-sounding background. “What happened? Where are you?”

“Graham. His thugs. I’m at the emergency room in Buffalo smelling like the ass end of the river with twenty-seven stitches in the back of my head. They think I’m nuts, but one of the cops recognized me.”

“Police?”

“I staggered up into the parking lot at the Naval Museum covered in blood. This guy’s kids thought it was Dawn of the Dead.”

“Are you okay?”

“I took a handful of painkillers and my head still feels like a seven-pound ham in a five-pound can. Are you okay? That’s what I’m worried about.”

Casey looked around her room and drew the curtains across the large window. “Fine. Yes. Tell me what the hell happened.”

Jake unraveled a story about following Graham, the people he met, and where.

“Then I tried to get closer to hear and they heard me and came after me,” Jake said. “I dove down this fucking huge drainpipe and I got flushed out of there and the next thing I know, I’m washed up onshore downriver and some toothless old whore is turning my pockets inside out calling herself the great Nelly Falconi. Thankfully, all she took was my cash, so I’ve got my cards. My cell phone is shot to hell, though. I have no idea how I didn’t fucking drown.”

“But,” Casey said slowly, unable to keep from playing the defense lawyer, “they didn’t hit you or anything.”

“I didn’t give them the chance. I ran my ass off and tried to lose them in the basement of this place. I don’t know if they opened some floodgates or what, but I got battered to hell.”

“I mean, were they doing anything illegal or anything?”

“I’m sure.”

“But you didn’t see any drugs or guns or anything, right?”

“You do this as long as I have and you don’t need to see the fire to know something’s burning. You can smell the smoke.”

Casey bit into her lip and asked, “Now what?”

“Well, you watch your ass,” Jake said. “I’m going to buy some clean clothes and a phone at the mall, then get back to my car and get on to those assholes Graham was with. There can’t be too many guys in wheelchairs getting shuttled around Buffalo in silver G55s. Once I find out how dirty this guy really is, then I go to my producers and plead my case. Then I nail him.”

Casey didn’t know what to say.

“You there?” Jake asked.

“Sure. What do the cops think?”

“I told you, that I’m off my sled,” Jake said. “The older one said his mom was a fan, so they kind of took me at my word on all the blood, but they got called to a domestic dispute five minutes into my stitches.”

Casey went quiet again.

The silence continued until Jake said, “Okay, so, I’ll let you know, right?”

“Jake?” Casey said. “Honestly? I think you’re going off a little half-cocked. You sound a little…”

“Off my sled?”

“Well, overexcited.”

“What about all that stuff I heard him saying on the phone?” Jake asked, impassioned. “That he should have ‘taken care of you before’ and all that? What did you do?”

“You don’t know if it’s me he was even talking about.”

“Okay,” Jake said, pausing for a long beat and losing his steam. “I hear you. But you put the pieces together and they add up. This I know, so you be careful. Call me if you find out anything, or if you need me. I’m not that far away.”

Casey woke up the next morning after a fitful night of sleep. The wind had blown, and the noise of the trees outside and the creaking sounds from the roof cut her imagination loose. She splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth, and decided on a long run to think. High clouds caught the dawn’s pink glow and the purple shadows of the prison wall seemed to visibly fade as she surged up the hill on her way out of town. She reached her halfway point, a small ice-cream stand at a four-corner stop and circled back, deciding to call Robert Graham as soon as she returned to the hotel.

She would ask him straight up about Jake and confront him about what Jake overheard Graham saying on the phone to the man named Massimo. Part of her believed Jake, but another part of her thought he might be a little cracked. And Graham was her client. He deserved the benefit of a direct confrontation. Resolute, she churned past farm fields, smelling the rich scent of damp earth and crops nearly ready for harvest, her feet pounding out a steady tattoo on the gravel shoulder as the early traffic growled past, headlights on in the thin light.

Sweat poured down Casey’s face and she breathed deep. When she reached the modest outlying homes on the fringe of the small city, she saw a man with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled closed coming her way at a serious clip. She averted her eyes and focused on the road in front of her. The other runner closed in fast and by the time Casey looked up again, he was nearly on top of her. She felt a small jolt of fear in her core and pulled up sharp. As she did, she saw him pull up short, grin, and tug at the string that held his hood close.

The hood flew back and there stood Robert Graham.

MIND COMPANY?” Graham asked.

“Were you trying to run me over?” Casey said, frowning and setting off again, as though the intrusion were only a mild annoyance.

Graham laughed, shaking his head and falling in alongside her.

“My ex-wife used to tell me I had to grow up,” he said, “but when you act young, you stay young, and don’t we all want that? Nice pace you’ve got. About a six-minute mile?”

“It used to be six-ten,” Casey said, huffing and wiping the sweat from her eyes with the back of her arm. “When did you get into town?”

“Late,” Graham said, revealing nothing more than the smile on his unshaven face.

Casey nodded and said, “Because this whole thing is feeling like a game that I walked into the middle of.”

“Meaning what?” he asked, casting her a quizzical look.

“Things going on behind the scenes,” Casey said, dodging a cluster of trash cans someone had left near the end of their driveway. “This whole thing has an odor.”

“We’re making people think,” Graham said. “Challenging a mind-set. You think most people really care about a black man from the ghetto who got locked up two decades ago?”

Casey said, “Let’s talk about Jake Carlson.”

“I think that Sunday morning piece is going to come out real nice,” Graham said.

Casey kept up her pace, studying the profile of his face and the look of smug satisfaction she couldn’t decipher.

She let some road go by.

“Look,” Graham said, pointing up ahead at a decaying clapboard building on the corner by the next traffic light, “the place where Hubbard ran into those hillbillies twenty years ago. Maybe Hubbard stops to tie his shoe, or one of those bastards decides to take a leak before he leaves for the night. A million things that could have let him walk right by. Chance is a bitch, isn’t it?”