Tim Green - False Convictions

“Can we move that mic to his tie?” Jake asked.

A soundman hurried in and out of the shot, following Jake’s direction.

“I want to move the two shot over this way a little,” Dora told a cameraman. “I think the back of his head looks a little funny.”

“Nothing funny about it,” Jake said, touching the back of his skull and feathering his hair over the top of the stitches. “I didn’t think you could actually see it.”

“Your hair covers it pretty well,” Dora said, “but it’s got a funny shape.”

“Great,” Jake said.

Kissle looked at Jake, mystified, and Jake just made a face and softly shook his head not to worry. Dora caught his eye and told him they were rolling.

“So,” Jake said, “Detective Kissle, we appreciate you talking with us.”

Kissle shook his head. “Just Kissle, or Myron. I retired from the force eleven years ago, so I can’t go by Detective, as proud as I am of my shield.”

“Mr. Kissle,” Jake said, leaning toward the old man. “Do you remember the Cassandra Thornton case back in 1989?”

“This isn’t New York City,” Kissle said, nodding toward the countryside behind him, “so we don’t regularly get things like that. Luckily. No, that’s the worst I ever saw or hope to see. As pretty a girl as you could wish. Face cut to pieces. Pants torn off. Stabbed full of holes. Blood all over the room like some slaughterhouse. Her daddy covered in it and crying to us to save her. She was still breathing, barely.”

Jake paused, then asked, “What can you tell us about the investigation following?”

Kissle rubbed his nose in a big circular motion. “Well, we were looking for a black man, no one ever said why, but that’s what we were looking for. Then we get a call from someone at the bus station who says a black man with blood on his clothes got on the bus to New York and good riddance to him, but someone ought to know. We caught up with Dwayne Hubbard down in New York City. Man went to trial and they put him away, you know that part.”

“That’s right,” Jake said, “the police found Dwayne Hubbard, but there were some things about the case that people-people like yourself-asked about that others didn’t like. What can you tell us about that?”

“Well,” Kissle said. He sat forward, the chair creaking and his rheumy eyes beginning to glisten. “We got word from above that said for us to stop asking questions, we had our man, and that was to be the end of it. The detective on the case-”

“Uh, Detective Yancy?” Jake said.

“Right. He dropped right out of it and left the force. Last thing he said to me was that if I was gonna stick around it’d be best to stop asking questions. Then he dropped off the face of the earth.”

“What kind of questions were you asking?” Jake asked.

“First thing was the boyfriend of the girl, I mean the ex-boyfriend,” Kissle said, using his aged hands to conduct as he spoke. “He’d been following her. She worked just up the road at the putt-putt golf, worked the ice-cream stand, and he’d show up there most every night, just hanging around with his buddies, or by himself if he didn’t have any, and watching her. We’d get calls from her dad, but we had to tell him that it’s a free country, which it is.”

“And what was the question some people had about the ex-boyfriend?” Jake asked.

Kissle shrugged. “Well, it only figures we should have talked to him. I mean, I know we had the New York City boy, but talking to him seemed like proper police work. That was my take on it. Billy Cussing-he was my partner-he thought more about it than me and he found himself looking for work. Couldn’t find anything until he got to Florida. I’m past that now, though. Work.”

“You worked hard for a lot of years,” Jake said. “Can you tell us about the ex-boyfriend? Who he was, and why you think it may have had something to do with you and others being asked to forget your questions?”

“We weren’t asked,” Kissle said, narrowing one eye and rubbing his nose. “They told us flat out. Leave it alone. We had our man and that was that.”

“Why?”

“Simple,” Kissle said, “the boyfriend was the DA’s son.”

“Can you tell us their names?”

“Everyone knows,” Kissle said, “that Patricia Rivers’s boy, Nelson, was no good, never. We’d pick him up smoking pot and driving drunk out on the road and we’d just bring him home. People didn’t necessarily think he’d do something like butcher a girl, but we thought at least he should be asked some questions. Not her, though. She put the word out and the chief at the time-not our chief now-he went with her on it, so did the mayor, and the word came down we had our man.”

“Do you think Nelson Rivers is the one who killed that girl?” Jake asked.

Kissle shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not, but we sure didn’t do nothing to find out if he did. He was stalking her. We all knew that. You won’t see any reports on it or anything, but the chief had a talk with the mom about getting him to back off.”

“Did Patricia Rivers, Judge Rivers now,” Jake said, “did she ever say anything to you directly about the investigation?”

Kissle tightened his lips and nodded slowly, remembering. “I imagine she said the same thing to Martin Yancy and Billy Cussing that she said to me. I was getting into my patrol car out back of the station and she pulled up in her big black Mercedes and she says, ‘Myron, you’ll leave that Thornton case alone if you know what’s good for you. You’re an officer of the law; you’re supposed to be working for the law, not against it.’ Well, I told her I thought I was. I told her the law was supposed to be blind when it come to color, but she just gave me a funny smile and told me the world was a hollow place for a cop who worked against the law. That’s what she called it, a hollow place.”

“And what did you do?” Jake asked.

“I believed her,” Kissle said. “She’s not one to mess around, never was. I guess Billy Cussing found that out the other way.”

“And Dwayne Hubbard,” Jake said.

“Yeah, him, too,” Kissle said, “and I’ve had an ache in my gut ever since. That’s why I’m sitting here now. I been keeping it inside all these years, and when I saw you people showing up and trying to help put things right? Trust me, though, back then? No one was putting anything right. She’s a hellcat. No one messed with Patricia Rivers and no one ever called her Patty, either. How do you think she got to where she is? Big judge in that big house? It wasn’t any kind of luck, I’ll tell you. She’s a barracuda.”

Jake looked over Kissle’s shoulder at Dora, his head feeling much better. She nodded and gave him two thumbs-up.

JUDGE KOLLAR swung large and shanked his ball into the trees.

“Fuck!”

He drove his wood into the turf, leaving a chocolate depression in the pristine turf before wiping the club with a towel and slipping its head into a cover shaped like a fluffy gopher.

“Judge,” Marty said, leaving the safety of the cart he and Casey had taken out onto the course.

Kollar glared at Marty and slammed his club into the bag on the back of his own cart before removing an iron. His tan forearms flexed as he gripped the club. His face showed red against the yellow of his golf shirt.

“I’m golfing, Marty,” the judge said.

“I’m sorry, Judge,” Marty said, offering his empty hands in peace.

Kollar turned his attention to Casey. His eyes flickered at Marty. He set his jaw.

“As a courtesy,” Casey said, slipping out of the cart and onto the paved path, “we wanted to let you get on board. If you choose to work with us, it’ll be easier all the way around.”