False Convictions

49

GUESS WHO I WAS on the other line with,” Casey said, standing up, taking her drink, and heading out.

“Graham.”

“He wants to meet,” Casey said.

“And you told him no?”

“Told him I’d call him back later.”

“That’s fair,” Jake said. “If this goes nowhere, you can use my cell phone to make the call. I see you.”

Jake waved from the doorway. When Casey got to the law office, Jake looked up and down the sidewalk before showing her inside and closing and locking the door. The lobby was dark except for a small lamp behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Not like my lawyer’s office in Manhattan,” Jake said, punching the elevator button and stepping in. “They burn the candles until midnight there. It’s, what? Seven o’clock, and this place is empty.”

“Small town,” Casey said, following him.

On the third floor, they passed Marty’s office and went into the library, where Jake already had a computer booted up. Casey studied the screen.

“You found it?”

“LexisNexis,” Jake said. “No big deal. I didn’t get very far.”

Casey sat down and scrolled through the twenty-three-page decision in The Nature Conservancy v. Eastern Oil & Gas, an appellate court ruling that she quickly found had made its way to the court of appeals docket for the fall session.

“So Rivers would have been able to rule on this,” Casey said, thinking aloud as she continued to scroll through the lower court’s decision. “And she told us the court is evenly split between the left and the right. She’d be left of center and help to uphold this decision.”

“I went to the end, but I wasn’t sure what they were saying,” Jake said. “It’s a bunch of stuff about bats from Indiana, right?”

“The appellate court ruled in favor of the Nature Conservancy,” Casey said, still reading, “basically blocking Eastern from using fracture drilling in the Marcellus Shale Formation. It’s not bats from Indiana, it’s Indiana bats. They’re endangered and they winter in the same caves and mine shafts year after year. Because the fracture drilling is so destructive, and because the chemicals are used to pump the water into these underground fissures that go for miles, the court is saying that Eastern-and essentially anyone else drilling for gas-is prohibited from using that specific drilling technique.

“And, from what I see of the defendant’s argument,” Casey said, “they’re saying that if they can’t use fracture drilling, the gas rights across the entire formation in New York State are worthless.”

“That’s where the money comes in,” Jake said.

“Millions,” Casey said, nodding and reducing the LexisNexis search to bring up Google. “Probably hundreds of millions.”

“And that explains the ‘her’ Graham complained about them not taking care of,” Jake said. “I thought it was you, then I thought it was the ship, but it was Patricia Rivers. He asked them to take care of her.”

“Who’s them, and what do you mean by ‘take care of her’?” Casey asked.

“If it’s the them I think it is-and I think it’s his partners who are like the real-life Sopranos-” Jake said, “then he meant for them to kill her.”

“Isn’t that what the real-life Sopranos would have done?” Casey asked. “With all that money at stake?”

“They kill people when they have to,” Jake said soberly, “but they don’t take it lightly. I’d bet Graham put this business deal together the way he has so many others-remember I told you he financed his comeback with money from offshore partners-and they probably told him it was his deal, so he should take care of it himself. Maybe they’re sick of his crap, running around like a do-gooder when they’re bankrolling him with heroin profits. Maybe he’s had other deals go sour. Maybe they’re getting tired of him as a partner. Maybe he’s the one they’ll take care of if this thing doesn’t work out.”

Casey typed and clicked until she had a list of the biggest leaseholders across the formation in New York.

“See these? Range Resources? Chesapeake? Dominion? The top leaseholders in the formation? They’re the big boys. See the abbreviations? All listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but look at this,” Casey said, pointing, “number four, with 437,000 acres under lease, the only one in the top twenty that isn’t a big, publicly traded energy company.”

“Buffalo Oil and Gas?” Jake said.

“With no symbol for the exchange,” Casey said, typing the full name into Google.

“What did you get?” Jake said, hanging his head over her shoulder.

“Nothing,” she said.

“That’s impossible,” Jake said. “The fourth biggest leaseholder?”

Casey’s fingers kept darting between clicks of the mouse.

“No,” she said after several minutes, “but see this? New York Corporate Law, the only public reporting required for a closely held corporation, is a biannual statement to the secretary of state that includes the current corporate mailing address and the CEO.”

“That could be anyone,” Jake said.

“Probably not just anyone,” Casey said, shaking her head. “Someone important. I’m not a corporate lawyer, and it’s been a long time since I studied this stuff, but I’m pretty certain that the CEO of a closely held corporation has a lot of rights, and whoever they are, he or she probably owns a lot of shares in the corporation, if not all or most of them.”

“So how do we get it?” Jake asked.

“We contact the New York Secretary of State,” Casey said, looking at her watch, “in about thirteen and a half hours.”

“Public information,” Jake said.

Casey’s phone rang and she looked at the number.

“Graham?” Jake asked.

Casey nodded.

“Don’t answer,” Jake said.

“I’m not going to hide from him.”

Jake put his hand on top of hers. “You’re not hiding. Think. If he’s really behind all this, your best bet is to stay away. If it’s all a mistake, then he’ll forgive you for being unavailable.”

Jake gave her a serious, pleading look.

“Is that your Geraldo look?” she asked.

He grinned. “Call me anything but Geraldo.”

Casey silenced her phone and put it down just as Jake’s rang.

He studied it and instead of putting it to his ear, Jake hit the speaker button and said, “What’s up, Marty?”

“Hi, Mr. Carlson. You still at the firm?” Marty asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, well,” Marty said, his voice tinny and small through the speaker, “I just got a call from Ralph. He said he was looking for Ms. Jordan, but then he asked if I’d seen you.”

“And you told him we’re-I’m here?” Jake asked.

Marty hesitated, then said, “Just that you needed to use the library for something with your story. Why? I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? He sounded okay with me helping you out. I know it’s her he’s looking for, but I figured I should let you know. I got the sense he’d be dropping by.”

“Thanks, Marty,” Jake said. “Gotta go.”

Jake snapped the phone shut and took Casey by the arm, leading her not toward the elevator but the fire stairs.

“You think-” Casey said.

“I don’t know what to think,” Jake said in a low tone, tugging her down the stairs, with the clap of their feet echoing down the concrete well, “but there’s no sense sticking around.”