False Convictions

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.”