False Convictions

58

WHEN CASEY emerged from the courthouse into a light drizzle, the mob of reporters shrieked and screamed their questions at her. In the frenzy, she made out Dwayne Hubbard’s name over and over, something about befriending a killer. Marty helped fight them back and packed her into his Volvo coupe. Several camera lenses bumped against the window, and by the time Marty made it around to the driver’s side, his glasses sat crooked on his face.

“They’re insane,” Casey said.

Marty started his car and blared the horn, backing slowly out of their spot.

“You’re surprised?” Marty asked, glancing over.

“It was an arraignment,” Casey said. “Not a hanging.”

“Dwayne killed her,” Marty said.

“It was twenty years ago,” Casey said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Not Cassandra Thornton,” Marty said. “The fiancée. The girl from the press conference. They found her butchered, her eyes gouged out. That’s what they were saying.”

Casey stared at him as they accelerated down the street, leaving the swarm behind, the knot in her stomach tightening. “I heard the butcher part, not the fiancée. You’re not sure?”

Marty fished the cell phone out of his pocket as he turned for the Holiday Inn.

“I know a cop,” he said, opening the phone with one hand and hitting a speed dial key.

“Clarence? It’s me, Marty. Is it true the Hubbard guy killed his fiancée?”

Casey watched Marty’s face tighten.

“No shit,” Marty said into the phone. “That’s what I thought. It was? Okay. Thanks.”

Marty snapped the phone shut and nodded. “He did it. And there’s no sign of him anywhere. Evidently, she took about eight thousand dollars out of the bank yesterday afternoon. Told people it was for their honeymoon. She was taking him on a cruise. First class. Nice guy, huh?”

“I don’t believe it,” Casey said, scowling. “Take me. Show me.”

“I can’t-”

“You’re the one with connections, Marty,” Casey said. “That’s all I’ve heard since I got here.”

Marty looked hurt, but he opened his phone and dialed, then browbeat his cop friend, Clarence, with a ferocity that surprised Casey and made her think Marty might be a good lawyer after all, especially when the cop gave in.

“Not bad, right?” Marty said, flashing an eager look and spinning the wheel to make a U-turn.

Casey said nothing as they passed the prison and turned down into a side street of broken and rotting homes, their lines sagging like the faces of old people, their windows jagged like broken teeth.

“I don’t see the tape,” Casey said as Marty pulled over onto a crumbling curb.

“We can’t go in the front,” Marty said, climbing out and heading off between two dilapidated houses.

Casey hustled to keep up, stepping over piles of dog crap that lay in the grit amid crushed empty cans of malt liquor and shattered beer bottles. Marty forced open a bent and rusty gate. They passed by an abandoned aboveground pool, its sides bowed and its seams cracked with rust. The fence had been trampled into the weeds where they made their crossing into another neglected yard and under some yellow tape.

A uniformed cop appeared in the back door and waved frantically for them to hurry. They stepped into a rancid back room where unwashed laundry lay in a pile on the filthy linoleum.

“In there,” the cop said, stepping through the kitchen, over an upside-down saucepan and pointing down a hallway.

The cop looked at his watch, then at Marty, and said, “Five minutes.”

He disappeared and they heard the front door open and close.

Marty looked at Casey, his face losing color. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Casey shook her head, pushing past him, aware of the handprints on the faded refrigerator, the dirty dishes on the table, and an open can of something on the counter growing a beard of green mold. The scarlet shag rug in the hallway had been trampled flat down the middle long ago. Casey passed a dirty bathroom, its mirror broken and decked out with racing oil stickers.

Sheets from the bed had been stripped for evidence, leaving the mattress naked and bloodstained. The spray of blood on the pink walls could have been artwork, color coordinated to match the long shag rug, and in a way, it was. On each wall stared an unblinking eye, Dwayne Hubbard’s signature.