False Convictions

59

CASEY LEFT through the back and staggered across the lawn. She climbed into Marty’s car and rode in silence, staring straight ahead without saying a word. She made it to the streetlight just before her hotel, then her nerve gave out, and she dropped her face into her hands.

“Hey,” Marty said, patting her shoulder as he stepped on the gas. “This isn’t your fault. Oh, boy. There’s more of them outside the hotel.”

“Will you go in and get my things for me?” Casey asked without removing her face from her hands.

“Sure. I can go around to the back and they won’t see you.”

Casey fished the key out of her purse and handed it to him without looking. “Thanks, Marty. Two-sixteen.”

Marty got out and Casey breathed deep, thinking back to the other disasters of her past, including her marriage, and wondering if it was something about her or just bad luck. She could still see her mother wiping the flour from a pie crust on her apron and bending over to look at a wasp sting on Casey’s cheek, telling her that she just looked for trouble. Casey remembered the words hurting more than the sting. And even though Casey didn’t feel that way about herself, the echo of her mother’s words had never found rest inside Casey’s mind.

She shook her head and pounded a fist on the dashboard. She didn’t look for trouble. Trouble found her. She never looked for it. Never.

Marty rejoined her, tossing her bags into the backseat and sliding in behind the wheel.

“Where to?” he asked. “There’s a couple nice places in Skaneateles, away from the mobs.”

“Skaneateles?” Casey said. “No. Just take me to the airport, Marty.”

Marty’s face dropped. “The-you’re not going to just run from this?”

“Why?”

Marty’s face colored. “They’ll keep saying things.”

“Who cares?” Casey said, weary from it all.

“Your reputation,” Marty said. “Your… image.”

“Image. Right,” Casey said, directing her eyes straight ahead. “Airport.”

Marty’s phone rang and he answered it with one hand still on the wheel. “Uncle Christopher? Yes. I am.”

Casey could hear the punctuated sounds of Marty’s uncle, yelling on the other end of the line. Marty rolled his lips inward and clamped down until the shouting ended.

“I’m going to the airport,” Marty said quietly, “then I’ll come get them.”

Shouting erupted again.

“I understand,” Marty said, his face pale. “No, don’t do that. I’ll come right now.”

Marty hung up the phone and glanced at Casey. “Can you give me ten minutes?”

Casey held up a finger and called her travel agent in Dallas to book the next flight out.

“My flight’s not until 8:40,” Casey said, hanging up. “We should be fine, right? To stop?”

“Yes,” Marty said, his face expressionless and staring straight ahead.

Casey rode for a minute, watching the faded landmarks as Marty made a series of turns that took them back toward the center of town.

“So you want to tell me?” Casey asked.

Marty took a deep breath and let it out slow. “That was my uncle.”

“I figured,” Casey said, “and he’s not happy that you’re helping me.”

“He told me I couldn’t,” Marty said. “Like he was pulling some lever.”

“He is your boss.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Marty said. “I can hang my own shingle just like anyone else.”

“You going to quit?”

“No,” Marty said. “He fired me. He gave me ten minutes to get my things or he said I’d find them in a box on the sidewalk.”

Casey paused, then said, “Sorry.”

Marty slowly nodded his head, swerved to the side of the road, and threw open the car door. He removed his glasses and began cleaning them furiously on his shirttail before he leaned out and retched, spilling a stream of vomit onto the edge of the road. When he leaned back into the car and replaced his glasses, he wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of a wrist and apologized to her.

“It’s okay,” she said as they pulled back out onto the road.

Casey sat in the car in front of the Barrone law offices while Marty ran in. When he came out, he carried two boxes, both of which he dumped into the trunk.

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Casey said.

“Yeah, well,” Marty said, starting the engine and pulling away from the curb fast enough to swerve into the oncoming lane and set off a series of horn blasts, “I was starting a novel.”

Despite Casey’s pleas, Marty insisted on staying with her as she worked her way though the check-in process at the airport, waiting patiently beside her while the TSA agents went through her luggage. Upstairs, security had only one line going, and it snaked through the terminal all the way to the mouth of the walk bridge that led to the parking garage. Casey looked at her watch, counted the people in front of her, and came up with an estimate of how long it would take to get through the line.

“Your ten minutes cost me,” she said. “They shut the doors, like, twenty minutes before the flight these days.”

“You’ll make it,” Marty said. “There’s only a couple gates. It’s not like Atlanta. It took me half an hour one time to get to my gate once I passed through security there.”

Casey nodded and moved slowly forward. Her phone vibrated and she saw another number she didn’t recognize. She powered it down and stuck it into her briefcase. Her voice mail had already been overloaded, some from concerned friends like Stacy and Sharon and José but mostly from reporters eager for a scoop. How they got Casey’s number she couldn’t imagine. She considered calling Stacy back, just to check in, but pushed the idea from her mind. She just needed to get home, to her own couch, with her own balcony overlooking the narrow Venetian canal. Maybe a longneck bottle of Budweiser in her hand.

She was next in line to have her ID checked when a stampede of travelers gushed through the double doors on the exit side of the glass partition. Marty finally said good-bye and that he’d call her as things progressed, but he remained standing off to the side, evidently intent on seeing her all the way in. Casey was loading her computer into a plastic tub when the profile of Jake Carlson’s face caught her eye.

“Jake,” she said, waving and patting the plastic divider. “Jake.”