False Convictions (21 page)

“Not technically,” Marty said, his voice soft. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Songs from the eighties are, like, oldies to you, though, right?” Jake said.

“All politics are local,” Marty said. “When a judge gets a big appointment, he shuts down his campaign fund, he doesn’t need
anyone. Same thing with, like, an administrative appointment, head of the DEC or the Thruway Authority or something. You shut
it down because you don’t want people to say you were political.”

Jake restrained himself from asking what all that had to do with politics being local and instead focused on the meat of what
Marty was saying. He nodded his head to go on.

Marty’s fingers played the keyboard and he clicked his tongue. “Very clever.”

“What is?”

“See this?” Marty said. “She never stopped raising money. Money coming in and, then, here’s the brilliant part of it, money
going out.”

“Slush funds?” Jake asked, feeling the thrill surge through his veins.

“Not that.”

“So, what?”

“Campaign contributions. Look,” Marty said, running a long fingernail across the screen. “She’s hedging her bets. Raising
money, I don’t know from whom. Probably special interests or trial lawyers or just legal junkies—”

“Legal junkies?”

“This is the cutting edge,” Marty said, his voice rich. “Jurisprudence is the flash point of democracy.”

“Okay,” Jake said slowly, but nodding in agreement.

“See? She’s making contributions to both party’s general funds. That’s how the big boys do it. Guys like Graham. They want
to pump a million into Obama’s next campaign? Boom, they write a check to the party. No limits.”

“But the party knows what to do with it,” Jake said, “and when the time is right, she’s got friends in Washington.”

“Dear friends. Both sides.”

“Smart. Oh, this is beautiful,” Jake said. “People love full-figured corruption, and she looks good, too. Not hot, but… handsome,
they’d call her. In Victorian times.”

“It’s pretty,” Marty said, running his fingernail down the column of numbers, some going in, others going out. “She gets donations
from people who want to help her, and she fuels both parties so she’s got the inside track on an appointment down the road.”

“Why would she do this? Report it all?” Jake asked, still studying them, hungry for the names of the contributors, thinking
of an entire investigative series and the tie-ins with the broader sentiment of public distrust.

“Who looks?” Marty asked.

“Us.”

“It’s not
illegal
,” Marty said. “Technically, it’s not even
unethical
. That’s why you report it. No one should ever find this, and if they did, they wouldn’t care.”

Jake felt his spirits sink. “No?”

“No, but it’s
wrong
. That’s the thing. She’s not going to jail for this. She could probably keep her job. The Commission on Judicial Conduct
might make a ruling. They might issue a reprimand and tell her to stop, but they can’t
do
anything because she isn’t breaking any rules. If she didn’t report it and they found out,
then
she’d be screwed. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s the way these laws work.”

“Wow, great system,” Jake said, still absorbing the numbers, his eyes scrolling down to the bottom of the column, where he
pointed. “What’s this?”

Marty squinted his eyes and leaned closer to the screen. “That’s a… that’s a contribution from a PAC that she… she… she gave
it back.”

“Which is something people do?”

Marty furrowed his brow and looked up at Jake. “Which is something they
never
do. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless it’s from someone they don’t want to be associated with,” Marty said, “someone who could embarrass them and put their
appointment in jeopardy.”

“What’s CJD, Citizens for a Just Democracy?” Jake asked, reading the PAC’s name.

Marty’s fingers went to work. The screen flashed and rebuilt itself as he changed Web pages. Jake saw an official banner that
announced the New York State Registry of Political Action Committees. He watched as Marty moved the cursor across the page,
clicking on a subsection, then the portal to CJD.

“This campaign finance shit is thick,” Jake said.

“Imagine without computers.”

“Is that all the information? No names? No people? All this leads to nowhere?” Jake asked. “Christ. Campaign finance reform
is, like, number twenty on voters’ issues. This is nuts.”

Marty struck a final key with his index finger as if he were conducting a philharmonic. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Jake put a hand on Marty’s shoulder, feeling the protruding bones. On the screen was a list of names. A third of them bore
the last name of Magaddino. Jake felt his stomach clench when he saw the name Massimo D’Costa. His head went light at the
sight of GF Incorporated.

“What’s that?” Jake asked, stabbing his finger at the name of the corporate contributor and its five-thousand-dollar maximum
contribution to the PAC.

Marty’s fingers did another dance. Together they waited while the screen went temporarily blank, then rebuilt itself with
a dark blue background, Greek columns, pyramids, and the somber face of Robert Graham.

“Graham Funding Incorporated,” Marty said. “Oh, shit. Why did he give her money?”

“I’ve got a better question,” Jake said. “If she’s keeping it from everyone else, why did she give his back?”

D
ON’T BE STUPID,” the man said.

Casey froze, her eyes locked on the gun. He shoved her back to the passenger side with his free hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

She realized she still had her purse slung over her shoulder and she began surreptitiously to fish through it, feeling for
the cell phone to punch in a 911 call. The man glanced over and snatched it from her.

“I’ll give it back,” he said, patting the purse in his lap.

“Who are you?” Casey asked, swallowing bile from the back of her throat.

“That’s not important,” he said, throwing the truck into gear and lurching away from the curb.

Casey studied the faces of the people walking past on the sidewalks and in the cars they passed. Not one of them looked up
to see her desperate expression. They drove at an easy rate with the flow of the evening traffic down a boulevard that ended
in a traffic circle at the park beside the lake. They took the first spoke, going south on Route 34, climbing a long curving
hill until they could see the lake below, now dark green and still glittering beyond the shadows of the trees on the steep
hillside. It couldn’t have been much more than two miles before they turned off the road and headed downhill toward the lake,
passing through a colonnade of sturdy and gnarled oak trees whose canopy extinguished the sky.

Muttonchops glanced at her as they rounded a final curve and the trees gave way to an elegant Second Empire mansion with a
slate mansard roof and a multitude of dormers and intricate brick chimneys surrounded by a carefully manicured lawn. Pea gravel
crunched under the tires as they circled a large fountain, coming to rest beneath a wide set of stairs leading up to the double-door
entrance.

Muttonchops cleared his throat and, raising the pistol, said, “I’m sorry about the gun. We don’t know what the hell is going
on, who’s behind all this.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said icily, “kidnapping is part of my Southern culture.”

“Just relax,” he said. “Nobody’s kidnapping you.”

“Keep saying it,” she said. “That’ll work.”

The man shook his head and pointed at the steps. “Just go in. She’s waiting.”

“She?”

He hung his hands on the steering wheel and directed his eyes ahead. “Judge Rivers. She has to see you. I’ll wait and take
you back.”

“Thanks, but I’d just as soon call a cab,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll swim.”

He gave her a funny look.

“You want to turn off the child lock, or let me out?” she asked.

He got out and rounded the truck, opening her door and staring up at one of the third-floor gable windows as if she weren’t
there. Casey got out and slowly mounted the steps, looking around at the abandoned grounds with their carefully sculpted shrubs,
hedges, and flowering trees. Thick beams of light bore through the trees and they flickered with insects.

When she reached the double doors with their oval centers of leaded glass, she turned around to look at Muttonchops. He motioned
her to go in. Casey turned the cast-iron knob shaped like a lion’s head and swung open the door. The smell of old leather,
musty Oriental rugs, and wood polish filled her nose. The spacious foyer contained a large carved staircase and a suit of
armor. Old oil landscapes and portraits covered the walls. On one side, a doorway opened into a posh sitting room, on the
other, a dining room paneled in rich wood.

Casey walked straight ahead where the opening led to a large room that bowed outward toward a broad covered porch and the
lake. On either side of the room, marble fireplaces faced each other across low leather couches, chairs, and tables covered
with books and pictures. By the window, in a high-back wing chair, sat a white-haired woman facing the water. In her hand
was a cut-glass tumbler, and she swirled the ice in a deep bath of scotch and it glittered in the light reflecting off the
lake. While the pale skin of Judge Rivers’s cheeks had been pulled back tight enough to make it shine, flaccid wattles hung
from the cords in her neck. When she turned her cold blue eyes, Casey hesitated at the sight of their wounded arrogance.

Judge Rivers forced a smile, but her eyes changed with emotions like a spinning kaleidoscope from hope to hatred and everything
in between. She set down her drink atop the manila file that rested on the small table beside her, then rose from her chair
and extended a hand.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, her voice deep and as solid as her nearly six-foot frame.

Casey looked at the hand, liver-spotted and bejeweled with elaborate gems from another century. “I had a choice?”

Judge Rivers cleared her throat and retracted her hand, motioning to the chair opposite her own. “I love this view. It always
changes. Look at the sunlight on the water. Different, but always there. Millions of years, and millions more after we’re
all gone. Can I offer you a drink? Or tea?”

“I’m fine,” Casey said, glancing out the window before sitting down and searching her pockets for her cell phone and then
remembered. “What I’d really like is to get my purse back and call a cab.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Judge Rivers asked, her voice rising as her face soured suddenly.

Casey leaned forward. “Righted a wrong.”

Judge Rivers snorted and wagged her head in disgust. “You have no idea.”

“Actually, I have a pretty good idea,” Casey said.

“Of what? Who killed that girl?”

“That, too,” Casey said.

“No,” the judge said flatly. “You don’t.”

“Why are you wasting your time on me?” Casey asked. “Shouldn’t you be threatening the new DA? He’s the one who’ll prosecute
your son.”

“No one’s prosecuting anyone,” the judge said.

Casey considered her a moment. “That’s why he went to Turks and never came back, isn’t it?”

Judge Rivers stared back at her before asking, “What is it you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” Casey said. “I’m out of here tonight.”

“Money? Attention? Another TV movie?”

Casey stood up. “I think you should get some help. You’re obviously distraught.”

“To prove how smart you are?” the judge said. “To manipulate the law? Because I know it’s not justice you’re after.”

Casey twisted up her face. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Do you honestly think my son killed that girl?” the judge said, gripping the arms of her chair.

“I saw the lab reports,” Casey said. “DNA doesn’t lie.”

“No, but people do.”

P
EOPLE LIKE YOU,” Casey said. “Everything about you is a lie.”

“Do you have any idea the good I’ve been able to do?” the judge asked. “Have you read a single decision? My work on women’s
rights? The environment? Unless you’ve seen my body of work, you should know better than to stand there sounding like some
hick from Texas.”

“I know your kind,” Casey said, lowering her voice. “Happy to punish anyone who does anything against the law, unless it’s
you or your own.”

“And I know yours,” the judge said bitterly. “A gunslinger. You think the law is a contest, winning and losing. Box scores.
Who cares about the truth? Justice? Well, I do, and sometimes the law needs some help. That’s what a judge does, she inserts
common sense into the equation to get justice in the end.”

“You?” Casey said, snorting. “You call putting an innocent man behind bars for more than twenty years justice?”

“Dwayne Hubbard?” the judge said, her brow darkening. “He killed that girl like he killed the others.”

“Others? You need more help than I thought.”

Judge Rivers nodded her head fervently. She picked up her drink and removed the file from beneath it, handing it to Casey.
“Good. You have no idea. So I’ll show you the others.”

Casey accepted the file and opened it, fascinated at the ranting of a woman of Patricia Rivers’s stature, wealth, and power
and believing more every minute that she’d come completely unhinged. The first page was a copied newspaper article from 1988.

“Another rape and murder,” Casey said as she read.

“Keep going,” the judge said. “Read the details. Pretend you found out that someone planted my son’s DNA in those hospital
records.”

Casey’s stomach soured as she read on. The murdered girl had been not only stabbed but mutilated. Pictures showed that her
ears and nose had been sliced off, her eyes gouged out with the point of the same razor-sharp knife before the killer unleashed
a frenzy of stabs into her lower abdomen. The coroner said the rape took place between the mutilation and the stabbing.

“Horrible,” Casey said, noting the location of the crime as Wyoming, New York, “but I don’t see the relevance.”