False Convictions (3 page)

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.”

C
ASEY RODE IN THE BACK of a big pewter Lexus sedan driven by a man whose thick rolls of neck sprouted a bristly bullet-shaped
head. Graham introduced their driver as Ralph Cardinale, an associate in the Rochester business offices of Graham Funding.
When Ralph loaded the luggage, Casey was certain she detected a prosthetic leg beneath his dark slacks.

“Whatever you need while you’re up here,” Graham said, turning around in his seat to face Casey, “you just let Ralph know.
Nothing will be more important to him than that while you’re working on this case.”

Ralph glanced at her in the mirror and offered the smile of a big dog, eager to please. She couldn’t yet be sure if the dull
light in his eyes spoke for a lack of intelligence or an abundance of brutality, but his manners were substantial if rough
cut. She guessed ex-military and wondered about the leg.

Casey peered out the window. A gray watercolor swirled in the sky. Light rain fell sporadically, muting the green brilliance
of grass, fields, and woods. They rolled into Auburn past the Wal-Mart and all the usual suspects of a commercial strip that
had replaced Main Street America from coast to coast. Sagging homes with leprous paint lined the streets along with staggered
light poles bleached like bones. In a way, it reminded Casey of home. Not Dallas with its skyscrapers, oil money, and black-tie
balls, not even Austin where she’d spent her college days and her early years in the district attorney’s office, but of West
Texas, where she grew up. A tired and dusty place whose better days would never return. A place she’d grown up determined
to get out of.

They passed a broken and boarded restaurant and the Holiday Inn before taking a right, crossing a bridge, some railroad tracks,
and pulling to a stop across the wide street from the prison.

Ralph stayed in the car while Casey followed Graham across the faded crosswalk, her heels clicking as she hustled to stay
under his umbrella. They entered what looked like a castle gate with stone turrets rising up nearly as high as the concrete
walls beyond. Inside, uniformed guards worked amid a clutter of old wooden desks, telephones, and papers behind a scratched
Plexiglas barrier, while more guards, administrative staff, cops, and lawyers in shabby suits filtered past, showing IDs and
passing through the metal detectors.

After the formalities, a bored woman in a pale blue uniform shirt led Casey and Graham into the administrative building and
to a battered room whose dirty windows gave away nothing beyond the bars. Wooden chairs sat scattered around a rectangular
gunmetal table. They sat to wait.

“Ralph seems nice,” Casey said, studying Graham’s face.

“If you’re on his side, he is,” Graham said.

“Special Forces or something?” Casey asked.

“Military police. Lost his lower leg in the first Gulf war. Got his business degree at University of Rochester. Top of his
class. Very good school. I hired him before he could leave the room.”

“Seems like a heavy pedigree for a driver,” Casey said.

“I told you this is important to me,” Graham said. “If you ask him to get you coffee, he’ll do it. He understands chain of
command. But if you need help accessing people, or getting to some information you can’t Google, Ralph’s your man.”

“I have my own investigator if it’s necessary,” Casey said.

Graham studied her, then said, “Ralph will keep an eye on you, too.”

“What? Like a bodyguard?” Casey said, wrinkling her face.

“This place can be a rough little town,” Graham said. “Five hundred of the worst criminals in the state inside these walls,
and lots of their family and friends like to come visit. Sometimes they stay. Think of Ralph as a big Doberman on the front
porch.”

“Nice doggie,” Casey said. “And anyway, what about his leg?”

“You should see him run with that thing.”

The door swung open, but instead of a prisoner, a bald man in glasses with an ill-fitting black suit came through and extended
his hand to Casey.

“Ms. Jordan?” the man said. “Collin Mallard. I’m the assistant warden and I heard you were in. Actually, there are a couple
of us who are big fans, but we run a tight ship, so you won’t see anyone except me glad-handing you. I just loved your movie.
My wife’s a fan, too. Being in somewhat the same field—putting the bad guys away and keeping them away—I feel like I almost
know you.”

Casey’s cheeks felt warm as she gently pulled her hand away from Mallard’s never-ending handshake. Graham’s grin wasn’t lost
on her.

“Thank you. It’s been a long time since I worked as a prosecutor, though. Uh, this is Mr. Graham. He’s on the board of the
Freedom Project.”

“Oh,” Mallard said, barely noticing the scruffy guy in flannel and jeans. “Hi.”

Graham nodded.

Mallard took a card from his suit coat pocket and put it into Casey’s hand before covering it with his other. “Anything I
can do, Ms. Jordan. We’ve got a fine staff cafeteria here if you get hungry. Do you like chicken-fried steak? You just let
me know. And don’t worry about working against the law on this one. I know deep down you’re all about justice. Would you mind
signing this? My wife and I heard they made a DVD of the movie and we found it on eBay.”

Casey took the marker he offered and signed the DVD case right over Susan Lucci’s determined face pointing at the jury box.
Mallard thanked her several times, then disappeared.

“See?” Graham said. “You’re helping already. The power of celebrity.”

“Shut up, Graham,” she said.

The next time the door opened, a guard appeared with his prisoner. Dwayne Hubbard clanked across the floor in manacles that
bound both hands and feet and were connected by a drooping chain. Dwayne’s round, gold-rimmed glasses, neatly cut short hair,
and wiry frame gave the impression of an accountant or school-teacher. And yes, a lot like that kid on
Family Matters
. She half-expected him to speak in that high, nerdy tone.

“Flight risk?” Casey asked the stern-faced guard, incredulous.

“Whatever the file says,” the guard answered with a shrug before stepping back through the door. “I’ll be right outside.”

Casey and Graham stood. Hubbard looked at them placidly.

“I’m Casey Jordan,” Casey said, extending her hand.

Hubbard stared at it, then sighed and sat down across from them with his legs splayed as wide as the chains would allow. He
studied the dirty window and rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

Graham said, “Dwayne, we’re with the Freedom Project. I’ve been talking with your mother.”

“This is a waste of time,” Hubbard said, his eyes burning into them from behind the professorial lenses. He wore a green jumpsuit
so faded that patches of thread shone white at the knees. Several scars, smooth and shiny as melted plastic, marred his arms,
neck, and face like chocolate eruptions in his honey brown skin.

“Can you tell us what really happened?” Casey asked after an uncomfortable silence.

Hubbard’s eyes nearly disappeared in a world of bitter wrinkles. “You know what happened. A white woman is murdered and a
black man needs to take the fall. Real interesting, isn’t it?”

“I know,” Casey said. “I fight what you’re talking about every day, but I’m talking about that night. I read the transcripts,
but I want to hear your side, from your mouth, then I’ll try to prove it.”