by Tim Green
“You’re with the island police,” she said.
“People on a vacation?” the major said. “They don’t want trouble. Like he said, most of them probably do like it, seeing the sharks.”
“But not knowing that’s what he’s going to do?”
“The thrill, I guess,” the major said.
“My God,” Casey said, “the DNA.”
The major raised his eyebrows and reached beneath the table, digging into his dive bag. When his hands reappeared, they held a Ziploc bag containing an empty can of Bud Light and a slimy pool of brown juice.
“Got it when I went to break up the fight,” the major said. “A world of DNA.”
“There wasn’t a fight,” Graham said.
“Might have been,” the major said, grinning. “Wouldn’t be your first, eh?”
Graham clapped the major on the back, grinning as well. “Not my last, either.”
31
JAKE COULDN’T keep going this way. He called a doctor friend down on Long Island and had him phone in some codeine to a local Rite Aid. He popped two, desperate for relief, and set off for Auburn. Jake listened to his messages. He tried Casey but got only voice mail before Don Wall rang in on the other line.
“You know who this Napoli guy is?” Don asked.
“Let me guess,” Jake said, the pain growing dim, his mind blurring slightly as he passed out of the city limits, “the attorney for the city of Buffalo?”
“Why are you fucking around with me?” Don said. “Do you think I have time for this shit? I already put out feelers for a Buffalo mob guy.”
“I just found out the hard way,” Jake said, concentrating hard on his mouth to keep his words from slurring from the codeine. “White flag. I’m going home.”
“Where you belong.”
“Thanks, Don,” Jake said. “I’m sorry. I’ll send you some of the new network lapel pins.”
“They got new ones?”
“For the VIPs. I got you covered.”
He rode for a while longer, gently probing the stitches in the back of his head and feeling much better before he sighed heavily and dialed up Dora for a different kind of medicine.
Jake tucked a brand-new cell phone under his chin, riding east on the Thruway now, toward his hotel room in Auburn. He got Dora and told her what had happened and how he felt stupid.
“Don’t feel stupid,” Dora said, “that’s what makes you good. You get wild ideas and you follow through on them. Sometimes they pan out, but that’s not why I left you a message to call me. Listen to this.”
Dora read him a story in the Auburn Citizen quoting anonymous sources close to Dwayne Hubbard’s Freedom Project legal team suggesting a cover-up in the twenty-year-old murder case that involved the then district attorney’s son.
“Casey didn’t say a goddamn thing about it,” Jake said. “I just tried calling her. No wonder she didn’t pick up my call. They actually leaked it to someone else?”
“Maybe Graham is the source,” Dora said. “And if he wasn’t, he’s the one paying her tab. Why would she give the scoop to the guy who’s out looking to smear him?”
“Not smear, just shine some light,” Jake said. “I know Graham is hiding dirty stuff.”
“Whatever he’s got going with an old mill and some factory jobs, it’s not as dirty as a judge who turned the system on an innocent man when she was the DA,” Dora said. “Did you know she was the governor’s choice to fill the vacancy they’ve got on the New York State Court of Appeals?”
“Not if this thing has any traction.”
“Exactly,” Dora said. “This is a story worth getting in trouble for. So get to work and find your girl and get us the inside scoop.”
“My girl isn’t returning my calls,” Jake said.
“If you can’t get a girl on the phone, it only tells me one thing,” Dora said.
“That she doesn’t like me?”
“That you’re not trying.”
“I am as of now.”
“Good, got a backup plan?”
“Not really,” Jake said. “But there’s a kid lawyer whose family is plugged in and the head of the Auburn Hospital who’re both fans, so if I can’t get her, I’ll start with them.”
“I’ll line up a crew in case. And Jake?”
“Yeah?” he asked, ready for one of her wisecracks.
“Don’t half-ass this one. This isn’t a puff piece.”
32
JAKE CHANGED into khaki shorts and a dark green polo shirt. It was, after all, a backyard barbeque. He swallowed two more codeine pills, then followed the directions Marty had given him, turning off Route 20 and heading south toward Owasco Lake. A mile before it, he turned off and wound his way through a few backstreets before finding a rugged drive that dipped down into some trees. Late model cars and trucks lined the shoulder, half in the ditch. Jake had to back into a driveway and swing around, going almost all the way back to the paved street before he pulled the Cadillac over to the side and got out. He followed a young couple where the wife wore a pale yellow sundress and carried some kind of casserole wrapped in aluminum foil. Her boyfriend or husband groped her rump through the dress until he realized Jake was following.
The couple turned down a dirt drive marked by a wooden sign, hand-painted with the name Zarnazzi. Jake followed, his shoes clapping the hard-packed mud in one of the tire tracks and leading him toward the twang of a live bluegrass band. The single story red summer cottage lay in the midst of dozens of picnic tables filled with revelers that stretched to the grassy bank of the lake inlet. Two Jet Skis buzzed by on their way to the lake, their drivers hooting and waving to friends in the crowd. A giant, half-round black grill hitched to the back of a heavy-duty pickup truck had been pulled onto the back lawn and poured smoke into the treetops from a stovepipe smokestack. Whole chickens in blackened suits disrupted the snarling flames while a fat man in a white chef’s hat basted them with a four-inch paintbrush.
The couple in front of Jake deposited their offering among the others on a checkered cloth that stretched across three picnic tables. Diners with paper plates worked the other side of the table, picking through the dishes before receiving their own char-grilled chicken from the fat man. Men crowded the beer keg’s icy tub while kids ran through the hubbub trailing balloons. Jake breathed deep the smell of food and cold beer and his mouth watered.
“Jake!”
Jake turned and shook Marty’s hand. The young lawyer was wearing pleated golf shorts and a Greg Norman straw hat. His collared shirt sported a litany of ketchup stains. He didn’t appear to notice, though, as he introduced Jake to a bucktoothed girl with dark hair and a deep tan. Jake thought she had the judge’s eyes and he couldn’t help but notice the ample curve of her breasts in the tight lime green tank top whose color matched her hair band.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Marty said, raising his voice above the band. “We’ll sit with you.”
Jake followed them through the line, loading his plate and sitting across from Marty and his fiancée before accepting a cup of beer Marty poured from a half-empty pitcher. The beer would go good with the codeine, make it a real party. They raised their plastic cups.
“Here’s to a victory for the Freedom Project,” Marty said.
His fiancée batted her eyelids at Jake, offering him a sly smile that let him know she was drunk.
“Is your dad here?” Jake asked her.
She shook her head.
“Had a conference in Houston,” Marty explained. “About everyone else is, though.”
“This the chief’s place?” Jake asked. “I saw the sign.”
Marty shook his head. “No, the chief’s here, but this place is his brother’s. He’s a fireman. Most of the cops are here, too. Those guys stick together.”
“And you think the chief might talk to me?” Jake asked, tearing into a chicken leg, hungry now from the drugs and the beer.
Marty shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. My uncle says
people are going to choose sides on this.”
“And you and your uncle are on my side?”
“It’s the right side, right?” Marty said, hugging his fiancée to him as he took a swig of beer from his plastic cup. “We’re fixing a twenty-year wrong and you’re-well, the Project-is our client. Spreading the message is only good for them.”
“Patricia Rivers still has friends, I assume?” Jake said, loading a forkful of beans.
“Sure,” Marty said, the blotches on his face reddening. “She still owns the big place on the lake. Lives in Pittsford, though, really.”
“Because it’s going to get ugly,” Jake said, lowering his voice. “You know that, right?”
Marty shrugged and stuck a pinkie finger in his ear, working it. “It’s TV. If you’re in public service, you got to expect it.”
Marty turned to his fiancée. “Your dad says that, right?”
“Your uncle know I’m here?” Jake asked, looking around.
“I was wondering, Jake,” Marty said. “You know, CNN and those morning shows, how they always have these lawyers on? You know, expert opinions on things? I could really see myself doing some of that.”
Jake studied him. Marty’s eyes were on his plate as he traded his ear for a fork and pushed a lump of potato salad into a pile of Jell-O. It looked like he’d clasped his fiancée’s hand under the picnic table.
“Don’t see why not,” Jake said, clearing his throat and enjoying the feel of the sunshine filtering down through the trees onto his face. “Send me your tape and I can pass it on to some people if you like.”
“Tape?”
“You know, work you’ve done on TV,” Jake said. “Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, local news, cable shows, anything. Just so they can see you.”
“But if you don’t have that?” Marty asked, looking up.
“Well, just go out and make one,” Jake said. “You can do it. Maybe take a class up at SU, or a community college or something, but you gotta get on tape.”
“Then you can plug me in?” Marty asked.
“Happy to help.”
While they ate, Marty pointed out various Auburn dignitaries and VIPs, the Bombardier plant manager, the fire chief, a restaurant owner, the cop who also played on the national paintball championship team.
Finally, Jake asked if Marty could direct him to the chief. Marty nodded and stood up, signaling for his fiancée to wait for them. Jake followed Marty into the cottage itself, where the furniture of the front room had been pushed to the walls to accommodate a green felt card table where eight old men sat smoking cigars and playing cards under the breeze of a box fan propped up on an armchair. The room was a sanctuary amid the din. The band, screaming kids, and laughter of drunken adults became a muffled backdrop to the box fan and the rattle of chips and the snap of cards.
“Hey, chief,” Marty said with a wave, walking right over to the balding, rigid-backed chief. “Look who’s here, Jake Carlson from American Sunday. You’ve seen his show, right? Jake, Chief Zarnazzi.”
“Marty, refill these pitchers for us, will you, kid?” the chief said, offering Jake a nod before he turned his attention back to the cards.
Marty hustled out with three empty plastic pitchers as Jake searched for a sign of the current that celebrity could create in certain intimate groups, especially in a small town. People loved a face from TV, whether they’d seen it themselves or not. But the other cardplayers kept whatever interest or excitement they had contained, glancing at the chief’s face just as often as they examined their own cards. The chief clicked two blue chips down on the table, raising the stakes. After a call around the table, the chief laid down three aces and everyone else groaned.
Jake waited for the chief to rake in the pot and when he still didn’t look up, Jake said, “Chief, I wanted to talk to you about this Rivers situation.”
The chief narrowed his eyes behind the wire-rim glasses, peering through the screen door and out at the water. “River looks a little high for this time of year, I guess. Other than that, we’re all good.”
“Patricia Rivers,” Jake said patiently, the codeine putting just the right emotional distance between him and the chief, “and her son, Nelson. The one with the white BMW no one bothered looking into twenty years ago. Cassandra Thornton’s boyfriend. I’m chasing that story and I’d love to find someone who worked the case, maybe someone who knows why so many questions got left unanswered.”
“Can’t recall who worked that one,” said the chief, lifting the corner of his first card off the table just enough to identify it.
“Martin Yancy,” Jake said.
“What?” the chief asked, looking up with cold blue eyes.
“The police report said Detective Martin Yancy,” Jake said. “I read it.”
The chief smiled. “Yancy left the force so long ago I can’t recall his face, so you’re out of luck, bub.”
“I’m sure there must be others who worked it,” Jake said, keeping his spirits up despite the chief’s obvious lack of interest.
The chief shrugged, called the first round of bets, and peeked at his second card when it came around as though Jake were a puff of smoke.
“Marty told me his uncle said people are going to have to take sides on this one,” Jake said, standing firm, oblivious to the tension that was quickly taking hold. “He’s right, and I don’t think you’re going to want to be on the losing side of this, chief. It would look well for the department if it helped out on the back end because the way it’s looking, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do about the front end of this little story.”
The chief picked his smoldering cigar out of a glass ashtray, drew on it until the ember perked up, exhaled, then raised his leg and passed gas. The table of old-timers erupted with adolescent chuckles.
Jake twisted his lips and said, “I hope you don’t make a habit of writing notes on your hand.”
The chief wore a puzzled look. “Why’s that?”
“The network has this lawyer down in the city who specializes in Freedom of Information requests,” Jake said. “When he gets done with this backwoods outfit, you’ll be handing over every Post-it and paper napkin you ever wrote on and if you scribbled on your palm, I wouldn’t put it past him to have that flayed off your greasy mitt and delivered to my office in a manila envelope along with everything else.”
Jake turned and shoved open the door, nearly causing Marty to spill all three of his pitchers.
“How’d it go?” Marty asked from behind him as Jake strode across the grass.
“Wrong side,” Jake said, waving his hand without looking back. “Thanks, anyway. Send me that tape.”
Jake reached the end of the driveway and went right. He’d nearly reached his car before he heard his name and looked back. An old man with a full head of white hair and a crooked hip hobbled toward Jake holding a single bent finger up in the air. Pale legs the color of skim milk flashed at Jake from beneath the man’s floppy shorts. Brown dress socks reached halfway up his calves, and his sneakers scuffed the dirt road, kicking up little dust devils.
By the time the old man reached him, he had to bend over to catch his breath before he could speak and before he did that, he extended a hand toward Jake, which he shook politely.
“Myron Kissle,” the old-timer said, looking up from either side of a flattened nose with two dark eyes. “Formerly Detective Kissle, Auburn PD. Get kicked in the back of the head by a mule?”
“Hi, Myron,” Jake said, touching the wound on the back of his skull. “What can I do for you?”
Myron rose as high as his bent frame would allow. Looking Jake in the eye, he said, “It’s what I can do for you. I heard Marty Barrone talking to the judge’s daughter about why you’re here. I worked that Cassandra Thornton case, and I can tell you some things.”
33
GRAHAM CONVINCED CASEY to stay an extra night on the island. He pointed out to her that the major’s courier service wouldn’t get the sampl
e to the lab in Syracuse in time to do anything until Monday morning.
So she stayed, getting on Graham’s jet the next morning at seven in order to be back by noon and hopefully get the results fresh from the lab. Ralph picked them up in the Lexus and they headed straight downtown.
The forensic laboratory in Syracuse was just off the main highway, between the hospital and the psychiatric center. Ralph pulled over to the curb in front of the five-story modern brick building. The lab’s director, a blonde woman in a white lab coat, personally held the door open for them. Casey and Graham introduced themselves and she gave them each her card, identifying herself as Helen Mahy.
“I spoke with the deputy director just a few minutes ago,” Helen said with a somber face as they crossed the lobby and stepped onto the elevator, “and he knows we’ve got you covered.”
“Do they match?” Casey asked.
The lab director looked at her watch.
“We should have it the moment we walk in,” she said, lowering her voice with import. “I know this is a matter of national security, and I’ve got to tell you, we’re very glad to be doing our part. My team really scrambled on this, especially Laurie Snyder. She’s the one who’ll have the charts, so if either of you could give her an attaboy it’d mean a lot.”
“We’ll do that,” Graham said, his face grim.
“Are you…” Helen said, turning to Casey and tilting her head. “I’ve seen you before.”
Graham held up a hand. “I’m sorry. We can’t talk about who, what, or where. You understand.”
“Of course.”
The elevator rumbled opened and they took a short turn down a hallway before pushing through two heavy double doors and into a lab that nearly filled the footprint of the building. Men and women in goggles, lab coats, and gloves worked at countertops amid test tubes, beakers, open flames, and high-tech electronic equipment. Nearly all of them stopped their work to stare.
Helen led them to one of several desks in the midst of the lab where a mousy woman in glasses and hair pulled into a ponytail with a red rubber band sat hunched over a computer screen. Helen asked if she had the results on their case.