“You were wrong,” Jake said. “Your dad isn’t such an asshole.”
“Funny,” Casey said. “My real old man was a stitch.”
Jake noted a heft of truth in the way she said it and didn’t say anything for a few moments.
Mirbeau Spa was a French château with small white lights strung along the rooflines. They found two low leather chairs in the bar by the fireplace and ordered drinks. Other people, mostly couples, talked softly, leaning across small tables into the wavering candlelight of small glass globes. The bartender stood behind an old-world bar, thick and dark and polished, in a black tie and vest. A waitress took their orders, speaking to them in the quiet voice usually reserved for libraries.
“I would have been so surprised if Ralph really was following us,” Casey said, her own voice low as she sipped her glass of cabernet. “He’s supposed to be at my disposal, not my chaperone.”
“Is his name really Ralph or did you make that up?” Jake snorted and shook his head. “He looks more like a Thor. And Graham looks more like a Biff. Like a guy who eats Grape-Nuts and shits in the woods.”
“You don’t like Graham,” Casey said.
“Someone high up got sold on the idea of us doing a profile and that’s what I’m doing,” Jake said. “I’m just kidding around. I don’t know the man well enough to like him or dislike him. Trust is something else. No, I don’t trust him; that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about a story. I know I’m gorgeous but I got brains, too, lady.”
“Hmmm,” she said. “I have to admit Graham does make me wonder. It’s a pretty good clip from Texas, and New York doesn’t exactly have a shortage of solid defense attorneys. Plenty who are a lot better than me.”
Jake studied her and swallowed a mouthful of his microbrew. “From what I know about Robert Graham, he doesn’t take a leak unless there’s a good reason.”
“Maybe we’re both jaded,” Casey said. “He’s giving money away, not just to the Freedom Project; he’s giving money to my clinic, and this is something I can do for him.”
“He’s a clever man,” Jake said, “and you can do more than you think.”
“Like?”
“Sitting here with me,” Jake said. “I can’t help wondering what’s behind it all. Yes, he gives money, but he gets a lot of bang for his buck: publicity, hobnobbing with important and credible people. He needs that.”
“Sure.”
“Ego is the obvious answer,” Jake said. “That’s the way with most of these people-people willing to spend big bucks to get a PR agency to sell a profile to some TV show-but I think it’s something else with Graham.”
“Everyone has an ego,” Casey said.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
Jake leaned into the table. “I think he’s involved with some questionable people.”
“You’re a little suspect,” Casey said, “but here I sit.”
Jake flashed a plastic smile and said, “This thing isn’t my story. Did you know he went bankrupt ten years ago?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Lost it all. Almost, anyway,” Jake said. “He took a pretty sizable family fortune and got into some big commercial real estate projects-hotels, casinos, office buildings-but that wasn’t enough. He leveraged the real estate and went wild in the tech market. At one point, his net worth was estimated at over three billion dollars.
“Then it crashed, and he lost all of it. Everything. The banks got left holding the property. Then, miraculously, he finds some offshore partners who stake him. He buys back everything from the banks for fifty cents on the dollar. He never made the tech mistake again and since then he’s had the Midas touch. He buys military-industrial companies before the Iraq war, then gets into oil and gas just before the energy squeeze. He buys shut-down factory equipment for pennies on the dollar, ships it overseas where he can pay people a dollar a day to work, and starts making a mint selling the same things on the world market. All the while he’s funded by some bottomless pit of money. Who are these partners? No one ever asks because he’s Robert Graham, the philanthropist, the great do-gooder.”
“You do a mess of homework for some puff piece.”
“Old habits,” Jake said. “I don’t buy it. Something is wrong with him. I can smell it. You say something is wrong with this case you’re working on? I promise you they’re connected for a very good reason. Now, that’s the story I want to do.”
“Oh, grow up, Jake,” Casey said. “I know your momma didn’t tell you this but there aren’t a lot of squeaky-clean billionaires out there. I think you’re taking a side road, and I note a little jealousy.”
“Like I said, this isn’t my story,” Jake said. “I’m supposed to do the interview with him at his offices in Rochester the day after tomorrow. Also, my contract’s up in a couple months and I’ve got a fourteen-year-old with braces. I’m too old for jealousy.”
“You’re married?” Casey asked.
“She’s gone,” Jake said, fixing the TV smile onto his face. “Cancer, but we had a lot longer together than they said we would. Good years. It’s been a while, so I’m as over it as you can get with these things.”
Casey cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry.”
“The ring keeps me out of trouble for the most part,” Jake said, flexing his fingers. “Otherwise, they’d be hanging all over me.”
They sat for a minute, drinking away the awkwardness, then Jake said, “I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll help you sniff around your corrupt little town tomorrow, tell the show I want to get some B-roll of this Freedom Project in the trenches, and head to Rochester the day after for the interview with Graham. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find your evidence.”
“If I’m going to shake this thing loose,” Casey said, “I’ll need that scandal. I need someone to come forward and admit they destroyed the evidence, but even then, I’d need to show a judge that they did it on purpose and why if I’m going to get him to grant me a new trial.”
“What was it you hoped to get from the evidence?” Jake asked.
“If I had the knife Dwayne carried and if I can show the blood on it doesn’t match the victim’s DNA, along with the other suspicious elements of the case, my guy walks.”
“Where would you get her DNA?” Jake asked.
“They’d have carpet samples or clothes with her blood on it,” Casey said. “That, or I could even have the body exhumed.”
Jake grimaced, then asked, “Didn’t I read your guy was convicted for rape and murder?”
“He was.”
“How dead was she when they found her?” Jake asked.
Casey wrinkled her nose. “Meaning?”
“Stone cold? Right to the morgue?” Jake asked. “Or was she still bleeding? Even breathing? And they rushed her to the hospital.”
“What would it even matter?” Casey asked.
“What about a swab?” Jake said. “If she went to the hospital, they would have done the rape kit.”
“But that would have gone into evidence,” Casey said.
“The rape kit would have,” Jake said, “but usually, when a hospital has a rape victim, they’ll test for STDs and AIDS when they do the rape kit. If he raped her, his DNA will be in those swab samples. If it’s someone else, your guy still walks.”
Casey sat silent, then said, “I kept thinking of this case as a murder. The rape is another part of it I didn’t think about, for the trial, I mean. They should have done a blood test on any samples they got. If it matched Hubbard’s, they would have used it. If it didn’t, the defense should have.”
“Either way, it sounds like the police evidence is gone,” Jake said. “I think your only hope is the hospital.”
“Would a hospital even have something like that?” Casey asked.
“One thing I’ve learned about hospitals,” Jake said, “they keep everything.”