“Do you think Nelson Rivers is the one who killed that girl?” Jake asked.
Kissle shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not, but we sure didn’t do nothing to find out if he did. He was stalking her. We all knew that. You won’t see any reports on it or anything, but the chief had a talk with the mom about getting him to back off.”
“Did Patricia Rivers, Judge Rivers now,” Jake said, “did she ever say anything to you directly about the investigation?”
Kissle tightened his lips and nodded slowly, remembering. “I imagine she said the same thing to Martin Yancy and Billy Cussing that she said to me. I was getting into my patrol car out back of the station and she pulled up in her big black Mercedes and she says, ‘Myron, you’ll leave that Thornton case alone if you know what’s good for you. You’re an officer of the law; you’re supposed to be working for the law, not against it.’ Well, I told her I thought I was. I told her the law was supposed to be blind when it come to color, but she just gave me a funny smile and told me the world was a hollow place for a cop who worked against the law. That’s what she called it, a hollow place.”
“And what did you do?” Jake asked.
“I believed her,” Kissle said. “She’s not one to mess around, never was. I guess Billy Cussing found that out the other way.”
“And Dwayne Hubbard,” Jake said.
“Yeah, him, too,” Kissle said, “and I’ve had an ache in my gut ever since. That’s why I’m sitting here now. I been keeping it inside all these years, and when I saw you people showing up and trying to help put things right? Trust me, though, back then? No one was putting anything right. She’s a hellcat. No one messed with Patricia Rivers and no one ever called her Patty, either. How do you think she got to where she is? Big judge in that big house? It wasn’t any kind of luck, I’ll tell you. She’s a barracuda.”
Jake looked over Kissle’s shoulder at Dora, his head feeling much better. She nodded and gave him two thumbs-up.
37
JUDGE KOLLAR swung large and shanked his ball into the trees.
“Fuck!”
He drove his wood into the turf, leaving a chocolate depression in the pristine turf before wiping the club with a towel and slipping its head into a cover shaped like a fluffy gopher.
“Judge,” Marty said, leaving the safety of the cart he and Casey had taken out onto the course.
Kollar glared at Marty and slammed his club into the bag on the back of his own cart before removing an iron. His tan forearms flexed as he gripped the club. His face showed red against the yellow of his golf shirt.
“I’m golfing, Marty,” the judge said.
“I’m sorry, Judge,” Marty said, offering his empty hands in peace.
Kollar turned his attention to Casey. His eyes flickered at Marty. He set his jaw.
“As a courtesy,” Casey said, slipping out of the cart and onto the paved path, “we wanted to let you get on board. If you choose to work with us, it’ll be easier all the way around.”
“I don’t work with people, Ms. Jordan,” Kollar said, twisting his lips and glancing back at his golfing buddy to see that he was in on the fun. “I’m a judge.”
“Not only does Dwayne Hubbard’s DNA not match the swabs from the hospital,” Casey said in a low tone, “the person who does match is Patricia Rivers’s son, Nelson.”
The judge’s scowl intensified and he glanced back over his shoulder before lowering his own voice. “I figured it was you in the paper yesterday, but I thought you’d want your name in there.”
“I’m part of the Freedom Project,” Casey said. “It’s not just me, but, yes, we found the information on Judge Rivers and her son. He drove a white BMW that my client saw near the scene, and he was romantically linked to the girl. That gave us the hint, but we’ve got the DNA now. It’s over. The only question is, how painful do you want to make this?”
“Because I have lots of latitude as the trial judge,” Kollar said, pointing the grip of the five iron at her as though the club were an enormous pistol.
“If you’re fool enough to use it,” Casey said, looking up at the judge without blinking. “Then you can go down with the rest of them.”
“Rest of who?” Kollar said, contorting his entire face.
Casey shrugged. “Rivers and her son. He’ll go to jail. She’ll be removed from the bench, if not put in jail herself.”
“I have nothing to do with them.”
“You can perpetuate their crime,” Casey said. “Put your club down and think. You should be racing me to the prison with your own set of keys to free that man. It’s a disgrace. Incompetence? Racism? Horrible realities that put innocent people behind bars, but this? This is an evil so deep there’s no bottom. A district attorney, police, a judge, officers of the court, who knows who else? It’s a smear on this town and if you toy with it, the smut will stick to you like pinesap, like skunk spray. You won’t get it off, and you won’t get reelected. I don’t care how strong your party is. You’ll be done.”
Kollar snarled silently.
“But why can’t you just ride in on your white horse and save the day, Judge?” Casey asked. “Righting a wrong, no matter who it’s to. Everyone respects that. And when Rivers’s seat goes empty, who better to fill that spot than a man with high morals who transcends things like race and gender?”
“But I’m still a conservative,” Kollar said, musing to himself and looking over at Marty as if daring him to disagree. “Not soft on crime.”
“A compassionate conservative,” Casey said. “What we need more of.”
“What are you thinking?” Kollar said, his voice almost too low to make out.
“Sign the order to overturn his conviction right now, without waiting,” Casey said. “I’ll have the lab results sent to your chambers this afternoon. Issue a statement, something about the horror of justice turned inside out and making things right as quickly as possible. A man who spent twenty years of an innocent life behind bars doesn’t deserve to spend another day there. People will love it. You’ll be part of the story, the good part.”
Kollar gritted his teeth. “I don’t want any fucking stories.”
“The curtain is already up,” Casey said. “Whether you like or not, whether you want it or not. Now it’s all about your lines. Judge.”
38
YOU WANT TO see it?” Jake asked.
Casey sat on the end of the bed in his hotel room at the Holiday Inn and crossed her legs, tugging down the hem of her skirt. In his hand, Jake held a long black TV remote.
“Yes.”
“’Cause, technically, I shouldn’t,” Jake said. “You know, keeping the parts of the story separate and all that.”
“I can do a Chinese wall in my brain,” she said.
“A what, in your brain?”
“When you have an ethical conflict in part of your firm, you create a Chinese wall to keep certain lawyers separated from the information, like the Great Wall of China. It’s just a way of keeping confidences, that’s all.”
He aimed the remote at the disc player atop the TV and played for her the interview with Myron Kissle. Casey let out a low whistle.
“You like?” he asked, feeling good not only from his work but from the painkillers for his head.
“And I was proud of my angle on this,” she said.
“DNA trumps a surly old cop,” Jake said. “That’s what’s setting your man free.”
“But Kissle completes it,” she said. “I mean, Nelson Rivers actually stalking her? You were right about no one else having the complete story. The mom issuing a mandate on a murder investigation? Personally threatening the cops? I can’t believe she got away with it.”
“Small town, right?”
“I know, but.”
“Anyway,” Jake said, “I guess it’s back to Texas now?”
“We’re doing a big press conference tomorrow afternoon,” she said.