by Tim Green
“God, what kind of a shit pile did I kick up with this one?”
“Nothing we can’t tamp back down,” Jake said. “Come on. We’ll get it worked out.”
“How?”
“Find the connection between Graham and the Marcellus Shale Formation,” Jake said. “We pull that thread and his whole flannel shirt comes unraveled.”
“So,” Casey said, “we start with The Nature Conservancy v. Eastern Oil & Gas.”
“Know any good law libraries around this place?” Jake asked, smirking and turning onto the main road and heading into town.
“You know, Marty works for Graham,” Casey said.
“Wouldn’t it be beautiful if that fat money really ended up funding a good cause after all?”
“What’s the good cause?” Casey asked.
“Putting his ass in jail.”
48
LOOK,” CASEY SAID, “I’m not as gleeful about this as you, and I’m not as certain, either. The web is pretty thick here, and you know from TV as much as I know from the law that when things get sticky, the truth has a funny way of losing itself in the slime.”
“I won’t say he’s providing the slime,” Jake said. “But, goddamn, there’s a trail of it wherever he goes.”
“You want to call Marty, or me?” Casey asked.
“I’ll do it,” Jake said. “Keep you clean in case this whole thing pans out for your savior.”
“Your top lip quivers when you’re nasty. Anyone ever tell you that?”
Jake winked at her and dialed Marty as he drove. “Marty? You still at the office? Good, I need in. Just turn me loose in your law library and I’m a pig in shit. No, you don’t have to stick around. I got it. Thanks.”
“You said it,” Casey said.
“What?”
“The pig part.”
“Want odds on who the real bad guy is?” Jake asked. “Ten will get you twenty.”
“I don’t gamble.”
“No, you’re too steady for that.”
When they arrived, Jake suggested that Casey wait outside until Marty went home, then he could let her in. “No sense in you spoiling your million-dollar baby if I’m wrong. He said he’s on his way out, so it won’t be long. I’ll ring you.”
Casey agreed and watched him go before she went across the street for a piece of broccoli pizza and a Diet Coke at a place called Daddabbo’s. As she waited for her food, CNN opened its half-hour news cycle with the Freedom Project press conference on the Auburn Courthouse steps. The restaurant began to buzz with excitement and when Casey’s face appeared, many of the patrons turned to her with knowing and gleeful looks. Most of the face time, though, along with the biggest sound bites, went to Brad Pitt and Al Gore, with Dwayne and Graham making appearances about as brief as Casey’s. Judge Kollar made the B-roll, smiling broadly and mugging with Jesse Jackson at the hors d’oeuvres table. She sighed and shook her head.
When her pizza came, the waiter pointed to the TV and asked Casey if it was really her. She nodded and sprinkled some red pepper on her slice. Two bites into her food the phone rang and she snapped it open.
“That was quick,” she said.
“I knew you wanted to get back, so I pushed it to drinks instead of a dinner.”
“Robert?” Casey said. “Oh.”
“I’m about twenty minutes away,” he said. “I ordered a couple lobster tails and filets for the jet, and a nice bottle of Silver Oak Cabernet, which you’ll love. The tails aren’t as fresh as on Turks, but you’ll be surprised.”
Casey pushed her pizza away. “Actually, I think I’m going to stick around for a few days.”
The chatter of other early diners around her seemed amplified in the silence of the phone. Finally, he spoke.
“What does that mean? You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I really am going to stay.”
“Why?”
“Just some loose ends,” she said, her stomach constricting.
“The jet’s already scheduled,” Graham said. “I’ve got my week planned out. I was going to spend a couple days in Dallas. I thought I’d check out the clinic and maybe have the chance to grab dinner or something. You’re not even making sense. Come on, here.”
Casey took a deep breath. “I spoke with Patricia Rivers today.”
“Today? Today, when? Like, between the press conference and now?”
“That’s the only time I’ve had,” she said.
“That’s ludicrous,” Graham said, his voice softening and taking on a singsong quality, as if he were talking to a child. “This case is closed. You did your job, now it’s time to go back. I’ve got dinner waiting for us. The crew. The jet’s all warmed up. Stop kidding around, Casey. It’s been a long day.”
“I’m not,” Casey said. “I think we may have made a mistake and if we did, I have to fix it.”
“Casey, Casey, come on,” Graham said. “There’s no mistake. You saw the DNA. This is crazy. Where are you?”
“And what if that DNA got switched?” she said.
Graham snorted. “Come on. Cut it out. You saw how serious those lab people were.”
“But how secure was the sample at the hospital?” Casey said. “Just stuck away someplace in some warehouse.”
Graham fell silent for a minute before he asked, “What did Rivers say to you?”
“She showed me three other crime scenes,” Casey said. “Remote places. Small towns where there weren’t any notes being compared. They all looked the same.”
“So, her son was a serial killer,” Graham said.
“She went outside the law to put Dwayne away, but maybe she did it because she knew he was guilty,” Casey said. “Her son wasn’t at those other places, but Dwayne might have been.”
“And you know this?”
It was Casey’s turn to go silent. Finally, she said, “I have to find out. If it’s true, then maybe we’ve done something very wrong.”
“Do you know how stupid, silly you’re going to look?” Graham said, his voice going suddenly hot. “You freed that man. You went on national TV and set him free. You don’t just go back on that. I’ve got this plane booked out for the next five days, so you need to get on it if you want get back home. You’re talking crazy here.”
“Then I am, and there’s always Delta. Good-bye.”
“Wait! Wait, wait, Casey,” Graham’s voice said, softening. “I’m sorry. It’s been a crazy day. I mean it, I’m sorry. Let’s talk. Let me come get you and we’ll talk. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t. You can go whenever you like. If my jet’s not around, I’ll charter one for you, and I’m writing that check for a million dollars for you tonight and you’ll have it. Sometimes my temper and I say stupid things I don’t mean.”
“Well,” Casey said, hesitating. Her phone beeped and she looked at the incoming call: Jake. “I’ve got a couple things to do. Let me call you later if I get free.”
“Like… what do you have to do?” Graham asked.
“I really have to go,” Casey said. “I’ll call you later.”
She clicked over and Jake told her it was clear.
49
GUESS WHO I WAS on the other line with,” Casey said, standing up, taking her drink, and heading out.
“Graham.”
“He wants to meet,” Casey said.
“And you told him no?”
“Told him I’d call him back later.”
“That’s fair,” Jake said. “If this goes nowhere, you can use my cell phone to make the call. I see you.”
Jake waved from the doorway. When Casey got to the law office, Jake looked up and down the sidewalk before showing her inside and closing and locking the door. The lobby was dark except for a small lamp behind the receptionist’s desk.
“Not like my lawyer’s office in Manhattan,” Jake said, punching the elevator button and stepping in. “They burn the candles until midnight there. It’s, what? Seven o’clock, and this place is empty.”
“Sma
ll town,” Casey said, following him.
On the third floor, they passed Marty’s office and went into the library, where Jake already had a computer booted up. Casey studied the screen.
“You found it?”
“LexisNexis,” Jake said. “No big deal. I didn’t get very far.”
Casey sat down and scrolled through the twenty-three-page decision in The Nature Conservancy v. Eastern Oil & Gas, an appellate court ruling that she quickly found had made its way to the court of appeals docket for the fall session.
“So Rivers would have been able to rule on this,” Casey said, thinking aloud as she continued to scroll through the lower court’s decision. “And she told us the court is evenly split between the left and the right. She’d be left of center and help to uphold this decision.”
“I went to the end, but I wasn’t sure what they were saying,” Jake said. “It’s a bunch of stuff about bats from Indiana, right?”
“The appellate court ruled in favor of the Nature Conservancy,” Casey said, still reading, “basically blocking Eastern from using fracture drilling in the Marcellus Shale Formation. It’s not bats from Indiana, it’s Indiana bats. They’re endangered and they winter in the same caves and mine shafts year after year. Because the fracture drilling is so destructive, and because the chemicals are used to pump the water into these underground fissures that go for miles, the court is saying that Eastern-and essentially anyone else drilling for gas-is prohibited from using that specific drilling technique.
“And, from what I see of the defendant’s argument,” Casey said, “they’re saying that if they can’t use fracture drilling, the gas rights across the entire formation in New York State are worthless.”
“That’s where the money comes in,” Jake said.
“Millions,” Casey said, nodding and reducing the LexisNexis search to bring up Google. “Probably hundreds of millions.”
“And that explains the ‘her’ Graham complained about them not taking care of,” Jake said. “I thought it was you, then I thought it was the ship, but it was Patricia Rivers. He asked them to take care of her.”
“Who’s them, and what do you mean by ‘take care of her’?” Casey asked.
“If it’s the them I think it is-and I think it’s his partners who are like the real-life Sopranos-” Jake said, “then he meant for them to kill her.”
“Isn’t that what the real-life Sopranos would have done?” Casey asked. “With all that money at stake?”
“They kill people when they have to,” Jake said soberly, “but they don’t take it lightly. I’d bet Graham put this business deal together the way he has so many others-remember I told you he financed his comeback with money from offshore partners-and they probably told him it was his deal, so he should take care of it himself. Maybe they’re sick of his crap, running around like a do-gooder when they’re bankrolling him with heroin profits. Maybe he’s had other deals go sour. Maybe they’re getting tired of him as a partner. Maybe he’s the one they’ll take care of if this thing doesn’t work out.”
Casey typed and clicked until she had a list of the biggest leaseholders across the formation in New York.
“See these? Range Resources? Chesapeake? Dominion? The top leaseholders in the formation? They’re the big boys. See the abbreviations? All listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but look at this,” Casey said, pointing, “number four, with 437,000 acres under lease, the only one in the top twenty that isn’t a big, publicly traded energy company.”
“Buffalo Oil and Gas?” Jake said.
“With no symbol for the exchange,” Casey said, typing the full name into Google.
“What did you get?” Jake said, hanging his head over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” she said.
“That’s impossible,” Jake said. “The fourth biggest leaseholder?”
Casey’s fingers kept darting between clicks of the mouse.
“No,” she said after several minutes, “but see this? New York Corporate Law, the only public reporting required for a closely held corporation, is a biannual statement to the secretary of state that includes the current corporate mailing address and the CEO.”
“That could be anyone,” Jake said.
“Probably not just anyone,” Casey said, shaking her head. “Someone important. I’m not a corporate lawyer, and it’s been a long time since I studied this stuff, but I’m pretty certain that the CEO of a closely held corporation has a lot of rights, and whoever they are, he or she probably owns a lot of shares in the corporation, if not all or most of them.”
“So how do we get it?” Jake asked.
“We contact the New York Secretary of State,” Casey said, looking at her watch, “in about thirteen and a half hours.”
“Public information,” Jake said.
Casey’s phone rang and she looked at the number.
“Graham?” Jake asked.
Casey nodded.
“Don’t answer,” Jake said.
“I’m not going to hide from him.”
Jake put his hand on top of hers. “You’re not hiding. Think. If he’s really behind all this, your best bet is to stay away. If it’s all a mistake, then he’ll forgive you for being unavailable.”
Jake gave her a serious, pleading look.
“Is that your Geraldo look?” she asked.
He grinned. “Call me anything but Geraldo.”
Casey silenced her phone and put it down just as Jake’s rang.
He studied it and instead of putting it to his ear, Jake hit the speaker button and said, “What’s up, Marty?”
“Hi, Mr. Carlson. You still at the firm?” Marty asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, well,” Marty said, his voice tinny and small through the speaker, “I just got a call from Ralph. He said he was looking for Ms. Jordan, but then he asked if I’d seen you.”
“And you told him we’re-I’m here?” Jake asked.
Marty hesitated, then said, “Just that you needed to use the library for something with your story. Why? I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? He sounded okay with me helping you out. I know it’s her he’s looking for, but I figured I should let you know. I got the sense he’d be dropping by.”
“Thanks, Marty,” Jake said. “Gotta go.”
Jake snapped the phone shut and took Casey by the arm, leading her not toward the elevator but the fire stairs.
“You think-” Casey said.
“I don’t know what to think,” Jake said in a low tone, tugging her down the stairs, with the clap of their feet echoing down the concrete well, “but there’s no sense sticking around.”
50
WHEN THEY REACHED the bottom of the stairwell, they found a door with a red warning on the handle.
“It’s going to set off an alarm,” Casey said, breathless.
Jake shrugged. “You ready?”
Casey nodded and he put his shoulder to the metal door, slammed his palm against the handle, and burst through. The alarm shrieked, piercing her ears. They dashed across a parking lot, crossed the street, and up a grassy knoll into the shadows of the old brick post office.
Casey giggled, feeling the thrill of her youth running through the backyards of town on Halloween night with toilet paper and eggs. Jake spun, looking over her shoulder, and his own smile melted.
“Christ,” he said under his breath. “Is that a gun?”
Casey turned to see the bullet-head shape of Ralph rounding the building at a speed unreasonable for his broken gait.
“I think a flashlight,” Casey said.
Jake tugged her deeper into the shadows. Graham appeared on the corner in a flannel shirt and jeans, following Ralph, but with eyes that scanned the street and parking lot. Ralph reached the emergency exit door and slammed it shut, silencing the alarm. The two of them talked in low voices Casey couldn’t make out before they split up, Ralph continuing down through the back alley and Graham returning to the front of the building.
Ca
sey and Jake stayed put until the Lexus pulled around the corner, into the back parking lot, and disappeared, with taillights glowing up the alleyway where Ralph had gone.
“Let’s stick to the shadows,” Jake said, rounding the post office.
“Why the hell should we have to hide?” Casey asked.
“We’re not hiding,” Jake said, “just avoiding them.”
“We’re not the ones who need to hide,” she said.
Jake gently brushed aside the hair on the back of his head so she could see the long line of crusty stitches. “If you don’t mind, I’m doing my best not to tear the stitches.”
“Think Ralph will bonk you with his flashlight?”
“You laugh, but it’s a little creepy, them showing up like that,” Jake said, “hunting you down.”
“Where’s your car?”
Jake took her hand and they sprinted across the street, jumping into the rented Cadillac he had parked in front of the courthouse steps, which were still littered with duct tape, bunting, and cocktail napkins from the earlier press conference. They hopped in and Jake eased the car out into the street, wary for the Lexus. He took a quick right and plunged them into the backstreets.
“Where are you going?” Casey asked, recognizing the same traffic circle Martin had driven them through earlier.
“Myron Kissle’s,” Jake said. “It’s not far. Then, if you like, I’ve got a place for dinner where Graham and his goon won’t spoil the meal.”
“We’re having dinner now?”
“A working dinner,” he said.
They traveled down the main road along the east side of the lake until they came to a gravel drive that led up the hill to a farmhouse nestled into a cluster of enormous trees. When Jake saw a big white van, two rental cars, and a shiny black limousine in the driveway, he made a face.
“You’re kidding me,” he said, stopping and snatching his keys as he started up the drive.
Casey caught up with him on the front porch. Inside, she saw the tangle of cables and the bright blue lights focused on a set of chairs in the front room and the two people sitting in them. Jake walked right into the middle of the shoot.
