42

DON’T BE STUPID,” the man said.

Casey froze, her eyes locked on the gun. He shoved her back to the passenger side with his free hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

She realized she still had her purse slung over her shoulder and she began surreptitiously to fish through it, feeling for the cell phone to punch in a 911 call. The man glanced over and snatched it from her.

“I’ll give it back,” he said, patting the purse in his lap.

“Who are you?” Casey asked, swallowing bile from the back of her throat.

“That’s not important,” he said, throwing the truck into gear and lurching away from the curb.

Casey studied the faces of the people walking past on the sidewalks and in the cars they passed. Not one of them looked up to see her desperate expression. They drove at an easy rate with the flow of the evening traffic down a boulevard that ended in a traffic circle at the park beside the lake. They took the first spoke, going south on Route 34, climbing a long curving hill until they could see the lake below, now dark green and still glittering beyond the shadows of the trees on the steep hillside. It couldn’t have been much more than two miles before they turned off the road and headed downhill toward the lake, passing through a colonnade of sturdy and gnarled oak trees whose canopy extinguished the sky.

Muttonchops glanced at her as they rounded a final curve and the trees gave way to an elegant Second Empire mansion with a slate mansard roof and a multitude of dormers and intricate brick chimneys surrounded by a carefully manicured lawn. Pea gravel crunched under the tires as they circled a large fountain, coming to rest beneath a wide set of stairs leading up to the double-door entrance.

Muttonchops cleared his throat and, raising the pistol, said, “I’m sorry about the gun. We don’t know what the hell is going on, who’s behind all this.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said icily, “kidnapping is part of my Southern culture.”

“Just relax,” he said. “Nobody’s kidnapping you.”

“Keep saying it,” she said. “That’ll work.”

The man shook his head and pointed at the steps. “Just go in. She’s waiting.”

“She?”

He hung his hands on the steering wheel and directed his eyes ahead. “Judge Rivers. She has to see you. I’ll wait and take you back.”

“Thanks, but I’d just as soon call a cab,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll swim.”

He gave her a funny look.

“You want to turn off the child lock, or let me out?” she asked.

He got out and rounded the truck, opening her door and staring up at one of the third-floor gable windows as if she weren’t there. Casey got out and slowly mounted the steps, looking around at the abandoned grounds with their carefully sculpted shrubs, hedges, and flowering trees. Thick beams of light bore through the trees and they flickered with insects.

When she reached the double doors with their oval centers of leaded glass, she turned around to look at Muttonchops. He motioned her to go in. Casey turned the cast-iron knob shaped like a lion’s head and swung open the door. The smell of old leather, musty Oriental rugs, and wood polish filled her nose. The spacious foyer contained a large carved staircase and a suit of armor. Old oil landscapes and portraits covered the walls. On one side, a doorway opened into a posh sitting room, on the other, a dining room paneled in rich wood.

Casey walked straight ahead where the opening led to a large room that bowed outward toward a broad covered porch and the lake. On either side of the room, marble fireplaces faced each other across low leather couches, chairs, and tables covered with books and pictures. By the window, in a high-back wing chair, sat a white-haired woman facing the water. In her hand was a cut-glass tumbler, and she swirled the ice in a deep bath of scotch and it glittered in the light reflecting off the lake. While the pale skin of Judge Rivers’s cheeks had been pulled back tight enough to make it shine, flaccid wattles hung from the cords in her neck. When she turned her cold blue eyes, Casey hesitated at the sight of their wounded arrogance.

Judge Rivers forced a smile, but her eyes changed with emotions like a spinning kaleidoscope from hope to hatred and everything in between. She set down her drink atop the manila file that rested on the small table beside her, then rose from her chair and extended a hand.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, her voice deep and as solid as her nearly six-foot frame.

Casey looked at the hand, liver-spotted and bejeweled with elaborate gems from another century. “I had a choice?”

Judge Rivers cleared her throat and retracted her hand, motioning to the chair opposite her own. “I love this view. It always changes. Look at the sunlight on the water. Different, but always there. Millions of years, and millions more after we’re all gone. Can I offer you a drink? Or tea?”

“I’m fine,” Casey said, glancing out the window before sitting down and searching her pockets for her cell phone and then remembered. “What I’d really like is to get my purse back and call a cab.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Judge Rivers asked, her voice rising as her face soured suddenly.

Casey leaned forward. “Righted a wrong.”

Judge Rivers snorted and wagged her head in disgust. “You have no idea.”

“Actually, I have a pretty good idea,” Casey said.

“Of what? Who killed that girl?”

“That, too,” Casey said.

“No,” the judge said flatly. “You don’t.”

“Why are you wasting your time on me?” Casey asked. “Shouldn’t you be threatening the new DA? He’s the one who’ll prosecute your son.”

“No one’s prosecuting anyone,” the judge said.

Casey considered her a moment. “That’s why he went to Turks and never came back, isn’t it?”

Judge Rivers stared back at her before asking, “What is it you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” Casey said. “I’m out of here tonight.”

“Money? Attention? Another TV movie?”

Casey stood up. “I think you should get some help. You’re obviously distraught.”

“To prove how smart you are?” the judge said. “To manipulate the law? Because I know it’s not justice you’re after.”

Casey twisted up her face. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Do you honestly think my son killed that girl?” the judge said, gripping the arms of her chair.

“I saw the lab reports,” Casey said. “DNA doesn’t lie.”

“No, but people do.”

43

PEOPLE LIKE YOU,” Casey said. “Everything about you is a lie.”

“Do you have any idea the good I’ve been able to do?” the judge asked. “Have you read a single decision? My work on women’s rights? The environment? Unless you’ve seen my body of work, you should know better than to stand there sounding like some hick from Texas.”

“I know your kind,” Casey said, lowering her voice. “Happy to punish anyone who does anything against the law, unless it’s you or your own.”

“And I know yours,” the judge said bitterly. “A gunslinger. You think the law is a contest, winning and losing. Box scores. Who cares about the truth? Justice? Well, I do, and sometimes the law needs some help. That’s what a judge does, she inserts common sense into the equation to get justice in the end.”

“You?” Casey said, snorting. “You call putting an innocent man behind bars for more than twenty years justice?”

“Dwayne Hubbard?” the judge said, her brow darkening. “He killed that girl like he killed the others.”

“Others? You need more help than I thought.”

Judge Rivers nodded her head fervently. She picked up her drink and removed the file from beneath it, handing it to Casey. “Good. You have no idea. So I’ll show you the others.”

Casey accepted the file and opened it, fascinated at the ranting of a woman of Patricia Rivers’s stature, wealth, and power and believing more every minute that she’d come completely unhinged. The first page was a copied newspaper article from 1988.