58

WHEN CASEY emerged from the courthouse into a light drizzle, the mob of reporters shrieked and screamed their questions at her. In the frenzy, she made out Dwayne Hubbard’s name over and over, something about befriending a killer. Marty helped fight them back and packed her into his Volvo coupe. Several camera lenses bumped against the window, and by the time Marty made it around to the driver’s side, his glasses sat crooked on his face.

“They’re insane,” Casey said.

Marty started his car and blared the horn, backing slowly out of their spot.

“You’re surprised?” Marty asked, glancing over.

“It was an arraignment,” Casey said. “Not a hanging.”

“Dwayne killed her,” Marty said.

“It was twenty years ago,” Casey said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Not Cassandra Thornton,” Marty said. “The fiancée. The girl from the press conference. They found her butchered, her eyes gouged out. That’s what they were saying.”

Casey stared at him as they accelerated down the street, leaving the swarm behind, the knot in her stomach tightening. “I heard the butcher part, not the fiancée. You’re not sure?”

Marty fished the cell phone out of his pocket as he turned for the Holiday Inn.

“I know a cop,” he said, opening the phone with one hand and hitting a speed dial key.

“Clarence? It’s me, Marty. Is it true the Hubbard guy killed his fiancée?”

Casey watched Marty’s face tighten.

“No shit,” Marty said into the phone. “That’s what I thought. It was? Okay. Thanks.”

Marty snapped the phone shut and nodded. “He did it. And there’s no sign of him anywhere. Evidently, she took about eight thousand dollars out of the bank yesterday afternoon. Told people it was for their honeymoon. She was taking him on a cruise. First class. Nice guy, huh?”

“I don’t believe it,” Casey said, scowling. “Take me. Show me.”

“I can’t-”

“You’re the one with connections, Marty,” Casey said. “That’s all I’ve heard since I got here.”

Marty looked hurt, but he opened his phone and dialed, then browbeat his cop friend, Clarence, with a ferocity that surprised Casey and made her think Marty might be a good lawyer after all, especially when the cop gave in.

“Not bad, right?” Marty said, flashing an eager look and spinning the wheel to make a U-turn.

Casey said nothing as they passed the prison and turned down into a side street of broken and rotting homes, their lines sagging like the faces of old people, their windows jagged like broken teeth.

“I don’t see the tape,” Casey said as Marty pulled over onto a crumbling curb.

“We can’t go in the front,” Marty said, climbing out and heading off between two dilapidated houses.

Casey hustled to keep up, stepping over piles of dog crap that lay in the grit amid crushed empty cans of malt liquor and shattered beer bottles. Marty forced open a bent and rusty gate. They passed by an abandoned aboveground pool, its sides bowed and its seams cracked with rust. The fence had been trampled into the weeds where they made their crossing into another neglected yard and under some yellow tape.

A uniformed cop appeared in the back door and waved frantically for them to hurry. They stepped into a rancid back room where unwashed laundry lay in a pile on the filthy linoleum.

“In there,” the cop said, stepping through the kitchen, over an upside-down saucepan and pointing down a hallway.

The cop looked at his watch, then at Marty, and said, “Five minutes.”

He disappeared and they heard the front door open and close.

Marty looked at Casey, his face losing color. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Casey shook her head, pushing past him, aware of the handprints on the faded refrigerator, the dirty dishes on the table, and an open can of something on the counter growing a beard of green mold. The scarlet shag rug in the hallway had been trampled flat down the middle long ago. Casey passed a dirty bathroom, its mirror broken and decked out with racing oil stickers.

Sheets from the bed had been stripped for evidence, leaving the mattress naked and bloodstained. The spray of blood on the pink walls could have been artwork, color coordinated to match the long shag rug, and in a way, it was. On each wall stared an unblinking eye, Dwayne Hubbard’s signature.

59

CASEY LEFT through the back and staggered across the lawn. She climbed into Marty’s car and rode in silence, staring straight ahead without saying a word. She made it to the streetlight just before her hotel, then her nerve gave out, and she dropped her face into her hands.

“Hey,” Marty said, patting her shoulder as he stepped on the gas. “This isn’t your fault. Oh, boy. There’s more of them outside the hotel.”

“Will you go in and get my things for me?” Casey asked without removing her face from her hands.

“Sure. I can go around to the back and they won’t see you.”

Casey fished the key out of her purse and handed it to him without looking. “Thanks, Marty. Two-sixteen.”

Marty got out and Casey breathed deep, thinking back to the other disasters of her past, including her marriage, and wondering if it was something about her or just bad luck. She could still see her mother wiping the flour from a pie crust on her apron and bending over to look at a wasp sting on Casey’s cheek, telling her that she just looked for trouble. Casey remembered the words hurting more than the sting. And even though Casey didn’t feel that way about herself, the echo of her mother’s words had never found rest inside Casey’s mind.

She shook her head and pounded a fist on the dashboard. She didn’t look for trouble. Trouble found her. She never looked for it. Never.

Marty rejoined her, tossing her bags into the backseat and sliding in behind the wheel.

“Where to?” he asked. “There’s a couple nice places in Skaneateles, away from the mobs.”

“Skaneateles?” Casey said. “No. Just take me to the airport, Marty.”

Marty’s face dropped. “The-you’re not going to just run from this?”

“Why?”

Marty’s face colored. “They’ll keep saying things.”

“Who cares?” Casey said, weary from it all.

“Your reputation,” Marty said. “Your… image.”

“Image. Right,” Casey said, directing her eyes straight ahead. “Airport.”

Marty’s phone rang and he answered it with one hand still on the wheel. “Uncle Christopher? Yes. I am.”

Casey could hear the punctuated sounds of Marty’s uncle, yelling on the other end of the line. Marty rolled his lips inward and clamped down until the shouting ended.

“I’m going to the airport,” Marty said quietly, “then I’ll come get them.”

Shouting erupted again.

“I understand,” Marty said, his face pale. “No, don’t do that. I’ll come right now.”

Marty hung up the phone and glanced at Casey. “Can you give me ten minutes?”

Casey held up a finger and called her travel agent in Dallas to book the next flight out.

“My flight’s not until 8:40,” Casey said, hanging up. “We should be fine, right? To stop?”

“Yes,” Marty said, his face expressionless and staring straight ahead.

Casey rode for a minute, watching the faded landmarks as Marty made a series of turns that took them back toward the center of town.

“So you want to tell me?” Casey asked.

Marty took a deep breath and let it out slow. “That was my uncle.”

“I figured,” Casey said, “and he’s not happy that you’re helping me.”

“He told me I couldn’t,” Marty said. “Like he was pulling some lever.”

“He is your boss.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Marty said. “I can hang my own shingle just like anyone else.”

“You going to quit?”

“No,” Marty said. “He fired me. He gave me ten minutes to get my things or he said I’d find them in a box on the sidewalk.”