“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.”

JAKE SAT WAITING in the lobby wearing khaki pants and a dark blue polo shirt that made him look younger than the suit he wore the day before. He stood, holding two cappuccinos, handed her one, and said, “Ready?”

Outside, Casey saw the Lexus before Ralph could step in front of her.

“Where to, Ms. Jordan?” he asked, pitching a cigarette into the bushes.

“You weren’t following us last night, were you, Ralph?” Casey asked. “Because that wouldn’t be necessary.”

Ralph stared at her with empty pupils surrounded by tattered brown and yellow irises.

“I think I’m set on a ride,” Casey said, glancing at Jake. “Don’t forget about the car, Ralph. The white one? Bavarian Motor Works?”

“I’ll let you know,” Ralph said, limping toward the Lexus. “But I’ll just tag along in case something comes up.”

“I’m a big girl, Ralph,” Casey said. “I even made these high heels from a rattlesnake I killed with my bare hands.”

Ralph looked down.

“I’m kidding,” she said.

Ralph opened the car door and, climbing in, said, “Mr. Graham is pretty precise in what he wants.”

Casey shrugged and followed Jake toward his Cadillac, which was parked on the side of the building.

“How’s Dad?” Jake asked.

“Constipated,” she said. “Makes him limp.”

“What BMW?”

“Hubbard says he saw a white BMW the night of the murder,” Casey said. “If Graham really wants to help, that’s what he should have Ralph doing. But we’re kind of keeping that under wraps for now, so if you don’t mind going off the record?”

“Graham,” Jake said. “He’s up to something else.”

The hospital was only a five-minute drive. They got there just after nine and Casey admired how Jake wormed them into the office of the hospital’s president.