“I mean, I can really help,” Marty said. “To follow the money. I think.”
“How?” Casey asked.
Marty said, “When you’ve got money, you’ve got taxes, right?”
“Taxes and death,” Jake said.
“For some people,” Marty said.
“I remember that,” Casey said. “That’s how he introduced you and your firm, right? Something about a second set of eyes on
some tax work?”
“I remember a company in Syracuse while I was clerking one summer,” Marty said. “They had this big office building with statues
and fountains, some fiber-optic company. A hundred or so high-paid executives with a thousand people underneath them, but
no one local did the legal work, or the accounting. They paid some firm in Connecticut twice the hourly rate they could have
gotten around here. It drove the partners crazy.”
“And?” Casey asked.
“The whole thing was a Ponzi scheme,” Marty said. “The shares were worthless. The thing went belly-up. Everyone lost their
jobs and when it was over, all the lawyers around said it was no wonder they didn’t use local lawyers or accountants. They
didn’t want anyone to know what was really going on. Like Jake said, people talk.”
“And Graham had your law office do some tax work?” Jake said.
“Maybe because we’re a safe distance from Rochester and Buffalo,” Marty said.
“Where his partners are,” Casey said.
“To catch wind of his scheme,” Jake said.
“What scheme, though?” Marty asked.
“That’s what we have to find out,” Casey said.
“And those tax records might be the key,” Marty said.
“Where are they, Marty?” Jake asked.
“That’s a problem.”
M
ARTY’S UNCLE’S house sat back off the road on the better side of town, an enormous three-story Tudor surrounded by a stone
wall capped with decorative iron spikes. Casey peered through the bars of the gates at the house’s outline as they rolled
slowly past. They’d left Marty’s Volvo outside his apartment and rode together now in Jake’s Cadillac.
“How the hell do we get in there?” Jake asked.
“Every Sunday growing up,” Marty said. “Turn there.”
Jake turned at the corner and followed the side street adjacent to the mansion.
“We’d have dinner at Uncle Christopher and Aunt Dee’s,” Marty said from the backseat. “My cousin Ruth, she’d take us out back
and smoke cigarettes. There’s an old door in the wall behind the garden with a lock that must be a hundred years old. You
can open it with a tire iron.”
“You think this is
Mission Impossible
?” Casey asked.
“It’s my uncle’s place,” Marty said.
“You just got fired,” Casey said.
“I’m good with it if he is,” Jake said, pulling over in the deep shadows of the trees overhanging the street. “I’ll go, too.”
“Listen to yourselves,” Casey said. “What are you going to do, break a window?”
“My uncle calls it the men’s room,” Marty says. “There’s a mahogany bar, a pool table, darts, a poker table. He’s even got
a walk-in humidor and a wine cellar. There’s an office down there, too. Big leather chairs and books. That’s where he keeps
the safe. There’s some steps back by the garage. He keeps a key in the light fixture.”
“And then you blow the safe?” Casey said. “Or are you a safecracker, too?”
Marty blinked at her from the gloom of the backseat. “I know the combination.”
“And you’re sure that’s where records are?” Casey asked.
“I’m the one who put them there.”
Casey nodded. “And you two won’t mind if I stay on the sidelines for this? I’ve got enough charges pending against me.”
“We got it,” Jake said. “Although the prison stripes would suit you.”
“Up yours, Jake.”
The two of them disappeared, leaving Casey alone in the dark. Jake popped the trunk and she watched them jimmy the lock on
the metal door, Jake forcing it open with his shoulder. After a few minutes, Casey got out and started up the sidewalk, using
a stick she found to scratch the stone wall. When she reached the corner of the uncle’s property, she saw a car slowing down
on the street to turn into the gates.
Heart pounding, she tucked herself behind a forsythia bush, its bloom a dull gold in the haze of the streetlight. The headlights
blinded her as the car swung into the drive, idling almost silently as it waited for the gates to open. With a grinding shriek,
the heavy metal bars began to part. Atop the corner posts, two bronze carriage lamps glowed yellow, and when Casey pushed
through the fringe of the forsythia, she could clearly make out Ralph’s face sitting behind the wheel of the pewter Lexus.
The gates clanged and Ralph disappeared through them.
Casey whipped out her phone and dialed Jake, praying he’d answer.
A
S JAKE’S PHONE rang on the other end of the line, Casey sprinted down along the wall toward the garden gate. It was still
ajar. When she got Jake’s voice mail, she tried Marty, peering into the garden and its own smaller wall with an arched entryway
on the opposite side. The smell of tomato vines and dirt filled her nostrils. Marty didn’t answer his phone, either, and she
stepped inside, moving slowly down a slate path between two rows of zucchinis. Something gurgled and hissed, and she jumped
back, searching the darkness until she could make out the foggy mist of a sprinkler.
Beyond the garden wall and through the trees, she could see part of the mansion’s roofline and a smattering of lighted windows.
Before she reached the stone arch, Casey heard shouts from the direction of the house. She stepped out of the garden as two
figures dashed her way across a broad lawn. A second shout came from behind them, and three orange tongues of flame licked
at the darkness, the thundering crash of gunshots hurting her ears. As she turned to run, Casey felt—as much as she heard—the
thud of bullets striking the garden wall within her reach.
She stumbled and felt Jake’s hand snatch up her arm, dragging her toward the gate. On the sidewalk, Marty shot past them with
a heavy cardboard filer thicker than a phone book under his other arm. They all piled into the car and hadn’t closed the doors
before Jake stamped on the gas and they shot down the street.
“Are you kidding me?” Casey said, twisting around to watch out the back window. “That son of a bitch shot at us.”
“We thought we were going to get away clean,” Jake said, breathing hard and checking the rearview mirror. “They went in when
we were sneaking out. We heard them shouting at each other after they opened the safe, and that’s when we just took off.”
“That Ralph,” Marty said, glancing over his shoulder as if he expected to see the old soldier chasing them down the street
on foot. “Metal leg didn’t do much to slow him down.”
“He shot at us,” Casey said, again.
Jake hit a turn that tossed Casey into his lap. She straightened and pointed at the filer Marty clutched to his chest. “You
got it?”
Marty nodded and undid the clasp, reaching into the filer and pulling a heavy ream of paper partway out. “Now we got to dig
through it all.”
“Good thing you’re a CPA,” Casey said.
Jake nodded and continued to drive fast, checking the mirror constantly.
“Where we going?” Marty asked from the back.
“It’s your town,” Jake said. “I’m just driving. I figured you’d tell me. Someplace where they can’t find us. Preferably something
with bulletproof walls.”
“He almost killed us,” Casey said.
“You keep saying that,” Jake said.
“I keep saying he shot at us.”
“Right.”
“I still can’t believe this.”
“Well, we know one thing,” Jake said.
“What?”
“Whatever’s in there is worth killing for.”
J
AKE PULLED the car around in back of the Bright Star Motel. Casey waited with Marty until Jake returned with three metal keys
on plastic diamond-shaped fobs. Marty helped Casey with her bags while Jake held the filer and the door. Casey set her bag
down on the sagging bed and looked around and sniffed at the mold.
“Reminds me of a place we went one time in Galveston when I was a kid,” she said.
Jake moved a rickety round table up to the bed, placing two chairs around it, and served the filer up in the middle as if
it were a meal for them to share. Casey sat on the bed. Marty and Jake took the chairs. They stared at the filer for a moment
before Casey undid the band that held it shut and removed the contents, serving them out equally.
Jake looked at his watch and said, “Ten o’clock. We should just see.”
He leaned over and switched on the dusty TV set.
Two local news anchors stared somberly into the camera.
The gray-headed man said, “Central New York and the city of Auburn are at the center of a media storm today, after the murder
of a woman by a man the courts set free from Auburn Prison. Dwayne Hubbard, sentenced to life in prison twenty years ago,
was set free on Tuesday after lawyers from the Freedom Project presented DNA evidence to the court that they said proved Hubbard
was an innocent man. In less than twenty-four hours, the woman who was Hubbard’s Internet fiancée has been found mutilated
and murdered in her home much the same way as Hubbard’s original victim twenty years ago. Authorities now believe that the
DNA evidence used to free Hubbard was falsified by his lawyers, most notably Casey Jordan, a controversial trial lawyer from
Dallas, Texas, who is known for her media exploits.”
Casey snorted and shook her head. Marty’s cheeks flushed.
The news anchor looked at his cohost, a young redhead with green contact lenses who said, “Another notable man in the center
of the controversy spoke with reporters this afternoon. Robert Graham, the well-known billionaire philanthropist and board
member of the Freedom Project, had this to say.”
Graham’s face filled the screen, looking weary with grief.
“In our wildest dreams,” Graham said, “we at the Freedom Project never imagined that someone could take something so good
and use it for evil, but that is what Casey Jordan has apparently done by turning loose a completely deranged individual into
our society to satisfy her obvious craving for media attention and personal gain.”
Graham paused to shake his head.
“Our deepest sympathy goes out to the family of Sheila Leeds,” he said, his face contorting with disgust as he spit out his
final words. “We never imagined or intended to have a hand in freeing someone so repulsive and so utterly sick.”
Graham glared out at his audience for a brief moment before the TV anchors reappeared, droning on about the great works of
Robert Graham and how he’d been assured that neither his friendship with Brad Pitt nor that great man’s commitment to the
Project would be harmed because of the unfortunate tragedy.
“Most people would be sick at this point,” Jake said, flicking off the TV and taking out his cell phone, “but I’m going to
order some Chinese. Anyone else?”
Casey shook her head and Marty muttered something about fried rice.
“I’ll get you a little vegetable lo mein, in case you change your mind,” Jake said to her.
Casey forced her breathing to slow, then began going through the documents, racking her brain to recollect the fleeting knowledge
of tax law she learned while studying for the Texas bar exam.
“I guess I should have gotten into natural gas,” Jake said, waving a piece of paper from his pile. “It looks like they made
a shitload.”
“Looks,” Marty said under his breath, as if in deep thought as he ran a finger down the page in front of him.
Casey sighed and shook her head. It wasn’t until a knock on the door signaled the arrival of their food that Casey had an
idea.
“Marty,” she said, snatching up the paper she was examining and pushing it in front of him while she averted her face from
the delivery man, “look at this.”
Marty adjusted his glasses and brought the paper into focus by moving it away from his nose.
“That’s an income statement, right?” Casey asked.
Jake set the food down on the dresser and leaned over Marty’s shoulder. The hot smell of egg rolls, noodles, and cooked chicken
filled the room. Her mouth watered and her stomach shifted.
“Yes,” Marty said, glancing at the food. “A K-1.”
“Isn’t there something about passive income and active losses?” Casey asked.
“Active losses you can write off against your losses of regular income,” Marty said, his eyes scanning the page.
“Like a tax write-off?” Casey said. “You make a hundred, you write off twenty-five, and you only have to pay taxes on seventy-five?”
“Sure,” Marty said, “it’d be the same as if you spent it on a new piece of equipment or a business trip.”
“What if it wasn’t?” Casey asked.
“Well, passive losses are just that,” Marty said, “losses on your investment. You don’t get to write those off.”
“But these are active losses this is talking about, right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do we have the gains they had anywhere?” she asked.
“I think I might,” Jake said, handing a small pile of pages to Marty. “Is this it?”
Marty examined them, slowly nodding. “This is what they got paid, yes. It’s a lot.”
Marty held up the paper Casey had handed to him and dug through Jake’s pile until he found what he was looking for.
“Holy shit,” Marty said. “Holy. Shit.”
W
HAT’S HOLY AND what’s the shit?” Jake asked, putting a hand on Marty’s shoulder as he leaned even closer to the pages.
“Holy shit,” Marty said, looking over his shoulder at the door to the motel room like he expected someone to burst through
it.
“You keep saying that,” Casey said.
“These guys are screwed,” Marty said.
“Graham?” Casey said.
Marty shook his head. “His partners.”
“Massimo D’Costa and John Napoli?” Jake asked.
“And all the rest of them,” Marty said.
“How screwed?” Jake asked.