Authors: David Ellis
The matter was postponed, finally, for the following day. Today.
She awoke this morning with the same grief and remorse, but with an indignation as well. Why hadn’t she been included in these conversations, this intricate mapping of the next step?
Her parents are already seated in the living room, with the obvious position on the sofa open to Shelly. She apologizes again, immediately, before she has even taken her seat. She realizes that she has acted irresponsibly. She realizes that her actions affect everyone, not just her. She has some ideas of her own about how this can be worked out. Above all, she is very, very sorry.
Her father, in particular, looks at Shelly as if he’s never seen her before. Or, worse, like he has known her his entire life and can’t believe the depths to which she has sunk. “Well,” he says, opening his hands. “Now we have to clean up the mess, don’t
we?” He is calm. There is no trace of the anger and disappointment, of the passion from yesterday.
She looks at her hands. “If you want, I could stay with Grandma Jeannie until—”
“I’m not sure that’s the best option.” Her father crosses a leg. He avoids eye contact, swings his foot nervously. “There are some choices that we don’t like, Shelly, but that make sense. Under the circumstances.”
Shelly looks at her mother, who avoids everyone’s stare. She blinks away tears, staring off in the distance. Shelly feels her mouth open.
“I don’t think I’m ready to be a mother, Dad—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Shelly, and I think you know that.”
She recoils. She is hearing this wrong. She is looking at a man who marched with the protestors outside the Anthony Clinic. A man who has brutally criticized an activist Supreme Court for creating a “right” that doesn’t exist. A man—
“You’re a young woman, Shelly. You have your whole life ahead of you. This would change everything.”
“It already has,” she whispers.
“But it’s not too late, Shelly, to keep this from—”
“I tried, Daddy. I couldn’t.”
He freezes. He looks at Mother, who has snapped to attention as well.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
She tells them. She tried. She went to the Anthony Center and something made her stop. Yes, of course she gave her real name.
“Well.” Her father flaps his arms. “My daughter went to an abortion clinic without telling me.” He is talking to Mother. “I bet that gave them a real chuckle.”
“It’s confidential, Daddy. They won’t tell.”
“They won’t tell, she says.” Again, to Mother. “Shelly, you don’t know these people.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
It is a moment before he speaks again. He leaves his chair and paces, into the kitchen and back, his hand over his mouth, then the back of his neck. Mother is silent but seems to be keeping watch on each of them. She is nothing more than a spectator.
What does she think, Shelly wonders. Why won’t she give an opinion? Shelly feels anger herself now. A wave comes over her, something she can’t put into words. Change, is the only word she can use.
“All right. Fine.” Father washes the air with his hands. “I had a place in mind out of state, but as long as they already have your name, it’s as good a place as any.”
“As good a place as any for what?” Shelly is startled by the control in her voice.
“Shelly, it’s okay now. I’m telling you, it’s okay with me.”
She gets to her feet without realizing it, reactively. It is different. She will remember it always as the single defining moment of her life. Yet she is not overwhelmed, because the change is coming from within. “You think I stopped it for you?” She spits the words in a fury she has never known, that grows with each syllable.
She leaves the room and goes upstairs. She will apologize to them again, and again, before she leaves their home. She is so very sorry this has embarrassed the family, that she has injured Daddy’s political aspirations. But that cannot be reversed now. Nothing can be. The looks on their faces. The words. She will leave. She will leave and never return to this place, to these people she has never truly known until now.
S
HELLY
’
S PHONE WAS
ringing when she walked into her office after eight o’clock. She picked it up before it went to voice mail.
“Jerod Romero, Shelly. From the U.S. Attorney’s office.”
“Jerod. Your ears must have been burning.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, I have to disclose my witnesses for trial. Should I just use your work address?”
The prosecutor’s laugh was less than sincere. “It goes without saying, I assume, that you will not be listing me as a witness just yet. Which brings me to the reason I’m calling. Are we abiding by our agreement, Ms. Trotter?”
“You mean, am I running around telling people about your undercover operation?”
“Yes.”
“No, Jerod, I’m not. Why do you ask?”
“Because it occurred to me that, in proving self-defense, you have to show that Miroballi was part of a drug scheme. And if you start asking around about cops selling drugs, you are touching on our operation. See what I mean?”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“So?”
“So. I have managed to provide Alex his constitutional right to adequate representation while at the same time preserving our plea agreement, such as it is.”
“People’s lives could be at stake, Counselor.”
“That’s been true for the last two months. What prompts the call now, Jerod?”
“Just making sure.”
“You can tell your goons I didn’t mention your operation to Eddie Todavia. He’s the guy who supplied Alex the cocaine, if you didn’t recall.”
“I do.”
“You’re not denying that you’re having me followed.”
“As long as you understand how seriously we’re taking this,” he said, which was not quite the same thing as an admission. “We’ll violate your client, and if I have the slightest indication that
you’re
jeopardizing undercover agents out there, I’ll have a half-dozen agents at your door, too.”
“That must be fun,” Shelly opined. “Saying things like that.”
“You’re on notice, Counselor. The F.B.I. doesn’t have a sense of humor about this.”
“Duly noted.”
“One more thing, Shelly. About your case. Obviously, there is going to be a point in time when you are going to discuss our operation in open court.”
“Yes.” Which meant that the federal government would have to make their arrests within the next month or so, before Alex’s trial began. Shelly sensed that it irked Jerod Romero that Shelly knew this, that the prosecutor enjoyed having the element of surprise.
“My question to you is, do you plan on doing it right away? With the voir dire? An opening statement?”
She had had the same question. As she had begun to develop her trial strategy, she was leaning toward postponing her opening statement until the beginning of the defense’s case, which the state’s criminal procedure rules allowed. Her thought was to ambush Dan Morphew with the information. But she might need to ask certain questions of the state’s witnesses that touched on the subject.
“I probably wouldn’t mention it to the jurors,” she said. “But beyond that, Jerod, I can’t guarantee anything. The state will have to try to disprove self-defense because I’ve pleaded it. So I expect it to come up.”
“And you won’t consider moving the trial date.”
“I won’t. You really need more time, huh?”
“Well, obviously. We weren’t planning on ending this operation so soon. We will probably miss the chance to put away a number of people.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Really. I hate to think that we’re messing with an operation that takes down dirty cops. But I have to do right by Alex. I think a quick trial date is what we need here.”
Romero sighed. He understood, of course, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
She hung up the phone. She was not entirely sure why she had been so glib initially with the prosecutor. She was going with her gut. She had the feeling that she had to keep everyone on edge and wait for something to happen. She had the feeling that a lot would happen between now and the trial date.
T
HE VIEW TO
the east. The city was really a breathtaking sight so late at night, when most of the downtown buildings were dark, the shoreline alive with the goings-on at the pier, the restaurants and lighted carnival rides. She leaned forward and pressed her nose against the window. There was so much promise, so much energy, so much emotion in this enormous metropolis.
Paul thrust himself inside her further. “I’m telling you, Ms. Trotter, you’re going to give me a heart attack.”
With the lights out in Paul’s corner office, she could see the reflection of him standing behind her, pants to his ankles, tie pulled down, applying the same dedication that he brought to any task. “Are you always going to whine like this?” she asked.
He cried out like a wounded animal, gripped her waist for another few seconds. “Damnation, Shelly Trotter.” He left her and attended to his business. Moving quickly, he was dressed and presentable within two minutes. “Sure, a little danger. Why not?”
“Danger, sure.” She had pulled up her panties. “You checked every office on the floor to make sure everyone was gone. On a
Sunday.
”
“Baby steps.” He opened his hands. “Now can we eat?”
“Back to work,” she said.
“Shelly, really.” He was blocking the doorway. “The sum total of postcoital time you’ve spent with me”—three times, so far, they’d been together—“I wouldn’t have time to fry an egg.”
She gave him a look. “I thought we discussed this.”
“Look, I’m not talking about a lifetime commitment. Or even a one-
week
commitment. But”—he looked down at himself—“am I nothing but a piece of meat to you?”
She stared at him. They laughed at the same time.
“You know, Riley, a lot of guys would think they hit the gold mine here. No-strings sex?”
Paul threw his hands up. “Yeah, I’m starting to feel like the girl in this relationship.”
“That’s ‘woman,’ not girl.”
“Whatever. I can’t keep up anymore.” He shook his head. “So can we eat?”
“I really have to get back to work,” she said. She ran her hand along his shirt. With a presumptive pat, she left the office.
T
O ARGUE SELF-DEFENSE
or not to argue self-defense. That was the question.
Technically, she could argue both at trial. Alex didn’t shoot the officer, but if he did, it was in self-defense. That was a ridiculous position, practically speaking, but it did allow her to wait out the prosecution’s case before making her decision. That would be a walk through a mine field at trial, but she might be able to pull it off. She had already begun to draft examinations of witnesses. She had written two closing arguments, one arguing that Alex was the wrong guy, the other that he acted with legal justification.
The “innocence” argument was straightforward. There was no credible witness that put the gun in Alex’s hand. The other cop, Sanchez, didn’t see the shooting. The architect, Monica Stoddard, didn’t see who shot Miroballi. The homeless man says he did, but he was not credible. The gunpowder residue test was negative. Alex was there, but he didn’t pull the trigger.
If Alex didn’t shoot Miroballi, then she had to have some explanation that someone else did. The Cannibals? She had to admit that she would never be able to prove that. She was trying to shake the trees but nothing was falling out, and she couldn’t very well march onto their turf and demand that they confess. She needed to point the finger at someone, but she wasn’t exactly full of ideas.
The self-defense argument looked something like this: (1)
Alex was being forced by Officer Raymond Miroballi to sell drugs and kick back some money. We know that from Alex’s testimony and from the photographs of them together, taken by the F.B.I. (2) Alex was picked up by the federal government, which was investigating a drug ring run by police officers, and Alex agreed to work for them and against Officer Miroballi. That can be shown from Alex’s testimony and from the F.B.I. agents she would call. (3) Miroballi found out that Alex had flipped. And what did she have to prove
that
fact? That Miroballi seemed nervous, according to Alex. That he was willing to go along with Alex’s “demand” of a smaller kickback—that he “must” have known because he was never so agreeable in the past. Yeah, that was a real winner.
Supposition laid upon supposition. She couldn’t decide which case was weaker. There were so many holes. Defense attorneys, in theory, didn’t need to fill in all the blanks, because they didn’t have the burden of proof. But the more implausible your story, the more you had to provide corroboration.
Her cell phone rang. “Shelly Trotter.”
There was no response on the other end. In the background of the caller, there were noises. It was busy. She heard a car horn. People yelling in Spanish.
“Hello?” she said.
Then she heard a
click.
With a cell phone, it was sometimes hard to tell if she had hung up on the caller or vice versa. She looked at the antenna icon on her phone and the signal appeared to be strong. “Hello?” she tried again, but the call had been terminated.
She picked up her land line and dialed the numbers. She looked at her watch. It was past eight o’clock on Sunday.
“You’ve reached Joel Lightner’s cell phone. Please leave a message.”
“Joel, it’s Shelly,” she said. “I need a trace on a call. As fast as you can.”
S
HELLY SPENT THE
day preparing for her afternoon argument to the state court of appeals that she should be allowed access to the city police department’s internal investigation. She had sought an expedited appeal, which was allowed for in cases such as this. She had made sure that various members of the city’s media were aware of the hearing—political pressure, in the end, might be the best way to get to these records—and some of them had shown.