Jury of One (33 page)

“Hello, Ms. Trotter,” one of them said. “Right this way.” They
led her to an ornate set of double doors that opened into a posh library.

“Thank you, boys.”

Shelly followed the direction of the voice and saw her father sitting in the corner, reading a report of some kind. The doors closed behind her and they were alone. The whole floor was probably cleared.

“Well, hello there,” he said. The governor’s jacket was off and his sleeves were rolled up to his forearms. He removed the reading glasses perched on his nose.

She felt her hands curl into fists, but she had vented much of her anger in the hour that she had waited. She had done plenty of thinking and her calculations had produced a measure of calm.

“You know,” she said simply.

He didn’t leave his chair, which told her something. He placed a bookmark in his report and took his time setting it down on a nearby shelf. “What do I know, Shelly?”

“You know about Ronnie.”

He produced an exaggerated sigh and got to his feet. She had almost forgotten how large he was. Wide shoulders, broad neck, still the full head of white hair offset by the steel blue eyes. His lack of an immediate answer was an answer itself.

“You put the I.R.S. on my legal clinic,” she said. “I blamed the federal prosecutors for that. But it was you. A quick call to your buddies in the administration. You jeopardized a nonprofit clinic that helps kids who have no one else to help them. Classy. That’s really something.”

Her father’s tight lips parted, but he didn’t speak.

“Then you tell your little puppet Raycroft to cut a sweet deal for me. Anything to keep this quiet. Right? Anything to keep
me
off it, at least.”

Her father looked her over. In part, it had to be a father’s curiosity, the soulful way a man looks at his grown daughter. Was he proud of her? Impressed with her accomplishments? She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t care about his opinion. Why, she could not say. She did not understand the quirky human trait that made a grown, independent woman crave her father’s approval, even now.

“You couldn’t have me ruin
another
election,” she concluded.

“Oh.” Her father looked at his hand a moment, rubbing his thumb and index finger together, an old habit. “That makes it easier for you, I suppose.”

“That is exac—”

“And it never occurred to you”—he raised a trembling, angry hand while keeping his voice even—“it never occurred to you that I was trying to protect
you
?”

“That makes it easier for
you.
” She shook her head. “You could have told me—”

“Yes.”

“—and let
me
make that judgment.”

“Yes. And if you had ever come to me over the last seventeen years and asked me if I knew where your son was, I would have told you. But you didn’t, Shelly.”

“I didn’t know you knew. I thought it was confidential.”

“I’ve held state office for fourteen years. You’re a lot of things, Shelly, but you’re not dumb. You knew I could find out.”

She deflated.

“But you never asked.”

“And when it was clear that I wasn’t getting off this case, no matter what you did?”

He nodded. “I could have told you. I didn’t.” He sighed and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. “The boy knows?”

“Yes.”

His jaw clenched. The information was coming loose now. The dam had sprung a leak.

“Do you see this information becoming public?”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “I can’t control Ronnie.”

“Try,” he said.

“I’ll ask him but it’s his choice.”

He didn’t seem to take that well but, as always, he hardly gave a visible reaction. The Trotter family was adept at outward appearances.

“All it would mean is your daughter chose adoption over abortion,” she said. “That works for you politically. As long as no one knows which option
you
wanted.”

She saw the fire, momentarily, in his eyes. She had stung him with that one. She felt the rage building, not from her father’s reckless interference in this case but from many years ago. That was the real reason she was here, she now realized, to say these words to him.

“You feel better now?” he asked.

“Not really. You?”

“Me?” He laughed. “No, Shelly, as always when it comes to you, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

A nice counterpunch. She felt like she was back in that room, watching the expressions on her parents’ faces as she broke the news. The shock. Disappointment. Anger. Amazing, how quickly these feelings could return to the surface.

“It wasn’t my choice for you to get pregnant when you were just a girl,” he said. “That was your choice. And it was your choice not to tell me who the father was. And your choice to move away from home.”

She felt the heat rise to her face.

“But I dealt with it,” he continued. “I found your son a home. Maybe things didn’t turn out perfectly, but who can ever guarantee such a thing? And yes, when this young man was arrested for shooting a police officer—”

“Alex.”

“Yes, when Alex was arrested, I was aware that he lived with—” His eyebrows lifted, as if the entire matter disgusted him.

“With Ronnie,” she said.

Her father wet his lips. “Yes. Of course, I was concerned. I didn’t understand why, of all people,
you
would be involved. I thought maybe you knew about—the situation with the boy.”

“Ronnie,” she said again. “His name is Ronnie.”

“Okay, fine.” He spit the two words violently, as if they were one. He lifted his hand. “In any event—it turned out that you didn’t know anything about it. You happened to know this boy Alex, and so there you were, defending the quasi-brother of your son. Of course, I was concerned. So yes, I tried to use some persuasion to move you away from it. And yes, maybe I put in a word to Elliot Raycroft. You were sitting next to a loaded grenade, young lady, and apparently you didn’t even know it.”

She looked away from him. He had not lost his ability to persuade.
But he was rationalizing. She felt her teeth grinding, which also brought her back to her teenaged years. It had all come back like an avalanche. She could see the shame even now, as he struggled even to utter the name of her son—his grandson. His complete, unadulterated disappointment. And beside her anger sat a feeling she struggled to identify. She felt, on some level, completely ridiculous. Ashamed of herself? Not quite. She realized that she had viewed herself, her life, through the lenses of her father. Was that the reason she had refused, these years, to acknowledge the existence of her son? Because it reminded her of the person who had let her father down so severely?

The issue, to use a legal term, was moot. Done. Inescapably over. And that, more than anything—that overwhelming sense of regret, of the inability to change past events—whisked the breath from her lungs.

Her father mumbled something, took a step to the side, slowly paced. He made his way over to the window. “First time I ran for this office,” he began. “There was that mistake in my nominating papers. A mistake big enough to topple my entire candidacy. I assume you heard about that.”

She had. Everyone had. When her father’s nominating petitions were filed for the governor’s race, one of his staff had failed to file the original of a particular document. The issue had been raised in the context of a murder trial involving the chief aide of her father’s Democratic opponent. By the time the information was public, the deadline for challenging nominating petitions had expired, so there was nothing anyone could do about it. The fact that her father had to ask her if she’d heard about it highlighted the gulf between them.

“The truth is, I knew about it before it was public,” he continued. “About a week after our papers were filed. I’ll never forget the look on the staffer’s face when he told me. My jugular was fully exposed. If I had been knocked off the ballot for a rinky-dink mistake like that, I would have been finished.”

She looked at him.

“And you know what was the first thing that went through my mind? The very first thought, after the staffer told me? As I was looking at the end of my political career?”

She blinked. Her eyes cast down on the carpeting.

“I thought how pleased that would make
you,
Michelle Ingrid.”

She watched him a moment, staring out the window, rubbing a hand over his neck. She grabbed her bag and headed for the door. “Goodbye, Dad,” she said.

T
HE GUARD BOLTED
Alex’s cuffs onto the table. Shelly realized that she could no longer remember what Alex used to look like before everything went south for him, the radiance in his expression, the gentleness in his manner, the humor. She moved to him and kissed him on the cheek. It brought a measure of life to his face.

“How you holding up, kiddo?” she asked.

He nodded. He was a bit disarmed, she could see.

“You know about the F.B.I. bust?”

He nodded. Shelly showed him the list of names of the people arrested. “Do you know any of these people?”

Alex directed his focus on the sheet with an intensity she had not seen in him before. He sat back. “No.”

“You seem relieved.”

“I thought the guys at McHenry Stern would go down.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought about that. “The guys you supplied at work.”

“Yeah.”

That made sense, perhaps, that the F.B.I. left them alone. First, because they hadn’t arrested—and wouldn’t be arresting—Alex, which could lead to some sticky cross-examinations at trial. Second, because these guys were buying three to five ounces a week, which was far beneath what normally interested federal agents. They might, on the other hand, refer the case to the state prosecutors.

“I don’t know any of those folks on this list,” Alex said.

“Okay.” That might or might not be okay. Shelly might well prefer that Alex was on a first-name basis with all of the crooked cops and gangbangers. “So listen, Alex. We have ten days until trial. We’ve got two different theories we’ve talked about. We have to make a call. At least between us, we do. I might be able to play some games up there, but we have to be straight what we’re doing.”

His chest heaved. “Okay, so what do you think?”

She had taken the seat nearest him. How was this for an icebreaker? “I know that Ronnie is my son and not you.”

His mouth opened.

“Don’t—please, Alex. Just don’t deny it, okay? I saw it for myself.” She focused on the table and kept talking, to take the spotlight off Alex while she exposed his undeniable dishonesty. “You had your reasons, I assume. You wanted me fully invested in this case. But I still am. I’ll do anything I can for you. I would have all along, by the way. But anyway. That’s done. So let’s put that behind us. Okay?”

She saw the pain in Alex’s face, saw him begin to burst forth with a string of apologies that were probably near the surface for a long while. He spent the next ten minutes apologizing and explaining. Shelly had already forgiven him and repeatedly assured him of that fact.

Finally, if for no other reason than time being short, she slapped her hand on the table. “Apology accepted. Let’s move on.” She looked at him. “Ready to move on?”

He laughed.

“This next part isn’t quite as funny. If we claim that you’re innocent—that you didn’t do it—then we have to play this game. I was in here before, saying it was the Cannibals. You say no, and that handcuffs me. I have to give them someone, right? The jury has to have some reason to think that someone else was in that alley.”

His face hardened. He was following the map now.

“No,” he said.

“Ronnie was there, Alex. I know it and I can’t shake out my mind and suddenly
not
know it. I know he was there, as sure as I’m sitting here.”

“No. Shelly, no.”

“Alex, you have to hear me out. You have to hear me out or I have to withdraw as your lawyer.”

That seemed to get his attention.

“I have a conflict now. I think someone else could be responsible, but that someone is related to me. So the only way I can be your lawyer is if you say it’s okay. You have to let me tell you everything I think, and then we have to talk about it. So just shut up, okay?”

Alex folded his arms, fuming.

“I think Ronnie was there. I think after the shooting, you ran to his car, and after you drove away, you switched clothes. You switched clothes so the incriminating evidence wouldn’t be on you. The blood. The gunpowder. Ronnie took your clothes, and the gun, and he drove somewhere and dumped them. That’s why the cops never found the murder weapon. Or your hat or coat, for that matter. You were wearing Ronnie’s leather jacket when you were caught.”

She could see, from the sheepish look on his face, that she was right.

“He left you behind because you were already made. Sanchez knew you. So this was the best he could do.”

“That’s crazy,” Alex said halfheartedly.

“You hurt your knee that night,” she said. “You fell and hurt your knee. You could hardly move right after. That’s how Miroballi was able to catch you. And there’s no way you could have gotten half a mile away with the city police descending on the scene. Unless Ronnie had driven you.”

She could see Alex’s mind race. He seemed unable to concede. “Well, if we were switching clothes and all that to hide the stuff on me, that means I shot him.”

“Yes, it does. Or I’m missing something. But remember what I said, Alex. I don’t have to prove anything. If I can put Ronnie at the scene, it might be enough for reasonable doubt.” She ticked off the points. “Two boys in the alley. No murder weapon to be found anywhere. You were tested for the presence of gunpowder residue and it was inconclusive. So why is it any more likely that it was you than Ronnie? That might be reasonable
doubt right there. Especially if I can add more to the story, which I can.” She dropped her hands on the table. “We’ve seen Ronnie on the west side, Alex. We’ve seen him with Eddie Todavia. I don’t think they were getting together to play bingo.”

“Bullshit.”

“Which means, at a minimum, that he was selling drugs. It might also mean that he’s working with the Cannibals. Let me finish,” she said as he began to protest. “So take that, and take Officer Sanchez’s belief that you were a snitch for Miroballi who had tipped off the Cannibals and, to me, that just means that you confided in Ronnie what you were doing. And he told the Cannibals.” She held up her hands. “Or something like that. I don’t know and I don’t have to connect every dot. I just have to come close and it’s over, I think.”