Jury of One (41 page)

There had been a subtle change in their relationship since their “attorney-client” conversation a few weeks back. Was it because she had confided in him that she had a son? No. Paul had a daughter. He wasn’t a twenty-year-old afraid of commitment. It was the other topic of conversation that day. She had told him that she had some reason to suspect Ronnie. He had strongly urged her to come clean with Alex, of course, and she had done so. But she sensed that he had the same feeling she did—not simply that pointing the finger at Ronnie was a better course of action, but that Shelly had not necessarily done the best job of trying to convince Alex of this. Maybe, she conceded, Paul disapproved of her conduct here, and he was trying to put some distance between himself and Shelly, at least on an intimacy level.

He hadn’t said any of this, which seemed to be his trademark. He spent many an hour with people accused of wrongdoing, often justifiably so, and he had grown comfortable with keeping his judgments to himself. He had spent much of the weekend helping Shelly prepare for the cross-examination of many of the witnesses without offering a word of advice on the best theory of defense. He had never even mentioned Ronnie.

They talked about the day’s events. Morphew’s description of how the shooting transpired. Eddie Todavia’s testimony. Most of Paul’s questions were about the jury. How did they like Morphew? How did they like Shelly? Did they believe Todavia?

They discussed a couple of evidentiary issues. This, more than anything, was where Paul had been most valuable. Shelly had been on trial dozens of times, but the vast majority were in juvenile court, where they never heard of the hearsay rule and most rules of evidence were relaxed; or in civil court, where witnesses rarely took the Fifth and there was scant talk of things like coconspirators.

She slid her chair back from her desk. Her stomach ached badly. She never ate well during a trial but she was usually spared indigestion. She had never felt such stress, and it was only during down moments like this that she noticed its effect
on her. She had seen it in her father, as well, the last four years as the state’s chief executive. Each of them had probably aged prematurely from stress, and yet each seemed to want, more than anything else, to remain in these positions that placed such burdens on them.

“And how are
you,
Ms. Trotter?” Paul asked. “Other than stressed and sleep-deprived.”

“Shows that much, huh?”

He smiled. “You’re the type, if you aren’t working past midnight and skipping meals, you think you’re not working hard enough.”

She allowed for that. That was a major difference between Paul and her.

“You feeling okay about things?” he asked.

A vague question. “The trial? I think so.”

He cocked his head. “Not really what I meant.”

“Ah. Our privileged conversation.”

“Those rules are more important than the case,” he said. “I know that must seem hard to swallow. But it’s true. And when a case becomes more important than those rules—well, that’s when you know that maybe you shouldn’t be working the case.”

“I’m being lectured now.”

He wagged a finger and gave a soft smile. “Reminded. It gives me comfort, Shelly, to think about that. I get invested in my clients’ welfare just like anybody else. But then I think of the rules that govern my role, and it reminds me that I just have a role. I don’t have this person’s life. I do everything within my power to play my role as best I can, but that’s all I do.”

Her head rocked back. She stared at the ceiling.

“I realize your circumstances aren’t quite the same,” he acknowledged. “But the principle is. Do the best you can, and realize that’s all you can do.”

“Okay.” Easier said than done.

“And get some food tonight,” he said as he left the office.

Her smile widened as he walked out. She realized that he really hadn’t been lecturing. He was trying to put her at ease, in his way.

She picked up the folders and began reading over reports and notes. She couldn’t help but think of the mystery that was Ronnie. So many questions about this boy. Could he really be working
with a street gang? A kid with a scholarship, a hardworking, ambitious boy? A caring young man who showed such a willingness to take care of a baby that wasn’t his? And why exactly was it that he had sent Alex to see her that first time at the legal clinic? Why send Alex to do his dirty work—

Her heart skipped a beat. Something within her stirred. She was missing something. Better put, she was looking for something and couldn’t find it. She closed her eyes and tried to relax. When you’re searching for something, it’s easier to look at everything than to look for that one particular thing. So she let the images come to her and absorbed them as best she could, using all of her senses. Alex in the park with Ray Miroballi on two separate occasions. A boy leaving the City Athletic Club in a long coat and cap. Ronnie and Alex in the photos with Angela. The view from the south of the crime scene, the nineteenth floor looking down on bodies and tops of heads. The surveillance photos of Ronnie with Eddie Todavia. The basketball in Ronnie’s room, that she had tripped over. Alex’s words to Shelly about Ronnie, a year ago.
He saved my life once.
Ronnie had come to Alex’s rescue after Alex and his drunken freshmen buddies had hot-wired the wrong guy’s car. What had Ronnie done to help Alex? Taken a beating for him?
Killed
the bad guy? It didn’t matter. The point was, Alex felt he owed Ronnie his life.

She opened the folders. She read over the police report and Joel’s notes of their conversations with the eyewitnesses, Monica Stoddard and Joseph Slattery. She tapped her own memory about her conversations with Sanchez and the others.

She leapt to her feet. She closed her eyes and worked it through. Yes.

Yes?

They hadn’t switched jackets that night, after all.

She dialed Joel’s cell phone before she could stop herself.

They had switched identities.

“Joel, it’s Shelly. Remember when you went to the City Athletic Club on open gym night? You showed Alex’s photo around?”

“Yeah. What’s today—Tuesday? You want me to go back tomorrow night?”

“Yes,” she said. “But show them Ronnie’s photo.”

“R
ONNIE WAS THE
drug dealer,” Shelly said into the Dictaphone. She had never used the transcription device before, felt odd holding a small tape recorder to her mouth. It came with her office supplies, and she felt the need to speak out loud and bounce her thoughts off someone. She couldn’t go to Paul. She couldn’t go to anyone. So she would go to herself. She would play the tape back later and see how it sounded.

“We know Ronnie has been seen with Eddie Todavia,” she continued, pacing around her office. She had closed the door for privacy. “We know that there were drugs in the car behind their house. We have assumed they belonged to Alex. Maybe—maybe Alex and Ronnie both were dealers.”

She touched the wall, a piece of peeling paint that was giving way to gravity. Truth was like gravity, a law professor had once said. In the end, both prevail. Shelly had always found that professor annoying.

“Ronnie was the confidential informant,” she said. “He must have been busted by Miroballi and flipped.” She held her breath. “But he worked with the Cannibals, so he didn’t want to be seen with a cop. So he sent Alex. Alex
was
feeding information to Miroballi. Sanchez was right about that. But the information was coming from
Ronnie.
”

She clicked off the recorder and said a silent prayer. She stared at the tiny device a moment. She considered throwing it
out the window, if she could even get the window open. Then she set it on “Record” again.

“When the feds saw Alex with Miroballi, they busted him. Alex couldn’t give up Ronnie. No way he’d do that. But then the feds start talking about Miroballi and selling drugs, and using Alex to catch Miroballi. So what can Alex do? He can’t give up Ronnie. So he takes their bait. He says, yeah, Miroballi was making me sell drugs for him.”

Yes. The F.B.I. had never really trusted Alex, and now she knew why. Their instincts had been accurate. He
had
been screwing with them.

“So somehow, Miroballi starts suspecting that Ronnie hasn’t been straight with him. Or that Ronnie is telling the Cannibals about him. Something. So he goes to find the person who has been playing around with him. He goes to find the snitch who, he thinks, has turned on him.”

She looked at the door. How much she wished she could walk out that door and leave this case behind her.

“He went to find Ronnie,” she said. “Ronnie, who was returning from a game of basketball at the open gym. Wearing a cap and a long black coat. He had his back to Sanchez the whole time. Sanchez probably never saw him. The other witnesses sure didn’t. Why the black coat, which Alex normally wore? We don’t know. Probably, because he was the only one going out that night, and the long coat was warmer than that leather jacket. These two shared everything else. They probably shared coats, too.”

She moved back to her chair and collapsed in it. “Ronnie shot Miroballi. And Alex got there, too late, and helped Ronnie escape. Alex figured that he wouldn’t look too bad as a suspect because he hadn’t fired the weapon. So Ronnie left with the gun and his bloody clothes. Alex stayed behind, because he hadn’t fired the gun and didn’t have blood on his clothes. He took the hit for his brother, for the boy to whom he owes his life.”

She sighed. “But if Alex thinks he won’t be implicated, he’s wrong. Turns out, Alex
did
get a little bit of blood on himself, probably from contact with Ronnie. And it turned out that Miroballi’s partner, Sanchez, didn’t know about Ronnie. The only person he knew about was the guy Ronnie was sending to
give information to Miroballi—Alex. Alex was the person who had met with Miroballi in the park—meetings that Sanchez watched from his car. Sanchez has probably never heard the name Ronnie Masters. So now Alex goes from not looking guilty to having Miroballi’s blood on himself
and
being identified as Miroballi’s snitch.”

She clicked off the recorder. She felt uncomfortably warm. Her heart was drumming. Her stomach was a barren wasteland of acid. She desperately needed something in her system but couldn’t even consider the thought. She lifted the Dictaphone back to her mouth. “We don’t know the details. Did Ronnie shoot in self-defense?
Was
Miroballi going to kill him? Or did Ronnie commit this murder on behalf of the Cannibals? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Ronnie’s not my client and I don’t have to prove any—”

Her throat closed on her. Yes, it was all finally coming together. It all made sense, and suddenly nothing made sense. She couldn’t implicate her own flesh and blood in a cop’s murder, but she couldn’t imagine how she could let this pass, either. Not now. She had solved the puzzle, she was sure of it, and it exonerated her client. And she couldn’t use it because her client wouldn’t let her, would contradict her, in fact, by taking the witness stand and denying Ronnie’s participation.

And she didn’t
want
to use the information.

She felt a draft and drew her arms around herself. She desperately wanted to go for a run but she was in courtroom attire and low heels, and she probably couldn’t have made it far anyway, from lack of sleep and poor nutrition. She tried to map out the turns this case had taken and how it had all come to this. This, she decided, was her punishment. She needed a priest, like Paul Riley had said. Or a philosopher. A theologian. She considered flipping a coin.
Heads, my client goes down. Tails, my son does.
All of these momentary diversions as the mind worked at warp speed were preferable to a reality that she wanted so desperately to avoid.

She removed the tape from the Dictaphone, dropped it to the floor, and smashed it to pieces with her heel.

S
HELLY REMOVED THE
Daily Watch
from the newspaper stand at the bus stop. She skipped the front page and went straight to Metro, where she would expect to see coverage of the trial yesterday. She reacted audibly to the headline.

DEFENSE BLAMES DRUG DEALER IN MIROBALLI TRIAL

She laughed, because she didn’t know how else to respond, and touched her eyes. The reporter, not surprisingly, had missed the subtlety and just taken out portions of quotes from the cross-examination. Yes, she had alluded to Todavia’s guilt, but that was hardly the highlight.

Still, this was interesting. If this was how a reporter viewed the evidence presented yesterday, is that how the jurors saw it, too? For all of her posturing on Todavia’s reliability, did they walk away thinking she was accusing him of murder? She wondered if any of the jurors would violate their oath, intentionally or otherwise, and catch that headline. Would they have the same reaction Shelly did?

For someone whose ultimate goal here was to argue self-defense, this was not the impression she was trying to give.
Was
she still pleading self-defense?

God, what a case. She longed for the easy stuff again, the
school disciplinary cases, the civil lawsuits, even the juvenile stuff, where one’s assignment was largely straightforward.

She forced some breakfast down her throat in the court cafeteria below the courthouse. She drained two cartons of orange juice but barely touched the grapefruit or toast. She read the entire article only because it was possible that some of the jurors had done the same, and she wanted to know what might taint their opinions.

The reporter expressed surprise at the turning of the tables on Todavia, after the defense had notified the prosecution of a self-defense theory. The first day of trial was entertaining theater, said the writer, ranging from a damning opening statement to one particularly humorous episode to a tough cross-examination of the admitted drug dealer.

Little of substance, other than the reporter’s complete misreading of her strategy. She tapped the table and headed up to the lobby of the courthouse. She saw a camera crew and a news reporter pacing in circles. She had almost slipped past when the man called to her. She refused comment but she couldn’t exactly run; she was in a line for the metal detectors. Used to be, lawyers could flash their credentials and get past all that, but security-conscious officials would have none of that now. Everyone got checked.