Law of Attraction

by Allison Leotta

  “Okay.” He stood in the doorway for a second longer. Anna wished she could know what was going through his head. After a moment, he smiled at her politely. “Good night, Anna.”

  “Good night,” she whispered to his back.

  • • •

  Anna awoke to the feel of a hand patting her foot. She opened her eyes. Morning sunlight glinted through the cracks of the curtains. Olivia stood next to the bed, one hand on Anna’s foot and the other holding an African-American Barbie doll. She was still in her pink pj’s.

  “Hi,” the little girl said with a shy, flirty smile. “Will you pour me a bowl of cereal?”

  “Sure.”

  Anna sat up, getting her bearings. The sound of running water came from Jack’s bathroom. He must be taking a shower. Anna stood up. Olivia grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hallway. Anna laughed and stumbled along, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Olivia led her to the kitchen and pointed up to the cabinet that held the Cheerios. Anna poured some into a bowl with milk, and they sat down at the kitchen table. Olivia munched away happily. Anna looked around the kitchen and living room. There were few surfaces that weren’t covered with toys.

  “That’s nice.” Anna pointed to the Barbie Dream House set up next to the couch.

  “Thanks! Look at these!” Olivia popped out of her chair and ran to the living room, where she scooped up a few toys in her path: another Barbie, an electric toy drum, and a sticker book. She dumped the toys proudly on the kitchen table before taking her seat and another slurpy mouthful of cereal.

  “Wow. That’s good stuff.” Anna pressed a button on the drum, which made it play an island rhythm. Anna stood a Barbie on top of the drum, bouncing the doll up and down to the beat. “It’s a dance party,” Anna said.

  “Dance party!” Olivia cried. She grabbed the other Barbie and bounced it on top of the drum next to Anna’s doll. Olivia sang along as the dolls danced.

  When the music stopped, the little girl called, “More!” and pressed the button again. This time the drum played a catchy salsa tune. Olivia stood up and grabbed Anna’s hand. “Come on, it’s a dance party!” Anna held Olivia’s hand and twirled the giggling girl around the kitchen.

  When Anna looked up, she saw Jack leaning against the kitchen doorway. He wore his suit pants, a white undershirt, and a look of supreme amusement. She was suddenly cognizant of the fact that she was dancing around her boss’s kitchen in a tank top, shorts, and bare feet. She froze, but Olivia ran over and grabbed her father’s hand. “Come on, Daddy! It’s a dance party! Dance!”

  Jack stepped into the kitchen and easily obeyed, moving his feet expertly to the salsa beat, spinning his daughter around and around. Anna laughed and clapped her hands with delight. Jack smiled at her as Olivia passed under his arm. It was the biggest smile she’d ever seen on his face.

  An hour later, Jack and Anna emerged from the house, lawyers again. He wore a dark suit and tie; she had changed into the gray skirt suit she’d brought. Her clothes from last night were stuffed in her backpack, slung over one shoulder. Olivia stood next to Luisa on the porch and waved at them enthusiastically. “Bye, Daddy! Love you! Bye, Anna! I hope you beat the bad guys!”

  “Me too!” Anna turned back to wave at the adorable girl. Jack smiled as they walked down the sidewalk toward the Takoma Metro station. He looked at Anna’s suit.

  “You don’t have to come to the office today. You can take the day off.”

  “I’ve never taken a sick day. I’m not going to give D’marco the satisfaction of starting now.”

  Jack nodded. He would have been the same way.

  “So, when are you auditioning for Dancing with the Stars?” she teased.

  “Don’t get me started, Britney.”

  “Britney? Come on. I was going for Madonna, circa 1992.”

  “Were you even born then?”

  “I was eight,” she said, feigning indignation.

  “I graduated from high school that year.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “Oh, did they have high schools back then?”

  “Mercy.” He put up his hands in laughing surrender.

  “Now that I’ve got you on the ropes”—her voice turned serious—“let’s talk shop.”

  He nodded.

  “D’marco didn’t come to my apartment last night to hurt me,” she explained. “He wanted to tell me something.” She described what D’marco said about the night of Laprea’s murder. “He admitted that he hit her, but he swore the last he saw of her, she was alive and running off to see a cop.”

  Jack shrugged. “So that’s going to be his defense? I’ve seen defendants blame the police, but that’s ridiculous.”

  “I hear you. But he walked away from an ambulance after he’d been shot just to tell me that. That’s probably why he was calling and writing letters.”

  “Anna, every man in the D.C. Jail swears he’s innocent. Denial is a natural human instinct. You could have him committing the crime on videotape and he’d tell you it was his evil twin.”

  “Okay—but—what if Laprea was seeing a cop? What if it was Brad Green?”

  “Green?” Jack looked at her incredulously. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head on something last night?”

  “I know, I know. But hear me out. Laprea was seeing somebody else, right? She was pregnant with another man’s child when she died. So, who’s the other man? Rose didn’t know of anyone else that Laprea was dating—but she did say that Green stopped by the house a lot. And when we visited . . . Green knew where they kept everything in the kitchen, he was all friendly with the kids. Rose said Green was always ‘looking after’ the family. What if it was more than that?”

  “I don’t think Green was Laprea’s type,” Jack said gingerly.

  “Stranger things have happened. . . .”

  “True. But if Laprea was dating Green, why did she keep it a secret from her mother?”

  “Maybe Laprea didn’t want to deal with the fallout unless the relationship really became serious. Maybe it would be controversial to date a cop. Maybe Rose would disapprove of the interracial aspect of it.”

  Anna glanced at Jack, gauging his reaction to her last comment. She’d found herself thinking about interracial relationships a fair amount lately, wondering if it was still an issue for anyone who lived in a modern, cosmopolitan city. Wondering, more specifically, if it was an issue for someone like Jack Bailey, or his friends and family. But Jack’s face remained neutral and he didn’t respond to her last point.

  “Come on, Anna. First Davis wants us to believe he was home all that night with his grandmother, playing video games. Now he wants to blame the police for killing this woman that an eyewitness saw him beating. Gimme a break. No jury’s gonna buy that.”

  “But the way D’marco said it—I think he really believed it.”

  “No offense, but you were hardly in a position to judge his credibility. That was a traumatic situation.”

  Anna knew Jack was right. But something about Green had nagged at her from the beginning—and made D’marco’s story ring true. She couldn’t just let it go.

  “Well, how about this,” she proposed. “What if we just get a paternity test? Let’s see if Green is the father of Laprea’s baby. Then we can put it to rest one way or the other.”

  “What?” Jack was looking at her as if she’d just claimed to have seen Bigfoot.

  “If it turns out Green is the father, then we’ve uncovered the truth, and we’ll deal with it, hard as it might be on our case. That’s our job. If it turns out to be nothing, great. It just makes the case stronger. It shows that the government investigated D’marco’s allegations, we took steps to confirm or deny it. It shows we’re acting in good faith.”

  “That’s exactly wrong,” Jack countered. “If we DNA-test Green, it will just suggest we might believe Davis’s bullshit story. And when it comes back negative, that won’t disprove Davis’s story, unless you plan on DNA-testing every other police officer on
the force. Are you going to swab every officer on the Metropolitan Police Department? And how would you even do that? With thirty-five hundred search warrants? Based on a street rumor Davis claims he heard? You don’t have probable cause for any of them—you don’t even have PC for Green.”

  Anna nodded. It was a valid point.

  “Look, Anna,” Jack said gently. “We know who did it—and so does his attorney. There’s no way Nick Wagner would be trying to plead his client guilty if he had any kind of a viable defense—especially one involving a police scandal. Wagner would be all over that. If there were any truth to that story, he’d be pounding the table, demanding to interview police officers about where they were the night of Laprea’s death, and leaking it all to the press. He’d make a whole sideshow of it. But he’s not. He’s telling D’marco to plead guilty. That tells you how meritless this claim is. I understand you’re shaken up by what happened, but don’t get suckered into wasting your time and energy on this. You have enough to do without chasing down Davis’s fantasies that his own lawyer can’t be bothered with.”

  Anna walked silently next to Jack. She had also wondered why Nick wasn’t making a big deal of the police angle, since his client apparently told him about it. She concluded that he didn’t know what she knew—he hadn’t seen how friendly and familiar Green had been at the Johnson house. He had no reason to suspect Green.

  She considered Jack’s arguments—they were all fair points and she understood his reasoning. But she just couldn’t get the possibility out of her mind.

  26

  When they got to the office, Jack and Anna were greeted like celebrities. As Anna badged her way through the lobby turnstiles, someone among the morning bustle cried out, “There she is!” The entire lobby seemed to turn toward her.

  “Hey, Anna!” exclaimed a vaguely familiar lawyer from the district court section. They’d never spoken before. “How’re you doing?”

  “Okay,” she replied cautiously, walking to the elevator bank.

  “Good for you, for coming in today,” said a secretary carrying a McDonald’s bag.

  “Um, thanks.”

  Anna turned to Jack, wondering how everyone had found out. He shrugged. They rode the elevator up, and he walked her protectively to her office. Grace was already there, poring over a newspaper spread on her desk. When Anna walked in, Grace sprang out of her seat.

  “Hey, can I get your autograph?” Grace hopped over the files scattered on the floor and grabbed Anna into a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered.

  “How’d you hear?” Anna asked when Grace let her go.

  “You’re famous.”

  Grace pointed to the front page of the Washington Post’s Metro section on her desk. “Federal Prosecutor Attacked in Her Home,” the headline read. Anna picked it up with astonishment. Jack stood behind her and they skimmed it together. As Jack read the paper over Anna’s shoulder, Grace noticed how close together they were standing and arched her eyebrows.

  The Post had a picture of Anna’s house, with D’marco’s mug shot and her law school yearbook picture inset in it. The article hit all the highlights, talking about how D’marco escaped from the ambulance, forced his way into her home, but was caught before anyone was hurt. The paper didn’t mention that the first cavalry that came galloping in was Jack’s ragtag group of off-duty cops. Anna tossed the paper back onto Grace’s desk.

  “That was fast,” Anna said.

  “But not surprising,” Jack replied. “There was a lot of activity on the police scanners. This is big local news. There are murders every week, but a full-fledged prison escape and attack on a prosecutor only happens every few decades.” Jack looked at his watch. “I have to be in court soon.” He turned to Anna. “D’marco will be arraigned on the new charges this morning. Escape, Assault, B&E, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Should I come, too?”

  “Only if you’re ready for your close-up. There will be press.” She shook her head. “Then stay here. You obviously won’t be assigned to the new case—you’re the victim of it.”

  “Right.”

  “Now, I want you to take it easy today. Nothing more strenuous than redacting witness statements. Grace, I’m counting on you to make sure she relaxes.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible,” Grace said. “But I’ll give it my best shot.”

  Jack smiled and walked out.

  Grace ceremoniously cleared a path through her piles of paper and Jimmy Choos, and Anna sank gratefully into her desk chair. Grace was dying to hear the details, so Anna told her everything that had happened last night. Grace oohed and aahed over the story. It sounded a lot better in the telling than it had felt in the happening. Anna realized she had her first great war story.

  “So,” Anna concluded. “After all the dust cleared, I was left wondering if Officer Green might be the father of Laprea’s child.”

  “Girl, that cop is a dog,” Grace said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he put the moves on Laprea and her mother.” Anna was heartened that Grace didn’t think she was crazy for suspecting Green. “But you’re not concentrating on the most interesting part of your story. You were a modern-day damsel in distress. Only your Prince Charming rode in to save you in a Yellow Cab.”

  Anna felt her cheeks reddening.

  “So . . .” Grace looked at Anna coyly. “How are things going with Jack?”

  “Good.” Anna could put on a neutral voice even if she couldn’t control the blood flow to her cheeks. “He’s an excellent lawyer.”

  “I know that, my dear. What I’m asking is: How are things going with Jack?”

  “Okay, Miss Nosy Pants. If you must know—”

  “Yes?” Grace leaned forward.

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  “Oh, come on! A good-looking single man, a beautiful single woman, hours spent alone together, and . . . nothing?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is it because he’s your boss?”

  “Yes, it’s because he’s my boss! Haven’t you watched the sexual harassment video? He’s a supervisor. I’m not even allowed to give him a gift worth more than ten dollars.”

  “Actually, he’s not your boss,” Grace corrected her. “Carla is. Evaluations, promotions, everything goes through Carla. Correct?”

  “Actually, that’s . . . that’s true.”

  “He doesn’t have any supervisory authority over you.”

  “Hm. Maybe you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. Now, you might catch a little flack from the sisters for taking a good black man off the market. But it won’t be too bad, I would think. And I can give you some cover there.”

  “Okay, enough matchmaking!” Anna protested, laughing. “Remember, I’m the victim of a crime. I’m traumatized. I need a seaweed wrap and a Swedish massage, not an interrogation about my love life.”

  “That’s my girl!” Grace said proudly; she’d introduced Anna to the concept of seaweed wraps.

  Grace picked up the phone, dialed a number she knew by heart, and made an appointment at the Red Door Spa for the two of them that weekend. When she hung up, she handed Anna a Post-it note with their appointment time written on it.

  “Just let me know if anything develops,” Grace said. “Personally, I would love to see it happen—you and Jack are two of the best people I know.”

  “Thanks, Grace.”

  Anna loved her friend fiercely in that moment.

  At nine o’clock, Grace had to go to court. Anna sat back and gazed around her empty office. It was the first time she’d been truly alone since D’marco had pushed his way into her house. She felt less shaken than she’d thought she would. Being at Jack’s last night had taken the edge off of her jitters.

  She pulled out some witness statements and a thick black marker. She would black out the witnesses’ home addresses and personal information before turning the papers over to the defense. Redacting this kind of paperwork was an important part of protecting w
itnesses, but it was mindless work. She knew Jack had her doing it today to give her a break.

  But she couldn’t concentrate on the work. Her mind kept going back to D’marco’s words, and Officer Green. It just wasn’t sitting right.

  Okay, she decided after she read the same police form three times without processing it, she would do a little research. There was no harm in that.

  She got up and quietly shut the office door. It took only a few minutes on the Department of Justice intranet to find the phone number for the FBI’s DNA laboratory. A brisk female voice answered. Anna explained that she was an AUSA, and that she needed to talk to a DNA analyst. The line was transferred, and a man with a nasal voice answered.

  “Hi,” Anna started, then paused. She had never dealt with DNA before—it was too expensive and complicated to be used in misdemeanor cases. She wasn’t sure where to start. “I have a case where I want to find out who’s the father of a child. Actually, the father of a fetus, an aborted fetus. How would I go about doing that?”

  The analyst explained that Anna would need to send samples from the fetus, the mother, and the suspected father to the FBI laboratory. They would determine everyone’s DNA profile. Then the profiles would all be compared, and the FBI could tell to a near certainty whether the man had fathered the child.

  “The FBI already determined the DNA profile for the mother and the fetus,” Anna explained.

  “If we already have the mother and the child’s profile, then you’ll just need a sample from the possible father.”

  “A blood sample?”

  “No. Paternity tests used to require blood. But these days, we just need a buccal swabbing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a fancy way of saying you run a Q-tip over the inner cheek. To collect saliva. If we have the man’s saliva, we have his DNA.”

  “And how long does the whole process take?”

  “There’s a bit of a backlog. I’d say three to four months.”

  That sounded long to Anna. They seemed to get it done a lot faster on CSI.

  Anna thanked the analyst and hung up. She sat back in her chair and gazed out the window, chewing the end of her pen while she thought. How could she get a buccal swabbing from Green, without a warrant? Anna’s mind raced through the possibilities, all of which seemed unlikely. Then she took the pen out of her mouth and held it in front of her face, rolling it around in her fingers as she studied it. A patina of spittle glistened on the cap.