Jury of One

by David Ellis

  “I know, Rena. God, I understand.” Defending Alex from the offices of CAP could wipe out the entire project.

  “A lot of people could handle this case,” Rena offered. “You always said you didn’t like handling criminal stuff, anyway.”

  Shelly nodded agreeably, but she had only one option here, and there was no point in delaying the inevitable. “I have to represent him, Rena.”

  “Shelly, we don’t have a choice. It’s not like we can ask the I.R.S., ‘pretty please.’”

  She looked at her desk. “I would never ask CAP to be a part of this. Not now.”

  She looked up at her colleague, who was getting the picture. “No,” Rena said.

  Shelly shrugged.

  “Shelly, this is crazy. You’re going to—to quit? So you can be this kid’s lawyer?”

  What could Shelly say? Certainly not the truth.

  “Oh, God, you’re really considering this.” Rena came over to Shelly, sat on her desk. “We need you here. This is—this is what you were meant to do.”

  “I feel like this is something I have to do.” Shelly reached for Rena’s arm. “I know it sounds crazy. But he trusts me. He needs me.”

  Nine years working for the rights of children. Nine years working with law students helping disabled and emotionally disturbed kids, finding ways to keep troubled children in schools when no one else cared. Nine years and it was over.

  Rena continued her protests, refusing to accept Shelly’s position. But the more Shelly thought about it, the more her conviction grew. Who else but Alex’s mother would be willing to go to the wall for him? Passion, Paul Riley had said, and he was never more right than now.

  “I’ll be gone by the end of the day,” Shelly said.

  20

  News

  SHE APPROACHES THE door of the study in much the same way she once did as a young girl, after her bedtime, eavesdropping on conversations not suitable for the ears of little Shelly. Politics mostly, gun control, the death penalty, taxes. She recalls several of them, one in particular where her father explained the evils of abortion to his two sons, Edgar and Thomas. That was back during Daddy’s second term as the chief prosecutor for the county. Shelly herself, at age nine then, had read the newspaper accounts. Rankin County Attorney Langdon Trotter had led the charge of protestors outside the Anthony Center for Women’s Health Care, which had brought the option of abortion to the downstate county for the first time since the Supreme Court had cleared the way. Her father hadn’t succeeded in stopping the clinic, not through protests and not through lawsuits.

  Only three days ago, Lang Trotter’s only daughter, Shelly, had walked into that very health center, secure in the notion that her father would never know what had happened to her. But now he will have to know. There is no hiding it. She is pregnant and she is going to stay pregnant. She is going to have the child. She has few answers. She doesn’t know how she will manage her next year of school, much less the rest of her education. She doesn’t know if she will keep the baby. She doesn’t know the gender. She doesn’t even know if the baby is healthy. These things she will figure out with time. The first step comes now, telling her parents.

  As she approaches the study, she hears bustling, drawers opening and closing, her mother and father talking with animation. She walks in and sees files pulled off the bookshelves, piles of paper on the normally orderly desk. Her father is leafing through papers.

  They turn and see Shelly. There is a glow to both of them. Her mother, Abigail, looking so youthful in a sweatshirt and her cropped blond hair, her light green eyes beaming with pride and excitement. Her father, in a T-shirt that exposes his large shoulders and arms, his hair slightly disordered.

  It is a Saturday morning, just past nine. The phone rang thirty minutes ago. Now she knows who it was and what they said. The top brass in the state Republican Party has had several conversations with County Attorney Trotter over the last several months. The current officeholder, a Republican, has privately given notice that he would not seek re-election. Now is the time, in June 1986, to begin the process of building support. By early 1987, candidates will be creating something called “exploratory committees” to begin their runs for the February primaries in 1988. The statewide party is disciplined, Daddy has told her, and they want to get behind a candidate to avoid a messy primary.

  Thus, the phone call. Shelly looks at the documents her parents were gathering. Tax returns, financial documents. Vetting, something Shelly has known well as the daughter of a politician since she was a small child. Checking out a candidate’s background before endorsing him.

  “We might as well tell her, Lang,” said her mother. Then to Shelly: “Honey, you’re looking at this state’s next attorney general.”

  Her mother squeals and hugs Daddy, rubs his arm. Her father smiles and blushes but quickly fixes on Shelly. The steel-blue eyes narrow and focus on her.

  “What’s wrong, pistol?” he asks.

  21

  Different

  RONNIE MASTERS ANSWERED the door on the first knock. He wore jeans with no socks or shoes, a purple sweatshirt with a towel over one shoulder. Didn’t appear to have visited a barbershop since Shelly last saw him, with thick strands of dark hair kicking out on all sides of a reversed baseball cap.

  He was holding Alex’s eighteen-month-old daughter, Angela. He was the babysitter while Mary Ellen, Angela’s mother, was at work. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, nodding to the toddler on his arm. “I thought you might wanna meet her.”

  She did. She had thought about Angela—her granddaughter; she was thirty-four and she had a granddaughter—constantly since Alex had broken the news. This little creature, who stared at Shelly with gigantic amber eyes, a pacifier stuck in her mouth, was her blood.

  Ronnie moved back to let her in. Shelly extended her arms and Ronnie handed her Angela. She took after her mother, Mary Ellen, whom Shelly hadn’t met but had seen in photos. A tiny, soft face with enlarged brown eyes, flyaway dark hair standing on end in some spots. She was wearing a tiny pair of beige overalls.

  Shelly lowered her head and nudged her nose against Angela’s. The toddler was at the grabbing stage, and she took temporary hold of Shelly’s nose. “Hello, little Angela.” She looked at Ronnie.

  Ronnie gave her some space. He had called her to discuss the case, but he could see she wanted a good long look at the newest member of her family.

  She held the baby close. Angela, with those faraway eyes, seemed content to be held by her. Shelly spent all of her time with children and teens, but little with infants. Still, it felt right. Better, certainly, than she had felt with Alex after he dropped the bomb on her. She’d been speechless. With an infant, there was little need for the intelligible word.

  She sat on the couch with Angela and rocked her, made noises with her lips, tickled her. When she wanted down, Shelly watched her stumble around the living room like a drunken sailor, grabbing things at random, throwing them or handing them to Shelly. What an amazing thing a child was. It unleashed such an outpouring in Shelly that all of the emotions canceled each other out, and she was left with utter astonishment. This girl was her blood. This one, no matter what else happened, would have a future.

  Ronnie wandered back into the living room after a while. He walked over to the table by the couch. For the first time, Shelly noticed the open scrapbook. Photographs of Ronnie and Alex at various times throughout their lives. Ronnie had been going through it. That was the sort of thing you did when you lost a loved one, cling to the memories. She felt a pang of remorse for both of the boys.

  Ronnie slid the scrapbook under the couch and looked at Shelly. “I’m going nuts here,” he said. “I gotta do something. I gotta help. You need any help? Organizing or making phone calls or—something?”

  Shelly bounced the baby on her lap. For starters, she could use a salary and an office. She’d said her abrupt goodbyes to the people at CAP only two hours ago. Two boxes of items from the office sat in h
er car.

  “I’m sure I will need that kind of help,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to work this all out? With the feds and all?”

  “That’s kind of complicated, Ron.”

  “Too complicated for a kid.” He clenched his jaw. He seemed to share some of Alex’s attitude. She had certainly heard that Ronnie was a smart one, academically accomplished. A scholarship, Alex had said, and Ronnie was only a junior.

  “Well, all right,” she conceded. “I think the federal government is reluctant to discuss the matter with the county prosecutors. Why, I’m not entirely sure.”

  “Probably think they’re in on it with the cops.”

  She cocked her head. That was a rather astute observation, she had to concede. “In any event, they are very worried about this. I imagine I can secure something favorable with the federal government, on their end. But frankly, a few years in a federal penitentiary is small potatoes compared to murder.”

  Ronnie nodded. He watched Angela, who was getting antsy. Ronnie lifted her off the floor and walked her around the room. “Take care of the federal problem,” he said quietly as he kissed Angela’s cheek and hummed to her. He seemed to be accustomed to caring for her. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Tell me what you mean by that,” she said.

  “I’m going to put her down.” Ronnie walked out of the room with Angela in tow.

  I’ll take care of the rest. What did Ronnie mean by that?

  He returned to the room, wiping his hands with the towel. “Never washed my hands so many times in my life as I have since she was born.”

  “Where’s your mother?” Shelly asked.

  He pursed his lips, indicating he didn’t know. “She’s usually out at night. Some bar or another. She’s more a social drunk. Likes to go out and get bombed, sometimes meets a guy. She doesn’t drink during the day. She has a job and the two—it hasn’t interfered.”

  “Is she around Angela much?”

  “Nah. If she’s had even one drink, I keep her away. So what do you think of my idea?”

  “I want to know what you mean.”

  “The drug thing,” he said. “The stuff with the feds. I can’t help him there. Get him off that, and I’ll get him off the murder charge.”

  Shelly felt a charge, as much physically as emotionally; she was on the verge of collapse. “Explain yourself,” she demanded.

  He sat down next to her. “I’ll say whatever I have to say.”

  Shelly looked at this boy, the earnest expression, and believed him. “Alex says you have a scholarship.”

  Ronnie seemed thrown by the change of topics. “Yeah. Legislative scholarship.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. “From who?” Each member of the state legislature was given a few scholarships a year that they could award to constituents. As she understood it, there were no fixed criteria, and she knew that several of the representatives and senators in the city gave them out based on need.

  “Sandoval,” he answered. Shelly had met State Representative Santiago Sandoval. A good man. She had discussed legislation with him to reform the state’s school code, the disciplinary section. The bill had passed the Democratic-controlled senate, which was run by a city boy, Senate President Grant Tully—the guy Daddy beat in the governor’s race. But the House was still Republican—most of its members were not elected from the city and had little use for it—and the legislation never even got out of committee.

  “Going to Mansbury,” Ronnie said. Mansbury College was a liberal arts school at the western boundary of the county. “Keeps me close to home. I can commute.”

  She liked this kid. She liked all children, she supposed, always tried to find the brightness in their soul. It was always there, somewhere, but with Ronnie, you didn’t have to look too hard. He was doing it the way everyone told him. He wasn’t bemoaning his fate, growing up in a single-parent house where the single parent was a drunk, attending a school where he was a minority. He was studying hard, working a job at the grocery store, planning a life. And planning, no doubt, to take the ones he loved with him.

  “Well, Ronnie, I imagine you had to work pretty hard to get where you are. You are a year away from college with a bright future. About the only way you can blow it now is to start playing games with the legal system. And with me. Perjury is a crime, pal—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that shit.” Ronnie left the couch. He pointed to the adjoining room. “That little girl’s daddy is sitting in jail right now because he was trying to support her. You got that? You think I’m gonna let that little girl lose her dad?”

  “He broke the law,” she said, immediately regretting the comment.

  “At least he tried,” he answered, his voice rising. “At least he was there for her.”

  She sat back in the couch as if a spear had pierced her heart. Apparently Ronnie had been in on the secret as well all along. Or maybe Alex had talked to him today.

  Ronnie, for all his frustration, seemed to immediately sense the impact of his words. He raised his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No, I—it’s all right.” She shifted in her seat, composed herself. “You’re right, actually.”

  Ronnie returned to his seat. “Really, I didn’t—”

  “The point I wanted to make, Ronnie, is that if you think you can lie to protect Alex, you’re wrong. All that will happen is that both of you will go to jail. Then where’s Angela? Without a father or an uncle.” She exhaled slowly. Better to focus on the case.

  “Got it.” His missteps had quieted him.

  “Just—please. Just tell me the truth.”

  He considered her for a moment, then threw up his hands. “Alex was selling coke to some asshole at work. Some young rich guy with so much money to spend, he can pick up a couple grams of blow on the weekends and get wired. I think there were two guys. He sold, like, five grams a week, I think. I didn’t like it but he didn’t exactly ask my permission. I said, just keep it away from the house. Which he did. You can ask the feds that, because they came through here like a tornado. Turned the place upside down.”

  “The F.B.I. searched your house.”

  “Yep. Alex kept the stuff in his car, see.”

  Right. She knew that. “Go on.”

  “I knew he had this thing with a cop.” Ronnie adjusted in his seat. “The guy had figured out Alex’s deal, I guess. He wanted some off the top.”

  “Alex told you about this,” she confirmed.

  Ronnie nodded. “Made his situation tougher. He had to sell a little more to clear the same profit.” He shrugged. “That’s what happens when you do that shit. I told him.”

  Shelly had, too. “Did you know the F.B.I. was interested in the cop? Miroballi?”

  “Yeah. That was Alex’s ticket. Only way he could stay out of prison.”

  “And did you—did Alex ever indicate to you that the cop, Miroballi, had gotten wise to the F.B.I. operation? Or that Miroballi seemed suspicious? Started to act differently? Threatened Alex? Anything like that?”

  Ronnie followed her questions closely, leaning in. He paused. “Did Alex say he told me about that?”

  “I’m asking you, Ronnie.”

  He scratched his chin. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “You’re saying self-defense, so you need proof that Miroballi had figured out that Alex was working for the feds.”

  She had never said the words self-defense to Ronnie. She felt a burn in her chest. “Ronnie, you and Alex can’t talk about this case when you visit him.”

  “He’s my bro—”

  “They can listen to you.” She touched his knee to deflate her words. “You aren’t his lawyer, Ronnie. There is no confidentiality. They can listen in on your conversations. Legally. You aren’t his lawyer and, technically, you aren’t family, either. You have to watch your every word in there.”

  Shelly wasn’t entirely sure that Ronn
ie was disqualified from familial confidentiality. He was the son of Alex’s legal guardian. Maybe that would qualify. That was a legal question that required research into the Department of Corrections regulations. Easier to play it safe and tell the boys to keep their mouths shut. “If you want to discuss something, do it through me,” she advised. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” Ronnie, she could see, was not accustomed to feeling dumb.

  The front door swung open. Shelly recognized Elaine Masters from the one time they had met. Shelly put her at midfifties but had to discount her estimate for the effects of alcohol. Laney appeared to be losing the battle with age, and perhaps with life. Her eyes were bloodshot and sad. Her cheeks had dropped considerably. Her hair was a bad color-job of red. The smell of alcohol spread immediately through the room. She cast a look at Shelly.

  “Who’re you?” she managed.

  Shelly got to her feet and offered a hand. “We’ve met, Mrs. Masters. I’m Shel—”

  “Oh, yeah.” She waved at Shelly and staggered past her. Ronnie was on his feet and standing in front of the room that served as Angela’s nursery. He shifted his feet, as if he were guarding her in a game of one-on-one. “What’s your problem?” she asked him.

  Ronnie took her arm and directed her away from the makeshift nursery, toward the hallway. “Sleep it off, Laney,” he said gently.

  Laney wrested her arm free. “Tell me what to do,” she mumbled, but she kept moving.

  Shelly glanced at her watch. It was close to eight o’clock in the evening.

  When Laney had made it down the hallway, Ronnie looked at Shelly. His face was flushed. “She just needs to blow off some steam after work. She’s got a job as a dock clerk at a parcel service. She got promoted last year. It’s just, after work, sometimes she—”

  “Ronnie, it’s none of my business.” She raised her hands. “Really. I should get going.”

  Ronnie looked down the hallway. Shelly, from the doorway, could only hear the sounds of his mother banging a door. “Okay, well, I’ll see you later,” he said.