Jury of One

by David Ellis

  “No. I can’t. For all I know, it was the cop that went first.”

  Good. Good.

  “You didn’t see a second gun on the floor of the alley, did you?”

  “No. There wasn’t a second gun that I could see.”

  “So if someone were to say that Alex had dropped a first gun—in an attempt to ‘trick’ Officer Miroballi, let’s say”—because this was exactly what Morphew had said in his opening statement—“you would say that this wasn’t true.”

  “It wasn’t true,” said Ronnie. “There was no second gun. Not then.”

  She watched him. Obviously, his testimony was excellent so far. He returned the stare with a life to his face that hadn’t existed on direct examination. Was he trying to tell her something?

  No, she could not trust this boy. This child of hers.

  “You never saw drugs in Alex’s possession during the time you were in the alley, did you?”

  “No. Alex? No, he ran right past me and I didn’t see anything fall out.”

  “Did you see the drugs at all?”

  “No. I told you what I saw. I saw the cop and Alex with their guns. Alex shot him in self-defense.”

  Dan Morphew leapt to his feet. “Objection, your Honor. There is no basis for that testimony. It is a legal conclusion and it—there are no facts to support it. No foundation. This witness”—Morphew wagged a finger at him—“this witness said he saw nothing until the moment the defendant went for his gun. He said he knew nothing of a relationship between Officer Miroballi and the defendant until later.”

  “That’s true,” said Ronnie.

  The judge held out a hand toward Ronnie. “Son, there is no question before you. The objection is sustained. The testimony relating to ‘self-defense’ is stricken.”

  The blood had rushed to Dan Morphew’s face. It was not simply a reaction to an adverse piece of testimony, Shelly assumed. It was the fact that Morphew himself had sponsored this witness, and now he might be heading south on the prosecutor.

  She was more interested in Ronnie. He had readily agreed with Morphew’s objection. And now he was looking to the side of Shelly. She turned, followed Ronnie’s line of vision to Alex, who was shaking his head slowly with a cold stare. He was saying no without words.

  Alex caught Shelly’s eyes on him and sighed. He dropped his head and continued to shake it, now more furiously.

  What was going on here? Was she being baited by Ronnie?

  Shelly took a step toward Alex and then stopped. She had conferred enough with Alex, who had stymied her every move. She was going with her gut. She was betting that Ronnie Masters would help Alex.

  “Mr. Masters,” she said, “you said before that you had never met Officer Miroballi. But did you know of him?”

  Ronnie’s chest heaved. “I knew he was a cop. I knew he had cops for older brothers, too.”

  Shelly’s eyes narrowed. She looked again at Alex, who stared at the table. Then back at Ronnie. Her mind raced as if her life flashed before her eyes. Ronnie had been the one who advised her to get rid of the federal case against Alex—because, she realized, he knew that the truth of what happened, when borne out at trial, would not be what Alex had told the F.B.I., would expose Alex as a liar to the F.B.I. She pictured Ronnie going to Alex last night, full of bluster, against her repeated warnings not to talk in that interview room because the government could listen—

  Her mouth opened, ever so slightly. A soft moan of recognition escaped from her throat.

  Okay. Ronnie had known exactly what he was doing last night when he marched in there. He wanted to be recorded. He wanted to get the county attorney’s attention.

  Why?

  She looked at Alex. It was like a tennis match for her now.

  Alex hadn’t let Ronnie say something that Ronnie had wanted very much, apparently, to say. Ronnie had a story to tell, and he didn’t want anyone stopping him. Not Alex, not Shelly, not anyone. So he got the prosecution to put him on the stand and give him this opportunity, in open court, where nothing could be reversed.

  “I’m sorry,” Ronnie whispered to Shelly, under his breath.

  The judge leaned forward. “The witness will only answer questions put to him.”

  Shelly nodded. “What did you know about Officer Ray Miroballi and his brothers, Ronnie?”

  “His brothers covered for him, Shelly. His older brothers were cops.”

  “Objection!” Morphew was on his feet again. “There is no evidence that the deceased officer has done anything wrong in this case, your Honor. In fact, the only testimony has been that Officer Miroballi was not involved”—Morphew stopped himself. “Judge, we object to the lack of foundation.”

  “I will sustain that objection. Ms. Trotter, I realize that you are entitled to some leeway here, but I want foundation laid before there are any more outbursts like this. Lay the foundation. And Mr. Masters”—he looked down at Ronnie—“you will only answer questions put to you.”

  Shelly held her breath. “Ronnie, do you have evidence that Officer Raymond Miroballi committed a crime that is related to this case?”

  “I do,” he said carefully.

  “Related to this case?”

  “Very much so. And I have more than evidence. I have proof. I have absolute, total proof.”

  “With your own eyes?” she asked, following the judge’s admonition.

  A sound came from his throat. Not quite a laugh. “With my own eyes,” he said. “My own nose. My face. My hair. My arms and legs.”

  She kept her eyes on him. His eyes. His nose. His mouth. His—

  “No,” she heard herself say.

  She took a step back. She brought a hand to her mouth. Of all things, she thought of Governor Langdon Trotter in the midst of a re-election campaign that was his to lose.

  “Ray Miroballi is my father,” Ronnie said.

  Shelly made an effort to turn away, toward the defense table, to look for her chair as if it were a life-preserver.

  “He raped you, Shelly, and they covered the whole thing up for him.”

  She became vaguely aware of Alex rushing from the table toward her, then everything turning upside-down.

  And then everything turning black.

  73

  Refuge

  DAN MORPHEW WALKED into the office within the judge’s chambers, a room typically reserved for the clerks and interns who worked in the state courts. Shelly was seated on a couch, her elbows on her knees.

  He handed her a glass of water. “Drink,” he said.

  She accepted it from him and he was right, it did help somewhat, the cool water in her mouth.

  It was early in the afternoon. Several hours had passed since Ronnie had testified in open court. Shelly had been taken into the judge’s chambers after fainting, where she rested for over an hour. Finally, when she had regained some measure of strength, the judge had summoned Ronnie Masters and his lawyer into his chambers, along with Morphew and Shelly.

  Ronnie’s public defender had freely offered a blood test for his client to confirm that he was linked by DNA to Ray Miroballi. Nobody in the room seemed to doubt this fact, but Ronnie submitted to a blood test nonetheless. Shelly also agreed to do so tomorrow. And the state had plenty of Ray Miroballi’s blood for a comparison.

  Dan Morphew looked like he had gone fifteen rounds with a heavyweight. Shelly probably looked like a zombie. And the judge, who on some level probably appreciated the courtroom theater, nonetheless did not enjoy spectacles during the most prestigious case he had handled in his short tenure as a judge. He told the lawyers that they had tomorrow off. The obvious explanation for this would be concern for Shelly’s health. A lawyer who passed out during trial was probably dehydrated, malnourished, and sleep-deprived to the point of exhaustion. But Shelly figured the judge wanted the parties to have the chance to talk, to perhaps make this case go away.

  Morphew took a seat at a desk near the couch where Shelly was sitting. It was just the two of them now. The
judge was in his chambers. He had dismissed the jury for today and tomorrow.

  “You feeling better?” he asked.

  She took another sip of the water, made an equivocal noise as she drank.

  “You didn’t know any of that, did you, Shelly?”

  She set the cold glass against her forehead briefly, then down on the floor.

  “I found out about two weeks ago that Ronnie was my son,” she said. “And I talked to Alex about it. But that is the only piece of information that I knew.”

  “I need a beer.” Morphew had his tie yanked down, his sleeves rolled. He was enjoying the refuge of the judge’s chambers as much as Shelly. A carnivorous media awaited the lawyers just outside the courtroom doors, and neither of them was anxious to venture through the crowd. Morphew looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Well, Counselor, whatever happens here, I can say this much. I’m sorry that happened to you when you were a kid, and I’m even sorrier that you had to have this on public display.”

  “Thanks.” She looked at her watch. “Where’s Ronnie?”

  “Back in lockup,” he said, which made sense. Ronnie’s testimony was not completed, so he was still being held as a material witness.

  “Your client is downstairs in holding,” he added.

  She got up tentatively and stretched her arms. “What are we going to do here, Dan?”

  Morphew chewed on his lip a moment, shaking his head slowly. “Miroballi was trying to cover up a dirty secret? Christ, I don’t know. Sounds like neither one of us got it right.”

  “Let’s end this now, Dan. This isn’t a drug case. This isn’t about a cop. This is about a man trying to bury his past.”

  “Aren’t we all.” Morphew lifted himself from the chair, wincing with the bad back. “Listen, Shelly, I’m sympathetic. But you can’t expect me to drop this.”

  “I can. I do.”

  “Then you’re not thinking this through.”

  Morphew’s estimate was probably right. If Elliot Raycroft simply dropped the charges at this point, the media would assume that Governor Trotter had intervened. That would be no help to Lang Trotter in his race for reelection, nor would it be something that Raycroft would want the voters remembering two years from now when he re-upped. Under these circumstances, the county attorney actually would have to take a tougher stand than he otherwise might. That was the irony of having a powerful father. Special treatment, perhaps, but not always more favorable.

  “A cop still died,” he added.

  “A cop who committed rape. You get those blood tests back, it’s absolute proof. You have indisputable evidence of statutory rape. And Miroballi knew that, Dan. That’s why this happened. You can sell this.”

  Morphew stared off in the distance as she spoke. “Your client was carrying a weapon. And he was probably extorting Miroballi.”

  “And he’s a juvenile. Those things won’t transfer.”

  “I know, Shelly. I know. Let me see what can be done. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.” He reached the door and turned back to her. “You really kicked Todavia in the gut?”

  “I sure did.”

  Morphew thought about that for a moment, chuckled to himself, and left the room.

  74

  Why

  THE JUDGE ALLOWED Shelly to take the back elevator down to the holding cells, so she was able to avoid the feasting reporters outside the courtroom. Alex Baniewicz was lying on the thin cushion in the holding cell. He bounced up when he saw her.

  “How are you?” He reached her and embraced her.

  “I’ve got my sea legs back,” she said, patting his back. She pushed him back so she was holding his shoulders at arm’s length.

  “Why you?” she asked. “Why you and not Ronnie? Coming to see me at the law school? Confronting Miroballi? Why did Ronnie send you?”

  His expression softened, as if in embarrassment. She held firm on his shoulders.

  “Give me one straight answer this entire case, Alex. You owe me that.”

  “Ronnie didn’t send me.” Alex nodded off in the distance. “He had no idea.”

  “Why you, then?”

  He focused on her, gave her a look as if the answer were obvious. “Money, Shelly. I wanted money.”

  She dropped her hands from his shoulder.

  “Think about it,” he said. “Ronnie and I look up your birth records. We find out that his real mother is the daughter of the governor. I figured you would probably do a lot to keep Ronnie a secret.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You were going to—blackmail me?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Ronnie would’ve killed me if he knew. But, yeah.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  He smiled. “Because I liked you. I went in there with a plan, I admit it, but then I got to know you. You were an okay chick.”

  “I was an okay chick.”

  “And then you told me about—that incident. It was about a year ago.”

  “Mother’s Day, last year, to be exact,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah, right.” He pointed at her. “Right. So anyway. After that, I don’t know—”

  “After that, you found an even better blackmail target,” she finished.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. That was part of it. Yeah. I admit it. But also—y’know, I felt like this guy should probably answer for what he did.”

  “So you used that same investigator who found me to find Miroballi.”

  “Yeah. This guy goes through the police records, whatever. He comes up with the name of a witness. Dina. Dina Patriannis.”

  A shiver ran through her. Dina. Yes. Shelly remembered how she envied that young woman, her glamour and grace, the way a young girl romanticizes someone older.

  “She knew about the whole thing, Shelly. She knew Ray Miroballi. She knew he had gone into that bedroom. When the cops came to her, she gave them his name. That’s how the cops knew about Miroballi.”

  “I can imagine how the police reacted to that,” Shelly mumbled.

  “Right,” Alex said. “Sure. He had two brothers on the force. They covered the whole thing up. They got you to drop it. They told Dina that you had dropped the charges.”

  “God.” Shelly closed her eyes. That all made sense now. And Shelly had complicated things back then by giving Dina and her friends a fake name and age. She had given the police plenty of fodder to force her into dropping the case.

  “So I went to Miroballi, after I knew all of this,” Alex continued. “I showed him what I had. The report you had filed with the cops. I even gave him some of Ronnie’s blood. I told him it was mine. I told him I was his son. I told him, test it if you want.”

  And he had, Shelly now realized. That was the reason Miroballi had gone to a medical center, not the one covered by his health care. He had told his partner, Sanchez, that it was a urinalysis. But it was a blood test. He was checking his blood against the blood given to him by Alex. It was a paternity test, not a urine drop.

  “What you didn’t know,” said Shelly, “was that the feds were searching around for dirty cops. So when they found you in these clandestine meetings with Miroballi, they followed you and nabbed you. They got in your face about Miroballi and drugs, and you gave them what they wanted.”

  He nodded along with her narrative. “I was feeling pretty tough, y’know? I’ve got this cop who seems pretty worried about me. I thought I was the big man. Then, the next thing you know, I got federal agents breathing down my neck, and I’m shaking in my boots. What was I supposed to do? They caught me with drugs. And they were so damn sure that I was selling for Miroballi. So I let ’em believe it. Hell, if they were so sure about him, I figured maybe he was selling drugs. I was hoping maybe they’d come up with something against him without using me. I was just buying time.”

  “A dangerous game,” she said.

  “Dangerous, yeah. But what am I supposed to do? And I couldn’t exactly go back to Miroballi at that point and demand cash from him. They were watching. And I
had told them that he was the one who contacted me.”

  “They thought you were working for Miroballi,” Shelly summarized. “Turns out, you were blackmailing him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Miroballi didn’t know about Ronnie?”

  Alex shook his head no. “He didn’t know there was a Ronnie. He thought I was his son.”

  She accepted that. It made sense. Alex had done the same thing with Shelly, assuming Ronnie’s identity. “Ronnie knew nothing about this?”

  He blew out a sigh. “Ronnie knew I had met you that first time. He thought that was the only time. He thought I just went because I was curious. And he had no idea I was talking to Miroballi. He had no idea I found out who his father was. You know him, Shelly—he would’ve kicked my ass. But after I was caught by the feds, I told Ronnie. My back was against the wall. So I told him everything. After that, he followed me around like a puppy. He was worried that Miroballi might come after me. Which is exactly what he did.” Alex pointed to his head. “That boy, he’s got a good brain on him. He was exactly right about that.”

  She tried to digest all of this. She walked along the cell. “Let me ask you the sixty-four thousand dollar question.”

  He raised his eyebrows. A kid his age probably didn’t even understand the reference.

  “Why, Alex—why in God’s name didn’t you tell me all of this?” She waved her arm. “All of this misdirection and deception? I’m looking at Ronnie. I’m looking at Todavia. I’m thinking about Miroballi and drugs. I understand why you bluffed the F.B.I. But why me?”

  “Because you would have used it,” he said easily.

  “Because—” She stared at him. “What?”

  “You would have had to tell everyone you were raped.”

  She drew back. “You were trying to protect me?”

  He raised his shoulders. His eyes suddenly filled. “All the time I’ve known you, Shelly, you only asked me for one thing. You asked me to keep one secret. After everything else I had done, I thought it was one thing I could do right.”