Literally, enter, as she taps on the door of the D.A. and is instructed to “Come in.” The D.A. is a large, extremely handsome black man someplace in his mid fifties. His voice, deep and rich, seems to come from the very core of his being. His name is Hugh Mosley, and he is used to his assistant D.A.s entering his office and saying, “Hugh-ston, we have a problem.” It happens almost every day. Today Lara says, “Hugh, we have a problem.” His head snaps up. He knows real trouble when he hears it.
“Sit down,” he says.
Lara is a tall, slender, attractive woman in her early forties. She has beautiful auburn hair cut in a no-nonsense boyish style that suits her features well. Her makeup is reserved, as is her mode of dressing. She loves the challenge of a trial and aspires to nothing higher than her present job; she absolutely loves the work she does. (Or did, until this case came up and the reports flowed in.)
Lara begins her story, most of which we already know. (And from here, dear lover of fairytales, there will be no happy ending. But you realized that, didn’t you? Just one sad assistant district attorney laying out the sad facts of a sad case.)
“The blood on the doorframe,” she tells Hugh Mosley, “appears to have gotten there by someone with blood on his or her clothes leaving the scene, given the direction of the blood swipe.” She pauses. “Hugh, we ran the DNA. It’s Natasha Miller’s blood.”
“What the hell! Natasha Miller works here!”
“Yep!”
“You sure it isn’t the victim’s?”
“Oh, there’s some of that mixed in, but apparently whoever killed Steve McGuire — and I’m thinking Natasha Miller was at least at the scene, given the DNA — got cut in the process, maybe by the murder weapon or by the glass vase that Steve tried to use as a defensive weapon. Anyway, there are two bloods on the doorframe: one is Steve’s; one is Natasha’s.”
“Shit!” (Not the language of fairytales, but we must go with the times.)
“Since she works here, she was in the system, so when we ran the DNA, Bingo! who pops up but our Natasha. Which means we have the blood of five people at the scene of the crime.” She enumerates on her fingers: “Steve, the victim. Holly, the victim’s wife. Holly’s mother, Holly’s father. And that of Natasha Miller.”
(She leans forward, her hands clasped in “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple.” The steeple points at D.A. Mosley.)
“What was Natasha doing at that house?”
“I think she was having an affair with him. God knows, she’s tried every man in this office.”
Hugh Mosley has the grace to blush, a charming coloration to his already dark skin. (We wonder just how far she got with that. Not very, if we know Hugh Mosley.)
“There was a note in his pocket from somebody named ‘R,’ which doesn’t make sense with Natasha, but maybe it was a pet name.
(Well, we know, don’t we? Stevie didn’t show up for his assignation with “R” after his “tedious faculty meeting” and she got mad. Hell hath no fury… There’s much to be said for old adages.)
“Hugh, it gets really heavy here,” she says.
“Oh, right! It’s not heavy with a member of the D.A.’s staff at the scene of the crime?”
(Mosley has a penchant for sarcasm. Probably his one fault.)
“Not compared to what I have to tell you. Judy at the lab ran the DNA for us and she came to me with this information. Holly — the vic’s wife — her DNA doesn’t match the DNA of her parents.”
“Adopted,” Hugh Mosley says, sounding happy to have solved at least this issue on the spot.
“That’s what I thought,” Lara says. “So I mentioned adoption or natural child to the parents when I was talking to them — naturally they weren’t exactly pleased to be talking to me since I’m supposed to be prosecuting their daughter — can’t really blame them — and the mother got all huffy and said, ‘She’s our natural child!’ So, I checked the stats on Holly and traced her birth to the hospital where she was born.” Lara sits back in her chair and folds her arms. “Hugh, there were two babies delivered in the same delivery room on the same night at exactly the same time. The hospital was undergoing some renovation and space was limited, so two women ended up in one delivery room. One of the women was Anita Singleton, Holly’s mother, and the other was a Margaret Miller, Natasha’s mother.”
“Oh, shit,” Hugh Mosley says again. “Are you going where I think you’re going with this?”
Lara nods. “The blood we identified as Natasha’s is an offspring match for the blood of Holly’s parents. Hugh, those babies were switched in the delivery room.”
“Oh, Christ! That will be a strong charge to make,” Hugh says.
“I know. The doctor’s dead, but I tracked down the nurse who was on duty that night. She’s long retired.” Lara takes a minute to look at her notes. “Her name is Ida Shimblebone. Jeez! What a witch! (DID I TELL YOU?!! DID I TELL YOU?!!) “She lives in this tiny furnished apartment. The landlord, who seems to spend all his time in the garden, says she’s been there for ages.”
“And she said?” Hugh asks. His head is in his hands.
“She was on me like white on rice,” Lara says. “Screaming, yelling. I had no right to accuse her — her record with the hospital was spotless — how dare I? I think she doth protest too much. She practically pushed me out of her apartment and slammed the door behind me. (And did a merry little dance around the sad little apartment. But only we know that.) We will probably have to subpoena her.”
“And you think the Millers are Holly’s biological parents?”
Lara nods.
“Do I want to know why you think that?”
Lara shakes her head.
“Didn’t think so. Anything we can use in court?”
Lara shakes her head again. (A lot of head action going on here, but with good reason. Lara struck up a casual, on purpose, conversation with Natasha — Natasha having no knowledge of the DNA report — and found out that Natasha’s parents, who aren’t really her parents, but we’ve known that for a long time — have a date night every Friday night — every Friday that Robert isn’t on the road, that is — with margaritas at Pablo’s Mexican Restaurant followed by dinner at George’s Steak House. “They’re so predictable,” Natasha had said. “Thank God,” Lara had said — to herself. It was a simple matter of an exchange of money and two replacement glasses and Lara had two used margarita glasses to take to the lab. None of this does Hugh Mosley need to know.)
“Is any of this relevant to our case? We can let Holly off the hook and proceed with a case against Natasha — God! I hate to think of someone from our office involved! Shit!” He slams his fist on the desktop. “Ouch. Damn!” He is quiet for a moment, shaking his hand, and then he asks, “Does anyone need to know about the switched babies? I mean, after all this time, is it really relevant? It doesn’t have anything to do with who murdered Steve McGuire. Right? Am I right? Tell me I’m right.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t have anything to do with the switched babies.” Lara clears her throat and then continues. “However, when these women see the other young woman, the one that is biologically their daughter, they are going to know something is seriously wrong.”
The D.A. is doodling on a scrap of paper, apparently totally intrigued with his efforts.
“Natasha is a dead ringer for Anita Singleton, Hugh, and Holly looks an awful lot like Margaret Miller. And I don’t know how you would be able to keep them apart, what with a trial and all.”