Oh, look at him! He was a sensitive, compassionate kid.
He was a drug dealer who shot a police officer.
“Tell me how you found me,” she said, though she could probably guess herself.
“Hired a guy,” he told her. “Some of the I-bankers use private investigators when they’re doing due diligence. I used one of them. Put me back about twenty-five hundred. He went to some agency-”
The Department of Public Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
“-and got someone to give him a peek at the birth certificates.”
There was a birth certificate for every child born in this state. The certificate contained the birth mother’s name and age, as well as the place of birth. For adopted children, an amended birth certificate was then placed on top of the original, with the adoptive family’s name. The procedure Alex’s investigator undertook was a routine, though technically illegal one, looking at the original birth certificate to find the name of his biological mother.
“So then we knew your name, and it didn’t take us long to find you.”
She nodded. For such a loud-mouthed, opinionated attorney, she was suddenly without words. She knew more about the process of locating a parent or child than he did. She could have found Alex. All these years, she could have and didn’t.
“I just wanted to meet you,” he continued. “That school thing-that fight. That was kind of my excuse. I just wanted to see you in person. I didn’t know if we’d ever get to know each other. I didn’t know if I’d ever tell you.”
She had never felt so disarmed. She wanted to duck under the table in shame. All of the rationalizations she’d lived with seemed empty. She was without excuses or words.
“It’s okay,” Alex said.
Was her remorse that obvious? She couldn’t know. She couldn’t think rationally now. What could she say to this boy? What should she say?
A knock on the door. The five-minute warning. Their time was up.
Shelly could recall the conversation almost verbatim. Last May, before the warm weather had broken. She and Alex were walking along the lake on a Sunday, only a short walk from Alex’s offices at McHenry Stern. She was cold and Alex had given her his long black coat.
She didn’t know, in hindsight, why she had told him. Maybe because she had known, of all people, he would never repeat it. They didn’t share friends or run in the same circles. So he was safe. Yes, that would have been the easy way to rationalize it. But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was, she had always opened herself more to children than adults. She had few close friends, perhaps by choice. The truth was, in the four months she had known Alex up to that point, she had come to rely on the friendship as much as Alex. She’d never told anyone, other than the police, of course. She’d never told anyone and she suddenly felt the urge.
The truth was, she wasn’t just helping Alex get his act together. She’d needed his friendship as much as he needed hers.
I was raped when I was sixteen, she’d told him.
She’d told him everything. The reaction of the police. Her thoughts of abortion. The reaction of her parents. Her life afterward.
I had the baby, she’d said. I gave it up for adoption and never saw it. Not then or ever again. An attorney came in, had me sign the papers, and it was over.
And now, as she sat across from a boy who was her son, she recalled Alex’s reaction. The loss of color to his cheek, the catch in his throat when he tried to vocalize a response. She didn’t discern the subtleties then, the difference between shock and disappointment, or perhaps the mingling of the two.
How, she wondered with the knowledge of hindsight, had that information affected Alex? When she told him of her rape last May, she was telling him he would never know his biological father. And worse. She was telling him that his birth, his very existence, was the product of a criminal act.
It came to her now, the reason for her need to purge to him that day. That hadn’t been just any old Sunday in May. And-yes, now that she thought about it-it had been Alex’s idea to meet on Sunday. He had bought her lunch and given her a small gift, a pair of earrings. She had accepted it for what she thought it was, a gesture of appreciation for everything she had done for him. It had never occurred to her then that it was a Mother’s Day present.
The guard entered the room and unlocked Alex’s handcuffs from the table. Alex stood up in his handcuffs and looked briefly at Shelly before being led out of the room.
17
Jerod Romero had a series of routine matters in court this morning. For some of the cases, prisoners in orange jumpsuits were shuffled in, joined by their defense counsel. Romero was all business, no humor, even when the judge was not on the bench.
He finished about noon and saw Shelly as he was gathering his papers. “Ms. Trotter,” he said in his formal courtroom voice.
“I need to know you’re protecting Alex.”
“We are.” Romero looked at her with curiosity. “Why do you mention it?”
Shelly had thought about it over the nine hours that had passed since the two men ambushed her in her apartment. She’d run to Alex to ensure his safety-only to be broad-sided by his revelation-then to work, to do a final run-through for the depositions that would begin today in the deaf-ed case-and then to the federal courthouse, where she had found Jerod Romero.
With the constant shift in focus, she felt punch-drunk, delirious, driven only by adrenaline. She could only imagine the impression she was making on the prosecutor.
She had decided she would not reveal what had happened. Not yet. She couldn’t prove anything and she could only make matters worse. There was always time to do it. Ways to do it.
“Something happened,” said Romero.
“Just make sure Alex is okay. I’m putting you on notice.”
“You have to tell me if someone threatened him,” he said. “Or you.”
“No, I don’t. But if you don’t give me assurances, right now, that Alex is safe, I’m going to the press. I’m going to the judge. I’m going to tell everyone in town about your operation.”
The prosecutor raised his hand, looked around the emptying courtroom as if he were afraid Shelly might divulge the confidential information right now. From Romero’s perspective, Shelly held a real card here. She had every right to change Alex’s plea to self-defense and to explain in detail the facts of that defense. The federal prosecutor, with all his powers, could not stop her. The U.S. Attorney’s office could not prevent Shelly from revealing the sting operation.
And that was not only important to the U.S. Attorney’s office as a whole, but in particular to this Assistant U.S. Attorney standing before her. This would be a major case, perhaps a career-maker, for Jerod Romero, depending on how many cops were snared in the operation.
“He’s safe,” he told Shelly. “You have my word.”
She was too exhausted to sufficiently read the prosecutor. She took him at his word, mostly because she had no choice. She didn’t want to expose the drug sting, either, and more to the point, she didn’t want to hurt Alex’s chances for a negotiated deal with the county attorney on the murder charge.
Romero motioned for them to sit at one of the rows of spectator seats, which resembled pews in a church. He seemed to appraise her outward appearance more than consider strategy. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I can’t make you tell me. But if someone’s getting nervous about Alex-I need to know that, Shelly. I can help you. And I need to know.”