She nodded, sitting next to him. “Tried a case against him.”
“Won or lost?”
“Lost.”
He chuckled. “Most people do. He’s as good as they come. I helped out a little on the Burgos case. Saw the guy in action.”
The Terry Burgos case was probably the most infamous case in the county in Shelly’s generation. She was in college at the time, but the case was covered throughout the nation. Burgos lived on the southwest side near a small liberal arts college where he worked odd jobs. He managed to lure six young women to his house-some of them students at the college, if memory served-murdered them, and performed various sex acts on them as they died or after they were dead. Shelly recalled the television coverage, the small home where Terry Burgos lived, the campus auditorium whose basement he had used as a personal graveyard, police cars and construction crews as they combed and excavated the house.
“I remember,” she said.
“Yeah, who doesn’t? All those girls. Women, I guess, some of them. I’ve seen plenty of crime scenes, but that one-” He shook his head. “Anyway, the whole thing was a circus. Burgos had this public defender, Jeremy Larrabie-remember that guy? Wanted to make a name for himself with the case. Had that big head of hair, and those crazy suits? Always ready to talk to the media, and they were everywhere. We always said he was crazier than Burgos.”
“Paul was kind enough to lend me some space for this case.”
“Yeah? Hell of a guy. God, was he cool in the face of all that. I mean, he had some serious pressure on him, but you wouldn’t know it.” He evened a hand in the air. “Cool as they come. Really made a name for himself after that case. Every damn law firm in the city was bidding for that guy. Instead, he goes in with Judge Shaker and starts his own firm. Good for him. So anyway.” He looked at her. “What do you think of Petey?”
“Who? Oh.” The trial had been assigned to Judge Pietro Dominici, a former assistant county attorney. Most of the criminal court judges were former prosecutors, because the presiding county judge would only assign judges with experience in criminal law to the criminal courts. It made sense, and yes, occasionally a criminal defense attorney would win a judicial election, but it seemed rather daunting that most of the jurists presiding over criminal cases used to be prosecutors themselves.
“Good draw for you,” she said.
“Yep. He’s tough.” He laughed. “Guy’s family comes over on the boat sixty years ago, from Sicily. They’ve got this real Italian name, right? So they change it. His dad’s got the same name-Pietro Dominici. He moves here, he changes his name to ‘Peter Dominic.’ You know, just drops a coupla vowels.” He jabbed a finger at the bench. “Petey here, he’s in our office, Peter Dominic, Jr., right? Real gunner. He runs for judge and loses. Peter Dominic loses. So he moves over to Brighton Village-you know, where all the Italians live? — and he goes back to his father’s original name. Yeah, now he’s ‘Pietro Dominici’ and he’s running in a subcircuit that’s at least forty percent Italian. He took it easily.”
Shelly looked at her watch as if she were unimpressed with Morphew’s familiarity with this judge. It was one minute to ten. “I better get over there, Dan. I don’t want the judge seeing me consorting with the enemy.”
“Aw, Petey’s never on time. We got at least five minutes.” He said it with the confidence of a man with power. This guy was her father without the polish or ego.
She wanted to ask him whether he ever worked with Dominici at the county attorney’s office, but the answer was probably yes. No matter how large the office was, Morphew was a lifer, a career prosecutor, and he supervised hundreds of prosecutors over the years. He slipped Shelly one of his business cards. “I’ll get discovery over to you today,” he said. “If you have any problems, you call me. Okay? Any problems at all.” He waved at the bench. “Make a motion to preserve your record but I’ll have it to you today.”
She thanked him and considered the unusually generous nature of the prosecutor. Could be he recognized the profile of the case and didn’t want any missteps. Prosecutors, to preserve their convictions, often had to do the defense attorneys’ preliminary work for them. But she assumed otherwise. The county attorney, Elliot Raycroft, was the political protege of Governor Langdon Trotter, and Morphew was probably under orders to treat the governor’s daughter right.
“Who’d you use in the grand jury?” she asked Morphew.
“The partner. Sanchez. Did everything through him.” In probable-cause hearings, hearsay was permitted, so often the prosecutor would simply put on the investigating police officer-or in this case, the dead cop’s, Miroballi’s, partner, Officer Julio Sanchez-and ask him what his investigation turned up. It obviated the need to bring laypeople before the grand jury, who were less practiced witnesses and who could be more easily tripped up at trial if they contradicted their previous testimony.
Shelly leaned back, looked behind herself at a sea of blue. There were approximately twenty uniformed police officers in the spectators’ seats. They had come out in force to show the judge that they were behind their fallen comrade. “Alex doesn’t deserve this,” she said.
“He shot a cop, Counselor. You had to expect this. But I’ll tell you what.” He leaned into her. “We might consider life. Just to get it done.”
“Won’t happen,” she answered as the door in the back of the courtroom opened. The bailiff, sitting in the corner, got to his feet.
“Don’t say I never offered,” Morphew whispered as Shelly walked away.
“The court will come to order,” said the bailiff. “The Honorable Pietro Dominici presiding.”
Judge Dominici walked with a purpose to the bench. He was a short man who filled out his robe. He had the face of a boxer, squarish, a pug nose, small but fiery eyes behind wire-rimmed bifocals, thick graying hair.
The court clerk, sitting to the right of and below the judge, a young heavyset man, called out the case-People v. Baniewicz.
“Good morning,” said the judge. His voice was softer than Shelly expected, free of emotion and almost difficult to hear.
“Good morning, Judge Dominici. Daniel Morphew for the People.”
The judge cast a furtive glance at the prosecutor, suppressed a smile. “Good morning, Mr. Morphew.”
“Good morning, your Honor. Michelle Trotter, for the defendant.”
“Good morning, Ms. Trotter.” The judge opened a file before him, adjusted his glasses.
“We’ll waive reading, your Honor,” she said, allowing the clerk to forgo an official reading of the indictment handed down against her client.
She’d been waiting for this moment ever since those two intruders left her house, left her wondering about the safety of her client as well as herself. Four nights now, sitting upright on her bed, watching the clock, listening for sounds. She had moved her couch in front of the front door. She had broken glass and sprinkled it on the patio next to the sliding glass door in back. She had placed a small glass full of marbles on the handle of the sliding glass door, where it loomed precariously and would fall with a rambunctious sound at the first hint of jarring. And as the hours of fitful sleep and meditation had passed, she found that she was angry with herself. She hadn’t given in right away. She had taken the first intruder and sent him headlong to the floor. She didn’t back away from the second one, she just couldn’t reach him, and he had a weapon trained on her. Yes yes yes, she could tell herself all of that. But she had been overtaken. Shelly Trotter, who had coached hundreds of pupils on the art of self-defense, had thought she was invincible herself. The moment had come and she had failed.
“Are you prepared to enter a plea at this time, Counsel?” the judge asked.
“Your Honor,” she said, “the defense pleads not guilty by reason of self-defense.”
A stirring behind her, mostly from the city’s finest sitting behind Dan Morphew. Morphew himself did not react, simply wrote something on a pad of paper.