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
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.