Jury of One

46

Shelly spent the day preparing for her afternoon argument to the state court of appeals that she should be allowed access to the city police department’s internal investigation. She had sought an expedited appeal, which was allowed for in cases such as this. She had made sure that various members of the city’s media were aware of the hearing-political pressure, in the end, might be the best way to get to these records-and some of them had shown.

The hearing had gone about as she expected. The judges-three of them, all political types from the city-had focused on the fact that the internal report had not been completed. The city’s Freedom of Information Act exempted preliminary internal investigations from disclosure. “Do you contest that this report is still preliminary?” one of the judges asked before Shelly had barely said her name. And of course, she could not dispute it. Her principal argument was that Alex Baniewicz’s right to a fair trial trumped a nondisclosure law on general policy grounds. “But if the report is preliminary, how do we know it contains accurate, complete information?” asked another judge. “Isn’t that the reason FOIA exempts it? Because the information is not yet reliable.”

“I don’t care so much about their conclusions as their underlying facts,” Shelly had said. “And even if they’re not reliable, proven facts, that’s up to me to investigate. Let me take the ball and run with it. But if they can throw a blanket over this and drag it out until after my client has gone to trial-”

“Do you have any evidence that the police department is stalling?” asked the same judge.

Of course she did not.

The third judge piped in. She had been in front of this one before; he had a reputation for dozing off on the bench. “Why can’t you discover the same information that the police department can discover?”

“They have power I don’t have,” Shelly had argued. “They tell a police officer to talk, and the officer has to talk. I can’t depose these officers, and they don’t want to talk to me.”

“But you can subpoena them for trial.”

“For trial?” Shelly had thrown up her arms. “Then I have to interview these officers for the first time in front of the jury.”

After the half-hour argument, Shelly knew she had lost. When the police department’s attorney went through his presentation, the judges hardly touched him. She would make a request to the state supreme court, but they wouldn’t agree to hear this case.

Shelly, dressing for an ordinary day in mid-May, was cold standing with two reporters, arguing her cause outside the courthouse. The sun was out but it was just over forty degrees. When she left them, she turned on her cell phone and called Joel Lightner.

“I think it was ‘Manuel,’ Joel. The kid who helped the cops break into my house.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He didn’t say a word.”

“So how can you possibly make that assumption?”

Shelly almost walked into an oncoming car. She stepped back to the curb but got a splash from the tire. “I think he was checking up on me,” she said. “He was worried about what had happened to me. He felt bad.”

“And he waited two months to call.”

“Just check it out, Joel. Okay?”

“I will. I’ll get a consent form to you. This is your phone, so we don’t need a subpoena.”

“Great.”

“And, Shelly? If this kid is calling you now, maybe that means there’s a reason to worry.”

“Wonderful.” She hung up the phone and braced herself against the wind. Ronnie was coming to her office today to help manage the growing pile of material for her. He would make photocopies, organize and catalogue files, run any errands she needed. Shelly probably could have used the firm’s paralegals, but she felt like a bit of a freeloader as it was-the deal she had worked out was rather lopsided in her favor-and Ronnie seemed so eager to lend a hand in whatever way he could.

She saw him. He was walking north on Donnelly toward her. He stopped as he got to the alley and looked in. She turned and walked toward him, but he didn’t see her. He was looking into the alley. And then he disappeared into it.

She quickened her pace, once again narrowly avoiding an oncoming vehicle. It was after four o’clock now, so the streets were just beginning to fill with people. She walked up to the alley and peeked in. Ronnie Masters was squatting down near the west end. Slowly, he got up and looked around. Then he turned in her direction and began to pace.

She had pulled back in time, she thought, so Ronnie didn’t see her. Now she turned and walked into the alley.

Ronnie stopped. “Oh, hey.”

“Hey yourself.” She gestured behind her. “Saw you back there.”

Ronnie had already turned back around. He pointed back at the area where he had been on his haunches. Shelly saw a piece of the pavement that had splintered badly, a fragment that had popped up.

“That must be where Alex tripped,” he said.

“Tripped.” She didn’t know anything about Alex tripping.

“Yeah, when he messed up his knee.”

“I didn’t know Alex messed up his knee,” she said. “I didn’t know he tripped.”

Ronnie looked at her. This meant that Ronnie had been talking to Alex about the case. She had already warned him that their conversations could be recorded, legally, by the authorities. She assumed that this particular talk had taken place before her warning to him. And she wasn’t up for scolding at the moment; she was more concerned with why everyone seemed to know more about this case than she.

“He fell while he was running?” Shelly asked.

“You don’t know this?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t. I didn’t notice a limp or anything.”

“Well, you know how it is when you bang up your knee. For five minutes, you think you’ll never walk again, then it’s fine.”

They walked to her office. Ronnie was still wearing that ratty hooded sweatshirt for warmth. She dearly wanted to buy him something warmer, but she knew he would not react well to the offer. He was a proud young man, she could see. And besides, it would warm up soon enough.

She could see the weight of the last two months in Ronnie’s eyes, which were puffy and dark. He seemed like a boy who kept a lot to himself-like his “brother,” Alex, but in a different way. Alex, at least before the shooting, radiated an optimistic glow. Ronnie seemed darker. Two boys who essentially grew up together but were different.

They reached the office, and Shelly put him to work. He sat on the floor of her office and began to place things in their proper places, which was no small chore. Shelly was no neat freak. Quite the opposite. Her office typically was chaotic. She had made a point to do better this time, with this case, but there were only so many new tricks she could teach herself.

“Christ, you’re messy,” he said, as if she needed the tip.

She smirked at him and poured over her notes again. She thought of the alley, of the fact that Alex had apparently fallen and hurt himself. Why hadn’t he mentioned that? What else didn’t she know? No, it was not exactly a crucial detail, but it made Shelly wonder about the completeness of her own understanding of events that night.

“You two got a communication problem,” Ronnie said, as if he were reading her mind.

“Tell me about it. I have to learn information from you.”

He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “You don’t plan on-after this is over. You don’t really plan on being a part of things, do you?”

“That’s not true.” She felt her hair rise. “That’s not true at all.”

“Well, you’re treating him like a criminal, Shelly. It’s like you find out you’re related to him and you like him less.”

She sighed. “Ronnie, I’ve told-”

“You know he used to talk about you? When he was younger? He used to wonder what was wrong with him. He wondered what was so bad about him that made you give him away.”

She set down the report.

“I know it must’ve been tough, Shelly. But it hasn’t been easy for him, either.”

She brought her hands to her face. “What do you want me to say, Ronnie?”

He looked up at her. “I want you to act like he wasn’t an accident. Or a mistake.” He got up from his work, wiped at his hands. He left under the guise of needing some things from the supply room.

Shelly had a headache. She was, she realized, getting tired of apologizing. If Alex didn’t beat these charges, it wouldn’t matter whether she accepted him into her life, or she into his. She had every right to be focusing on his defense.

Her phone rang. It was Dan Morphew, the prosecutor.

“Seventy years, Counselor. Let’s make this go away. I need to get back to all that paperwork they give me these days.”

“I can’t buy that, Dan. Not even close.”

“Think on it,” he said. “Let’s keep talking.”

Shelly stared at the receiver a moment before hanging up.