David Ellis - Jury of One
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- Название:Jury of One
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- Издательство:Berkley Books
- Жанр:
- Год:2005
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:4 / 5. Голосов: 1
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“You think it’s hard for me to understand?” Ronnie stood up. “You loved someone you had never met. So did I. I understand. Is that what you need to hear? I forgive you. Okay? It was tough, and you have all kinds of thoughts swirling around your head. It’s a lot different when it moves from the abstract to real. Believe me, I get it. Just-don’t get so worked up about labels. Let’s just-y’know-hang together. Watch each other’s backs. Have some fun once in a while. Stay a-a part of each other.”
She walked over and extended a hand. He took it and pulled her into a hug. “There,” he said. “Not so bad, was it? Friends hug.”
“Okay.” Her throat choked, but she felt unimaginable relief. He was making this so easy for her. “Now, as inappropriate as it may seem, we really do need to talk about your testimony.” She grabbed his shoulder, then moved to the other side of the table and picked up her notepad.
“Can I have ten bucks for the movies tonight?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Can I stay out past my curfew?”
“Cease and desist.” She raised a hand.
“Can I sleep over at Billy’s?”
“Only if you clean your room. Now, can we talk about your testimony?”
“Hey-” He shrugged. “You’re the one who wants to make up for lost time.”
Lost time. Time lost. She had spent so long pining over it, she had forgotten to turn her head forward. Her cell phone rang again. She reached for it and turned it off.
76
Shelly fought through reporters that had gathered around the county jail, and jumped into a cab. A taxi to her house from downtown could set her back as much as twenty dollars and was typically unheard of for her, but she couldn’t fathom the thought of dozens of reporters following her to the bus stop. Safely in the taxi, she dialed the number Mari Rodriguez had left her.
“Mari, it’s Shelly.”
“Shelly-God, I’ve been calling you all day.”
“I take it the news has reached you.”
“You could say that. He wants to see you, Shelly. He’s been in a budget meeting all day but he told me to pull him out when I got hold of you.”
“I’m heading home.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“This news isn’t-” She wasn’t going to apologize. No. There was nothing for which she needed to say she was sorry.
“Mari,” she said, “I didn’t want this. I had no idea who this cop was.”
“I understand.”
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”
A pause. Mari was a good sort.
“You could say that,” she said.
Shelly clicked off the phone and dropped her head back on the carseat. She thought of the headlines for her father. She tried to rationalize each piece of information. A private adoption was not a crime. His grandson’s involvement, in some way, in a cop shooting. His loose-cannon daughter. It was the collective whole. Messy, is what it was.
Her phone rang again.
“Shelly, it’s Joel. Jesus Christ!”
“Hi, Joel.”
“I’m reading this on-line. The Watch. Ronnie’s your son ? Miroballi-”
“All true,” she said.
“‘A grandson who’s never been acknowledged by the Trotter family.’ ‘A daughter, outcast from the family-’”
“It says that?” She came forward in the seat, felt a wave of nausea.
“‘Did the governor involve himself in the prosecution?’ ‘Did his daughter know this all along?’”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“It’s not pretty, Shel. Did you really faint?”
She moaned.
“And I got some news for you, Counselor.”
“Tell me it’s good, Joel. I can’t take anything else right now.”
“Depends on your perspective. Guess which west-side drug dealer woke up this morning without any arms?”
“No.”
“Mr. Edward Todavia, one and the same.”
She did a quick calculation. Ronnie Masters was in the county lockup last night. She immediately scolded herself for even considering it.
“That’s the Cans for you. He got notorious. They don’t like publicity.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.
“Not in my cab, lady,” the driver called back.
“That’s one less scumbag on the street,” Joel said. “Don’t lose sleep over that guy.”
“It’s up here on the left,” she told the cab driver.
“You got plenty else to lose sleep over, I’m afraid,” Joel added.
77
Shelly walked down the hallway upon hearing the whine of the intercom buzzer. She hit the button for entry into her building and walked over by the door. She unlocked it and found herself taking steps backward, away from the door.
The state plane from the capital would have landed, by her estimation, about twenty-five minutes ago.
He came in by himself, without any security detail. He seemed startled, for some reason, to see her. Perhaps he’d been lost in thought. Perhaps he’d been busy calculating the damage to his political campaign. There had been some talk of a vice presidential bid down the road, perhaps even the top spot. Why not? He was a tall, handsome, personable conservative from a large Midwestern state.
That was over now. No question. Stuff like this? Just too messy. He’d be lucky to hold on to his current job now.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, standing firm. She immediately regretted the capitulation.
He looked at her with a quizzical expression, cocked his head. And then she saw something she had not ever seen before. She saw tears in the eyes of her father.
“ You’re sor-” His throat closed. Something else she had never seen.
It was a moment she couldn’t describe, one that she never would be able to explain. A breakthrough. A spark, maybe, that each of them had been awaiting. She didn’t know who moved to whom. Later, she would remember that they met in the middle. They held each other tightly, desperately, their bodies trembling. No words were spoken for what seemed like forever, as if they were trying to recover so much with this embrace. Just like that, and she felt it sweep over her, felt time melt away.
His head turned, his mouth moved to her ear. “What kind of a father am I?” he whispered, his voice trembling. “What kind of a father am I, when my beautiful little girl can’t tell me that she was-that somebody had-had hurt my little-”
“I should have told you, Daddy. I’m so-”
“No,” he whispered gently. “It wasn’t your job to tell me. It was my job to ask. I prosecuted so many of those cases, and when it came to my own daughter-” He stroked her hair. “I thought you were being stubborn. I swear that’s what I thought. I swear.”
She didn’t have a reply to that. She just held on to him as tightly as she could.
“You had to go through all of that alone. And I made you feel worse. Oh, God, Shelly, can you ever forgive me?”
“I already have.” She pulled back from him. She tried to smile, but her lips were still trembling.
He cupped his hand around her chin, and this seemed to calm him. “I am so proud of you and so ashamed of myself.”
She shook her head but couldn’t speak.
“I want my daughter back,” he said.
“She’s back,” she managed. And she meant it. Could that really be all it took to erase years of barriers and resentment? Was that, in the end, all she ever really wanted, to hear these words?
He smiled at her. His steel-blue eyes were entirely bloodshot now. The strong, stoic mask was washed away. It seemed appropriate, somehow, that she was seeing something new in him at this moment.
He touched the back of her neck tenderly. “You hurt yourself today. You fainted.”
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