AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t go there. Highly unlikely.”
“Okay. I’m just…”
“Let me know what else I can do.”
“Sure. I will.”
Ballard disconnected and looked up. Now the whole team was gathered around her end of the raft.
“No match,” she said. “Nick Purcell isn’t related to the judge or his wife.”
“Fuck!” Persson yelled.
Masser snapped his head back and spun away from the group as if shot.
“I knew it,” Hatteras said.
“You knew it?” Laffont said. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I did—nobody listened,” Hatteras insisted. “I said the genetic tree I was building didn’t connect in any way to the judge.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Laffont said.
“It’s the truth,” Hatteras said. “But it doesn’t matter. What matters is what do we do now?”
“All right, let’s just calm down,” Ballard said. “I know this isn’t what we expected. But let’s think.”
Ballard knew that something had gone wrong as they built their case against the judge. That had started with the birth certificate indicating no adoption had taken place.
“Paul, can we take another look at the birth certificate?” she asked.
“Right here,” Masser said.
He grabbed a printout of the birth record off his desk and handed it over the wall to Ballard. She confirmed what she already knew: The birth certificate was filed with the county two days after the birth. Then she noticed a detail she had not seen the first time.
“Nicholas Purcell was born at County-USC,” Ballard said. “Maybe their birth records will tell a different story.”
“Not without a court order,” Masser said. “It’s a dead end.”
“But wait,” Ballard said. “The judge wasn’t a judge yet when the kid was born, but he must’ve been doing well, right? I mean, well enough to get appointed or elected judge.”
“I would say so,” Masser said. “Successful enough financially or reputation-wise or both to get a slot on the superior court.”
“So, County-USC back then or even now is not one of your high-end hospitals. It’s a public facility. It even provides indigent care. Is it the kind of hospital where the wife of up-and-coming lawyer, soon to be judge Jonathan Purcell would want to give birth to their child?”
“I should have seen this,” Masser said. He looked mortified at not noticing the inconsistency earlier.
“So what do we do?” Hatteras asked.
“Well, for the moment, I want you all to go back to what you were doing,” Ballard said. “Let’s try to run down more of the names from the Thawyer files. When you’re needed on Purcell, I’ll let you know. Maddie, when’s your roll call for tonight?”
“Five,” Maddie said.
“Okay, well, you should cut out, then,” Ballard said. “Get ready for your shift.”
Maddie looked crestfallen, like she was being cut out of her own case, and Ballard read it in her expression.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re still lead on this. It’s your case. We won’t make a move on it without you.”
