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In her peripheral vision, Ballard saw Masser turn toward her, questioning her decision to reveal to the judge that they had followed him. Ballard kept her eyes on Purcell, who seemed incredulous as he grasped what had gone down.
“You thought it was me,” he said. “You thought I was the Pillowcase Rapist?”
“Judge, when your son was arrested last year, his DNA was collected and sent to the state’s Department of Justice database. That produced a familial match to DNA collected from several crime scenes involving the Pillowcase Rapist. The science told us that Nicholas Purcell’s father was the rapist. We pulled his birth certificate, and you and your wife are listed as the birth parents. You can understand why we then placed you under surveillance so we could make a surreptitious DNA capture. We did that at the Parkway Grill on Monday night. We got DNA from your wife too and sent the samples through our lab to the DOJ. We received results today that confirm that neither of you are birth parents of Nicholas Purcell.”
Ballard stopped there to let Purcell digest what had happened. The skin around his eyes darkened, and she suspected his blood pressure was rising.
“Were these actions approved by your superiors?” he asked, his voice tightly controlled.
“I run the unit, sir,” Ballard said. “We like to say the cases go where they go. I did not need approval, though I did make my captain aware of it.”
“I should jail you both for contempt of court,” Purcell said. “That you would—”
“You could do that, Judge, but it would get messy and very public,” Ballard said. “I didn’t think you’d want that for your son, your family. There is a way for us to keep Nicholas out of this, especially when it hits the media. But that would entail you cooperating with us and explaining how he became your son.”
It hit Purcell then, the threat of public exposure. Nicholas could be branded as the son of a rapist-murderer.
Ballard waited, stealing a quick glance at Masser. Color was just coming back to Masser’s face after the threat of jail from the judge had bleached it printer-paper white. She realized that she should have let him in on how she was going to play it.
“We tried to have children of our own,” the judge said. “It wasn’t happening. Then an opportunity presented itself.”
He stopped there. Ballard sensed that he needed to be prompted to continue revealing a secret he had kept for almost twenty-five years.
“You were offered a baby?” Ballard asked.
“Not exactly,” Purcell said. “There was a girl in the neighborhood. A high school girl. She got pregnant. The family—her family—they were very religious. They believed she had to have the child. And her parents, they knew us from down the street. They knew about… our struggles. We were open about it. They came and said there was a way for—you see, they didn’t want their daughter’s life to be forever changed by this. They had an unwanted child coming and we wanted a child so very badly…”
“You agreed to take the child.”
Purcell nodded.
“Did you know who the real father was?” Ballard asked.
Purcell shook his head. “No, she never told her parents or us,” he said. “She was protecting him. I wanted to know so we could protect ourselves, you understand. I wanted everyone’s approval… but she wouldn’t tell.”
“How did you register the birth so quickly?” Ballard asked.
“That wasn’t a problem. I had a former client in a divorce case who worked in the registrar’s office take care of it. I didn’t want there to be any kind of stigma, you know? For the boy to grow up with that, knowing he was adopted, not knowing who his father was.”
“And the mother, she was never involved?”
“No, not after the birth. The family had a place in the desert. Out at Smoke Tree. They moved to that house. Kept the house on Arroyo, but the whole family started over out there. It worked. No one ever knew about the baby… except us. Till now.”
“We need to reach out to her, Judge. What’s her name?”
“You can’t. It’s too late. She killed herself a year after. Took a lot of pills, sat in a car in the garage, and started the engine. It was a terribly sad thing. We thought that, having lost their daughter, the parents would come to us for the child. We were prepared—legally—to fight it. But it never came to that.”
Ballard glanced at Masser. The DNA door they thought had swung open for them was now swinging shut. She saw her own dismay playing on Masser’s face.
She looked back at the judge.
“Judge, what about those parents?” she asked. “Are they still around?”
“Robin is,” Purcell said. “Edward passed, and now she’s selling the place on Arroyo.”
Ballard thought about the house with theIN ESCROWsign she had parked in front of while following the judge Monday night.
“What is Robin’s last name?” she asked.
