27

27

BALLARD AND MASSER parked in the garage at the PAB and walked the block up Spring Street to the courthouse. Along the way, Ballard pulled her phone and called Ashley Fellows, who was one of the last friends she had in the Robbery-Homicide Division.

"Hey, girl, whatcha doin'?" Fellows said.

"Biding my time till it's time," Ballard said.

It was their routine greeting.

"You still in the same desk over there?" Ballard asked.

"Sure am," Fellows said. "What's up?"

"You've got eyes on the captain's office, right?"

"I do."

"Is he in there at the moment?"

"No, but he's right outside it talking to Broom-Hilda."

That was the name they used for Captain Gandle's bully of an adjutant, who sat at a desk outside the captain's glass-walled office and guarded it like it was Checkpoint Charlie. Her name was actually Hildy McManus.

"I need to call him but I don't want him to answer," Ballard said.

"One of those," Fellows said. "Well, he asked me this morning for an update on a case I'm working. I told him to give me a few hours. I could call him over to look at what I got spread all over my desk. But you still got Hilda to worry about. She could pick up."

"He gave me his direct line once. I think she doesn't have that on her phone."

"Then give me three minutes before you call. I'll get him over here."

"Thanks, Ash." Ballard disconnected.

"What was that about?" Masser asked.

"If we confront the judge without approval from the captain, there could be hell to pay. But I don't want to wait for him to take it to command staff. So I'm going to call him and leave a message to cover my ass."

They got up to Temple Street, and Ballard made the call. She held her breath until it went through to voicemail.

"Captain, it's Renée. The analysis on the judge's DNA came back negative—Nick Purcell's not a match to him or his wife. That leaves us no alternative but to talk to the judge about his son. I need to do that before he goes off for a three-day weekend. Heading to the CCB now. Just keeping you in the loop like you asked."

She disconnected, hoping that her casual tone implied that this was a routine interview, even though she knew there was nothing routine about an interview with the presiding judge of Los Angeles Superior Court.

In the Criminal Courts Building, they took the law enforcement–only elevator up to save time. Purcell's courtroom was on the sixth floor in Division 101. The courtroom was literally dark when Ballard and Masser entered. There was one overhead light on and it was shining down on the clerk's corral, where a woman with short brown hair sat. She looked up when she heard them enter.

"We're dark today," she said. "Can I help you?"

"We're with the LAPD Open-Unsolved Unit," Ballard said. "We'd like to talk to Judge Purcell."

"He's on a deadline writing orders before the weekend," the clerk said. "You need an appointment, and he has no room on his calendar this afternoon. If you need a search warrant signed, I would suggest that you go see Judge Coen for that. He handles criminal matters."

"It's about his son, Nicholas," Ballard said. "I think you should ask him if he wants to see us."

Without responding to Ballard, the clerk picked up a phone, hit one button, and then whispered behind a hand cupped around her mouth. Ballard made out the word Nicholas but otherwise could not pick up on the conversation. The clerk put down the phone and got up. She walked to a half door in the corral and pulled it open.

"The judge will see you," she said. "Come through here and then go through that door and down the hallway. His chambers are the first door on the right."

Ballard led the way. The clerk's directions were not needed because the judge was standing in the doorway of his chambers. He was wearing a white shirt and tie but no jacket or robe. Ballard watched his eyes for any hint of recognition of Masser or herself from the surveillance at the Parkway Grill.

She saw nothing.

They followed Purcell into the office. He sat down behind a desk covered with legal documents. He pointed to the two chairs across from him, and Ballard and Masser sat.

"Thank you for seeing us, Judge," Ballard began.

"Never mind that," Purcell asked. "What's my son done this time?"

"Uh, nothing, sir. As far as we know."

"Then if this is about the DA dropping those charges against him, I had nothing to do with that. I didn't even make a call."

"It's not about that, sir."

"Then why are you here on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend? What is so important about my son?"

"Well, sir, we are from the Open-Unsolved Unit and we think your son is key to identifying and arresting a serial rapist and murderer."

Purcell drew his head back as if he'd been slapped.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he said. "Nick's had his difficulties but nothing that even approaches an involvement in—"

"We are not suggesting he is in any way involved, Judge," Ballard said quickly. "It's his father we're looking for. His real father. His biological father."

That stunned the judge into silence. Ballard studied him for any sign that he knew about the Pillowcase Rapist's connection to Nicholas Purcell. She saw none.

Ballard felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She guessed it was Captain Gandle calling her back, probably to tell her not to approach the judge without the command staff's approval. But she had a perfect excuse not to answer. You didn't take calls when you were talking to the presiding judge of the superior court. You didn't even look to see who was calling.

"What do you mean, his real father?" Purcell said.

Ballard nodded. This was the moment.

"Judge, do you remember the Pillowcase Rapist case?" she asked.

"Of course," Purcell said. "But that was before my son was even born."

"Not quite, but that's the case we're working. And I need you to know that that is all we're interested in. We don't care about anything else, what you may have done in adopting your son or—"

"Are you suggesting that Nicholas is not my son?"

"Judge, we know he's not your son."

"This is incredible. How could you—"

He stopped mid-sentence as a thought occurred to him.

"You talked to my wife?" he said. "You talked to Vivian?"

"No, sir, we didn't," Ballard said. "We got your DNA from a spoon you left on a table at a restaurant."

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 the IN ESCROW sign she had parked in front of while following the judge Monday night.

"What is Robin's last name?" she asked.

"Richardson," Purcell said. "Robin Richardson."

"Do you have a phone number or an email for her?"

"Vivian has that. I can get it."

"One last thing. What was the daughter's name?"

"Mallory. She was a great kid. One mistake changed all of that. Like I said, it was sad. Very sad."

Ballard nodded and realized she had one last question. "What school did she go to when she lived on Arroyo?"

"That would have been St. Vincent's in South Pasadena. That was their church too. We also sent Nick to St. Vincent's for a few years."

"Thank you, Judge. If you can get us Robin Richardson's contact info, we'll let you get back to work."

Purcell looked at her with worried eyes.

"Keep Nick out of this. He's a good kid. If he knew who… where he came from, he wouldn't take it well."

"We understand, sir," Ballard said. "We'll do our best."