Читать книгу Winston Patrick Mystery 2-Book Bundle - David Russell W. - Страница 18

Carl and Bonnie Turbot lived in an East Vancouver house architects anachronistically refer to as a “Vancouver Special”. Vancouver Specials began to appear on the local architectural scene in the 1960s, mostly in the eastern parts of the city.

It was in the East End towards the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. Scarcity of land and its ever increasing price had led city planners to permit, if not smaller lots, at least narrower ones. Thus, home designers were faced with the difficult task of developing profitable homes that everyday, working class people could afford and that would somehow fit this new, thin slice of land zoning that was unique to Vancouver.

The result is an often-mocked long shoebox of a house that looks a lot like a two storey version of a mobile home, without the trailer park and rental pad. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of these Vancouver Specials dotted throughout the city, and while designers and “artistes” scoff at their boxy image, for many years it was the home of choice for people anxious to break into the home-owning segment of society. In recent years, architecture students have begun a kind of a love affair with the homes, attempting to develop selected Vancouver Specials into a respectable genre of home building. Largely, it hasn’t worked.

Carl and Bonnie’s house was white—as almost all of them are—with green trim around the windows and front doorway. Their shoe box abode was sandwiched between two houses of obviously different vintage: 1930s hard stucco bungalows. In the front yard, if you could call it that, stood two willow trees whose drooping branches hung well out onto the quiet street. When I arrived, Furlo and Smythe were already waiting outside in their unmarked Crown Victoria police cruiser.

“Good evening, Mr. Patrick.” Detective Smythe smiled at me as she opened the driver’s side door of the car. It struck me as odd that Smythe would be the driver and Furlo the passenger. He seemed the macho type who would have a hard time letting a woman drive. Come to think of it, he seemed the macho type who would have a hard time just working with a woman partner, particularly one senior to him.

“Keeping you up late?” I asked by way of reply.

“The life of the weary flatfoot,” she replied. Smythe had the look of someone who knew for herself the job she was doing was important, just and honourable, but a little distasteful at times. To her credit—and I gave the credit to her because I was convinced Furlo had nothing to do with it—there was no need for them to include me in their plans to arrest Carl. The phone call could as easily have come from Carl after he arrived at central booking.

“No doubt. I had forgotten how much fun it can be when you’re on call. At least with teaching you don’t generally get called out to work in the middle of the night.”

“Maybe you should stick to teaching then,” Furlo snarled as he rose up from out of the passenger seat. And the testosterone battles began anew.

The three of us stared across the car at each other for a moment that was more awkward than tense. Furlo and Smythe at least both appeared to recognize how uncomfortable a situation we’d all found ourselves in. The murder of a child, even one who was nearly embracing adulthood, is about the worst type of case anyone can be assigned to. Given that the prime, about to be apprehended, suspect was in a role we all like to believe is relatively sacred just made working anywhere near this case all the more unpalatable. Though I had given up law to move into teaching, over the past year of my teaching practicum I had still consulted on a number of cases and picked up the odd bit of pre-litigation work for friends’ firms just to keep myself in legal shape. But we all seemed to know, standing around in the cold November air, that this was not the type of extra-curricular moonlighting I would have taken on had I known where it was going.

Finally, Smythe broke the uncomfortable silence. “Would you like a few minutes alone?” she asked, gesturing towards the house.

“Yes,” I replied graciously. “Thank you.” I turned towards the elongated homestead before pausing. “Does he know you’re here?”

“We’ve been quiet as a mouse,” Smythe replied, smiling. “Two mice actually.”

“What, no S.W.A.T. teams?”

“You’ve been watching too much TV,” Furlo condescended to me. “We call them E.R.T.’s here.” He was making reference to Vancouver’s elite Emergency Response Team, generally dispatched to assist in the apprehension of violent criminals or in hostage scenarios. Taking down a mild-mannered biology teacher was likely below them.

“Ten minutes?” Smythe asked, as though we were making an appointment to meet for lattes after I picked up the dry-cleaning.

“Sure, that will do,” I replied as I began to make my way towards Carl’s front door. Because I am who I am, I couldn’t resist suggesting to Furlo, “You wanna watch the back door?” I nodded my head towards the side of the house.

Furlo’s top lip curled up in a lop-sided grin-come-sneer. “You’re not out in ten minutes, we’re coming in. Anyone’s missing, I shoot you first.” Generally, once fire arms are mentioned, I find it best to surrender the last word. I’d had to do that a lot that week. I wondered if Furlo would like to meet my ex-wife.

By that time, I was convinced that not only Carl and his wife but also all of his neighbours must have been aware of our presence. How often do people stand in the rain chatting outside grey sedans at ten thirty at night? Apparently, often enough that as I tentatively rang the doorbell, the people in Carl’s neighbourhood continued to take no notice.

It was nearly two minutes before a dishevelled and sleepy looking Carl opened his front door behind a safety chain.

“Yeah?” he asked groggily. Through the small crack he had permitted in the doorway, I was already aware of the distinctive odour of alcohol.

“Carl, it’s me, Winston Patrick,” I told him. “Open the door. I need to come in.”

“Winston?” He considered this carefully, squinting through the barely open doorway at my now soaking wet visage on his doorstep. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s important. I need to talk to you. Come on. Open up. Now.” As a rule, semi-drunk people are about the only people I ever have success with talking forcefully to. I turned towards the street and waved and smiled at the two detectives, both still standing against their car. I wondered if they were going to stand in the rain for the full ten minutes I’d been allotted, or if they’d seek refuge in the car. Smythe gave me a bendy fingertip wave back. It almost looked like flirting, but then it was late, and I do have a vivid imagination.

The door closed momentarily, and I could hear Carl wrestling with the front door safety chain. I figure those are more for show than anything else; it doesn’t really take much to push through cheap chain link.

Carl opened the door and, seemingly recovering the good manners I had always seen him demonstrate at school, waved me into the entrance hallway. “Come in. Come in. Sorry to keep you standing in the rain.” He was oblivious to the two detectives at the curb.

As I entered Carl’s house, I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that most of what my ex-wife had suggested about the earning potential of a teacher was apparently true. Looking into Carl’s modest home, I sheepishly felt the teensiest bit grateful that my previous profession, coupled with some relatively savvy investing, had permitted me to live with a lifestyle a few degrees higher than what Carl and Bonnie Turbot appeared to be living. Clearly, no one becomes a teacher as a get rich quick scheme.

From the front hallway, Carl led me immediately up a flight of stairs to the main living room area. As we reached the top of the stairs, Carl gestured into the narrow living room at the front of the house. The Turbots had done a pleasant job of decorating the shoe box. It at least looked homey. “You want something to drink?” he offered.

“No, thank you,” I replied. It was hard to know where to begin. How do you explain to your friend that he’s busted? I forced myself to refocus my mind to think of Carl just as a client. Keeping my distance was becoming increasingly necessary if I was going to give him an adequate defence. I looked quietly around the room, then gestured with my head towards the long hallway that trails off into darkness along one side of the house. “Is your wife sleeping?” I asked Carl.

“No,” he responded, looking away down the same darkened passage. “She’s not here.”

“Oh.” That’s the best I could conjure up for the time being.

“She . . . umm . . . Bonnie has gone to stay with her parents for a little while,” he managed to confess.

“I see.”

“It was, I guess you could say, a little tense here after the media broke the news that I was a suspect in Tricia’s death.”

“I can see how that could create some conflict in the household.”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause during which both of us stood looking mostly anywhere but at each other. Finally, I sat down on the edge of the couch and invited him to do the same.

“Carl, I wish you had told me the truth about Tricia.” Though I meant our conversation to be about legal strategy, somehow I managed to make the statement be all about me and immediately regretted it. The last thing I needed from my client was to have him feel like I was against him. The truth was I was slowly beginning to lean that way.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. From the sound of his voice, I could tell that whatever alcohol he’d consumed following his fight with his wife, its effects had not completely worn off. His voice was unsteady, no doubt partially from emotional turmoil, but there was also the slightest slur to his consonants. This wasn’t a good time for him to undergo any further questioning.

“Your relationship with Tricia was much more than teacher and student. I don’t know how serious it was. I don’t know if it was romance or love or lust, and I don’t care. What I do care about is the fact you were having sex with her, and you denied it to my face. That doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t help you.”

“That’s not true!” he blasted indignantly. “I told you that she was making it up. She’s trying to get me in shit!”

“Enough! No more bullshit. I know about you and Tricia.” His eyes were wild again, and I saw the flash of wild anger he had shown me two days earlier at the school. I had a momentary flash of Carl’s rage exploding and him wrapping his big hands around Tricia’s neck, choking the life out of her in a darkened park.

“Carl,” I continued, lowering my voice in an attempt to calm him, “I know about it. The police know about it. They have evidence that can and will prove it.”

Another pregnant pause passed between us as the anger flowed out of him nearly as quickly as it had appeared. Finally, he looked up and nearly whimpered, “How did you find out?”

“I didn’t,” I told him. “They did. They found some soiled garments when they searched her bedroom. Preliminary DNA tests indicate a match to you.”

“They have my DNA?” he asked. As a scientist, he certainly understood how it works. I sensed his confusion and imminent panic at the thought of what other information about him might be on file.

“Evidently we leave all kinds of DNA kicking around our classrooms. It wasn’t difficult to find something with your DNA signature.”

“Holy shit,” he mustered.

“Yeah. That was about my reaction.” I paused for a moment, afraid to ask the next question. “Why didn’t you tell me about your relationship with Tricia?”

He looked at me pleadingly. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Win.”

“What I’m thinking isn’t really the issue here. More important is what the police who are in front of your house are thinking. Not to mention the thoughts of the judge who they managed to convince to sign a warrant for your arrest.”

“The police are here? Now?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here. You’re about to be arrested.”

Carl, I was quickly learning, was a frequent rider on the pendulum of mood swings. The confusion I had seen give way to anger was now replaced with a veritable wave of fear. He leaped to his feet and actually ran to the front window, parting the curtains to see his anticipated captors below.

“They’re out there?” he asked. He suddenly sounded very young, like an adolescent who has just been informed the school bully has shown up to punch his lights out. “I don’t understand,” he continued, his breath coming faster as real panic set in. “I thought you said their evidence was no good. I thought it was going to be all right?” He had begun to pace. I hoped Furlo and Smythe couldn’t see his shadow dancing back and forth in front of the window. They might think he was planning to run.

“I thought everything was going to be okay. I also thought you weren’t sleeping with one of your students, Carl. This sort of changes the perspective of the police, and quite frankly, I can understand why they’re looking at you very carefully.”

He continued to pace, his breathing growing shallower to the point I thought he was beginning to hyperventilate. All the while he was muttering “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”

Finally, I stood up, grabbing him by the shoulders to brace him and guide him back to the chair. “Carl, there isn’t a lot of time. I need you to sit down and talk to me for a few minutes while we can still be reasonably assured of our privacy.” He sank down and looked up at me for salvation, as though by simply listening to me he might be free of whatever demons were tearing up his insides.

“Okay,” he gasped out, recovering at least some of his composure. “What do we need to do?”

I slumped back down on the couch, looking at Carl across the coffee table. “For starters,” I began, “you can explain to me why you didn’t tell me right away about you and Tricia.”

Carl looked across the room directly into my eyes, looking for some confirmation that he ought to break his own silence and reveal the details of what had been happening.

“You’re going to need to trust someone now,” I told him gently. “It may as well be me. Your wife sounds like she’s gone, I can’t imagine anyone at school is going to come near this. Tell me the truth. Were you having sex with Tricia?”

“Yes,” he said. “I was.”

At least that much was out in the open. Glancing at my watch, I realized that in mere moments Smythe would not be able to restrain her partner any longer, and Carl would be led out in cuffs.

“Was this a one time thing, or was it a relationship like Tricia described?”

Carl stared at me, his eyes pleading for me to understand. “It isn’t what you think, Win. It really isn’t. I, we were in love.”

“You loved her?”

“And she loved me. My God, it was so wonderful but so wrong at the same time. I’ve been making this constant trip between heaven and hell for over a year.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look. It wasn’t some perverted thing, as much as it sounds that way because of her age and the fact that I’m her teacher. I don’t know if she’s very mature for her age or I’m immature, but she is just the most wonderful woman in the world.” Carl continued to refer to Tricia in the present tense. Denial, perhaps? Or was this still the liquor talking?

“It started out very innocently. She was in my Grade Eleven biology class. Of course I noticed her physical appearance. She’s a beautiful girl, and objectively I could see that. But I never set out to seduce her or anything.”

“Tricia told me you first got, uh, together one night working late on a biology lab,” I interjected, trying to move it along.

“That’s right. We’d had lots of conversations, she would just hang around and chat and then one night, it just happened. I don’t know how to explain it except to say that we kind of looked into each other’s eyes, and the next thing you know we were kissing madly. It was right out of some teenage romance movie.”

“And no one ever suspected anything? You kept it hidden for nearly a year?” I asked incredulously. In the nearly three months I had been at J. Mac, I had most definitely learned that schools are a hotbed of gossip. Even I knew about which teenager was dating which teenager. It seemed impossible to believe a teacher and student could be romantically involved for so long without word getting out, no matter how hard they tried to conceal it.

“No. At least I don’t think so. We were very discreet. We used to meet in the evenings. Sometimes on the weekends. It was like dating. We talked about everything. She is the most understanding, giving person I have ever met.” Tricia had resumed the present tense again.

“Then why did you ‘break up’ with her?”

Carl looked down at his hands. I couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to be examining his left hand, where his wedding ring would be sitting were he wearing one. “I don’t know. Somehow Bonnie, my wife, suspected that something was going on. I don’t know if she knew anything for sure, but she hinted around that she thought I was spending so much time away from home that something must be going on.”

“So just like that, you were able to dump Tricia?”

“God, no,” he protested. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I even spoke to my priest about it. He’s the only other person who knows this, Win. He’s the one who insisted I break up with Tricia. He said I owed it to God to honour my wedding vows.”

I could relate to that one. Having made the decision to forego my wedding vows, my priest, and the entire organization of the Roman Catholic Church, had essentially told me where to go.

“So?” I prodded.

“So I made the decision that it would be best for both of us to call it off. I’ve never been so depressed.”

“And Tricia?”

“She was crushed at first. She sobbed and cried, but she didn’t seem angry. She never asked me to change my mind. She never demanded anything of me. She was entirely mature about it.”

“Until she threatened to expose you.”

He looked up at me again. “That’s just it. It was well over a week since we had broken up. She was pleasant and everything in class. I thought things were going to be fine. It’s like she suddenly snapped.”

I sighed. I hated to have to ask the next part. “What happened next?”

He looked back at me with what appeared to be genuine surprise. “What happened when?”

“On Wednesday. The day Tricia was killed.”

Carl’s face broke into a pained, near horrified expression. “Winston!” he proclaimed. “You don’t think that . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.

“I told you, what I think isn’t important. You have to understand the police have even more good reason to think you killed her.”

“But I didn’t!” he wailed. “I love Trish. I would never do anything to hurt her.” With that, the damn burst, and Carl slumped over in the chair, painful sobs flowing from him. I had no way to comfort him, so I just sat back to let him cry himself out.

While I was waiting, my cellular phone beeped again in my pocket. Reaching in, I popped it open and answered, knowing full well who it would be.

“Time’s up, Counsellor. Should we come in?” Smythe asked me politely.

I knew I had no right to ask, but I did anyway. “Five more minutes, and I’ll bring him out myself.”

“I’ll give you two,” she replied and hung up before I could respond. Even good cops have their limits.

“Come on, Carl,” I told him soothingly. “It’s time.”

He sat up and began wiping away at his face. “I’m sorry, Win. I really am. I’m just so lost. I can’t believe she’s gone.” I hated myself for it; I could feel myself being dragged into his emotional response, starting to believe what he was saying to me. There was just one piece that didn’t fit.

“Carl,” I asked him as he rose to his feet, “the police found Tricia’s underwear with your DNA on it in her laundry basket. When was the last time the two of you were together?”

He looked at me wounded, caught like a kid skipping classes. “When I went to try to talk to her after you did. We talked and things were going okay, and all of a sudden—it just happened.”

“Where?” I demanded.

“At school,” he said, hanging his head again to avoid my incredulous stare. “It was the only time that ever happened.”

“So you and Tricia had sex the day she was killed?” He flinched when I used the term “had sex.”

“Yes. And then I went home. And that was the last time I ever saw her. I swear to God.”

He looked so pathetic, standing there pleading with me to believe his version of events. It was going to take an enormous amount of debunking of the police’s theories about my client.

“I’ll let the police in,” I told him, heading back towards the stairs as the front doorbell rang.

I headed down the stairs to meet Furlo and Smythe as Carl waited at the top of the stairs. I opened the door once again to the blustering rain. Furlo stood leaning against the doorjamb, handcuffs swaying from his raised hand.

“Okay, Teach,” he said, smiling smugly. “Detention time!”

I knew he had been dying to use that the whole time I’d left him out in the cold, fierce rain.