Читать книгу Winston Patrick Mystery 2-Book Bundle - David Russell W. - Страница 19

So far, most of my week had been taken up in some way, shape or form by the legal problems of Carl Turbot. It seemed only appropriate that my Friday evening should be wrecked as well. I sensed Furlo was deriving perverse satisfaction from eating into my weekend. I don’t know if he slapped the cuffs on extra loud, or it was just my imagination, but his smug grin told me, at least, that he felt I was some kind of lowlife for defending Carl. He was going to take as much time as possible while I escorted my client through the booking process. Even if my Friday night plans just involved going to bed early to catch up on sleep, Furlo was determined to sabotage that. Ha, I thought. Little does Furlo know that insomniacs don’t sleep any better just because it’s the weekend. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway. One grabs self-righteousness wherever one can find it.

Of course, Providence would have it that all those neighbours who had been seemingly oblivious to Furlo, Smythe and myself out talking on the sidewalk suddenly appeared in their doorways just in time to see Furlo’s dramatic display of patting down and cuffing Carl. Smythe looked apologetic, knowing full well I wouldn’t have brought Carl out armed and that Furlo’s dramatic displays were intended to embarrass his suspect in front of his neighbours. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about it; searching the suspect before placing him under arrest was proper procedure.

Once one neighbour stuck his head out, porch lights came on up and down the street, and despite the bitter, near winter rain, a number of busybody neighbours braved the downpour with umbrellas and cups of hot chocolate in hand to watch the proceedings. Certainly, this would not have been completely unexpected for them, given the enormous coverage that had been given to Tricia’s murder and Carl’s subsequent questioning. Some were likely planning their comments to the media, who would surely arrive once word of his arrest was leaked out. I was fairly confident that by now a local resident was probably telephoning the newsroom of one of Vancouver’s TV stations, hoping to catch their fifteen minutes of fame.

“We can’t believe it,” they’d say. “He was always such a pleasant neighbour. Quiet. Kept to himself. Never bothered anyone, but always gave you a pleasant wave and good morning. We’re completely shocked.” In the entire history of television and homicide, has there never been a murderer whom neighbours thought was kooky all along? Don’t loud and obnoxious neighbours ever kill people?

Once Carl was securely tucked away in the back seat of the Crown Victoria, I hopped into my car to follow the two detectives to the pre-trial holding centre, where Carl would be processed and placed into formal custody. Once behind the wheel and in the late Friday evening traffic, my adrenaline began to subside, and I had time to process the events.

Much was beginning to bother me about Carl’s case. Apart from its inherent unpleasantness, little legal alarm bells were sounding in my head’s attaché case. The first element of concern was the speed at which the investigation had progressed. It was only yesterday morning that Carl and I had been interviewed at the school; a few hours later, he had been picked up for questioning, and within twenty-four hours he was under arrest. Certainly, Furlo and Smythe looked completely haggard, and I had no doubt they had been working around the clock since Tricia’s body had been found early on Wednesday evening. Vancouver doesn’t have a great number of homicides, so every one of them is taken very seriously, but the death of a young person would definitely see all of the stops pulled out to catch her killer. While Furlo and Smythe were the lead detectives—and likely their energy had been focused almost exclusively on Carl over the last thirty-six hours—there must also have been dozens of officers working different angles and gathering evidence for an arrest to happen so quickly.

Even the evidence itself was troublesome, essentially because there didn’t seem to be a lot of it. On the surface, Carl’s DNA found on Tricia’s undergarments looked extremely bad, but only insofar as it potentially gave Carl a motive for wanting to see Tricia dead—if she was dead, she couldn’t report on their inappropriate and illegal relationship. But motive usually isn’t enough for Crown counsel to advise an arrest be made. The DNA finding only proved Carl had had sex with Tricia, not that he had killed her. Indeed, since the underwear wasn’t even found at the crime scene, as far as I could tell, they had very little to directly suggest his involvement in her death.

The high profile nature of this particular case would have had any good police chief wanting to see an arrest made quickly, but by the same token, the very fact this case had garnered so much media attention should have made the Crown extra careful to ensure they had a rock-solid case before making an arrest. The justice department would look much worse if they focused their investigative efforts on one suspect, only to have the case against that suspect collapse due to a premature arrest or a lack of solid evidence.

The DNA sample itself was also troublesome, and not just because it positively identified Carl. How had the police come to make that positive identification in less than twenty-four hours? I had had very little legal experience with homicide, but what I did know was that forensic analysis, apart from being expensive to conduct, was also notoriously slow. Advances in DNA testing and myriad other crime scene technology meant forensic evidence was used not just in murder cases, but in almost any crime where human DNA evidence could be gathered. Consequently, there was always a huge backlog of DNA sampling that prosecutors and defence counsel were anxiously awaiting.

Carl’s DNA had been collected, tested and reported to the police in what must have been a matter of hours. True, a case like Tricia’s would be considered important, but not that important. Somehow, Furlo and Smythe had pushed the DNA analysis to the very front of the line and had clearly kept technicians working overtime to make the identification of Carl Turbot. For that kind of pressure to be applied to the forensic team, someone much higher up than Furlo and Smythe must have had a hand in speeding up the process.

That, of course, smelled of politics and pressure that had nothing to do with the fact that the prime suspect was Tricia’s teacher. Even the apparently heinous nature of Carl’s romantic—a term I was forcing myself to use—relationship with Tricia wasn’t enough to justify the kind of pressure that must surely have been exerted to get that kind of speed and commitment from everyone involved. Tricia, or more likely, someone in Tricia’s family, was connected to the powers that be in a way that warranted faster than normal action on everyone’s part. Of course, the police came out winners too: they got to show the world they’d caught the killer, and fast.

The last key problem that kept tugging at me was that despite Carl’s sleeping with Tricia, despite his trying to use me as his legal protector should that relationship be discovered by administration, despite what looked like a rather obvious motive for wanting Tricia dead, something about him kept bringing me back to a belief in his innocence. I don’t consider myself to be a gullible person by nature, and I admit to having been burned on occasion by trusting people I should not have, but for the most part my experience at determining whom I can and cannot trust has proven pretty successful. And however naïve I hoped I didn’t turn out to be, driving behind Furlo and Smythe as they delivered my client to lockup, I just couldn’t accept that the man who had held my hand through my introduction to high school teaching, the same man who worked tirelessly with students, the very same emotional wreck who broke down sobbing in grief at the death of someone he claimed to love, could have killed her in cold blood. No, I just couldn’t accept that.

It was clear that I had a considerable amount of work to do. Whether or not I believed wholly in Carl’s version of events was no longer relevant. If Carl was going to get a fair and aggressive defence, I had to believe in his claims, at least to the degree that I could give him the best defence money could buy. Which was the first point I put down on my legal to-do list. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer, I suppose, but Carl and I were going to have to sit down really quickly and start figuring out what kind of fee I was going to be paid. Call me shallow, call me uncaring, but I was not about to undertake the massive amount of work that preparing a murder defence entails completely free of charge, especially considering I had this other fulltime job that was extremely demanding of my time.

Item number two on my mental checklist was figuring out a way by which I could somehow do both of my jobs simultaneously. I don’t think it’s overstatement, especially to anyone who’s been a teacher, but by the end of a day of working with kids, I had barely enough energy to scrape together some kind of dinner, mark the work the kids did one day, plan something for the next day and get enough sleep to function. Fortunately for me, that last part is a task I have been avoiding for a number of years.

The larger problem was scheduling court appearances. Not to appear a complainer, but judges are not especially forgiving when it comes to trying to schedule around other commitments. Similarly, I’m pretty sure the school’s management would not be too keen on letting me postpone my classes until evening, when court lets out.

Being so new to the profession also made it quite unlikely the Vancouver School Board would grant me a temporary leave of absence to fight the case. Given the negative publicity and numerous phone calls from irate parents they were likely already receiving, the school board would not take kindly to another of their teachers seeking time off to defend the one charged with Tricia’s murder. Even once the trial was over, it was pretty much guaranteed that Carl would be fired from teaching and have his credentials removed, if not be prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with a minor in a position of trust, the original charge Carl had come to me about. That was a legal challenge that would have to wait.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized our best course of action was to make sure Carl never went to trial. It just seemed impossible that I could adequately defend him, and I didn’t really feel I was ready to bail out of the teaching profession just yet. One of the first things we would have to do was make every effort to nail down Tricia’s exact time of death, details of which had not yet been released to me as quickly as Carl’s DNA test results had been. Then Carl and I had to make sure he was able to come up with a very good alibi that proved he couldn’t have done it. On the face of it, it seemed like pretty sloppy police work that the detectives had apparently done very little to confirm Carl’s whereabouts during Tricia’s murder. Of course, that perception of sloppy detecting was based on my growing conviction that Carl had been wrongly arrested.

The Vancouver pre-trial detention centre is located at the poorest, most drug-addict ridden corner in Canada’s poorest neighbourhood. Hastings Street is considered an arterial route and becomes a highway a little further east, taking the driver who chooses its traffic light-congested lanes from close to Stanley Park in the west to the eastern edge of the suburban city of Burnaby, just east of Vancouver. The entire stretch of roadway from end to end is littered with all manner of pawn shops, rundown fast food joints, a sprinkling of car dealerships and the Pacific National Exhibition fair grounds, historically a major agricultural trading ground that evolved into an amusement park and now is slated for permanent destruction and restoration to park space. Some attempts have been made to gentrify the neighbourhoods that Hastings passes through, but somehow, those attempts never seem to take in a meaningful way. It doesn’t matter how much a city council spends on improvements, it’s as though Hastings refuses to allow new buildings, sidewalks and hanging baskets to penetrate its aura of washed out, rundown dowdiness. Some claim that’s its charm.

One block north of Hastings, Main Street meets Cordova at the outer edge of Vancouver’s renowned Chinatown. Strangely, small merchants, largely “mom and pop” Asian family operations, have not only survived, but thrived amidst the largest collection of homeless people and strung-out addicts the country has to offer. It’s no secret why so many homeless people and junkies end up in Vancouver: compared to other major Canadian cities like Montreal, Toronto or Winnipeg, Vancouver’s wet winters are practically tropical. It has long been a grievance of B.C. politicians that our province foots the bill for the derelicts, the neglected and the addicted of the other nine.

It’s at the intersection of Main and Cordova that the forbidding pre-trial detention centre sits kitty corner from the old Vancouver Police Department headquarters. Definitely an equality-based institution, the centre houses those awaiting their day in court for crimes as small as minor break and enter to capital offences like rape or homicide. Even Canada’s only real terrorists, charged with the bombing of an Air India flight that killed over three hundred passengers and crew, had spent their pre-trial months preparing with their counsel in the facility at which Carl was just now arriving.

The gaping garage door at the end of the driveway off of Cordova yawned open as Furlo and Smythe delivered their cargo for processing. Not being an official of the police or the courts, I was left to park my car on the dark, rain-soaked streets. Most people would not feel comfortable leaving their car, especially if it were an expensive one, parked outside in this neighbourhood. But the reality of the area surrounding the courts was that car theft was relatively uncommon. For most of the people for whom the streets of Vancouver’s downtown East side was home, a car really isn’t a prized theft item. Where would they go? The supply of drugs, food handouts and even temporary shelter for those trying to break their street existence is all located in this neighbourhood. Why would they want to leave?

I was buzzed through the front entrance doors by a night security guard who looked surprised to see me. “Winston Patrick,” he proclaimed boisterously. “I thought you’d given up this game.” Meinhard Werner was officially part of the Sheriff’s department, which is responsible only for the operation of our court system, including the transportation of criminals from prisons for court appearances. Meinhard, however, presented an image far from that which we equate with law enforcement. Nearing sixty, with a belly that protruded well beyond the capacity of his belt, Meinhard’s principal responsibilities were the signing in of visitors and the completion of the daily crossword puzzle in the Province newspaper. Oddly, though the Province is the “dummed down” tabloid paper in the city, its crossword puzzle is much more difficult than the one in the Vancouver Sun, its main competitor. One of life’s little mysteries.

“Hey Meinie,” I replied. “This is a temporary dalliance, I assure you.”

“You probably just missed me,” he joked jovially. How anyone working the evening shift on a Friday night in the worst part of town could consistently remain so happy is another of life’s little mysteries.

“That must be it.”

“So they bringing your boy in back now?” he asked, glancing down at video monitors showing the various entrances to the facility. It was hardly surprising Meinhard would know who my client was. If I flipped over his Province newspaper, I’m sure Tricia’s murder figured prominently on the front page. By the weekend editions of the two dailies, my picture from this morning’s media scrum at the school would make me instantly recognizable.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I offered glumly. There was little I could do for Carl right now except see to it that he was processed properly and given an appropriate place to bunk down. Unlike what is often portrayed in fiction, I knew Furlo and Smythe would make sure their prisoner was safe and sound and not locked up with a violent offender. The police generally have little interest in allowing their prime suspect to sustain any harm prior to going to trial. After sentencing however, anything goes.

Meinhard looked me over, his joviality sliding just slightly. People often view law enforcement personnel and defence counsel as enemies. It isn’t always the case. As much as Meinhard got to see the lowest of the low come through his watch, he always showed tremendous respect for the process and the principle of innocent until proven guilty. He had never made me feel like I was a lesser citizen for defending those charged with a crime, even the guilty ones.

“A bit of a tough one for ya, I imagine?” he asked, trying to give me some comradely support.

“It isn’t the most comfortable position to be in, that’s for sure.”

“He work with you, this one? Is that how you came to be his counsel?” He hooked his thumb towards a video monitor to his right, where a grainy image of Carl and the two detectives could be seen getting out of the car and heading towards a freight-like elevator in the underground parking lot.

“Yeah,” I replied. “We teach at the same high school. He approached me to ask for some legal advice, and next thing you know, I had a client.”

“Yeah, well, it’s going to be an ugly one, if the media dogs are right. You hang in there, and you’ll do right by him, one way or the other.”

“Thanks. I’ll do what I do.”

He gestured towards the doorway at the end of the hallway. “You remember the way, or would you like an escort?” Meinhard knew visitors weren’t really supposed to wander the innards of the building, but most practicing legal counsel were unofficially permitted to make their way to meet with clients without the aid of a sheriff escort. It was another of his subtle ways of saying “welcome back.”

“I think I still remember,” I told him.

“All right then. Go get him,” he said, passing me a plastic encased visitor’s badge and unlocking the hallway door with a loud, electronic buzz.

The interior hallways of the pre-trial centre are painted institutional cream, not quite blinding white, but also devoid of colour, warmth or personality, three elements generally not permissible in publicly funded buildings. The only decoration on the walls was the occasional “No Smoking” sign and a variety of scuff marks, where reluctant prisoners dragged and slid their bodies and handcuffs and wary new lawyers bumped their briefcases. I wound my way through a short maze of hallways to the central processing areas, where Carl would be getting fingerprinted, searched, given prisoner’s garb and assigned a cell until his first court appearance. I found Furlo and Smythe standing aside as a fingerprint technician worked Carl through the process.

Ambling up to the two detectives, I decided that for the time being I might try a less adversarial approach. It might prove to be more useful in gathering information.

“Coffee, Winston?” Detective Jasmine Smythe offered. I noticed Furlo was working his way through a Styrofoam cup of what must surely have been his twentieth cup of the day. Smythe carried with her a bottle of water she sipped from periodically. I also noticed she called me by my first name.

“No, thank you. It will only keep me awake all night.”

“You mean you’re not going to camp out here to tell bedtime stories to your client?” Furlo asked. He had already resumed punctuating the word “client” with a sarcastic drawl. For the time being, I refused to be drawn into a verbal pissing match with the bleary-eyed detective. I wondered how long my resolve would last.

“You two didn’t waste any time solving the case, Detective Smythe. You must be very confident.” I was on my non-combative best behaviour, just passing the time of night with my two VPD friends.

“Maybe we’re just that good,” she replied with a smile. “And why don’t we drop the formality? It’s Jasmine. Call me Jazz.”

“I like that. Jazz. It has a very smooth sound to it.”

“Winston,” Jazz smiled again at me in mock embarrassment, “are you flirting with me?”

“Would that be a good idea?” I smiled back coyly. At least, I was trying to be coy.

“Gosh,” she adopted a southern belle persona. “Why I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“No one would believe it for a moment. If anything, they’d accuse me of being your sugar-daddy.”

“Jesus Christ,” Furlo blurted out, “are you two finished fucking around here? I wouldn’t mind dumping the perv over there and going home. Some of us haven’t slept in a long time.”

“Well, at least you haven’t tired yourself out actually gathering sufficient evidence,” I retorted. It was embarrassing how quickly my resolve not to fight with Furlo had fizzled.

Furlo put his Styrofoam coffee cup down on a nearby table and walked towards me, slowly, menacingly. His lack of sleep and abundance of caffeine had heightened his already aggressive personality to the near breaking point. I wasn’t helping. Rationally, I recognized his approach for what it likely was: Furlo was drawing a line in the sand to see whether or not I would flinch. This was a good time to be the bigger man—at least in terms of maturity—and apologize for my snide comments and walk away. Secretly, I was starting to enjoy how quickly I could get under Furlo’s skin.

“Don’t kid yourself,” he hissed, pushing his considerably wide frame into my personal space. “This is the worst type of crime. No one wants to see a kid—a kid—murdered. But when you have a kid who was being abused by her teacher, a man who should have been a person she could turn to for help, someone she could trust, and he not only takes advantage of her so he can get his own rocks off, then whacks her when she’s no longer interesting to him or she threatens to expose him for the pig that he is, you can bet your ass that I’m going to work around the clock and do everything I can to put your piece of shit client in the shit can for as long as our pathetic Criminal Code will let me. Your client is the worst kind of asshole we deal with. And as a parent of a daughter especially, he makes me sick. So don’t you worry, Winnie, we have and will continue to gather all the evidence we need.”

He paused a moment to breathe his stale coffee breath directly into my nostrils. I felt like I was getting CPR at a Starbucks. Then he continued. “You’re in the big leagues now, teacher-boy. No more little Legal Aid penny-ante stuff. You’re just feeling like such a shit because you recognize what a lowlife you’re defending.”

Two choices again. Walk away. Or. I cocked my head slightly to the right. “Did you pick that up reading pop psychology books when you were supposed to be catching the real killer?”

My chest pounded as Furlo’s hand pushed me back against the wall behind me. “You listen to me, you little fuck . . .”

“Michael!” Smythe burst sharply, suddenly reminding us of her quiet presence throughout the exchange. “Step back, now!” she commanded. Amazingly, Furlo did exactly as he was told. It was as though acting tough with me was perfectly acceptable, but crossing his partner was not something that would even enter his mind. Immediately, he backed away, turned around and crossed the room, picking up his coffee cup and walking back towards Carl and the sheriff’s employee, who were watching the exchange in wide-eyed wonder.

Smythe turned her sharp glare to me, softening it ever so little. “Why?” was all she asked, with a deep sigh.

“I don’t know. I can’t help myself?” I tried.

She gave me a caring look. “He’s right, though, Winston. This is going to be a big, ugly case. From the point of view of your teaching career, which I respect greatly, by the way, think carefully about whether you want to continue representing your client. This might be a good juncture at which to pass this off to other counsel.”

“I can’t do that,” I replied. “That would not be right.”

Detective Smythe took my right hand in both of hers. “I know,” she said. “I thought I would try. Let’s try to be good, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Scout’s honour.”

“Good,” she said, releasing my hand and picking up her purse. “Goodnight, Winston.”

“Goodnight, Jasmine.” Then, because Jasmine had such a disarming way about her, I called across the room to her partner. “Goodnight, Detective Furlo. I apologize for upsetting you.” It was the best I could offer.

“Whatever,” he grumbled, not bothering to counter with an apology of his own for tossing me against the wall. He turned to leave, then paused and walked back over to me. I prepared for a firm handshake. Instead, he stopped to stare me down again. “One more thing. Stop flirting with my partner. You do it again, I’m going to give her husband your home address. That’s former B.C. Lions defensive tackle Warren Smythe, in case you’ve forgotten.” With that he turned and left, accurately tossing his coffee cup into the waste basket from a distance of nearly twenty feet. Impressive.

Catching my breath for a moment, I turned and walked over to where Carl was removing his belt and emptying his pockets. He watched me carefully as I sauntered over, trying to gauge my impression of the state of his situation.

“Jeez, Win,” Carl began shakily. “He seemed really pissed off at you.”

“Yeah,” I admitted a little sheepishly. “I have that ability to alienate people. My ex-wife would confirm that for you,” I added, trying to inject some much needed levity into the room. As is often the case, I recognized immediately my timing was ill-placed. Looking at Carl, I could see that the gravity of his situation had sunk in, and he looked more terrified than I had seen him to date.

“Look,” I continued gamely, “don’t worry about my relationship with the police. He’s pretty much not our concern any more. It is not at all uncommon for the police not to get along with defence lawyers. Cops like Furlo, if they had their way, would shoot first and ask questions later.” Of course that was an unfair characterization of Furlo. He was going to extraordinary lengths to ensure he had a rocksolid case against Carl. There was no way he wanted to see this case fail due to some minor procedural flaw. He was going to be doing this one by the book, but Carl didn’t need to hear that right now.

“Okay,” he said, a little dejectedly. He raised his lowered head to meet my eyes, like a beaten puppy, looking to his master for some kind of explanation for the torment he was going through. I wished I could tell him that everything would be fine, but I didn’t feel right making that assurance until I had more information to work with.

“Did you want to go into one of the conference rooms?” the helpful young sheriff’s officer asked. He looked about nineteen, much too young to have actually completed the Justice Institute training course now required for virtually all courthouse positions.

“Thank you,” I told him. “We’ll just take a few minutes.”

“That’s all right,” he replied. “Believe it or not, it’s actually a slow night.” He was right. For a Friday night, I would have expected to see all manner of minor arrests coming through central processing around this time. Thus far, we had been entirely alone.

The sheriff took us down yet another narrow hallway and ushered us through a plain door into a small room, holding only a cheap, standard, government-issue table with three stacking chairs around it. I pointed to a chair. As he lowered himself wearily into a chair, the sheriff closed the door and left us alone, though I knew he would be standing immediately outside the door. His guardianship in the hallway was pretty much a formality. The door could not be opened from the inside without a special key device inserted into a latch key slot where the doorknob would normally be.

After a silent time, during which I tried to think of comforting words for my client, Carl finally asked, “Is this it? Am I going to jail, Win?”

“Yes. You are. In a manner of speaking.”

“What manner of speaking? What does that mean?”

I sighed. Briefly my Law Twelve class flashed before me. I wondered if any of them would be able to explain Carl’s present circumstances and what was about to happen to him. I suspected that less than half the class could.

“For starters, though it’s going to feel like it, this isn’t technically ‘jail’,” I began. “This is pretty much just a holding place until we can get you before a judge. When that happens, we argue for getting you released pending trial, and we go from there.”

“Is that like bail?” he asked plaintively.

“Yes. If we’re lucky, the court will release you without bail, but because it’s a murder case, and it is getting a fair bit of media attention, we will likely have to try to post bond. It’s called a ‘surety’, and it’s the court’s way of having you guarantee that you’ll show up for trial.”

“I don’t have much money,” he began to protest. I recognized that any legal fees I could expect to collect, just like in the olden days, were likely to be picked up by Legal Aid. So much for hiring an investigator and assistant. At Legal Aid rates, I would be lucky if I could recoup my photocopy costs. My ex-wife would be so proud.

“You don’t generally have to put up too much money. We won’t have to worry about that for a while,” I told him, easing into the bad news.

“When will I be bailed out? How long do I have to stay here?”

“Under the Criminal Code, you’re generally entitled to a first court appearance within twenty-four hours or as soon as possible. But it’s Friday night. That means the likelihood of us finding a sitting judge on the weekend is pretty slim. I think it’s one of the reasons they arrested you so quickly. They buy a couple more days of investigative time while you have to wait for your first court appearance.”

“But that’s not fair,” he protested. He was beginning to sound like one of his own students, complaining about an upcoming exam or major assignment that infringed on their teenage social life.

“Legally, it is fair. There’s really nothing I can do about that. The good news is that it will also buy me a couple of days to start preparing to get you out of here. Look, the police know you’re not some hardened, career criminal. But they believe you killed Tricia.”

“But I didn’t.” He slammed his open palm down on the table. “I didn’t kill her. Winston, I loved Trish.” Clearly, he had sobered up from his alcoholic haze of earlier in the evening. He had resumed speaking of his lover in the past tense.

“Right now, believe it or not, that doesn’t really matter. The detectives, and probably the Crown Counsel who has been assigned to this case, believe they’ve caught their man. They also figure that since this was some kind of crime of passion, by arresting you tonight and leaving you to cool your heels over the weekend, you’ll be scared into making some kind of plea by the time we get into your first appearance on Monday.”

“They think that I’m going to plead guilty?” he asked indignantly. “I didn’t kill her.”

“That’s not what they believe, and they’re hoping they can avoid a messy trial by having you cop a plea.”

“I’m not pleading guilty to killing the woman I loved,” he insisted vehemently.

“Let’s not worry about that right now. And for the time being, I don’t want you referring to Tricia as ‘the woman you loved’. In fact, I don’t want you referring to anyone or to anything about your case. Have you got that? Not a word. Not to a guard, not to a detective, not to a Crown prosecutor. No one. You don’t say anything about the murder or your relationship with Tricia unless I’m present. You understand?”

“Okay,” he relented. “I won’t say anything.”

That dispensed with, I figured our time was just about up. There was nothing more I could do for my friend right now. “Good,” I said, rising from the table. Walking around to his side, I placed my hand on his shoulder. “This is going to be a really tough time, Carl. It will be worse than anything you’ve been through, but we’ve got some time on our hands. My first job will be to get you out of here on Monday. Then, we’re going to work on ensuring there’s no way this ever gets to trial. But it isn’t going to be easy. We’ll have lots of work to do.”

He looked up at me, placing his hand across mine, still on his shoulder. “I don’t know how I’m going to thank you. I don’t have much, but I’ll pay you as my lawyer, I promise you that.”

“We’ll take care of that later.” I walked towards the door to notify the sheriff’s officer that we were done. Then I turned to face Carl again.

“I’m going to ask you something one more time. It’s not a question defence counsel generally get into. It isn’t technically relevant, but I’m not just a lawyer any more. I’m a servant to two loyalties, so I’m going to ask you anyway. Whatever your answer is, I’m still going to be your lawyer, and I’m going to defend you. But for my own state of mind, I have to know the absolute, honest truth. Did you kill her?”

Carl’s eyes filled with tears. I knew and—damn it—believed the answer before he even spoke it. “No. I told you. I loved her. I would have given my life for her. I did not kill her.”

“Okay.” Running my hand through my hair with exhaustion, I regarded him one last time. “I’m very relieved to hear that. Is there someone you want me to call?”

He looked absolutely lost. His wife had already taken off to her parents’. It didn’t seem likely she was going to want to come visit him in jail. “I don’t think so.”

I knocked on the door. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Try to get some rest, all right?”

“All right,” was all he could muster. The door hummed as an electronic pass card key buzzed the lock and the sheriff’s officer poked his head in.

“We’re done,” I told him. “Goodnight, Carl.”

He was slumped at the table as the sheriff came to escort him to his first-ever jail cell. I turned and headed down the hallway towards the front entrance, unable to watch.