The Endless Knot

by Gail Bowen

  “Ethan’s very talented,” I said carefully.

  “What do you think about Chloe?”

  “I think Chloe’s you.”

  Taylor’s voice was small. “That’s what I think too,” she said.

  “If this is too much for you, I could talk to Ethan – or maybe to his mother.”

  “No! That would just make things worse. I can handle it.”

  “Okay,” I said. I slid my arm around her. “When I saw it was snowing, I brought up the new boots we bought you last spring at Aldo.”

  In one of those quicksilver mood shifts that signal the onset of adolescence, Taylor was suddenly ecstatic. “The orange ones? Sweeeet. I love those boots. This is going to be the best day.”

  I wasn’t so confident. Soul-fire: A Hero’s Life might have moved off Taylor’s personal screen, but Ethan’s disturbing portrait of the artist as a young man had stayed on mine. I was reading through A Hero’s Life seeking reassurance when Zack called.

  “Finally,” he said. “I’ve tried this number about forty times. I thought you were stuck in a snowbank somewhere.”

  “Sorry. I forgot to turn my cell on. Did you try our land line?”

  “Yep, and it was busy forty times.”

  “Taylor must have left it off the hook,” I said.

  “As long as you’re safe,” Zack said.

  “I am – I’m sitting here reading a comic.”

  “The Adventures of Pentangle Boy?”

  “Right,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “Lousy. It’s snowing like a son of a bitch, which means my chair is probably going to get stuck and my car is going to get stuck and I’m going to get stuck.”

  “ ‘Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm / Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.’ ”

  Zack chuckled. “What the hell was that?”

  “The last stanza of Ezra Pound’s ‘Ancient Music.’ Anyway, it made you laugh. Anything wrong apart from the weather?”

  “I’m facing a jury trial – that always makes my stomach churn.”

  “After all these years?”

  “After all these years. Jo, every lawyer is edgy before a jury trial. People are unpredictable – hammering out a settlement with the other side is a lot easier than taking a case to a jury. Of course, it’s also less fun. Actually, I was explaining all this to your younger son five minutes ago.”

  “You were talking to Angus?”

  “He phoned to wish me luck.”

  “Lawyer to lawyer,” I said.

  Zack chuckled. “Something like that. I haven’t heard so much legal lingo since I was in my first year at law school.”

  “Did he make any sense?”

  “Not a bit, but it was fun listening to him. He loves what he’s doing, Jo.”

  “That’s what he tells me, but Angus has a way of channelling only good news my way.”

  “Well, relax, because he’s happy in his work. As am I. I love my work, and I love my woman,” Zack said. “I’m a lucky guy. But it’s time to make tracks.”

  “In that case,” I said, “I will see you in court. Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “And, Jo, try to keep things in perspective. I’m going to do everything I can to get Sam off, but whatever happens, when the trial’s over, I’ll be coming home.”

  “So I should relax.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said. “Just relax and enjoy the show.”

  On the courthouse stairs, I ran into Ed Mariani. The collar of his winter jacket was up, the ear-flaps on his Irish walking cap were down, and his cheeks were pink. He beamed when he saw me.

  “Come to see your boyfriend in action?”

  “No, actually, I’m Canada Tonight’s eye on the Sam Parker trial.”

  Ed’s smile faded. “Nice gig,” he said, stamping the snow off his feet. “I wouldn’t have minded getting it.”

  “At this moment, I imagine Jill is wishing she’d offered you the job.”

  Ed removed his hat and brushed away the snow. “Why?”

  “Jill is concerned about my bias.”

  “Because of the boyfriend.”

  “No, because I find what Kathryn Morrissey did in her book morally repugnant.”

  “That could be a problem.”

  “Maybe I’ll just stick with safe topics. Maybe tonight I should lead with the inside info on that mural over there.”

  “Look out, Peter Mansbridge.”

  “Peter Mansbridge was never a parent-helper on four separate tours of this courthouse. Did you know that the mural is a mosaic of 125,000 pieces of Florentine glass? Did you know that the gent holding aloft the arms of the balance of right and wrong is a symbolic God of Laws? Did you know that the females flanking him represent Truth and Justice? Do you want me to continue?”

  “God, yes. If you’re that boring tonight, your job is mine.” The mirth disappeared from Ed’s face. “Talking about truth and justice won’t be easy in this one, Jo.”

  The Sam Parker trial was taking place in Courtroom C, the largest of the building’s courtrooms. Those of us with media passes were directed to two rows that had been reserved for us. As we filed into our places, there was only one topic of conversation: the weather. No one had arrived in Regina prepared for winter. Smart fall suits and expensive footwear had been wrecked by the snow, and journalists were not amused.

  I was wedged between a slender, trendily dressed young woman whose increasingly frequent bylines on increasingly more important stories suggested she was on her way up in the world of print journalism, and a square-jawed, deeply tanned, ex-anchor who was clearly on his way down. The young woman’s name was Brette Sinclair; the ex-anchor, who was a foot shorter than I’d imagined him to be in his anchor-desk days, was Kevin Powers. As soon as he was seated, he leaned across me to confide in Brette. “This suit is pure worsted wool, and it’s totally fucking ruined. I had it made in Hong Kong – cost me the equivalent of $785 U.S.”

  Brette smoothed her silky black hair. “You should have bought Canadian,” she said sweetly. When Kevin straightened and turned his back to her, Brette silently mouthed the word asshole, then removed a notebook and a pen from her tiny fabric handbag, settled in, and waited for the curtain to rise.

  On the school tour, I had learned that the judge, the jurors, the lawyers, and the defendants all came into the courtroom through separate entrances. It was an arrangement that made for good theatre, and as the lawyers entered, the buzz of anticipation subsided.

  The Crown prosecutor was a tall, slim redhead named Linda Fritz. Zack said she was a formidable opponent: smart, quick, and fearless. She took her place at the counsel table, opened her briefcase, and began arranging her files without fuss. Within seconds, Zack and Sam Parker entered and went to the defence table, but before Sam took his chair he gazed around the courtroom. He wasn’t looking for his wife. Beverly Parker had decided against attending her husband’s trial. Officially, she was overwrought; in truth, she had refused to be in the same room as Glenda. But if Beverly had chosen to shun her child, Sam was drawing strength from her. When Sam’s eyes found Glenda, the connection between them was electric. Clearly, they were counting on each other to get through the ordeal ahead. Finally, Glenda gave her dad the thumbs-up sign, and he smiled and sat down. It was all very low-key. He and Zack chatted until court was called to order with Mr. Justice Arthur Harney presiding.

  Like many other facets of the trial, the selection of a jury was a grindingly mundane process. The jury panel was brought into the courtroom. There were perhaps fifty people on the panel and they were asked two questions: were they related in any way to the accused or the witnesses? Had they read the transcript of the preliminary hearing? When no one responded in the affirmative, each member of the jury panel came forward and was either accepted or rejected. The Crown had four peremptory challenges, plus forty-eight “stand asides”; the defence had twelve peremptory challenges.

  From my perspective, Linda Fritz and Zack seemed to accept or chall
enge the jury candidates pretty much on the basis of instinct. I didn’t know how much digging the Crown had done into the background of the members of the jury panel, but I knew Falconer Shreve’s investigations had been casual. Zack’s firm had possessed the panel list since Labour Day. It included the ages and occupations of each potential juror. The obvious bad fits had been culled, but Zack believed in common sense and gut reaction, and it seemed Linda Fritz did too. In a little under three hours, the jurors who would try Samuel Parker on the charge of attempted murder were selected.

  Zack had rolled his eyes about the impossibility of finding a jury of peers for a right-wing fundamentalist millionaire who made no bones about the fact that he would do anything to protect his transgendering child. As I watched the jury members take their places in the box, I wondered how Sam Parker would fare with the six men and six women who were solemnly assuming their new and unfamiliar roles as “judges of the facts” of his case. They were as typical as any random group you might find searching for videos at Blockbuster on Friday at 5:00 p.m. There was a dapper little man with a scowl and an aggressive combover; two pleasant-faced women with gently permed white hair and seasonally patterned cardigans; a tall, imposing woman with a pale oval face Modigliani would have lusted to paint; two men in three-piece suits; a woman with a Lucille Ball explosion of red curls and a smile that looked slightly demented; two young people, one male, one female – both of whom squirmed and looked distinctly unhappy; a silver-haired gent who turned out to be a serious notetaker; a cocky, meaty man who sprawled in his chair, seemingly defying all comers to explain why they weren’t wasting his time; and a woman about my age, wearing a vintage granny gown, lace-up shoes, and the last rose of summer in her glorious salt-and-pepper mane.

  Despite Zack’s somewhat lackadaisical approach to jury selection, once he had a jury, they were his focus. From the moment they were sworn in, the members of the jury became players in the legal drama, joining the judge, the defendant, the lawyers, and the witnesses on the other side of the fourth wall, that invisible curtain that, in theatre, divides actors from their audience. On that first day, Zack’s eyes wandered towards me, but he never established eye contact. Later he told me that only inexperienced, showboating lawyers play to the back of the room. Experienced lawyers remember who makes the decisions, and they keep their focus on the judge and the jury.

  When the jurors were seated, Arthur Harney read the jury some elementary points of law and announced that we would recess so the jury could select a foreperson and we could all have lunch.

  Brette Sinclair slid her notebook and pen into her vintage bag. Kevin Powers, obviously over his snit, leaned across me again and addressed her. “Do you think there’s a decent place to eat around here?”

  “I’m sure there is,” Brette said. She gave my media identification tag a sidelong glance. “Joanne and I arranged to have lunch. I’ll give you a report on the restaurant when we get back.”

  Kevin glared at her. “You do that,” he said, and he got up and stomped off.

  When he was out of earshot, Brette picked up her bag. “Sorry,” she said. “Super-stud and I have some history I’m not anxious to repeat.”

  I knew Zack would be eating with his client. “I don’t have any plans for lunch if you’d like to join me.”

  She squinted. “Seriously?”

  “Why not? What do you like?”

  Her eyes sparked mischief. “Cake.”

  I slipped the strap of my purse over my shoulder. “I know just the restaurant for you,” I said. “Follow me.”

  In its previous incarnation, Danbry’s had been the Assiniboine Club, a gents-only place where men with deep pockets could sit in leather chairs, sip Scotch, read their papers, and escape women. Sense and shifting sensibilities had been the death knell for clubs like the Assiniboine, but an enterprising developer had seen the potential in the graceful old downtown building, and that wintry day, Brette and I walked into a restaurant of real charm. We arrived without reservations, but we were in luck – not only were places available, they were prime – in front of the fireplace in the high-vaulted dining room. Brette shrugged out of her trench coat. She was wearing nicely fitted blue jeans, a white shirt, a black cardigan, and a long string of pearls. Her outfit was a theme that would appear with variations throughout the trial.

  The server came, took our drink orders, and handed us menus. “What’s good?” Brette asked.

  “Everything,” I said. “But the lamb burgers with gorgonzola are amazing.”

  She snapped her menu shut. “I accept your recommendation,” she said. We ordered and she leaned forward. “So what’s your take on this case?”

  “Too soon to have a take,” I said.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll know after the opening statements.”

  “That soon?” I asked.

  She wrapped her pearls around her forefinger. “How many trials have you covered?”

  “This is the first,” I said.

  “Everybody has to start somewhere,” she said equitably. “Anyway, the conventional wisdom is that 75 per cent of cases are won or lost in the opening statement.”

  “Because you never get a second chance to make a first impression?” I said.

  She smiled. “My mother used to say that. Anyway, I’ve never seen Linda Fritz, but I have seen Zachary Shreve, and he’s a trip. I covered a trial where he was defending a Hells Angel named Lil Joe. Even slicked up for his court date, Lil Joe was a gorilla, but in his opening statement, Shreve wove this touching story about Joe’s kindness to widows and orphans. Of course, he failed to point out that Joe was responsible for a lot of those widows and orphans becoming widows and orphans, but no matter. Shreve got the jury on Lil Joe’s side.”

  “That must have been a killer opening statement,” I said.

  “It did the job,” Brette said dryly. “More importantly, Shreve managed to keep the jury on side. It must have been tough sledding for him. One of the Crown’s witnesses – hostile, needless to say – quoted the defendant as saying, ‘If you mess with the best, you die like the rest.’ ”

  “Scary stuff,” I said.

  “Yes indeed, but Shreve got the jury to buy his theory about the facts in the case, so Lil Joe got off. Afterwards when we were doing the post-trial scrum on the courthouse stairs, a contingent of Angels roared past on their bikes. They were carrying a banner: ‘Ride Hard. Die Free.’ ”

  I shuddered. “Sounds like a great moment in Canadian justice.”

  “From what I hear, Shreve is responsible for a lot of those,” Brette said.

  The server arrived with our drinks and Brette raised her glass. “Thanks for rescuing me from Kevin. I grew up watching him read the nightly news. Doing him was on my life list.”

  “Like hiking the West Coast Trail,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Brette agreed. “Except they give you a certificate for that. Anyway, onward and upward. What do you know about the judge in this case?”

  “Arthur Harney? He’s a farm boy. I heard him give a speech once, and he said he became a lawyer because shovelling shit was shovelling shit, and the law paid better than farming. The lawyers I know like him. He’s fair. He’s not a showboater. He trusts the lawyers to do their jobs. When he quit smoking, he took up origami to keep his hands busy.”

  “The origami’s a nice touch. Mind if I copy?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “I’ll trade you,” Brette said. “I’ll bet you tomorrow’s lunch bill that at some point this afternoon, Zack Shreve will give Sam Parker a LifeSaver.”

  “A LifeSaver?”

  “Yep. Shreve and Lil Jo must have gone through a dozen packages during his trial. The intent is to show the jurors that the defendant is just an ordinary guy.”

  “I have a lot to learn,” I said.

  “Stick with me,” Brette said. “I’m young, but I’m savvy.”

  When court reconvened, the jury announced that they had chosen a foreperson.
I’d put my money on one of the three-piece-suit men, but the jurors picked the earth mother. Given the many complexities of Samuel Parker’s case, an aging hippie with flowers in her hair was probably as good a choice as any.

  Linda Fritz’s opening address to the jury was admirably economical: no theatrics, no emotionally loaded language. Her summary of the facts of the case was concise and concrete. Samuel Parker’s only child was a transsexual, making the transition from male to female. Glenda Parker had given an interview explaining the process to Kathryn Morrissey. The interview had been intense, and its appearance in Kathryn Morrissey’s book Too Much Hope had repercussions. Publicly humiliated and hounded by the media, Beverly Parker had been hospitalized for exhaustion; Glenda herself had considered suicide. Samuel Parker had attempted to have publication of the book stopped, but when his lawyers told him he had no legal recourse, he had taken matters into his own hands. The Crown would prove that Samuel Parker had, with forethought and intent to kill, fired a pistol at Kathryn Morrissey. Linda Fritz then gave a quick sketch of the evidence the Crown would bring forth, including that of a witness who heard Samuel Parker utter threats against Kathryn Morrissey and who saw Samuel Parker take aim and pull the trigger.

  I noticed that Linda Fritz stood very close to the jury box during her opening statement. In her barrister’s robes with her smoothly coiffed red hair, she was a striking figure, and the jury was attentive. Only once did she change position, but once was enough. Towards the end of her opening, she began to sneeze. When she went back to the counsel table to get a tissue, her connection with the jurors was broken. Zack, who had been watching Linda Fritz carefully, noticed that the jury’s attention had wandered momentarily towards the defence, and he pounced. More accurately, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a package of LifeSavers. The jury’s eyes were on him now. When, very slowly, he unwrapped the package and offered a candy to Sam Parker, everyone was watching. Sam took the LifeSaver and smiled his thanks. It was a small moment, but a nice one.

  Beside me, Brette Sinclair whispered, “Bingo.”

  Linda Fritz finished her opening statement with the assertion that the job of the Crown is to see that justice is done. It was a powerful statement, but the jury’s attention had been diluted. They listened respectfully, but Linda knew she had lost momentum, and as she resumed her place behind the Crown prosecutor’s table, her shoulders were tense.