The little voice kept saying: Don’t engage. My head was bobbing, noncommittal agreement.
“Anna would say you’d have had to be more like her old man to make it for any length of time. The old-timers, being tougher than the cons, learned to think like inmates. It’s all about your own survival.”
“The cons are usually passing through,” I said, the little voice now hissing, Don’t engage. “Most of us are there for life.”
He laughed. “Exactly. How often I thought exactly that.”
Sullivan intervened then. “Why don’t you guys talk about how you first got to know each other? I’d be interested. There’s quite a difference in your ages.”
“How do we know each other, Dwayne? You start. I’m trying to remember how old you are anyway.”
“Twenty-nine,” he said. “Heading for the big three-oh. What about yourself? I think you said you were in school with Aunt Maggie. But if you’re retired …”
“Went out early,” I said. “I’m fifty-five.”
“Wise.” Strickland was smiling at me, a private and communicative smile. We are from the same world, I thought. And not just home. I have more in common with him than with the lawyer in the suit.
“How are you passing the time here?” I asked.
“The usual,” he replied. “Reading a lot. Watching way, way too much television. You following that shit in the States?”
“Not really,” I said. “I haven’t got a TV. I read what’s in the papers. And of course it’s all they talk about in the store.”
“Ah,” he laughed. “The store. But you must have an opinion.”
I shrugged.
He tilted back in his chair. “For my money it’s all about the oil. The Americans will do anything to get control of oil. It’d be the same for us if we had oil they wanted.”
“We have tons of oil,” said Sullivan. “They’re buying it as fast as we can pump it.”
“My point exactly,” said Strickland nimbly. “You’d see how quick they’d be in here with their Marines if we ever decided not to sell it to them.”
Sullivan patted a jacket pocket, retrieved a pen and a folded wad of paper, unfolded what appeared to be notes, studied them briefly. “Now,” he said. “Let’s get down to it. You guys knew each other inside, I gather.”
“Not really,” I said, studying Dwayne’s face for some indication of how much I should reveal. “We had some dealings back in ’98 and ’99 about a particular situation. I didn’t see a lot of Dwayne after that.”
“But Anna, Mrs. Breau—after I went to Warkworth—became my salvation.” Dwayne was talking straight to Sullivan. “Her father was the warden there and I had a few little privileges. Nothing unusual. But like, for access to books and such. I was thinking of taking some university courses. Anna and her father helped me big time. I started. English lit. Made good marks, found I had a talent for stories. Wrote a few, actually.
Nothing you’d show anybody other than, say a friend, like Ann—Mrs. Breau.”
“She never used my name,” I said. “Always went by Moroz. Like her father.”
“There you go,” he said. “I just took it for granted. She was always Anna as far as I was concerned. The once I called her Mrs. Breau she corrected me. ‘Just Anna,’ she said. And that was that. You’ll give her my best?”
“For sure.”
There was a movement on my right and I realized that Sullivan was looking at his wristwatch.
“So the here and now,” Sullivan said. “Maybe you can tell Mr. Breau about why we’re here. All off the record—just to be clear. Let’s start with how you knew the deceased.”
Strickland studied his hands, furrowed his brow, looked up at me. “You know her family, I guess. Her mom, really her grandma, would be closer to your age.”
I nodded.
“If you’re talking to any of them, not that it would do any good … I um …” He shook his head and looked away briefly.
“How did you know her?” I asked.
“I didn’t really,” he said. “She was just a kid I saw around. I was living alone in the old place, the old home, and they’d drop in. There isn’t much around, no place for the teens to hang. The store, I suppose. But that’s discouraged. So they’d come to my place. I guess they felt comfortable there. It started with just one or two. Then there would be maybe a dozen regulars coming around when they wanted to get out of the house or didn’t want to go home. To tell you the truth, it got to be a bit of a pain.
They seemed to think they could come by at any time.” He paused, studied my face. “I suppose you heard all the rumours.”
“What rumours?”
“That I was dealing drugs, that I was a fag. You know the way the place is.”
I shook my head. “I keep mostly to myself.”
“Good policy,” he said.
“So Mary Alice, she was one of the regulars?”
“Not at all. It was mostly boys—kids from families that don’t care or don’t know their youngsters are hanging around with an ex-convict. Or kids who don’t give a—don’t care what their parents think. I don’t want to try to make myself sound pious, but I was actually trying to get through to them. A lot of the dads are away, out west, working.”
“How were you trying to get through to them?”
“You can imagine. They wanted to hear stories from the inside. Or about the crimes I’d done. The holdups. Like I’m Jesse fuckin James. Like there was something glamorous about crime and prison. I cleared that up, for sure. Couple of stories about the skinners and the chicken hawks and what happens to pretty kids like them inside.”
His tone and his expression projected a kind of sorrow.
“So how did someone like Mary Alice end up at your place?”
“She came maybe once with some young fellow who was one of the regulars. I thought a boyfriend, but I asked him later and it wasn’t like that. She was from a good family but was acting up a bit, wanting to hang out with the rougher guys. Anyway she landed in with one of them one night, I think in August. It was late. They had a six-pack. Wanted a place to sip a few beers, watch a video. I said make yourself at home. I went to bed before they left.”
“This was in August?”
“Early August, I think.”
“Who was the guy?”
“I can’t remember. They all kind of blur together in my memory.”
Sullivan interjected. “We have the name of the young lad he’s referring to. I’ve spoken to him on the telephone and he’s able to confirm what Dwayne is telling us. He’s on an oil rig somewhere in northern Alberta, but he’d come back.”
“So imagine my surprise,” Dwayne continued, “when she arrived alone, maybe a couple of weeks later, looking kind of wrecked. I was getting ready to go to bed but I let her in—one of those moments I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about. One tiny little action—you step aside, hold the door open, she walks in and, you don’t know it yet, but the rest of your life just flew out through that same open door.”
We sat in silence, Sullivan and I processing his words for truth.
“Anyway,” Dwayne said, clearing his throat. “She was a pretty girl—in a wholesome way, not at all sexy or anything. But she looked like shit that night. She told me that she’d had this big blowup with somebody at home. She said she needed a place to crash. I sympathized. I’ve been in her position a hundred times myself. I got a blanket and I put it on the couch, along with a pillow. I went to bed.”
“You didn’t talk to her at all?”
“Nothing that I can remember. Oh—she asked if I had anything to drink. I think I had a heel of rum and she asked if she could make a toddy to help her sleep. ‘Sure, go ahead,’ I told her.”
“A heel.”
“It was a forty-ouncer. There might have been maybe four or five ounces in the bottom. At the most.”
“Had you ever seen her drink?”
“A beer or two on that other visit. After they’d been there a
while I realized that what they really wanted was to smoke a little weed. I suppose I should’ve drawn the line at that. But, anyway, I didn’t.”
“Were you aware of any drugs that second time?”
“Nothing. She wanted to make a toddy and that’s what she was doing when I left her. I can still see her standing by the kitchen counter with her arms folded, watching the kettle.”
“Then what?”
“Then what? Not a thing. I went to bed. Slept. In the morning I had to drive to Halifax. I left at six a.m. The living room was kind of dark but I could see that she was there, curled up under the blanket. Sound asleep, I thought.”
I let the silence hang.
“And that’s the God Almighty truth,” he added.
“There will be toxicology, I assume …”
Sullivan interjected. “The toxicology—and this is confidential until it comes out in court—the toxicology revealed the significant presence of a narcotic, possibly oxycodone, in her system. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest.”
“She was seventeen.”
“We’re trying to get her medical records to determine if there was any prior history of coronary disease, for her or near relatives. I believe her grandfather died quite young of a sudden heart attack.”
“He wasn’t a blood relative, as far as I know,” I said.
Strickland said to Sullivan: “He’d know.” The tone was neutral.
Sullivan said, “I see. Well, given the circumstances, Dwayne is in a strong position to get the charge reduced and a reasonable outcome. Obviously the Crown will want to be seen to pursue this aggressively because of local sensitivities. Her age and background. Being a young woman with a promising future, one way or another related to almost everybody in the place from what I hear. But the facts speak for themselves.”
I studied Strickland’s face. “Oxycodone?”
He made a face and shrugged. “Don’t look at me. God knows where she got it. She could have got it from home, for all I know. She told me she lived with old people. They get it real easy.”
“So you have no idea where she got it?”
He raised his right hand, looked me directly in the eye. “Swear to God, on my mother’s grave.”
Our eyes were locked, and he didn’t blink. I let the silence grow.
Finally I said, “So what were you doing for five days?”
Strickland shrugged. “A bit of business. Met some friends. Enjoyed the city. I have a female friend up there. She can confirm everything.”
“And how did they trace Mary Alice to your place?”
“No idea,” he said. “I assume one of the regulars said try there. Anyway, I hadn’t even locked the door behind me when I left.” He laughed. “Some murderer, eh?”
“The fact is,” said Sullivan, “the Crown knows they have an extremely weak case. This murder charge is a knee-jerk reaction to the local mood. I think they came on strong because they’re as anxious as we are to settle this without a trial. We’re talking about an agreed statement of facts and some kind of a saw-off on sentencing for a guilty plea. They’re pushing for criminal negligence causing death. I think we can hold out for bodily harm. Get off with time served.”
“Sounds like they don’t have much of a case at all,” I said.
“My thought exactly,” Strickland said.
Sullivan waved his hand. “Look. Let’s be realistic. Dwayne here has a serious record. They’re gonna try to make the case that he was a drug dealer and the source of the OxyContin that’s been showing up around the place …”
“That’s all horseshit,” Strickland interrupted.
“I’d rather play it safe, argue for probation. A period of house arrest. Community service.”
“Right,” said Strickland. “I can imagine the community service …”
“What would be helpful,” said Sullivan to me, “would be someone of your background and obvious stature to give us an affidavit for pre-sentencing. Talk a bit about how Dwayne grew up, the things he was up against, kind of an outsider in a tight, dare I say, inbred community. What he was like as an inmate, how he worked to turn his life around. You know his institutional history, which was pretty positive, I understand. What do you think?”
“An affidavit,” I said. “I could be called then, and cross-examined?”
“Technically.”
I suppressed a smile. Technically? “I’m not sure that I could be very helpful. We grew up in the same place, but at different times. I never met him here. I think the Crown would argue that any insights I achieved in prison would have been affected by the circumstances.”
“That I was putting on an act?” said Strickland.
“I wouldn’t say that, but someone else might.”
“I think your words would carry a lot of weight,” said Sullivan. “We’d be before a judge and I think he or she would pay attention to anything you had to say.”
Nobody spoke for what seemed like a full minute. “What do you think, Dwayne?” I asked.
“I hate putting you on the spot,” he said. “You’re probably thinking about how you gotta live there. What they’re going to think. But you’ve always been one for doing the right thing, eh.”
His eyes were steady, unblinking, a slight smile at the corners of his mouth. “Plus, I think you probably owe me one.”
“Owe you?” said Sullivan. “Owe you what?”
I cocked my head. “Where have I heard that before?”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“Do we really want to talk about that again, Dwayne?”
“What’s the downside?”
“About the Italian? You’re sure.”
“What Italian?” Sullivan was puzzled.
“There was a situation,” I said carefully, “when Dwayne had a choice to make, whether to respond as a convict or as a citizen.”
“I see,” said Sullivan. “I’m assuming he made the right choice.”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” I said. “I couldn’t swear to it.”
“How about if I tell you up front,” Strickland said. “I ratted out some guys for a murder in the joint.”
Sullivan seemed to jerk backwards, face surprised.
“You did?” I said. “Not to me.”
“No. I kept you out of it. I told the IPSOs. I also told the shrink, the cute one, Sophie. You can check it out.”
“I don’t work there anymore.”
“You still have contacts.”
I shook my head. How much should I disclose? How much does he already know? “It’s pretty sensitive,” I said.
“Mr. Sullivan put his finger on it,” said Strickland. “Comes a moment in everybody’s life when you gotta pick a side. Right or wrong. Even if everything is on the line. You know what I’m sayin’, Tony?” His eyes were briefly anxious.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, suddenly too warm. “You’d really want that on the record, Dwayne? Public testimony that you informed on a couple of other inmates? Guys like the Horse and Driscoll? The media would be all over it.”
“If it would get me off I wouldn’t have to worry, right? They’re both doing life twenty-five. Maybe facing dangerous offender. We’ll all be old people when they get out. Anyway, if we can keep it from going to trial, who’d ever hear about it?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Oh. And you should know Mr. Sullivan plans to get in touch with Anna. You can maybe let her know.”
“Anna and I aren’t together anymore,” I said.
“Oh, really?” Dwayne’s surprise was genuine. “Christ. That must be tough. Since when?”
“It’s not really relevant,” I said. “Suit yourself about getting in touch with her, though I can’t imagine how she might help.”
“Character,” said Sullivan. “She can talk about his character and how hard he worked to improve himself.”
“Anna was the best friend I ever had, for a while there,” said Strickland, face now sl
ightly flushed. I asked myself if I was imagining some insinuation in his tone.
“I envied you,” said Strickland. “I really did. I’m really sorry to hear that you two split. Anna is one of a kind.” His eyes were actually misty.
I stood, reached out a hand. He clasped it. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “You think about it too—about me bringing up the Vito business.” I shook my head. “Give it some serious thought.”
“Thanks for your time,” Dwayne said. “And be sure to remember me to Anna, if you’re talking to her.” Was there a hint of mockery in the tone? “Come back sometime,” he said, all smiles.
“We’ll see.”
“I’ll do the paperwork. Get you on my visitors’ list.”
“Sure thing.”
“It’s a really, really short list.” Smiled again, calm and handsome, confident.
“Oh, and the kid’s family,” Strickland said. “Really. I really mean it. I can only imagine what they think.”
Driving away, the wind and rain were delivering a full-bore autumn storm, a preview of the coming winter. Imagine this as snow, the groaning windshield wiper seemed to say. But I was still with Strickland, weighing his sympathetic words for honesty, some evidence that he grasped the reality of his situation. The legal case was weak, almost non-existent. But he didn’t seem to understand that in the court of public sentiment, he was in deep, deep shit.
5.
The rumour spread that Strickland was going to plead guilty, save everybody a lot of heartache. At the store, there was general approval. I didn’t ask, “Guilty to what?” Or comment, “We’ll see how pleased you are when he pleads out on negligence causing bodily harm or less and gets what you’ll consider a free pass.” Time served because he’ll have been in jail for months by then; community service, whatever that might be.
Caddy called the night before Strickland was to appear in court for a plea and presentence arguments. She told me she had to be there and asked if we could go together. She needed moral support. “I’ll pick you up,” she’d said. “Be ready, I’ll not come in.”
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