“The inferences that I choose to draw from this particular narrative, if I can call it that, is this: that what occurred that evening was some form of punishment. The punishment was aimed clearly at Reena Virk. It was based on something some of this group believed her to be responsible for and that in fact the book or the diary was to be recovered in the process.”
Josephine was the one who had reason to search for “a book or diary.” As James Williams had stated in his opening, Reena used the book to call friends of Josephine’s and make statements that were “defamatory or untrue,” and this caused Bell “to remark that she was angry and she intended to cause harm to Reena Virk.” Thus, the judge sentenced Josephine to one year, the harshest sentence possible, and a sentence also handed to Dusty. Maya, Laila, and Willow received sentences of six months, while Eve received only sixty days, for as far as anyone could establish, she had only slapped Reena Virk once or twice, and she seemed, to the courts and the psychiatrists, the girl most remorseful and least culpable.
Hearing of her sentence, Josephine was outraged. She did not mind so much that the judge had spoken of her “bizarre mafia fantasies” and announced to the world that she “has displayed all the elements of sociopathic conduct.” No, what enraged her was the sentence of a year. “A year?” she raged. “I got a year for one shot. I only gave Reena one shot and everyone else kicked the shit out of her. That’s nice. A year, for one fucking shot! Reena was fine when I left. She only had a black eye. If it hadn’t gone to a murder, I probably would have gotten a month, maybe, not even. They would have looked at me and said, ‘Oh, first offense. It’s serious, but it’s not that serious.’ I would have gone on probation, but that’s about it. And instead, because of all the media and all of that, I get fucked around. That judge is smoking crack!”
Maya and Willow and Eve held hands and cried when their verdict of guilty was read aloud.
Mayland McKimm read to the court of Maya’s “atrocious” family background in the hopes the judge would grant her leniency. “Your Honor is aware that Maya was present when her father was murdered during the course of a prolonged beating and that she was then abducted by the culprits of that crime and kept out of contact with the police or any authorities for some five or six days. Your Honor will notice that I have filed a letter from a detective, which talks about the little girl that he found at the age of six, devastated and traumatized, having been locked in the basement of a drug house for a period of time. Her mother is in court today, that’s her adoptive mother, Ms. Belle Longet, and she has been extraordinarily supportive through the process. She feels now that her child has seen the inside of a jail, that she sees the hardening process taking place, because that’s how you survive in a youth detention center. If we increase the jail sentence, Maya will simply harden more. We have jailed a number of young people in this matter who were the more serious instigators. They were the people who had the problem with Ms. Virk, and they’re the people who led her to her untimely demise. We’re at a crossroads here. She can go to the Youth Detention Centre and become brilliantly tough, or the court can show some compassion and allow some latitude for her to deal with the issues before her.”
The judge listened attentively, and then sentenced Maya to serve her full time in youth custody.
Josephine returned to “juvie.” Kelly, released on bail, was back in View Royal, under house arrest. Alone, Josephine suffered indignities. She could not watch MuchMusic, the Canadian version of MTV. Dean Melanson, the Director of Programs, explains: “We didn’t think the videos were giving the right message. With rap music, it’s all ‘ho,’ ‘bitch.’ We’re trying to change attitudes.” Certain magazines were also banned, in particular those that “depict females in a non-positive way.” The list of contraband magazines read as follows: The Source, Vibe, Details, Glamour, FHM, Maxim, and Low Rider.
Josephine, one evening, ate her dinner of grilled ham and cheese, split peas, and fries, and then went to the games room where she could play Super Nintendo and Donkey Kong. Above the raucous machines, there was a reproduction of a Van Gogh.
A boy named Barrington was reading Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, and others were playing Ping-Pong and shuffleboard.
Suddenly, on the television, a reporter said something about the murder of Reena Virk. It was difficult to hear his words. The imagery, so often played, of a black shapeless bag being removed from the Gorge, of the rainy skies, of the flowers on the bridge, appeared and the boy reading Tolkien asked Josephine, “So how did you kill her?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with the murder,” Josephine said, definitively.
Warren was in the games room as well, and though the two youth of View Royal rarely spoke now, Warren suddenly began to talk to Josephine. “He got mad,” she recalls, “He said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to think about it.’ He kind of had a little spasm or whatever, and I was like, okay. Sorry. I won’t talk about it anymore. And he just said, ‘I hear it every single day. You turn on the TV and there it is. I turn on the radio and there it is.’ He goes, ‘I swear, every time I turn around somebody’s talking about it. Every time somebody looks at me, they’re thinking about it.’ He goes, ‘When I go to sleep, I dream about it. I can’t get away from it. Everywhere I go, I turn on the TV, I turn on the radio, I go to sleep, it doesn’t matter what I do…. If I was in a room all by myself, it would be there no matter what. It would always be there.’ He said his bad dreams were something to do with the murder and he woke up crying and the bad dreams wouldn’t stop and that he was scared and he wished he didn’t have anything to do with it and he wished he’d never met Kelly. He just said that he wished that he never met her, and he said, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have been there that night. I wish I wasn’t drinking. I wish I wasn’t there that night. I wish I wasn’t such an idiot. I don’t know why I did those stupid things.’ He said stuff like that and I felt kind of bad for him, and I said, ‘All right, we won’t talk about it anymore.’”
Josephine slept in her cell, under a quilt purchased at Wal-Mart. She thought about Warren’s “spasm” and she “felt kind of bad for Warren.” She thought again of her former friend, and wondered if Kelly had bad dreams now. “It was weird that it never bothered Kelly,” she says. “She never seemed to have any bad dreams about it or anything. Warren seemed really bothered by it.” If she was asked about the presence of bad dreams, she would say, “Who knows? Maybe Warren had a conscience. Maybe he has more compassion for people.”
Of Warren, she thought, “He’s a smart kid. He probably could have done something with his life.”
• • •
In his BMW, Warren’s lawyer, Jeremy Carr, drove to juvie and gave Warren the bad news: the letters he had written to Syreeta had been discovered and confiscated by the police. More bad news. Here was the list of Crown witnesses who would testify against him, a long list, a list of all those he’d loved and been loved by: Dimitri, Marissa, Richie D., Maya, Willow, and mainly and mostly this, Syreeta.
“Syreeta’s going to testify?”
“I don’t think she has much choice. She gave statements to the police.”
Warren knew this already, but he was not too concerned about Syreeta turning against him. “Our bond was too strong,” he would later explain.
Jeremy Carr was a portly man with a gentle, soothing voice. He was a senior partner in a small law firm, and Warren’s trial would be his first murder case. Maya had recommended him to Warren for he’d helped her when she was first charged. Before the trial began, Jeremy Carr brought in Dale Marshall, a lawyer with more expertise in murder cases. On this day, Jeremy Carr suggested Warren forego a trial by jury and have his case heard by a judge alone.
“You’ll have a better chance for an appeal if you’re found guilty.” Jeremy Carr advised.
“That’s a stupid idea,” Warren’s dad told him. “Go with a jury.”
“I think the guy knows what he’s talking about; he’s a lawy
er,” Warren reasoned, before asking his father to come for the trial in April. His father promised to be there.
A few weeks before his trial for the second-degree murder of Reena Virk, Warren received a package from his father, and inside he found a double-breasted pinstriped suit, two sizes too large. “I can’t wear this at my trial,” he thought to himself after trying the large blazer on. “I’ll look like a little hoodlum.”
His hair was no longer bleached or curly, and he’d grown several inches, but he still was neither tall nor with the physique of a man. Often in juvie, he seemed content to strangers, though he was not content. “Hey,” he’d say, “don’t worry about me.” He painted a scene of rainbows in arts and crafts class and sent the drawing to Tara. He liked arts and crafts most of all. “The teacher, Glo, she’s an awesome lady. She was like a mother to me.”
Many of the girls in juvie may have had crushes on him, may even have fallen in love, and Warren may have loved them in return, but he would not, could not, forget about his love of Syreeta Hartley.
“Where do I start?
What should I write?
Hugging my pillow tight
Just trying to fall asleep.
Holding in my tears, not wanting to weep.
It all started back in the day.
I had a boyfriend who thought it was o.k.
To take a young life away
And still to this day he’s in jail
And can’t even receive my mail.
Just as things started to straighten out
My mom went to the doctor and he told her about
The cancer in her body that has started to sprout
She went through chemo and lost all her hair
I’m only sixteen
My life is too much
All the pain that I’ve seen
I go to court next week to testify
Just thinking about it makes me cry
Sometimes I wish I had the strength to die
But I’m too scared
I can’t even try.”
from the diary of Syreeta Hartley, April 18, 1999
* Witnesses in Youth Court cannot be identified.
The Meaning of Animosity
OF A YOUNG WOMAN, once it was written that she possessed a “beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.” The same might be said of Syreeta as she arrived in Courtroom 54 to testify at the trial of her first love.
She chose not to swear on the Bible. (“I didn’t want to dig myself in that deep.”)
“Please state your name in full,” the clerk said, as Syreeta sat in the seat surrounded by a square of mahogany.
“Syreeta Chandelle Hartley,” she said.
“Ms. Hartley, it’s very important that everyone in the courtroom be able to hear you, so please project your voice as much as you can.”
Hearing this, Syreeta suddenly looked very glum, and she dropped her chin.
Stan Lowe rose to face his most important witness. (“Those men were all so scary,” Syreeta would later say. “All those men in their black gowns.”)
“I’m going to ask that you pretend that I’m hard of hearing so your voice is nice and high,” he said to Syreeta, for he could tell she was uncomfortable.
And so he raised first the subject of her first love.
“In November of 1997, you were in a romantic relationship with a person named Warren Glowatski?”
“Yes.”
“How long had you two been together at that point in time?”
“Six months,” Syreeta replied softly, her tone reluctant, as if to say to the men in the room, “I would rather not speak of my love to you.”
“And on November 22, you were interviewed by police with regard to the investigation of the death of Reena Virk.”
“Yes.”
“Did your romantic relationship with Warren continue after his arrest?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it continue for?”
“Two and a half months.”
“Objection!” Warren’s lawyer announced. “I’m not sure what the relevance of this is.”
“Well, her relationship with Warren Glowatski is potentially an issue in this matter,” the judge said. “I’m going to let your learned friend proceed.”
“I’ll repeat the question. Last summer, did you still have romantic feelings toward Warren Glowatski?”
“I had feelings,” Syreeta said, raising her chin for the first time, and staring at Stan Lowe directly.
“What kinds of feelings?”
“Memories, and just …”
“Did you have any animosity toward him?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Let me try another word. That’s my fault. Did you dislike him last summer?”
“Sometimes.”
“While he has been incarcerated at the Victoria Youth Detention Centre, did you ever receive letters from him?”
“Yes.”
Stan Lowe nodded, and then having established their illicit and questionable conduct of staying in touch when the law had forbidden them from doing so, he moved away from love and to the night of the Russian satellite.
“Did you work that day?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you work at?”
“Brady’s Fish and Chips.”
“And what did you do after work?”
“Went down to Shoreline School.”
“Did you see Warren Glowatski that night?”
“Yes.”
“Now how were you feeling that night.”
“Sick.”
Though no one could tell, for he seemed outwardly pleasant, Stan Lowe was frustrated with her monosyllabic replies. “It was like pulling teeth with her,” he would later recall.
“When you say sick, what was your problem? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“Um, I just had a really weird feeling in my chest.”
“When you were feeling sick, did you go somewhere?”
“Yes, I went home,” Syreeta said.
“What time would that be around?”
“Nine o’clock,” Syreeta said, with the dull voice of someone indifferent or drugged.
“Would you like a sip of water?”
“I’m fine.”
“What did you do when you got home?”
“I went to bed.”
“Prior to going to bed, did you do anything to prepare for bed?”
“Not besides brushing my teeth and washing my face.” If Stan Lowe sounded as if he was speaking to a very young child, Syreeta had started to speak back to him as if he were a particularly ignorant and bothersome adult.
“What do you recall next?”
“Receiving a phone call.”
“What time?”
“Around 11:00.”
“What were you doing at the time?”
“Sleeping.”
“Who was the phone call from?”
“Warren.”
“How long did you talk for?”
“Thirty seconds.”
“What was the conversation about?”
“There was no conversation. I said I was asleep, and I’d talk to him in the morning.”
“Did you see Warren Glowatski the next day?”
“Yes. In the afternoon.”
“He came over to your house. Did he not?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. You have to say yes or no. Now, where were you when he came over?”
“In the shower.”
“Okay. I want you to take your time. Think back. Describe as best as you can what the conversation with Warren was then.”
“I just told him that I heard he kicked a girl in the head the night before. I asked him why he did that, and he told me not to worry about it, and that was the end of the conversation.”
“What was his demeanor … I mean, what was he acting like?”
“Normal.”
“And is that all you recall from the convers
ation?” Stan Lowe said, incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said, trying to maintain a friendly tone, despite his growing awareness that she was most definitely and certainly becoming a hostile witness.
“You mean today you can’t remember word for word everything that was said with Warren on the 15th of November?”
“Yes.”
• • •
“Did you do some laundry for him?”
“Yes. I washed a pair of white jeans and a cream-colored sweater.”
“How dirty were they?”
“There was lots of mud on them.”
“Was there anything else on the pants?” he said, both hopefully and hopelessly.
“A bit of blood.”
“Can you describe what that bit of blood looked like?”
“It just looked like splatters off a paint brush maybe.”
• • •
“What happened in the bedroom?”
“Um, on the CD player came a rap song that said ‘187’ and he pointed to the CD and said ‘Exactly that.’”
“Did he say anything further about this 187?”
“I don’t remember in what terms, but somehow it came out that she was missing, and that’s where the 187 came in.”
“What did you take that to mean?”
“Um, personally, I didn’t believe him. I thought, you know, being a boy, that he was trying to make up stories, and you know….”
“Was there any other conversation in the bedroom?”
“No,” Syreeta said, rather languidly.
“Do you recall today if he said anything else in the bedroom?”
“No.”
And Stan Lowe then sank, almost fell down into his chair, as if he’d been flayed by a scythe.
Court took an afternoon break.
Warren, at night in his cell, wondered, “Why didn’t she look at me?” He had forgotten that her right eye was blind. If she had wanted to look at him, she would have had to turn her face dramatically toward him. When he saw her after so much time, it startled him slightly, and he felt both the stab of disbelief and loss—disbelief that he’d once held on to that beauty, that he’d once been so close to such beauty, and for no reason, he’d lost it forever. Lost her, lost so much, all because of the darkness of that single moment, under the bridge, after she’d left him, and after she’d walked away and not let him walk her home. All in the darkness when he’d walked across the bridge and gone to an even darker place, away from the light, and nearer to the place where the moon pulled the water with some invisible force.
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