You fucking fool, he told himself for the millionth time. What had he done? And why? The girls he’d dragged into the darkness, the girls, the one he didn’t even know and the one he loved.
He’d been in a slow haze of his own making all during the trial, a self-induced and perpetual numbness, but seeing Syreeta, he’d been roused back to this reality. He’d heard the words around him for the first time. She was telling those who would decide his fate about the words he’d said to her in his bedroom, but she was telling them reluctantly, and regretfully. He could hear the regret in her every pause and every breath. She didn’t want him to go to prison, he thought, and she didn’t want to lie before Reena’s family. What was she supposed to do? She was in a terrible position. He wished he could fall back into the fog. Once he’d thought their bond was too strong for her ever to betray him. “Our bond is too strong,” he’d told himself on the night of his arrest. He thought back onto her earlier answers and found himself dizzy with the vision of his cell wall through tears. “I had feelings,” she’d said, in her way, sort of haughty and sassy. “Memories, and just….”
Round Two. That was how 2:00 P.M. felt to Stan Lowe. A bell might have rung. He might as well have sucked water from a clammy bottle rather than drinking the last of his stale coffee. He grabbed his black cape of the courtroom. He often said: “You gown up, the battle’s on.” Stan Lowe did not need to review Syreeta’s statements, though the junior prosecutor, Ruth Picha, had underlined the pertinent lines from Syreeta’s police interviews:
He told me that him and Kelly killed the girl.
He told me that she had kicked her and stepped on her head or something, a couple of times, and then she stuck her head under the water for about five minutes and then they dragged her into the Gorge.
“I’ve memorized every friggin’ word in her statement,” he told Ruth, and he returned to face his adversary.
She has to tell the truth, he thought, even though she seems to still be in love.
“Syreeta, besides what you’ve told his Lordship this morning, is your memory exhausted as to that conversation you had with Warren in the bedroom?”
“That’s all that I remember,” she said, and he then tried another tactic.
“Okay, Syreeta. I’m going to ask you to turn to page 11 of your police statement. Are those portions that I’ve outlined accurate?”
“It is surely what I told them, but all I know now is that I don’t recall Warren saying those things to me.”
“Explain that to the judge.”
Still in a voice somewhat distant and almost sleepy as if she’d been roused from her dreams, Syreeta tried to explain: “I think rumors got mixed in, and the questions being asked over and over again by the police, sometimes you add a little bit each time, and I’m not sure if that’s what happened in this situation, but I don’t recall Warren saying those things to me.”
“Have you exhausted your memory as to any further conversation with Warren?”
“I’ve pretty much exhausted my memory to every conversation.”
She said this with such finality that no one was surprised that Stan Lowe soon thanked her and let her be.
Warren’s lawyer moved toward Syreeta. Like a jealous lover, Stan Lowe bristled. “She’s smiling at him,” he thought to himself. “I bet they met before this.”
“Syreeta, I just have a few questions for you,” Jeremy Carr said solicitously.
“When you got Warren’s pants on Saturday morning, do you recall if they were wet?”
“They weren’t wet at all.”
“You’ve had a chance to review three statements you gave to police, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t recall Warren Glowatski giving you a lot of details, is that right?”
“That’s right,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear and raising her chin.
“Is it correct to say that Warren would always want to protect you by not telling you things?”
“That’s right,” she said, nodding.
“How would she know?” the judge interjected.
“Thank you, my Lord. Now, you’re clear that Dimitri used bleach. You have not used bleach before, though, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I have no further questions.”
Syreeta left the courtroom now. She could not look at Warren, not only because her blind eye made a glance futile, but also because of her guilt. “I felt as if I’d betrayed him. He didn’t have anyone there for him, and I should have stood by him.”
• • •
The trial would proceed with testimony from Dr. Laurel Gray and Dimitri and Maya and Dusty. Dimitri and Marissa could establish that Warren and Kelly were on the bridge after the fight, around 10:40 following Reena into the darkness of the faraway north side, while Maya could verify that she’d seen Warren and Kelly returning, heading south, together, around 11:10. Three went over, two came back. Even more damning was Dimitri admitting something he had never said before. Stan Lowe was proud of Dimitri, grateful for the boy’s betrayal of his best friend. “He did the right thing,” Lowe said. Dimitri finally admitted he’d seen Warren later that night, “pumped up” and boasting of his fight with the “Native guy.” His pants were splotched with mud and blood and water, as they had not been when he was under the bridge kicking Reena in the head. The boys at John Wear’s crash pad too testified of Warren’s appearance at sometime around 11:15, and Chris Fox said that Warren got home sometime after 11:00 and they sat on the porch and talked about the “Russian thing that went through the sky.”
The Dive Unit recalled their discovery of Reena’s pants and underwear in the silt near the water’s edge, while Dr. Laurel Gray spoke almost mournfully of the pebbles in Reena’s throat, her half-naked body, the bruises and trauma as if she’d been stomped on with all the force of a car.
A Darker Place
ON THE THIRD DAY OF MAY, the defense opened its case.
It would call only one witness: Warren Glowatski.
Warren didn’t feel prepared for his time on the stand. He turned to a friendly guard for advice. “Just tell the truth,” the guard said before escorting him out of his cell.
Warren wore a shirt by Tommy Hilfiger as he had on every day of the trial. Teary-eyed and trembling, he told his story of the evening, and he told what had occurred after he’d left the dark place under the bridge.
He told of the brutal acts by Kelly Ellard and his own panic and pleas for her to stop and of coming home and calling Syreeta and she’d told him she was sleeping and he’d said good-night and he’d gone out to the porch and talked to Chris Fox about the Russian satellite.
• • •
“There was nothing real about his story,” Stan Lowe thought to himself disgustedly as he reviewed his notes that evening. Pieces of paper were all over his kitchen table, near the drawings by his own children and the photos of a costumed family on Halloween. Stan Lowe prepared for his cross-examination of Warren. “There was no Reena in his story. It was just all about minimizing his own actions. You have to get him to break it down. You have to get him to explain how he got Reena to the water. Why? What did he think was going to happen if he dragged her down there?” His strategy was to force Warren to admit to the consequences of his actions, the utter lack of any reason for his movements beyond the most simple one: he wanted Reena to die.
“Don’t take him through the nightí chronologically,” he told himself. “Throw him off. Shake him off. Keep going back to his actions because those are the actions of a person who is guilty. Making up the story about the Native person. You have to get into his mind. ‘What were you thinking, Warren? When Kelly punched Reena, what did you think?’ Keep bringing up Reena because there was no Reena in his story. ‘Was Reena crying? Was she begging for her life?’”
He couldn’t prepare much more. “I always say 90 percent of cross depends on what they say on the stand. You can’t prepare for that. You just have to listen really hard. Think on you
r feet.”
And this: “I wanted to peel him down. I wanted to wear him down.”
• • •
Had there ever been a person not somewhat moved by the lovely and frightened face of Warren? “I did feel a bit sorry for him,” Stan Lowe recalls. “He was very, very nervous. He was crying. I asked him if he wanted some water. Taking the stand is not easy for anybody. I didn’t envy his position.”
He began by asking Warren about his explanation that he’d dragged Reena “only to get her to a darker place.”
“You say you were pulling Reena to a darker area? Why?”
“I thought Kelly wanted to take her away from the road because cars were driving by.”
“But the lights from the road weren’t shining on you,” Stan Lowe said, pointing at a photograph that proved he was correct.” You were already in a dark place. So why did you drag her to an even darker one?”
“I don’t know,” Warren admitted.
“Did you ever say, ‘Kelly, where are we going?’”
“No.”
“Well,” he said, his tone harsh for the first time, “you must have realized you were heading toward the water!”
“I never thought about it.”
“You never thought about it?” Stan Lowe repeated, incredulously. His manner had changed dramatically, from the gentle and patient way he’d been with his own witnesses. Now he was aggressive, mildly sarcastic, and even menacing. One could see why convicts called him “The Undertaker.”
“You never thought about it,” he said, strutting toward the boy. “Warren, did you sit on Reena so Kelly couldn’t drag her in the water?”
“No, its the worst mistake of my life that I didn’t do that.”
“I’ll agree with you there. Did you try to push Reena’s pants up after they fell down—give her a little dignity?”
“No.”
He then produced a pair of jeans, and he brought them over to Warren. With his gloved hands, he also handed the boy Reena’s underwear. Warren flinched and shivered. He cast his eyes at some invisible sight. For the first time, Reena seemed to be in the courtroom, at least some pitiful and lost part of her. And for the first time, those in the audience seemed to viscerally understand there had been a real girl, for she was evoked by the tangible sight of her clothing in a way that all the mentions of her name and “her” and “that girl” had never really evoked an image or a reality.
“When you were dragging Reena toward the water, it never entered your mind that something would happen to her?” he said, his voice a hostile reprimand.
“I didn’t think she was going to die,” Warren whimpered.
“Well, what did you think was going to happen when she went into the water?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it look like she needed a swim?” Stan Lowe sneered.
“Objection!”
“Mr. Lowe, please refrain from the sarcasm,” the judge intoned dryly.
“I’m sorry. Mr. Glowatski, I suggest to you that you and Kelly dragged Reena into the water. You were in the water up to your knees, and Kelly Ellard was in the water up to her waist. You watched Kelly hold Reena Virk under the water until she died.”
“No,” Warren said, but Stan Lowe found his denial unconvincing, for as he described the final moment, he scrutinized the look on the boy’s face. He was standing as close to Warren as he possibly could, with a vantage point no one else in the room could hold. So close, and he looked right into the eyes of the boy.
“He’d started to relive the moment,” Stan Lowe would later recall. “There was this eerie look in his face, and I knew he was going back there. He seemed almost excited. There was an excitation in his face. You just knew when you looked in his eyes, he was there and more.”
Stan Lowe looked up at the judge and saw he too seemed to be struck by the look in Warren’s eyes. The judge was looking down at the boy, and though his own face remained stiff and unreadable, he was noticeably observing Warren very, very carefully.
“No further questions, my Lord,” Stan Lowe said, and he returned to his seat, and sat very straight. He smiled then, very slightly.
• • •
Though they had classes, Syreeta and Marissa returned to the courtroom to hear the verdict. The girls believed Kelly was guilty of the murder and Warren was guilty of something, but not of drowning and not of causing a death. But this was not the smoke pit at Shoreline, nor were they members of the tribunal. This was the court of law, where words of Latin were on the walls and these were words they’d never learned.
Diana, Tara, and Felicity also sat in the courtroom for the first time, and Warren turned his head briefly before the verdict was read and saw The Five, there for him. Their attendance both comforted and subdued him for he knew, whatever the verdict was, he’d brought about their loss of innocence. (“My trial was really traumatic for all those girls; it messed them up. I was like their big brother, and then all of a sudden, I was involved in a murder.”)
So many people arrived in the courtroom to hear the verdict that speakers were set up in the lobby of the courthouse. “I’ve never seen so many people in the courthouse in all my life,” a sheriff said. “I thought we might have a riot on our hands if that Glowatski kid was found innocent.”
Stan Lowe glanced at Warren’s lawyer, noting he was writing with his special good luck Mont Blanc pen. He himself wore good luck bulldog cufflinks, a gift from Don Morrison.
“It’s 50/50,” he told himself.
“It was such a nail biter,” Stan Lowe would later say. “If we’d had a jury, we would have known immediately, but we had to sit through the whole judgment before we got his decision.”
The judge read: “Reena Virk died on November 14, 1997, after a vicious beating. Warren Glowatski is charged with second-degree murder. Another individual, Kelly Ellard, faces the same charge but will be tried separately at a later time. All three were teenage students at the time as were most of the Crown witnesses. The Crown must prove the charge of second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The girls shifted in their seats as the judge went on and on about “objective determination” and “fundamental guiding principles.”
“The Crown must prove that he or Ellard would cause bodily harm to Virk of a kind that he knew was likely to result in death and that he was reckless whether death ensued or not.
“Virk drowned in the Gorge on November 14th, 1997, following a savage beating that occurred during the two hours before her death. She suffered severe internal injuries from blows and stomps to her front and back torso area. The pathologist compared the force involved to a crush injury if run over by a car. These blows would have caused immobilizing pain and severe shock. I consider it highly unlikely that Virk would have been able to walk across the bridge if she had received the blows that caused the internal damage at the south end of the bridge. In my view, the inference is inescapable.”
Stan Lowe glanced at Warren’s lawyer, for he was making an odd motion with his good luck pen. He was shaking the pen, and his wrist jolted back and forth.
“His good luck pen has run out of ink!” Stan thought to himself, and he smiled then, for he was a believer in such omens.
Though she was not on trial, the judge spoke first of Syreeta. Clearly, he did not agree with Jeremy Carr’s description of her as “honest and forthright.”
“During her evidence in chief, Hartley was at best reluctant, and, at times, almost indifferent. She was a bold liar at trial, but not a sophisticated or clever one. I also take into account her demeanor as well as her relationship with Glowatski, including her current feelings for him, in reaching my conclusion that she lied to protect Glowatski whenever she thought she could get away with it.”
Syreeta could not understand the harsh condemnation. She believed she’d done no lying on the stand. “That judge didn’t take five minutes to talk to me! How do you base an opinion without talking to me?”
The judge then tu
rned to his verdict on her ex-boyfriend, Warren G.
“On the whole, Glowatski’s evidence was incomplete and improbable. I did not believe him nor do I have a reasonable doubt about the truth of his evidence. I conclude that he actively participated in the further beating at the north end of the bridge and then helped drag Virk, while she was unconscious, to the water, where Ellard probably drowned her. I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Glowatski intended to cause Virk bodily harm of a kind that he knew was likely to result in her death and also that, by then dragging and abandoning her near the water, he was reckless as to whether death ensued. I find Warren Glowatski guilty of second-degree murder as charged.”
As soon as he heard the verdict, Warren turned his head to the public for the last time before he was taken back to the cells. He could not see The Five, for they had fled the courtroom. He could not see his father, for his father sat in the back row, alone, behind his dark shades, with an air of stoic misery. His father spoke to no reporters and seemed out of place in the grand courtroom, like a cowboy who’d wandered into the palace. Warren could not see his friends or his family. In the front row, when he turned, he saw the Virk family. His eyes met those of Reena’s little brother. They exchanged a glance, and the young boy looked only sad and not angry. When he looked at the little boy, it was then that Warren knew, as if for the first time, what it was that he’d really done.
• • •
Through the chaos of the reporters screaming into their cell phones, The Five were heard to utter their own verdict, as they hugged one another and drifted, stunned, from the hated courtroom. “That’s so unfair!”
The Virks moved to thank Stan Lowe, though there was nothing celebratory or vengeful in their hearts, for they felt almost pity for a boy so clearly lost and without reflection or knowledge or faith. As for Stan Lowe, he found the verdict, as they often were, “anticlimactic.”
Under the Bridge Page 27