Denial

by Beverley McLachlin

  “I was familiar with them.”

  “Your son, Nicholas, was the residuary beneficiary, the person who would inherit everything but the house—a sum of a quarter million dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “A substantial bequest to the Society for Dying with Dignity would have significantly reduced the amount Nicholas would receive?”

  A flush slowly creeps up Joseph’s face. “Draw your own conclusions, Ms. Truitt. But if you are suggesting that my son—”

  I cut him off. “I am suggesting nothing. The facts are all I care about. And the facts are that Nicholas stood to gain from the will not being changed.”

  Beside me, Jeff tugs at my gown. “Nicholas has walked out,” he hisses.

  Cy is on his feet. “My Lady, I object to this line of questioning. If my friend wishes to pursue it, I would ask that the jury be removed so we can canvas my objection.”

  “No further questions,” I say, but no one is listening. All eyes are riveted on the prisoner’s box, where Vera Quentin slumps in her seat, head lolling sideways. The clerk and sheriff rush to her side, prop her up.

  Justice Buller likes an orderly courtroom and the sudden disarray does not please her. She slams her book shut; she’s had enough for one morning.

  “Court stands adjourned,” she thunders, and stomps off the bench.

  CHAPTER 33

  LESS THAN TEN MINUTES LATER, we sit in the witness room, Jeff, me, and Vera. She is pale, and her voice is low. Her fury is palpable.

  “Nicholas has nothing to do with this,” Vera Quentin informs us icily. “You should not have asked the questions about the will.”

  “I am sorry if this distressed you, Mrs. Quentin,” I begin, but she doesn’t let me finish.

  “This is not about distressing me,” she hisses. “This is about what is right, or rather, what is very, very wrong. Ms. Truitt, you and Mr. Solosky spent hours discussing with me the questions you would ask Mr. Quentin in cross-examination. I told you Nicholas had nothing to do with this, and now you’re suggesting in front of the jury that Nicholas would have killed his grandmother—oh yes, don’t deny it—you’re asking the jury to infer that he would have killed her for this.”

  We decided to walk a fine line, Jeff and me—enough to raise a reasonable doubt without actually implicating Nicholas. But fine lines are just that—fine—and knowing which side you’re on can be difficult. We needed the suggestion, however vague, that someone else stood to profit from Olivia Stanton’s death. I thought it would be alright, but it’s not alright. My client is furious.

  “You shouldn’t worry. There is no case against Nicholas, never will be a case against Nicholas. Olivia’s decision to revise her will is part of the context that preceded your mother’s death. It’s part of what happened. Somehow, out of all this, if we put it all before the jury, the truth may emerge.”

  “I thought I could trust you, Ms. Truitt,” she says low.

  I sit, silenced. Trust, the one thing I have always prized. Upfront, straight shooter Jilly Truitt. Or so I used to think. Leave Nicholas out of this, she had told me. And I had betrayed her. Vera, it strikes me—her name is truth. No shades and shadows, no murky recesses where half-truths can breed. It is simple for her; I, her trusted lawyer, have suggested something unpleasant about her son.

  I touch Vera’s hand where it lies on the table. “Mrs. Quentin, you can trust me. Trust that I will do my best for you.”

  She sits in angry silence, considering her options. “We will go on,” Vera Quentin says at last. “But on this condition. For the rest of the trial, you will refrain from any suggestion that my son might be implicated in my mother’s murder. You should know—I would rather go to prison than see my son falsely accused.”

  Jeff shoots me a warning glance.

  I prevaricate. “As lawyers, we cannot and will not do anything that would deceive the judge or jury—that would be unethical. But at the same time, we can’t defend you with one arm tied behind our back.”

  “If suggesting my son is implicated when I know he is not responsible, is tying a hand behind your back, then you must fight on with that arm firmly tied,” Vera says. “So long as you are my lawyer, Ms. Truitt.”

  “You can fire us,” Jeff says hopefully.

  But Vera Quentin is not about to let us off the hook, not yet. “Perhaps it will come to that. We shall see.”

  She picks up the folds of her dress, pushes herself up on the arm of the chair, and leaves. Jeff and I stare at her empty seat in silence before he erupts in a harsh laugh.

  “Who would have thought? Vera has just dissected our strategy and told us where to get off. I’ve underestimated her.” He frowns. “Which worries me. Our client is a woman of dimensions we have yet to fathom.”

  “As in, she could have done it?”

  “Yeah, as in, at this point, I have no idea what she’s capable of. Has she been covering for Nicholas all along? The incalculable enormity of maternal love. Willing to go down for her golden-haired son, spend the rest of her life in jail if need be. What galls me is that we can’t bring it out. Aren’t trials supposed to be about getting to the truth?” He cuts off my rejoinder with a cavalier wave of his bony hand. “No matter, Jilly. You went as far as you could. You got our reasonable doubt in.”

  “Maybe, but we can’t lay it out for the jury in our closing.”

  “We don’t need to. I saw the foreman focus in on it. More to that evangelical preacher than I suspected. The jury will go over the evidence—who stood to profit, the replaceable window Nicholas must have known about—and conclude that it’s rationally possible that Nicholas killed Olivia. That’s all we need. And you needn’t flagellate yourself. You know the old barrister’s rule, if the client is in the courtroom, it’s up to the client to object at the time; otherwise she’s stuck with what her counsel does.”

  “She swooned,” I say. “Does that count as an objection?”

  “Nope,” Jeff smiles. “Congratulations. A move worthy of a master, Ms. Truitt.”

  Jeff’s words hit me hard. I went into law to defend the weak and uphold their rights. I’m no Cy; I don’t want a reputation for sly manoeuvres that circumvent the rules.

  On our way down the corridor to grab a sandwich, we pass Joseph Quentin. He looks at me, then away. I read his anger, I’m not paying you to make specious aspersions on my conduct and character. Or to destroy my son’s reputation. But he can’t say it, any of it—he’s still Cy’s witness, and Cy has the right to re-examine.

  Or maybe the judge will take him on. Surely she, like me, is wondering what makes Joseph Quentin tick. But she won’t. She’ll be patient, play it by the rules. In the end we’ll see what happens. Right now we’re just groping in the dark.

  CHAPTER 34

  “NO RE-EXAMINATION,” SAYS CY WHEN we return from the luncheon break, and slumps to his seat. The clock is ticking. Justice Buller clears her voice loudly. Everyone looks at Cy, who gazes up innocently. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Joseph slide into the first bench in the spectator section. Now that his testimony is over, he’s free to watch the proceedings. Nicholas, I note, has not returned.

  “I call Constable Dennis Lamoureux,” Cy says at last.

  Finally, I think, after a day and a half of mincing about, we’re getting to the police evidence. Today it’s the constable who answered Vera’s 911 call the morning after the death.

  Constable Lamoureux arranges his stocky form in the witness box and runs a hand through his curly red hair. He gives Cy an obliging nod.

  Cy takes him through the crime scene. He and his partner, Constable Lana Marks, were cruising in the neighbourhood when they got the relay from 911. Another day, another death. Elderly people die all the time; it’s a simple job: Calm the relatives down, arrange for morgue men to get the body. Say goodbye and move on to the next case. All in a day’s police work.

  “Mrs. Quentin met us at the door. She was sobbing. My mother is dead, she said. She waved to a room off the hal
l. In there with my husband. And then she kind of broke down. Incoherent, like.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Not that I remember. I mean, she seemed in shock. Not making much sense. And then her husband came, Mr. Quentin”—he points to the first bench—“and he put his arm around her, took her into the living room. Constable Marks stayed with them while I went into the den to look at the body.”

  Cy gives Constable Lamoureux a photo. Jonathan hands a copy across the desk to me while our clerk, Naomi, distributes duplicates to the jury. “Do you recognize this photo?”

  “Yes, I took the photo. It is a photograph of the victim, Olivia Stanton.”

  I pass the photo to Jeff. It’s not pretty, but death seldom is—the jaw open in the rigour of the last breath; the eyes not quite closed, a ghost still lurking behind them. This death was not as gruesome as many. Olivia never knew that death awaited her, never knew, as she drifted off to sleep, that she would not wake again. But that unawareness brings its own cruelty. To die is part of life, the last great act, and Olivia was denied the right to live that act with dignity, as she would have wished.

  “What happened next?” Cy asks.

  Constable Lamoureux consults his notes and describes how he examined the body, how he and Constable Marks then joined Vera and Joseph in the living room until the paramedics arrived. One of the EMTs, after seeing the body, whispered for him.

  “So you followed the paramedic into the den,” Cy asks. “What happened then?”

  “The paramedic—a Mr. Giffin, according to my notes—lifted the deceased’s arm, stretched it out, which was not easy because rigor mortis was already settling in, and showed me the inside of the deceased’s left elbow. There was a needle wound, a blotch of red where the needle entered flesh before whoever injected her found the vein. Bit of a botch, Giffin said. Whoever did this didn’t know what the hell they were doing.

  “A bit of a botch,” Cy repeats, his voice dripping with inference. “And what did you say?”

  “I asked him what he meant. I thought this was a natural death, I said. He just shook his head and replied, Maybe. Then recommended I call a detective for a suspicious death. So I did—I made the calls,” Constable Lamoureux continues. “And then I went back to the living room and told Mr. and Mrs. Quentin about what I described as a complication.”

  Complication, I think, understatement of the year. I picture them sitting there, on Olivia’s dusty 1970s chairs, Vera sobbing, Joseph stoic, as they try to understand what has just happened.

  “How did they react to you telling them that?” Cy asks.

  “Mr. Quentin’s head snapped up. Complications? Like what? He asked, aggressive-like. I told him that there might be a question of whether it was a natural death or not. Mrs. Quentin, she just sat there, eyes wide-like. And then she said, Oh no. It was just a whisper, but Lana and I both heard it. I remember we looked at her, surprised sort of, because it was almost like she was expecting this.” Constable Lamoureux sees me rising to object to his speculation and adds quickly. “Hey—I could have read it wrong. I’m just telling you the facts as best I remember them.”

  The entire jury is watching Vera, trying to reconcile the image of the calm, composed woman before them with the description they have just heard, trying to figure out what she meant when she whispered, Oh no.

  Cy’s on a roll and he knows it. “Carry on, Constable.”

  “I told Mr. Quentin that I couldn’t discuss the matter with him, and that a team of homicide detectives and the FIU—I should say, Forensic Identification Unit—were on their way.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “Well, he stood up—This is preposterous, he said—and glared down at me. I definitely felt the heat. And then his wife—the accused—started to say something, and he sat back down beside her, put his hand on her arm, and she stopped talking. He muttered things like, I can’t believe this, what a fiasco; you guys must have better things to waste the taxpayers’ money on. We hear it all the time.” He treats the jury to a wry smile.

  I exchange a meaningful look with Jeff. Constable Lamoureux has just opened the door for Cy to interpret Joseph’s reaction as an effort to derail the investigation and protect Vera from what, in that moment, he realized she had done.

  Constable Lamoureux redons his serious mask. “By then Constable Marks had taken out her notepad and was making notes. I believe they’ve been put in as an exhibit; it’s all there, what they said.”

  “By consent,” I say.

  “And Mrs. Quentin?”

  “She just sat there weeping. I mean, she had been sobbing off and on before, but now it was like continuous streams pouring from her eyes. Constable Marks got up and gave her a packet of tissues—we always carry them for just such emergencies, something people don’t know.”

  In the jury box, the librarian and the college professor smile; they like Constables Lamoureux and Marks, poster kids for your helpful average cop.

  “Was that the end of your involvement in the case, Constable Lamoureux?” Cy asks.

  “Yeah. The FIU arrived and the homicide detectives took over. Constable Marks and I left and continued our patrol.”

  “That’ll be all.” Cy sits down and we break.

  CHAPTER 35

  WHOEVER CALLED THE INTERIM IN court proceedings a break wasn’t thinking about defence counsel after a Crown witness—this is when we do our heavy lifting, figuring out what has just happened and what to do next.

  Jeff and I huddle in the witness room and assess the damage. It is considerable.

  The jury has walked out thinking the police are able, competent, and caring—never something defence counsel like—and there’s no soft underbelly to claw at. Beyond that, they have been given a fistful of information that Cy will twist against our client. How can we minimize or undercut this wreckage without emphasizing the very things we want the jury either not to notice or forget? We can’t erase the fact that the injection was botched; the coroner’s report attests to it. Nor is it likely that we can erase the fact that Vera’s reaction to her mother’s death being labelled suspicious was oh no—like she expected it. Constable Lamoureux has already gone as far as we could hope to push him when he said that he could have read it wrong.

  In the end, we decide that all we can do is to try to convince the jury that Joseph’s and Vera’s reactions were consistent with the successive shocks they were receiving, and that Vera responded as any innocent, grieving daughter confronted by the sudden death of her mother would have.

  I get to my feet. “My cross-examination will be brief, my Lady.” What I don’t say is that our options are limited.

  Justice Buller bows her head approvingly, and I move to the well of the court.

  “Constable Lamoureux, you told the jury that when you arrived, Mr. Quentin put his arm around his wife, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was a husband sharing his wife’s grief at losing her mother?”

  “I wouldn’t know, but I suppose that’s one explanation.” The constable’s guard is going up; he’s been warned not to agree with anything I suggest.

  “How did he hold his wife, what did he say? Can you describe it in greater detail for the jury?” I’m taking a chance but not a big one. Joseph’s smart and would have played the innocent husband, whatever he may have suspected.

  Constable Lamoureux thinks for a moment. “He wrapped his arms around her and held her for a long time. I could see his face over her shoulder. It was pale, strong—what’s the word?—resolute. I remember he kissed her hair and said something like, Sweetheart, I know it’s hard. But your mother’s better off where she is. She’s at peace now. And then I think he said, You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

  Good, I think. “Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect a husband who loves his wife to do when they discover her mother has passed away?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And later, when Mr. Quentin sat down
beside his wife and placed his hand on her arm, that was also what a loving husband would normally do?”

  “I don’t know—”

  I cut him off. “You don’t know.” Cy gives me a look, but he’s not worried enough to object. “Constable, when you told Mr. and Mrs. Quentin that the police were regarding the death as suspicious, you said Mr. Quentin stood up and questioned how that could be?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you agree that the idea that someone could have murdered his mother-in-law would come as a surprise and a shock to him?”

  “I suppose it might have.”

  “And would you agree that his behaviour and words at that moment were consistent with such shock and surprise? Disbelief, as in, what are you talking about?”

  “Depends. But I suppose.”

  “Thank you, Constable. Let’s move on to Mrs. Quentin’s reactions. We’ve seen the photo of the deceased, how she looked that morning. Would you agree that to come downstairs and see this would be shocking to her daughter, who cared for her dearly?”

  “I suppose so. Yes. Assuming—”

  “Enough to make any daughter sob hysterically?” I interrupt again. I don’t want his assumptions about Vera’s guilt or innocence.

  Cy is up. “Objection. The witness is not qualified as an expert in human reactions.”

  “Police officers deal with human reactions all the time,” I shoot back. “You don’t need a PhD to be an expert. But in deference to my friend, I will narrow my question.” Justice Buller nods and I turn back to the witness box. “At the time, Constable, you had no reason to doubt Vera Quentin’s statement that she came down and found her mother dead?”

  “No.”

  “And accepting that, you were not surprised that she was shocked and sobbing and hysterical?”

  “Not really.”

  “In other words, Constable, the behaviour you observed in Mrs. Quentin that morning was completely consistent with her innocence?”

  “Objection. Ultimate issue,” shouts Cy.

  Justice Buller peers down at me. “Mr. Kenge is right. The witness cannot testify to the ultimate question of innocence,” she intones.