After Cy deposited me at my building, I went straight up to my condo. Vaguely, only half-caring, I scanned for signs of intrusion, found none. Danny’s men didn’t bother with trying to deliver their “parcel,” they followed me straight to Mike’s, where they killed him. In the lexicon of the law, we call the unthinking chance I took criminal negligence. I downed one of the doctor’s pills and stumbled to bed.
I woke to the ring of phones—my cellphone, my landline—unremitting, impossible to ignore. I slowly realized that I would not be allowed to simply sit and grieve. Police officers were waiting downstairs. The hospital was calling. Mike’s lawyers wanted to see me immediately. Martha and Brock, Jeff and Richard left messages. I didn’t answer.
Death is not just an event that knocks the bottom out of your world. It is a happening that demands to be dissected, analysed, and slotted into preordained bureaucratic niches, there to be put to rest. The world goes on, and with it the aftermath of a life. Police files must be opened and filled; hospitals must be instructed where to send the body; lawyers must make their arrangements.
I answered their queries as best I could. “I hope you catch the man who did this,” I told the police. I didn’t mean the hitman, who’s long gone. I meant Danny. They made no comment. We both knew that proving a connection between Danny and Mike’s murderer will be impossible; Danny’s too smart for that.
Morning passed to afternoon and afternoon passed into night in a blur of misery and another pill. I spent Sunday staring at the sun glinting on the waters of False Creek, dancing off the elegant boats moored in the harbour below. Too perfect a day to waste, my brain said. Take a run, like you always do on beautiful days like this, but I could not move. I sat immobile, lost in a numb lassitude.
But Vera Quentin’s future was in my hands. Toward evening, I roused myself. No more dawdling, no more pills. I’ve lost the case I called Mike; now I must move on, like I always do when I lose. I can do it; all I need to do is hold on to this numbness inside. I got off the couch, opened my laptop, and brought up the folder labelled R. v. Quentin.
Now I’m seated in the courtroom where Vera Quentin’s fate will be decided. Vera is poised and calm in the prisoner’s box. Joseph Quentin, flanked by Nicholas, acknowledges me from the front row as I pass—present to hear Vera tell her story. If they’ve figured out the connection between me and the late Michael St. John, they give no sign. Better that way.
I hear Cy coming down the aisle. He lets his briefcase fall to the floor by his table and stops by my table. The dome of his head dips, and he peers down at me, searching my face to see how I’m making out.
“Are you sure you should be here?” Cy says for my ears only. “We can adjourn.”
I think of Vera in the witness stand, waiting to end her ordeal, one way or the other. “It won’t be better tomorrow. Or the next day. I need to put this behind me.”
Cy nods, goes back to his table.
Jeff arrives in a flurry of black robes, straightening his white tabs. He hasn’t seen me since last Friday, a lifetime ago. “I read about it in the news, tried to get in touch. Home invasion? What the hell, Jilly?”
“A hitman,” I whisper. “He was after me but took out Mike instead. I’m sorry, I should have called you back, but—”
He looks at me like I’m a witness who’s not telling the whole truth. He is angry; he is hurt. He wants to ream me out—This isn’t the way you treat your partner—but the jury is filing in. He takes a seat next to me.
I’m a loner; I’ve never been much good at partnering. I see now how wrong I’ve been. I never told Jeff about Danny, never filled him in on the connection with May. Never mentioned I might be in danger. So busy, why burden him? “Forgive me, Jeff,” I whisper.
“Fuck, Jilly,” he says, his anger dissolving into grief. “I liked Mike, really liked him. And you? How are you even here?”
“I’m fine.”
“Like hell, you are.” He scans my face and I know what he sees, what I saw in the mirror this morning as I applied my makeup—skin preternaturally white, eyes sunken in dark circles, lips painted bright in a desperate attempt to simulate normalcy.
Then he makes a decision. “You’re in shock, Jilly,” he says. “Move over. I’m taking over.”
CHAPTER 48
“I CALL VERA QUENTIN,” JEFF tells the assembled court.
The sheriff opens the prisoner’s door. Vera crosses the room to the witness box, head high. Her voice is firm as she takes the oath.
Jeff starts with the crucial question. “Mrs. Quentin, you have been charged with the murder of your mother, Olivia Stanton. Tell the jury, did you kill your mother?”
Vera turns to the jury box. I read their reactions: the beautician’s practiced eye running down her body, the nurse studying her face for signs of anxiety, the college professor treating her to a distanced once-over. Our accountant-preacher leans forward in barely concealed anticipation; the day of reckoning is upon us.
Vera regards them calmly, then turns back to Jeff. “I did not kill my mother,” she says. “I am not guilty of the charge that has been brought against me.”
“Thank you,” says Jeff. “Now, on to the details.”
Jeff takes Vera through the months and days leading up to Olivia’s death. She answers his questions with simple eloquence, telling the jury how much she loved her mother and how she obsessively worried about her.
“I was suffering from general anxiety disorder,” she says. “My doctors told me, but I never really believed them. I know now that they were right.”
“Are you still suffering from GAD?”
“No. My mother’s death was a terrible shock to me. That episode forced me to take stock of my life. I realized I had a choice—become well or die. I decided to become well. I had so much to live for, a husband, a son. I will spare you the details, but I found better medication and engaged in cognitive behavioural therapy. Now I am healthy.”
“Would you tell the jury what cognitive behavioural therapy is, Mrs. Quentin?” Jeff asks.
“CBT, as they call it, teaches you how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours work together in patterns. It helps you replace unhelpful patterns with good patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and find new strategies to deal with underlying difficulties.”
Jeff moves on to Olivia Stanton’s suffering and Vera’s attempts to alleviate it. “Did your mother ever ask you to help her die?”
“Yes, several times.”
“What was your response?”
“I told her that I couldn’t do it.”
“Why did you feel you couldn’t do it, Mrs. Quentin? Was it the fact it would be illegal?”
“No, I didn’t think about whether it was illegal or even immoral, as it is in the view of some. All I knew was that I could not do it. I knew in my heart that if I gave her the morphine, I would be calling 911 within minutes to have it pumped out. Every person has their limits. There are some things they just can’t do. I knew myself, knew what I could not do. It wasn’t rational; it was visceral.” Her eyes slide to the jury box, willing them to believe her. “Killing my mother, killing anyone, is something I know I could never do.”
“How did it make you feel that you couldn’t do this for your mother?” Jeff asks gently.
Vera bows her head.
“Mrs. Quentin?” Jeff prompts.
She looks up and answers at last. “Guilty, inadequate. I felt I had let her down. But it didn’t matter; I just couldn’t do it.”
“Did you continue to feel that way up to the time she died?”
“Yes. My feelings on the matter never changed.”
“Did you ever tell your husband that you couldn’t take it anymore, referring to the situation with your mother, the burden of her care?”
Vera glances at Joseph, then back at Jeff. “Yes, I probably said words to that effect. You have to remember, I was suffering from anxiety disorder and I worried incessantly about the future, what would happen to my mothe
r, what I would do if I couldn’t cope. The worry, the apprehension, made me feel like I couldn’t continue sometimes. But I never meant that I would change the situation, do something to relieve me of the burden of my mother’s care.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Quentin, for that clarification,” Jeff says. “Let me take you to the day of the murder. You’ve listened to your husband describe the events of that evening, and you’ve reread the statement you gave to the police the morning after. Do you agree with that evidence and with your statement?”
“I do. That is how it was.”
“Your mother was agitated when you arrived that evening?”
“Yes, she seemed upset.”
“Were you able to find out why she was upset?” Jeff asks.
“No. I didn’t know it then, but she had just been diagnosed with early dementia, which can cause confusion and upset. I wish I had known though; I would have tried to help her,” she adds.
“What did you do then?”
“I gave my mother her evening pills, which included a sleeping pill. Because she seemed upset, I gave her two Imovane, instead of one. Dr. Menon had told me to do this if she seemed especially agitated. Then I put her to bed. I checked a while later and she was asleep. I decided to go to bed myself. I locked the doors and set the alarm, with the bypass for interior movement on before retiring.” Her head bows. “That was the last time I saw my mother alive.”
“You went to sleep yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You heard no noise during the night?”
“No. I woke in the morning, around half-past seven. I put on my robe, went downstairs, made a coffee. Mother, I called, but there was no answer. I went into her room and I saw her.” She breaks, unable to continue, and wipes her eye with the corner of her monogrammed handkerchief.
“Do you know who killed your mother, Mrs. Quentin?”
She shakes her head, unable to answer. Jeff decides to let it go. “No further questions.”
“Well done, Jeff,” I whisper as he takes his seat.
I scan the faces of the jurors. We didn’t want them to feel sorry for Vera; that wouldn’t forestall conviction. We wanted them to sympathize with Vera, in the real sense of the word, to see her as they might see themselves and embrace her, as I, deep in my own loss, feel myself embracing her. Have we succeeded? Several jurors are nodding, the librarian at the back is blinking back tears. Perhaps, just perhaps.
CHAPTER 49
VERA HAS TOLD HER STORY. Now it’s Cy’s turn to destroy it.
We’ve prepared her as best we could for how nasty this could get. Now she’s out there on her own; the rules are clear—a witness under cross-examination cannot talk to her lawyers. Outwardly, Vera is calm and composed. Inwardly, I can only guess. One thing I know—Vera Quentin is much stronger than I had thought.
Cy begins on an amiable note. “How are you feeling today, Mrs. Quentin?”
“Very well, Mr. Kenge,” Vera replies evenly.
“Quite well enough to testify?” Cy asks with a sly, mock-sympathetic side look.
“Objection,” Jeff fires. “I don’t know where my friend is going with this, but it has nothing to do with the issues in this trial.”
“Sustained,” says Justice Buller, giving Cy a curious glance.
“Mere opening pleasantries,” says Cy.
I glare at him across the aisle. He knows he can’t get into Vera’s weekend overdose—the prejudicial nature of that evidence would greatly outweigh any probative value it might have. But he’s not above suggesting to the jury that something might have happened to Vera that they would love to know, if only the rules would let him bring it out. His opening sally accomplished, Cy gets down to business. “Mrs. Quentin,” Cy begins. “You have told the jury that the evening before your mother died, you gave her two sleeping pills, instead of one?”
“Yes. I wanted—”
“You wanted to put your mother in a sedated state?”
“Well, yes. Not deeply. But enough so she would sleep.”
“Your mother was a small woman, Mrs. Quentin. You knew that two Imovane would put her into a semi-comatose state, did you not?”
Vera is not ruffled. “It would make her sleep, yes, but not be unconscious.”
“We know, Mrs. Quentin, that you worried incessantly about your mother’s health. Yet this night, you gave her a double sedative—a lot for a tiny, frail woman—and blithely went to bed, no worries at all?”
“You have to understand. I knew the pills wouldn’t hurt her—Dr. Menon had told me to give her two if she was agitated, which she was.”
“Ah, no doubt, Mrs. Quentin,” Cy says lightly. “So, let me see if I have this right? You say you gave your mother this double dose of sleeping pills, enough to sedate her. You say you then went upstairs to bed and slept soundly until the morning.”
“Yes.”
“The room where you were sleeping was directly above the den where your mother slept. Is it fair to say that if a disturbance occurred in the den, a person in the room above would have heard it?”
“Normally, yes.”
“It was an old house with wooden floors, not terribly well-insulated?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you heard nothing that night. No doors, no footsteps, no cries—you just slept?”
“I don’t know why I wasn’t disturbed, but I just—” Vera breaks off, at a loss.
My ear, attuned to the nuance of Vera’s voice, senses she is on the edge of control. She swallows and hangs on, her face impassive.
Cy crosses to the counsel table, takes the document Jonathan proffers. “I have here the report of your psychiatrist, Dr. McComb. You have seen it, read it?”
“Yes, I have.”
Cy hands her the report. “Would you read me the highlighted paragraph on page three, Mrs. Quentin?”
With a shaking voice, Vera reads, “July 8, 2019. The patient complained of difficulty sleeping. She reported that she has always been a light sleeper, but that the problem has worsened in recent months.”
“That is what you told your doctor one month and two days before your mother was killed?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“But the night your mother was killed, you say you slept through a disturbance in the room below without waking.”
“I do. I do not know how, but I did.”
“You do not know how you slept but say you did,” Cy repeats. He leans forward. “Are there other things, Mrs. Quentin, that you do not know how, but say you did?”
“Objection,” Jeff shouts.
Vera picks up on his warning. “No, no,” she says quickly, but the damage is done.
Cy gives her a small smile. “Of course, Mrs. Quentin, of course.”
The foreman of the jury whispers something to the college professor next to him. Jeff and I, like the lawyers we are, keep poker faces. But we know what has just happened.
Cy continues on. “In the days and hours immediately preceding the death of your mother, do you agree that you were in a state of almost overwhelming anxiety?” he asks.
“Often, yes.”
“You told your husband you couldn’t go on like this?”
“Yes, as I said before—”
“You knew your mother wanted to die and that she wanted you to help her die?”
“Yes,” Vera says.
I see what Cy is doing, lulling Vera into agreeing with him, and I will her to resist. Don’t trust this man.
“You had just had a pleasant dinner with your husband and were relaxing into the evening when once again you got a call from your mother that required you to go to her house and spend the night?”
“Yes.”
“You found her agitated and dishevelled?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That night you were anxious, overwhelmed, and distraught at the plight of your mother, and you decided to do what she wanted you to do and take her life.”
Vera gasps. “No, I didn’t—”
“And having decided, you took action. You gave her double sleeping pills, and then, when she was soundly asleep, just before midnight, you collected the morphine the nurse had showed you how to administer, came downstairs, went to her room, and injected a lethal dose into her arm as she slept.”
“No, no.” Vera is sobbing now.
A few of the jurors look away, but the face of the foreman is set in hard, unforgiving lines.
Cy drops his voice. “Mrs. Quentin, you admit you had a severe case of general anxiety disorder at the time your mother died?”
“Yes,” she manages.
“And you heard Dr. Pinsky say that disorder is associated with denial?”
“Y-yes.”
“I put it to you, Mrs. Quentin: You killed your mother and you are now in a state of denial, unable to face the horror of admitting to an act you never thought you could commit.”
Vera clutches her handkerchief as her dark eyes fill with fresh tears. “No, no, I am not in denial. I never did it. I did not kill my mother.”
“And you heard Dr. Pinsky say that people in that state can commit acts they would otherwise never countenance?”
“Yes.”
“Like committing suicide or even worse, killing the object of their anxiety?”
“Yes, he said that, but I would never—”
“And you also heard him say that people with this disorder may enter into a state of denial.”
“You’ve already asked me that.” Vera’s voice is rising. She is slipping out of control. “I did not kill my mother. I am not in denial. I did not kill my mother. I am not in denial.”
“I see.” Cy looks at the jury. No need to say the words, Ladies and gentlemen, behold. This is what denial looks like.
Jeff and I are too smart to let our faces show what we know has happened. The pathetic façade of a defence that we’ve been building has just crumbled and lies in a heap at our feet.
How can Vera win, when the denial she makes in support of her innocence is undercut by the very fact that denial is part of her sickness and cannot be believed? Catch-22.
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