Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  “You were there? In court?”

  She shrugged. “No big deal. I guess you were too busy to notice me. You never turned around. But I did talk to that friendly young man.”

  “Nicky?”

  “I guess so. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. How’s it going?”

  “Okay.”

  “But it would be better if you could get into Riverside?”

  I moved away, toward the window, and studied the huge flakes of snow that were suddenly falling between the clinic and the store next door. They never made it to the pavement, disappearing into the wet air. “Queenie,” I said, “I’m truly sorry that I gave offense by asking you to do something wrong.”

  I felt her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be sorry, Your Honor. I’m working on it, I’m working on it.” She shook her head, but whether in exasperation or frustration I couldn’t tell.

  “Come to supper with me,” I asked again.

  “I’ve got to finish this report tonight.” She flipped through the pile on her desk. “But then, if I leave it alone for an hour, it won’t disappear, will it? Looks like you talked me into it.”

  I took her to a little Chinese place at Broadview and Gerrard in the heart of Chinatown East. It pleased me to watch Queenie eat. She was so delicate in her movements that to watch her eat spareribs with her fingers was like watching someone else play the clarinet.

  “Are you afraid, Your Honor? About tomorrow, I mean,” she said when she noticed that my usually too healthy appetite was nowhere in evidence.

  “Afraid? Why would I be afraid?”

  She took a sip of tea, then refilled both our cups. “It’s been a long time since you’ve done this.”

  “Eaten with you in a Chinese restaurant?”

  She frowned at my feeble joke. “Your Honor,” she said, “do you remember the time you and I ate at that restaurant around the corner from the courthouse and really got sick? When we thought somebody was trying to poison us?”

  “That was pretty bad. Not something you’d forget.”

  Queenie nodded. “You know, Your Honor, we’ve been through trials and tribulations that an ordinary person couldn’t survive. I think you and I are tough enough to handle anything now, because there’s not much worse than being a street drunk that begs food when he isn’t too hungover to eat.” She hesitated, smiled. “We sure know how to suck it up.”

  “As long as a man can say, ‘This is the worst,’ the worst is yet to come.”

  “Who said that?” Queenie asked.

  “I can’t remember. A Roman or a Greek. Maybe Virgil.”

  “Virgil from down at the shelter?” she asked. I saw that Queenie had a sense of humor after all. “Listen, Your Honor, you may not have been lawyering for a long time, but you know about murder cases ...”

  “Queenie, a long time ago, I promised Stow I’d help him one time in his life, no questions asked.”

  She touched the gold ring on my finger. “I remember all of that, Your Honor,” she said. “I remember that the day you became a lawyer, you and the Justice and his wife and a couple of other lawyers made that promise. When he asked me to talk to you, he reminded me.”

  I felt a stab of anger. I’d almost forgotten that Stow had sought Queenie out. “What else did he say, Queenie? Did he tell you why he needed an intermediary?”

  “What are you getting so hot about?” she challenged. “It’s a free country. He came to me late last summer. He said he’d run into a little trouble, and he needed someone to help him out. He said you were our mutual friend. He said he needed you to defend him in court, but that you were a proud man.”

  A master of timing, Queenie sipped her tea before going on. “He said he was a proud man, too, and that it’s easy to ask a favor through an intermediary. But now I’m not so sure I did the right thing.”

  I wasn’t sure myself. “Why?”

  She cleared her throat and blurted out, “Because the day I came to court, I saw how you were with him. You didn’t talk to him, didn’t look at him.”

  “Queenie, I can’t show how I feel about my client. It would be unprofessional.”

  “I didn’t say you didn’t show how you felt,” she answered. “Everybody could see how you felt. Like you weren’t absolutely sure that your client was innocent. That scared me. How can you defend somebody if you think he’s guilty? Isn’t that, like, lying?”

  “Queenie,” I answered, “it’s not my job to convince a jury that Stow is innocent. It’s my job to raise a reasonable doubt.”

  She glanced around the small restaurant as if some stranger were more capable of clarifying matters than I was. “All I know,” she said, “is that if you really believe Stow killed his wife, if you yourself don’t have that doubt you talk about, how’re you going to convince a jury?”

  How many times had I encountered laypeople with the same question? They believed we lawyers were morally reprehensible. And how to explain this aspect of the law to my old friend? I took a deep breath. “Queenie, you have to understand that my personal doubts about my client have nothing to do with the case.”

  “That’s what you think,” she declared, as if she had known more about the law than I did all along—or more about Stow.

  After dinner, Queenie said she wanted to take a look at her charges at Tent City before returning to the mass of work in her office. Our trek along Queen Street East was mostly silent. By the time we reached the bridge over the Don River, the final red rays of light had faded from the western sky behind us, turning it first to leaden gray, then to deep blue. From the north side of the bridge, we could see the Don wind up toward expensive residential neighborhoods. Ellen was up there somewhere. Maybe little Angelo was getting ready for bed. I could picture my daughter reading her son a bedtime story, or regaling him with tales about her day in court.

  From the south side, we could see the campfires and lanterns of Tent City.

  I told Queenie, “I feel guilty that I haven’t been able to go down since the trial started. But everything looks under control.”

  “There’s where you’re wrong.” She gazed at the homes of her misfits and sighed.

  “Things are worse out here than they’ve ever been.”

  Along the narrow east bank of the river the tents and shacks stretched like beads on a black ribbon. The night was quiet. No raised voices, no music. “What’s so terrible?”

  She shook her head. “As soon as the worst of the cold weather passed,” she said, “the drug dealers moved in. If it seems quiet down there right now, that’s because it’s too early in the evening for the coke market to open.”

  I turned away from the peaceful scene below and wished I had it in my power to right the world’s wrongs. A piercing scream rose from the depths of the valley, and a slim figure—I judged it to be a young woman—ran from a tent that burst into flame seconds later. Soon the tranquil scene below me became a riot of dark figures running in every direction.

  “They’re at it again!”

  I followed Queenie without question as she darted down the embankment. Pushing through people climbing up to the bridge, she quickly made her way to the burning tent. Beside it the young girl watched her home become ashes with a mixture of horror and disbelief. “It came right out of the sky. Like lightning! I was standing by the tent and I saw it come, and I just run.”

  The girl clung tightly to Queenie, sobbing that her stuff was gone and she could never get any more, that somebody had tried to kill her, that she didn’t know what to do ... Queenie gently pulled the distraught young woman away from the fire and patted her head as though comforting a child.

  “Queenie, what is it?”

  “Firebombs,” the girl said before Queenie could answer. “It’s been happening every night for a couple weeks. Some yahoos are throwing burning rags down on the tents from the bridge or from cars on the road. Mostly they just go out in the air, but not tonight. Tonight they landed on me. I’m a lucky bitch!” She smiled weakly, and Queenie patt
ed her again.

  I was appalled. Drug dealers. Firebombs. “The tenters have to be removed at once. How about back to the shelters?”

  “No,” the girl answered immediately. “It’s better to burn than sleep one night in a shelter.” As if in confirmation of what she’d said, most of those who’d run at the sight of the fire from above were making their way back down.

  One of the shack dwellers whose home was still intact agreed to take the young girl in for the night, and with many backward looks at the embers of her home, she went along. As for me, I was anxious to get Queenie and myself away before the next firebombing episode commenced or the drug market opened for business. But we didn’t go back to the office. Instead, we walked up the embankment, over the bridge and along King Street to her house. I’d not been there since New Year’s Eve when I’d been forced to remain outside. This time, she invited me in.

  “Why are you so secretive about this?” I asked her as we entered a small hallway that opened onto a comfortable living room.

  She rearranged a few books on a table, as if I’d criticized her housekeeping.

  “It’s so nice, Queenie, with all your Indian art and your plants. Why wouldn’t you want to show me?”

  “No reason, Your Honor. Why are you so questionable all of a sudden?”

  “Inquisitive,” I corrected. “I’m not questionable. I’m inquisitive. Did someone give you the money to buy this house?” I persisted.

  A stronger notion hit me. “Did someone donate it to you?”

  Queenie balled her hands into tight little fists at her sides, as if she were about to attack. “Are you a nut case? I’m not a charity!”

  “How about bribes? Do you accept those?”

  I’d gone too far. Why couldn’t I stop harassing my best friend? Queenie. unballed her fists and said, “If you weren’t just about my only pal, I’d throw you right out of here. Why don’t you ask the real question, the one that’s bugging you?”

  Okay, I thought, I will. “Queenie, did Stow give you this house in exchange for talking me into taking his case?”

  She appeared embarrassed, but only a bit.

  “Oh, Queenie!”

  Now she fired up again. “He didn’t donate it or give it to me. He sold it to me and made the mortgage one I could afford. It was legit. Fair and square deal.”

  “And in exchange, you convinced me to become his lawyer?”

  “Nobody convinces you of anything.” She looked around the cozy room. “Anyhow,” she said, “so what if I did do Stow a favor? One hand washes the other. No big deal!”

  Uncomfortable with her rationalizing, I left a few minutes later, went home and tried to get some sleep. When I was still tossing and turning at 5 a.m., I gave up, showered and headed downtown to the office.

  It took me a minute to realize that the lights were on, as though someone had been working from dark until after sunrise and had forgotten to turn them off. Nicky? He’d said he had a date.

  I glanced around. Nothing seemed out of order. The boxes were still neatly stacked, generally in numerical order. We had cut most of the red tape away. I could see nothing different about the boxes or the tape. As before, the tape had been resealed carefully but without the appearance of tampering.

  Perhaps I’d left the lights on myself. Prepared to dismiss the puzzle, I moved toward my desk. There in the middle of it was a courier’s envelope that had definitely not been there the day before. A smudged black time stamp indicated 1:06 a.m. as the time the envelope had left the courier truck. I turned it over to see whether Nicky had signed for it. All I saw on the signature slip were the words “Signature not required.”

  I tore open the envelope. A sharp edge caught my knuckle, so that a smear of blood sullied the front of another envelope inside. On this second envelope, I saw the bold black globe that was the logo of the Toronto Daily World. I tore that open too.

  A note was scribbled in blue ballpoint on a single piece of letter-size paper. “Ellis,” I read, “I found something more on Harpur’s trust. Here’s a one-page record concerning the transfer of the trust to that family member I mentioned. What does it mean? Let me know when you figure it out. Aliana.”

  I turned the note over. On the other side was a photocopy of a few lines of legal jargon. I interpreted it to mean that the person who had signed the document agreed that some preexisting claim to inheritance had not been relinquished. My eye raced to the bottom of the page. The signature I saw there was more than a shock; it was mind-boggling: a neat, precise, familiar “Portal.”

  Chapter 12

  It was the same signature I’d seen on the financial records that I’d checked, on the Pipperpharmat drug trial records, on so much of the Crown’s disclosure material. I mulled it over for more than an hour. I pulled a few random pages from my files, from the stacked boxes. I was so sure that Ellen had signed all the Crown’s disclosures that I hadn’t stopped to ask myself why she’d have to sign them. And indeed, most of the material I now looked at was not signed. There were initials here and there, including at the bottom of typed memos from Ellen, but only a few full signatures. They looked very similar to the document Aliana had couriered, but now I realized that I couldn’t be 100 percent sure. But I had to ask myself: Was I only now questioning the signature because the document I held in my hand was questionable? Why would my daughter have signed a paper stating that she refused to relinquish a claim on Harpur’s money?

  I had no more time to figure it out. I shoved the paper back into the courier envelope and stuck it in a drawer. Nicky was waiting for me at court, and I had to get there before he got nervous and Judge McKenzie got furious. I ran down Queen Street, but any time I gained by rushing was lost as I went through an exceptionally thorough search of my person and belongings. Security at the courthouse seemed to be getting tighter by the day.

  I shouldn’t have worried about Nicky. He was engaged in friendly banter with Ellen when I arrived in the courtroom, and as she called her first witness, he stared at my daughter with the smarmy gaze of a hero worshipper. I had seen junior defense lawyers in awe of senior Crown lawyers many times. This time it really ticked me off.

  “Constable Simms,” Ellen began, “you were the first officer on the scene the night Riverside Hospital was broken into and Harpur Stoughton-Melville died?”

  “Correct.”

  “Can you tell the jury what your duty that night entailed?”

  The officer, a woman dressed in a suit a bit too tight in the jacket and in ankle-length trousers answered, “It would have been my job to secure the scene, to make sure no evidence was misplaced or disturbed ...”

  Even though Nicky and I knew the answers to such basic questions, we wrote furiously on our pads to intimate that the officer was saying something controversial. It was a technique we intended to employ with all Crown witnesses, to keep the jury on edge, to give them the impression that what each witness said was disputable.

  Nicky and I had agreed to share the cross-examination of the routine police witnesses. We asked each of them about eyewitnesses to the actual events in Harpur’s room. There were none.

  When he concluded his questions with the last police constable, Nicky indulged himself by speculating in front of the jury. McKenzie didn’t stop him, which we imagined would be a tiny coup for us.

  “So, Officer,” Nicky said, practically puffing out his chest, “looks like the only witness to the death of Harpur Blane Stoughton-Melville was the unfortunate deceased herself. ”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” the officer answered calmly and with what I suspected was a twinkle in his eye. “I never worked on a murder case yet where the only witness was the corpse.”

  Every day of the trial, Aliana sat and scribbled as much as we did. I realized I needed to get her take on the “Portal” paper. Anne was in the body of the court, too. I caught her watching Ellen with an intensity I couldn’t remember her displaying before. I flattered myself that she was watching me too, imagined I could f
eel her admiration, even approval, when I rose to cross-examine the first of the more specialized police witnesses. Why did I care what Anne thought?

  For whatever reason, I was conscious of the attention of both women as I rose to address the witness. “Detective Wellesley, your notes taken the night of the break-in at the drug vault in Riverside show that you found three full vials of Somatofloran on the floor near the vault.”

  Wellesley thumbed through his small black memo book. “Yes.”

  “But you have not indicated that you fingerprinted those vials. Am I right?”

  Wellesley stared at me for a moment, aware of my tactics.

  “Are you asking whether I indicated fingerprinting the vials in my notes or if I actually did fingerprint the vials?”

  “Both, sir,” I said with a slight air of exasperation that was designed to make the witness look less intelligent than he clearly was.

  “I did not indicate that the vials had been fingerprinted by me immediately upon their discovery,” he answered calmly.

  “Why?”

  “Because I was the officer in charge of the case,” he explained with exaggerated patience, as if trying to communicate with a backward child. Tit for tat. “I don’t conduct fingerprint examinations. That would have been done by forensics at the scene sometime later.”

  “I see.” The faces of the jury had come alive with interest. Fingerprints. Crime scene. This was more like Law and Order. Good for keeping them awake. “So you would have received a report sometime after the break-in alerting you to the results of the fingerprint examination of the vials?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But?”

  “But the results were negative.”

  “Officer, does that mean there were no fingerprints?”

  “Fingerprints were found on the three vials,” he answered, “but they were partials. We couldn’t get enough to make a conclusive match.”

  I appeared to give this information careful consideration. This was precisely the opening I’d been going for. “So, Officer,” I declared ponderously, “you are telling me that the fingerprints of my client were not found on any vial of Somatofloran retrieved at Riverside Hospital during the time in which his wife was a patient there.”