Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  “I didn’t,” the witness said. “We decided to fingerprint staff who worked near the drug vault to see whether anyone working in or near the drug station that night might have been involved in the theft.”

  “And?” Ellen let the question hang in the air.

  “We found no matches. So we filed the case, set it aside as pretty much unsolvable. It wasn’t such a big deal, really, because the drugs that were stolen were not opiates or hallucinogens and therefore had limited value on the street. We more or less let the whole thing drop. Until ...”

  “Until?” Ellen asked, feigning surprised interest.

  “Until we heard about Mrs. Stoughton-Melville’s case being reopened. We were informed by the hospital that it now suspects she was injected with the same drug that was stolen. It got us to thinking. We checked out a few new angles, took another look at some facts from the old case, reread some of the old records. On a hunch, I ran the prints I had found five years ago through the computer—I mean those clear prints from the drug vault. This time, I wasn’t disappointed.”

  “What did you find?”

  The face of the officer remained as it had been, polite, immobile. “I found that the prints matched those of Supreme Court Justice John Stoughton-Melville.”

  Perhaps I imagined the sound, but I thought I heard one or two of the jurors gasp.

  “The prints of the Supreme Court Justice were on file?” Ellen asked, again in the tone of feigned surprise that indicated to me that she had been paying attention in advocacy class. “Why would that be?”

  “Because of a routine background check now required of all appointees to the court.”

  “But Justice Stoughton-Melville had already been appointed at the time of his wife’s death,” Ellen pointed out.

  “The checks were done after 9/11. Retroactive,” the witness explained.

  I wished Nicky could be in the courtroom. We were ready for this. We’d known from the start that it was coming. Ellen went on with the examination, but I just sat back and listened. I had my angle ready. When her questioning of the witness ended, I rose and slowly approached the man.

  “Sir,” I began, “you have told the jury that you found three fingerprints that you believe might match those of the accused before the court ...”

  “Not might match,” the witness interrupted. “Do match.”

  “Perhaps, sir,” I said, “you would be so good as to let me finish my question?”

  “Sorry.” To my surprise the witness blushed. Not good. More than half the jurors were women, and their sympathy toward the handsome young man thus embarrassed was obvious.

  I nodded indulgently at his apology. “So,” I repeated, “in your opinion, then, you found three fingerprints inside the drug vault at Riverside Hospital that appear to match some computer-generated representations of the fingerprints of my client?”

  The witness, perhaps to spare himself further cause for blushing, answered right away with a simple yes.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “Now, could you please tell the jury again whether you found a print of three different fingers or three prints of the same finger?”

  “I don’t think I said, but it was three different fingers,” he replied.

  Giving the impression that this information was of great importance to my case, I stood still long enough to seem to ponder, to calculate. “Is it true, sir, that there are about ten areas on any given print that must match before you can offer an opinion that a print is from a particular person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Let’s look at some numbers. John Stoughton-Melville is blessed with the continued possession of the number of digits he had when he was born, am I right?”

  “What?”

  “He has ten fingers.”

  “Of course.”

  “So,” I said, maintaining eye contact with the witness, “ten times ten equals one hundred.”

  “One hundred?”

  “Yes. You have about thirty points of comparison from which you have concluded that my client was present in the drug vault?”

  “I suppose, but ...”

  I interrupted the witness quickly. “As compared to one hundred points of comparison for both hands?”

  “Yes. A hundred points of comparison could identify both hands.”

  “Then what you actually have here is a 30 percent chance of the fingerprints being those of John Stoughton-Melville?”

  “Not exactly.” The witness looked startled, as if he felt he had neglected some crucial piece of testimony.

  “Well, you must agree, sir,” I went on, “that you have relatively few matching points when you consider how many points it is possible to match overall?”

  “We had enough to make the comparison,” he persisted.

  “Enough to make a comparison, yes. But to make an identification?” I shook my head ever so slightly. Before the witness could react, I said, “Thank you. Now let’s move on to another area.” I reached down and picked up a thick sheaf of notes that Nicky had prepared. “You said that you reviewed some of the evidence from five years ago. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you suspect that a homicide had been committed at the time the original fingerprints were collected?” I asked, “—all those years ago?”

  “No. As I said, we were looking into a theft, not a murder.”

  “Exactly at what point did you make the connection between the fingerprints in the drug vault and the death of my client’s wife? I mean in your own mind, sir.”

  The witness gave the matter a moment’s deep consideration. “Recently,” he firmly answered, “at about the same time as the results of the drug test were made known.”

  “Don’t you find that rather strange, sir?” I asked. “Rather coincidental? You have drug tests suddenly appearing to show that Mrs. Stoughton-Melville was murdered five years ago. And then, lo, and behold—again after lying buried for five years—three perfect prints show up that just happen to belong to Mrs. Stoughton-Melville’s husband! I call that quite a coincidence, don’t you?”

  “It’s only a coincidence if the two events are not really connected,” the witness replied.

  “Oh, really?” I said, lightly mocking. “If the events were ‘not really connected,’ as you put it, then we really have no case at all, do we?”

  “But they are connected.”

  “The death of Mrs. Stoughton-Melville and the missing drugs are connected? You’re absolutely sure of that, even five years after the fact, five years in which nothing was done to find the real killer of Mrs. Stoughton-Melville?”

  “I’m absolutely s-s-sure,” the witness answered. But the stutter made him sound less certain.

  I shook my head again. “Five years is a long time, sir, and a mere one-third chance of being right is the same thing as a two-thirds chance of being wrong, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” the witness said, now licking his lips.

  Which is where I ended my questioning. It’s always good to get an expert to say those three words if he or she is testifying against a person you are trying to prove has done nothing wrong.

  Though it was strictly against the rules, I followed my client when court was done for the day—right down into the sweat-smelling concrete bowels of the courthouse. I knew every staircase in the place. Besides, the guard escorting Stow that afternoon knew me.

  “Tomorrow I’ve got to let His Honor know, Stow. I’ve got to tell the court whether we are going to call witnesses in your defense. I’ve snowed them with tricks as long as I can, but the end has come.”

  He smirked, but remained silent.

  “You’ve got to instruct me,” I persisted. A second guard joined the first and together they bolted Stow’s shackles to the floor of the van that would speed him back to jail. “You’ve got to tell me what happened on that night.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said, and he signaled the driver as if he were in the backseat of a limo and the man was
his chauffeur.

  Later, I tried yet again to figure out Stow’s behavior. I replayed my own actions in my mind over and over. What had I seen that fateful day? No one in Harpur’s room. I remembered that it had been daylight when I’d arrived. I remembered seeing the children at play in the park beyond Harpur’s window. I remembered sitting with her until it got dark. I remembered leaving her asleep, all traces of her sorrowful condition wiped clean by the smoothing blanket of slumber.

  And then I remembered when I had seen the syringes spilled on the floor.

  Chapter 15

  Queenie’s house was on a little cul-de-sac. I hesitated for an instant, framing in my mind the one question I had to get Queenie to answer. Then, I walked up to the brightly painted wooden door and pressed my finger to the bell.

  And pressed.

  When she finally came, it was clear that I’d awakened her. Surprise at seeing me caused her to rub her eyes sleepily.

  “Queenie,” I said, almost throwing myself into her arms, one hand poised on the door, one on the doorjamb, “thank God you’re here.”

  She stared at me. “I wasn’t missing,” she finally said.

  I moved toward her, but we didn’t make contact because she spun around and led me down the short hallway into her small living room. When she flicked on the light, I saw the room was piled high with boxes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me they were closing the clinic? And why didn’t you answer my phone calls last night?” I asked.

  “It was no big deal.” She shrugged. “And I was out.” She pointed toward the one piece of furniture not covered with boxes, an armchair. I sank into it.

  While she was making tea, I glanced around. Happy as I was to see that she was okay, I had something else just as urgent on my mind. “Queenie,” I said when she came back, “I don’t want to upset you the way I’ve done before, but I have to be straight. I came at this hour of the night because I need your help. I’m not going to beat around the bush.”

  “I’ll help you if I can and if I want to.” She pointed at the box on which she’d rested the tea tray and some sandwiches. “Eat something. You look like you need to.”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, you must be in trouble if you’re saying no to food.” She pushed the tray away. “Okay, then. I’m listening.”

  I leaned closer to her. She smelled of the warmth of her bed. “Queenie,” I said, “Stow is using me. All during this trial, he has refused to do or say anything in his own defense. Nicky and I have constructed the entire case simply from studying Ellen’s disclosure—the material she gave us to show what she intended to prove against Stow.”

  Queenie nodded.

  “The whole time,” I went on, “I’ve wondered whether there was something that Ellen was holding back, some secret witness. That’s illegal, but a really clever lawyer can find ways to spring something on the defense, especially if that something has been obvious all along. I have heard it said that the best way to hide a leaf is on a tree.”

  Queenie thought over that figure of speech and seemed to approve. “I think Ellen’s secret witness has been in court all along. Every day,” I said.

  Queenie seemed interested in this assumption, moving closer to me, putting her warm hand on my cold one, encouraging me to continue.

  “Today we had a witness who made me remember something I’d forgotten—something that could change this case entirely.”

  “What did you remember?”

  I looked again around the room of the house that Stow had made possible for Queenie. “The time will come when I can tell you everything,” I told her. I didn’t add, And you can tell me everything, too. “But right now, about this one favor. I want you to call Riverside Hospital to determine whether there is anybody in quarantine. Whether there’s anybody contagious or in any other way a danger to public health. Please, Queenie, I can’t do this without you.”

  “Your Honor, nobody is allowed in Riverside except doctors or ...”

  “Exactly. One phone call, that’s all I’m asking.”

  She raised her eyes, and it was as though I could read a thousand questions there. I admired her for not asking even one of them. She sighed, not something she usually did, and left the room.

  After an eternity, she returned. I had heard no phone, no voices. I was so intent on her message that I didn’t notice at first she was carrying a small package. “Your Honor,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, and I hope I don’t find out. But I have the answer to your question, and then we’re going to forget the whole thing. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said, half grateful, half afraid.

  “There is nobody contagious or quarantined in Riverside right now. If somebody breaches security, they will get arrested, but they won’t get sick or spread a disease.”

  “Thank you, Queenie,” I whispered. I leaned toward her and kissed her hair. She pulled away and pressed the parcel into my hand.

  Later, in the car, I opened it. It was a surgical mask, a green plastic disposable gown and an envelope. I opened the envelope. Inside was Queenie’s nurse ID, an electronic badge.

  Northeast of the former Tent City encampment, on the edge of the Don valley, Riverside Hospital loomed like a fortified redoubt. If I hadn’t known from past experience how to sneak up the steep valley walls and into the wooded area adjacent to the hospital parking lot, I would have been unable to breach the security of the hospital. City police officers with their cruisers blocked the main entrance off Gerrard Street. Armed contract-guards were closing off the paved path that led from Broadview past the Don Jail and across the front of Riverside. From the parking lot at the rear I could see the white isolation tents glowing in the cold night air. Lit from within, they looked almost festive, as if patients were awaiting guests for a lawn party instead of death.

  From the shadows beneath the trees on the western side of the building, I watched the action near the tents. Several people I took to be front-line nurses and doctors were silhouetted against the white walls of each of the four tents. They seemed to be communicating at close quarters with their patients. Clearly, Queenie had been correct that there were no contagious cases in the hospital.

  I watched and waited for the better part of two hours. It was almost dawn. I couldn’t see my watch, but I didn’t need it. I had lived in the valley as a vagrant for five long years. I could tell time by the way the moonlight fell on the water, by the sounds of the wildlife as foxes and raccoons scurried away from coming daylight and cardinals and jays sang its approach.

  I was less successful at judging the coming and going of humans, because I was caught by surprise when the shift-change of non-front-line workers began. Secretaries, maintenance workers, nurses who dealt with records instead of people, all the workers who had no contact with patients in the facility. These people came and went on a regular schedule, though they had to be gowned and masked the same as nurses and doctors.

  I slipped out of my jacket and donned the gown and the mask just in time to join the long line of males and females who moved toward a metal door beyond the fourth tent. When I finally got to the front of the line, I flashed my pass, like everyone else. I passed through without incident.

  The long line proceeded down a corridor with a number of doors. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I guessed that we were headed east, toward what had been the outer wall and the eastern stairwell in the old days. I guessed that that stairwell must lead to the quarantine area now. As we passed each door, a number of workers peeled off, until I alone was left at the end of the hall. In a matter of seconds, I was accosted by a guard. Not being able to do anything else, I flashed Queenie’s pass again. “Special duty,” I mumbled into my mask.

  “Hold it up, please,” the guard insisted.

  If I were caught, I faced ninety days’ quarantine followed by arrest. Without any hope of contacting Nicky on a daily basis, and with Stow’s refusal to let Nicky represent him, our case would be declared a mistrial. All our work
would be for naught. Plus there’d be no possibility of my returning to the courtroom, or to the law. I’d escaped the consequences of criminal behavior already in my life. I couldn’t afford another misstep.

  “If you are medical, why are you entering from a non-secure area?” the guard asked.

  “Public health informed me there are no quarantines,” I answered. “They said it would be okay to ...”

  “Can you step back, please?” he interrupted.

  I did as he said. I stepped back. He pulled a black metal device from a loop on his belt. But it wasn’t a weapon. It was some sort of communication tool. He pressed a button and held the thing to his ear.

  I tried to look around without moving too much. My only escape route was the long corridor back toward the door to the parking lot. That door would be harder to get out of than into, if I knew anything about detention, which I certainly did.

  In front of me, the door to the eastern stairwell beckoned, but between it and me stood the dragon.

  Until the guard realized his communication device wasn’t working. In an automatic gesture, he held the thing up and shook it. He only moved an inch or so, but suddenly I knew I could get by him.

  I grabbed the door, pulled it open, jamming him behind it. I sprinted up the stairs as fast as my sixty-year-old legs could pump. My heart began to pound, my ears rushing with the roar of my own blood, I didn’t realize at first that the stairwell was ringing with the pulsating screech of an alarm.

  I’m running up the stairs. I reach Harpur’s floor.I turn the corner. An old lady is down the hall, but she has nothing to do with me. I don’t really see her. Or anybody. Because all I can think of is Harpur. I feel a slight bump. I hear something fall and skitter across the floor. I glance down. A dozen or so syringes are scattered there. Half are full—blue. Half are empty—clear. I mumble a swift apology to the orderly who has bent down to pick them up.

  I hurry to Harpur. I stay with her for a little while. I feel overwhelming relief. She has forgotten. She does not ask me again to help her to die. All she asks for is a drink of water. But when I come back with it, she has pulled the sheet up over her lower face, as if she were cold. I want to pull the blanket up, too, but she is so deeply asleep that I don’t want to risk disturbing her by touching anything. It pleases me to see her so still, so peaceful.