Victim Impact

by Mel Bradshaw

  “I sure as hell won’t put it in those terms,” Nelson chided. “Officers respond to what they’re given.”

  “Fair enough, James.”

  It sounded to Ted as if Nelson would know how to handle the Crown if Szabo had any questions.

  Chapter 13

  By five on the morning of the last Friday before his court appearance, Shawn Whittaker was feeling sleep-deprived, bored, ripped off and virtuous. He sure as hell shouldn’t have been spending any part of his last week of freedom working, but Dwayne—with a truly brilliant sense of timing—had come down with a flu that sent his guts straight down the toilet and left no question of his being able to hold down his usual graveyard shift. So Shawn was pinch-hitting. At least he’d leave his family with a good impression of him.

  They’d been strange since the plea bargain had been struck at the start of November. No, Dwayne had been strange for much longer. For over a month, Dwayne hadn’t exchanged a word beyond “Pass the butter” and “Your lawyer phoned.” Well, Dwayne owed Shawn for tonight. For the rest, if Dwayne disapproved of his brother, that was his problem. It would be up to him to come round.

  The change in Cliff and Meryl, however, was more recent. Following the bail hearing, they had been affectionate—almost clinging. Shawn wanted to tell his father to get a grip.

  “I could turn down a few runs, son, do your shifts in the store instead. I’d like to give you the time you need to sort things out. And then, with me home, you and I’d have a chance to talk more.”

  “Thanks, Dad. You just keep doing your job. You can help me most by being strong.” Saying these words gave Shawn a sense that he was the man of the house. Nothing built character, he decided, like being an outlaw.

  His mother was more resourceful. More intrusive—though Shawn could always bring her into line by playing on her insecurities.

  “It all takes so long,” she’d say. “It wears you down. But we kept you out of jail in October. We’ll do it again.”

  Both parents had thought the trial would clear Shawn. The plea bargain hit them hard.

  Now they had to hear their son say he had caused the death of an innocent woman, a customer, someone they knew. It knocked the stuffing out of them. They felt they had to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to love a killer as a son.

  “It’s not an admission,” Shawn had tried to tell his mother when she barged into his bedroom in her bathrobe late one night. He had been lying on top of the bedclothes, still dressed and looking through the friends listed on his cellphone for one whose conversation wouldn’t bore him too much. “It’s just a move in a game. If we went to trial and I pleaded not guilty, they’d probably put me away for longer.”

  “Then we could go to that association,” said Meryl, “the one that helps the Wrongfully Convicted. Maybe we still can, but this—this bargain will be hard to explain.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “Better start by explaining it to me. Did you kill Karin, Shawn?”

  “If you don’t like the deal, Meryl, you should have hired Eddie Greenspan to defend me,” he replied icily. “I guess you were saving your money for something closer to your heart. Let’s talk about that ‘cause I’d like to know what it is.”

  That had shut her up. The longer he kept her from deciding he’d done Karin, the longer he’d benefit from her doubt. She wanted him to be innocent, would believe so as long as he let her. She should thank him, really, not nag. Shawn was thinking of getting a skull tattooed on his lower arm so she’d never again ask him to wear a Handy Buy golf shirt.

  Despite the Greenspan crack, Shawn wasn’t disappointed with Natasha. A plain little mouse, but scrappy. He’d expected some jail time, not looking forward to it, but seeing it as a rite of passage. Toughen him up. He had a lot to learn about not minding being hurt. Where he thought he might be ahead was that he already didn’t mind hurting other people. Even people he liked. If he saw the necessity of killing Natasha or even his brother, he’d do it, and there’d be no one in prison he’d feel as close to as Dwayne.

  Dwayne, whose deadly dull shift he was doing at the Handy Buy.

  Shawn had tried to put some games on the company computer, but it was hopelessly limited to inventories, revenues and a few letter templates. Forget about Internet. The magazines the supplier filled the rack with seemed to publish the same articles every two months. The weeklies featured the same movie stars every issue. Then there were the customers. Tonight they had been few and boring. Most seemed genuinely oblivious to the fact that the clerk behind the counter was out on bail. One or two had the air of knowing and of trying to act normally. A woman who came for cigarettes after three a.m. appeared to be wearing only nightclothes under her car coat and really had quite a decent figure, as well as a husky voice and a friendly manner, but was so wrinkled that she might as well have been wearing a hazmat suit and speaking Klingon. Shawn actually found himself looking forward to the arrival of the day’s newspapers at five thirty. Maybe something there would catch his interest.

  Something did, and how! He ordinarily didn’t read much beyond the headlines, but these weren’t ordinary headlines—

  “Secret motorcycle gang raided.”

  “Police bust clubhouse, ecstasy lab.”

  “Broken Arrows.”

  “Biker killed, cop bitten in fray.”

  Shawn pieced the story together from various accounts. At eight the night before, police had simultaneously raided two alleged assets of the secretive Dark Arrows Motorcycle Club. At a townhouse in the Malton area of Peel Region, ingredients and equipment for producing MDMA or ecstasy were seized, along with over fifteen hundred finished tablets with a street value of over forty thousand dollars. Meanwhile, SWAT teams had captured a heavily fortified biker clubhouse outside the village of Pebbleton in the Caledon Hills. The raids were timed to coincide with the Dark Arrows’ regular Thursday night meeting. A dozen bikers in custody now faced charges of drug trafficking, possession of unregistered firearms, obstruction of justice, and attempted murder. Only one fatality resulted from the raid. A Doberman pinscher belonging to the bikers nipped an officer’s hand, causing his gun to go off, with the result that the dog’s handler was fatally shot. The victim’s name had not yet been released.

  Shawn tried to picture a SWAT team member, body armour head to steel-capped toe, not wearing gloves. What next?

  Ontario Provincial Police spokesman Earl Fischer, who admitted that the gang had been very successful in flying under the radar of the Biker Enforcement Unit, professed himself satisfied with the raids. Asked whether the BEU had infiltrated the motorcycle club or been tipped off by a member-turned-informer, Constable Fischer declined to say anything that might help identify their source. Despite the large number of arrests, he admitted that a small number of Dark Arrows remained at large, and there was a real risk they would be looking for revenge.

  Shawn flexed his left hand. The scar tissue didn’t look too bad, but he disliked the tight feeling when he moved the fingers. He guessed that would pass if he kept working on it—but in the meantime, it was a reminder of the last time he’d been made to feel small. No list of those arrested had yet been published, but he hoped that when it was, it would include Scar Hollister.

  Two days later, the police released the name of the dead biker. This was more payback than Shawn had counted on, or truly wanted.

  When Ted read the news, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. At the same time, he was quite clear that Scar’s death was no lucky break for Shawn.

  Natasha Cullen had not been practising law many years, but more than enough to remember Eliot Szabo as a member of the defence bar. He took on the most banal petty crooks and made them happy by pretending to negotiate the sentence the judge would have given them anyway. He knew the odds and made them work for him. Natasha, by contrast, was always striving to distinguish herself by taking on the extraordinary cases.

  This time the roles seemed reversed. Shawn wasn’t complaining about the six-year sentence Nata
sha had negotiated for him. She herself let him think he was pulling a fast one, despite the lack of direct evidence that he’d done the killing. The problem was that he simply wouldn’t co-operate by taking the stand and fingering anyone else. Maybe he was suffering from a romantic notion of honour among thieves.

  Meanwhile, the highly predictable Eliot Szabo had become a man of surprises. Never had she seen anything less ordinary than the Victim Impact Statement that tumbled out of the envelope from the Crown counsel. As soon as she could get him on the phone, she gave him a blast. “Mr. Boudreau can’t read this in court, Eliot. In the first place, it contains untruths. In the second place, it’s not a Victim Impact Statement in that it doesn’t confine itself to the effects of the crime or crimes on the victim. In the third place, it puts my client’s life at risk.”

  “Natasha, my learned friend, you have me mixed up with the judge. His is the ear you should bend.”

  “Cute, Eliot, but the judge won’t know my client didn’t tip off the BEU.”

  “Nor do I,” Szabo put in. “If Mr. Boudreau isn’t telling the truth, you’ll have the chance to catch him out when you cross-examine.”

  “Eliot, don’t forward this to the judge. If you already have, I suggest you ask him to set it aside.”

  “Are we done?”

  This wasn’t like Szabo at all. Natasha Cullen wondered what had got into him. “You aren’t thinking you’re still a defence lawyer, are you, and regarding the victim as your client?”

  “In that case,” Szabo replied, “wouldn’t I have had to get Ted Boudreau to approve the plea bargain that you and I and Shawn Whittaker struck behind his back?”

  “We no more struck a deal behind Mr. Boudreau’s back than I brushed my teeth this morning behind his back. He simply has no rôle in the process.” Natasha Cullen stopped for breath. “I think you’ve just admitted my point, Eliot. I’ll be moving to have this hearing conducted in camera. Any objections?”

  “Certainly not. We wouldn’t want anything to actually happen to your client.”

  “Does Mr. Boudreau know he won’t have an audience for his little piece of theatre?”

  “I haven’t said anything to him about it. I like a quiet life. Heck, he studies crime for a living. Let him figure it out.”

  Wednesday, November 22—the day had arrived. Markus drove Ted to the Brampton courthouse early. After lending their keys and coins to the Linescan X-ray machine, walking through the magnetometer arch, and having their outlines traced by scanning wand, they were admitted as weapon-free. From the information desk in the foyer, they discovered which third-floor courtroom to wait outside. When they got off the elevator, they found windows all down one wall flooding the corridor with natural light. Fixed metal seats distributed in front of this glass faced inward, away from the outside world. The seats were perforated with closely-spaced holes. Like a colander, Ted thought, tentatively resting his butt on one next to where Markus had already plunked himself down. It was surprisingly comfortable.

  More so than the conversation. Ted hadn’t told his father-in-law what he intended to say, responding to every inquiry with a plea for patience. Markus felt he was too old for patience and was having a hard time getting his mind onto any other topic.

  “Have you replaced your television?” Ted asked him.

  “What would be the point? All the films that aren’t about killing are about divorce or adultery or intergenerational conflict.”

  Ted was on the point of asking if Markus had ever considered subscribing to the golf channel when a wheelchair rolled off the elevator. In it, wearing a purple muumuu patterned with butterflies, sat the diminutive Martha Kesler. On recognizing Ted, she flashed him the broad, white smile that once again, as at Convocation Hall, cancelled any impression of fragility. Her chair today was pushed by an older, fleshier, seedier man, who wore a pink breast cancer ribbon pinned to his black turtleneck.

  “Professor Boudreau, I was hoping to catch you before we all go into court. My deepest sympathy.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Kesler. And what brings you here?”

  “Oh, research. I want to see how plea bargains further or frustrate the aims of therapeutic justice.”

  Ted thought he must still have looked curious, for she went on.

  “And—naturally—this case meant more to me since we’d met. Kyle, Ted Boudreau was the very able moderator of the panel discussion I told you about. Ted, Kyle is bravely allowing me to tell people he is on parole for trafficking heroin and cocaine and is receiving therapy for his own dependencies. He also gives lectures on just saying no.”

  Ted shook hands with the chair pusher. Deciding it would not be tactful to ask whether Tyler, Kyle’s predecessor, had finished serving his sentence or had violated its terms and was back in custody, he introduced Markus.

  Martha Kesler looked from father-in-law to son-in-law. “You two must have been going through it. Mr. Gustafson, I’m a victim of violent crime myself, and I’m a parent as well, but all that those experiences together can do is give me the barest inkling of your suffering. And I know how isolating suffering can be. Even good friends don’t want to know us when we’re in that much pain.”

  “That’s kind of you, Martha.” Markus allowed his face to crinkle pleasantly. “It’s true that my friends won’t talk to me.” A piercing glance at Ted. “But there’s always intoxication. And I also find great comfort in imagining Shawn Whittaker’s severed head on the top of a pole.”

  “Markus.” Martha laid a thin hand on his wrist. “We both do counselling for a living, and the community is not so big that word doesn’t get around. I know you help many people in life-changing ways. Let me help you by assuring you that you can dream bigger dreams than retribution and revenge.”

  “I look forward to dreaming them just as soon as Shawn has breathed his last.”

  Kyle shifted his weight and made a throat-clearing noise.

  “Ted, Markus,” Martha Kesler interposed quickly, “look after each other. Which of you is delivering the Victim Impact Statement?”

  “I drew the short straw,” said Ted.

  The news seemed to ease Martha’s spirit. “I’m sure you’ve given it a lot of thought. We’ll be listening with interest. Kyle, shall we go in and get settled?” She grinned at Ted and Markus. “Before someone else grabs the last wheelchair parking spot in the court.”

  The next people to get off the elevators were the accused, his parents, and his lawyer. Ted hadn’t seen Natasha Cullen since the bail hearing, and only at a distance then. And yet he almost felt he’d had her as a student, so vividly did he recognize her type. The type that would eat her lunch in a lecture or seminar to save precious study minutes. She’d take few notes and ask incisive questions. She’d usually excel. When things didn’t go her way, she wouldn’t whine—though she might fidget. For court, she wore a black vest with trousers, black robes and white tabs hanging from her throat. Shawn’s suit was navy blue. By contrast to its shaggy appearance two weeks ago, his longer hair was now styled and parted. A young businessman look. He was clearly trying in his demeanour to express modest confidence, to steer a course between cockiness and fear. Meryl too wore a suit, charcoal grey with a narrow skirt. Her back was straight, her arm laced through Shawn’s as they walked towards the courtroom. She avoided catching Ted’s eye. Of the four in the party, Cliff was the only one the least bit rumpled. His suit was blue like his son’s, but far from new, and the shoulders looked as if the jacket had sat too long on a hanger of the wrong shape. The trousers plainly hadn’t kept up with Cliff’s waistline and appeared savagely tight. When he saw Ted, Shawn’s father broke away from his party and came over.

  “Mr. Boudreau,” he said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “And I for yours.” Ted stood and took the offered hand. It wasn’t easy, for Cliff didn’t yet know what shape his loss was to take, but there was Markus too. “Mr. Whittaker, I’d like you to meet Karin’s father.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,”
breathed Cliff. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

  “Come on, dad,” Shawn called from the courtroom door.

  “No need for words,” Markus assured him. “Your coming over says a lot.”

  Cliff swallowed and nodded before returning to his family.

  At work, in his incarnation as a prisoner escort officer or PEO, Charles Godin was never known as Chuckles. Nor was he known as a biker. He drove a twelve-year-old Lumina minivan, which gave him the aura of dignity and frugality becoming to a special constable. At night, his wife used it to get to her work as a cleaner of professors’ offices at the University of Toronto. Godin had been trimmer and more agile when he had started his career in court security more than a decade before. His vision had tested then at 20/20. He was disciplined in his use of cannabis and only slightly less so in his consumption of Jack Daniel’s. He held a high school diploma and was qualified in First Aid and CPR.

  To this day, Charles Godin had no criminal record, or even an unpaid traffic ticket to his discredit. His utility to the gang depended on his respectability, and he was still resentful that Brother Scar—rest in peace—had picked him to seal Thorn’s lips. Whackings were supposed to be left to the strikers, as tests of gang-worthiness. But of course, Thorn was the only dude striking for the DA at the time, so logic required that a full-patch member help him out. Godin had used his PEO cuffs to secure Thorn to his Ford’s steering wheel while the CO gas was wafting over him. The note hinting at erotic bondage was supposed to explain the chafing on Thorn’s wrists, while the padding Godin had taped over the chain had prevented scratches on the wheel itself. Still, the business didn’t sit easy with him.

  Godin’s day job, which paid $17.54 per hour, was neither onerous nor unpleasant. It consisted mainly of cuffing prisoners, shuttling them to and from court, and supervising them while they were there. The hardest thing was getting assigned to the prisoners and courtrooms that interested the Dark Arrows. He was employed by Peel Region, where the Arrows’ drug kitchen and clubhouse were both located. He would be usefully placed when charges arising out of the latest raids came to court. That the scene of Shawn’s crimes was in the same region was an extra opportunity, which Godin had used all his skill at juggling schedules to grasp.