by Mel Bradshaw
Natasha Cullen turned to catch Shawn’s eye and, to reinforce the judge’s words, held her yellow pen to her lips.
Meanwhile, Shawn was squirming on his bench. It occurred to Ted that even if under normal provocation he was, as Dwayne said, “not a squealer,” fear for his life might still cause him to denounce Chuckles. There was no saying how that would play out.
“Have you further questions, Ms. Cullen?” asked the judge.
“Your Honour, yes. You are alleging, Mr. Boudreau, that Mr. Whittaker told you certain secrets of the Dark Arrows Motorcycle Club. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say why he was speaking to you and not the police?”
“Karin and I have been acquainted with the Whittakers for a number of years. We watched Shawn grow from adolescent to adult and have always been on good terms.”
“You’re not answering the question, Mr. Boudreau.”
“Perhaps he thought he knew me.”
“I’m not asking you to speculate as to what Shawn Whittaker thought, Mr. Boudreau. I’m asking what Shawn Whittaker said.”
Ted took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“He said, as it says in the Agreed Statement of Facts, that he had not meant to kill Karin. He said that he was sorry and wanted to make some amends.”
So the cross examination petered out. Natasha Cullen could not shake Ted out of his ridiculous story, and the young judge looked as if he were lapping it up. Then His Honour turned to Shawn Whittaker. “Now comes your turn to speak. Do you have anything to say before sentence is passed?”
“I’ll do my six years, like the Crown said. But no one should believe I gave anyone information about biker facilities—’cause I didn’t. I couldn’t have told anyone. I never knew about any of that stuff. The only thing I told Ted Boudreau was where the Wal-Mart is in Meadowvale. Honest.”
All this, as far as Ted knew, was true.
“Do you shop at Wal-Mart, Mr. Boudreau?” asked the judge.
“No, Your Honour. I don’t.” Equally true.
“Didn’t think so,” said the judge with a twinkle in his eye. “Well, Mr. Whittaker, this case demonstrates very clearly how crimes against property may lead to crimes against the person. Your recklessness has led you into a situation where a woman’s life has been lost. Even if you did not intend Karin Gustafson’s death, you are responsible for it.
“Now the question is: does your behaviour subsequent to being charged give any grounds for hoping that you are turning your life around? The facts appear to be in dispute, but I intend to give you the benefit of the doubt. That is, the benefit of the good deed which you now deny. In the light of Mr. Boudreau’s very interesting Victim Impact Statement, I am reducing the recommended six years to four.
“Do not despair. If you behave yourself, you may apply for parole as early as sixteen months from now, and in time you may even secure a pardon. This is not the beginning of your life of crime, but the end of it.”
Chuckles drew his handcuffs from their case on his belt.
That’s when Shawn lost it. He turned his face to the bench as the cuffs were being clicked on him and started yelling. “Judge, this officer is one of them—the Dark Arrows. He’s going to kill me. His name is Chuckles—” A second constable moved quickly in and helped Chuckles restrain him. “Judge, you have to listen. I’m dead if you let him take me.”
From behind, Chuckles got his right hand clamped onto Shawn’s shoulder right up against the neck. With the biker’s left hand in the small of Shawn’s back, the prisoner was propelled towards the door. The other officer pulled on Shawn’s right upper arm in such a way that if Shawn did not advance, the pressure on his manacled wrists would tighten painfully.
“Put me in protective custody at least.”
“One moment,” called the judge. “Prisoner Escort, a moment please.”
The officers paused. Ted held his breath.
“Thank you,” said the judge. “Mr. Whittaker, you will be evaluated according to the Custody Rating Scale and assigned to a federal correctional institution of a security level appropriate to the risk you pose. If you have safety concerns, by all means raise them with your case management officer. I wish you well.”
So Shawn was dragged away—not to the corridor where his parents would be anxiously waiting, but out the side exit in the direction of the holding cells. Immediately after that, the judge ordered a recess. Everyone had to rise for his withdrawal, along with that of the clerk and the court reporter. Natasha Cullen gathered up her few papers and, without a glance in Ted’s direction, hurried out, presumably to brief Meryl and Cliff.
There remained only a constable charged with clearing the courtroom—and Eliot Szabo. The Crown counsel patted his head and packed his briefcase. He stood up and pulled down on his black vest. With evident reluctance, Szabo finally met Ted’s eye.
“You proud of that, Ted?” he asked. “I’m not. But I predict I’ll forgive myself for my part before you will for yours.”
Ted’s heart was not pounding. His pulse was not racing. It occurred to him that he was a cold-blooded killer. “Forgiveness is overrated,” he said. “Or haven’t you been paying attention?”
Chapter 14
When Ted Boudreau stepped out of the late winter drizzle into Dr. Ornstein’s waiting room, receptionist Sally Lee was showing red-headed girl-and-boy twins how to connect pieces of railway track from the office toy box. Ted smiled and dropped into a chair, where he could keep their progress in view between perusing articles in a news magazine. It bore a date of March 22, still three days in the future, so he imagined it couldn’t be more than a week or two old.
There was a brief mention of the first of the Dark Arrow biker trials, the one involving the drug lab. Or as it had to be reported, the trial of Walter Reid—for the Crown had been unable to establish a sufficiently strong link between the ecstasy kitchen and the gang. Walter had his shoulder tattooed with the black arrowhead dripping blood, but he claimed that dated from his reckless early twenties and that he’d had nothing to do with the gang for five years. In the townhouse unit that contained his chemicals and pill press, Walter kept no firearms or weapons of any kind and no club documents or paraphernalia. He was convicted of various offences under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act and drew a six-year sentence, but was not perceived to be high-risk, and upon classification was sent to the same medium-security facility in the Kingston area that housed Shawn Whittaker. Ted had already heard this news on the radio and read it in the daily press, but it bore repeating.
“Oh, train wreck,” Sally laughed as brother and sister drove their locomotives into one another.
A father with babe in arms emerged from the inner office to collect the twins.
“No train wrecks today, please,” said Dr. Ornstein from her door. “My schedule is too full. Come in, Ted. How are you? You haven’t exactly been cluttering up my office in the past six months, so you’ve either been fiercely independent or seeing someone else.”
“I’d rather be thought fierce than disloyal.” Ted shut the door behind him. “There just hasn’t been much to talk about. The sleeplessness, the flashbacks, the avoidance behaviour—all gone. I’ve even decided to go on living in the house.”
He had considered putting it up for sale after Meryl had asked him not to shop any more at the Handy Buy. But then the Whittakers themselves had moved to Kingston to be nearer where Shawn was incarcerated, and Ted broke off talks with the real estate agent. In February, he had moved his study upstairs to Karin’s practice room, where there was more of her than anywhere else. He’d rehung there the photo borrowed, and eventually returned, by the police. The one thing he hadn’t yet managed to do was to eat a Friday night dinner at the Bouquet Bistro.
“What about the pain of loss?” asked the doctor.
“Raw, fresh. Like it happened—not yesterday, but last week.”
“That’s normal. The illness passes; the grief goes
on. Believe me, I understand . . . And work? Courses must be just about over for the year. Will you be back to a regular schedule next fall?”
“Ah no,” said Ted. “I have changed horses. I’ve jumped from criminology to history—specifically the history of crime, criminal justice and criminal organizations. Have you ever heard of the Brook’s Bush Gang that killed a Canadian member of parliament in 1859? It seems a subject less freighted with dogma.”
“Sounds like you lost your religion,” said Dr. Ornstein with a grim smile. “Also, this historical steed transports you to an era when crime was punished more robustly. Take off your shirt and let me listen to your heart.”
On the way out, after Rebecca Ornstein had checked all his vital signs, Ted stopped at Sally’s desk and waited till she had finished leaving a reminder of an appointment on a patient’s voice mail.
“How did Dr. Ornstein’s husband die?” he asked, too softly to be heard by the waiting patients.
Sally Lee hesitated, then seemed to decide Ted was someone she’d have permission to tell.
“Drunk driver,” she said, while keying in the next number. “Hello, is Mr. Peter Narayan there?”
Next morning, Ted was breakfasting in silence when the hordes descended.
He had already listened to the CBC radio news at six and found it not much changed as far as domestic content went from the midnight broadcast, which he had listened to on the way home from Markus’s. He had done a lot of listening over the course of the evening, which made the morning peace especially precious.
Markus had talked as much as a man in love. He didn’t admit to being in love, but he wanted Ted to know that he was dating. Martha Kesler, of all people. She had made an impression on him when they’d met in the hallway on the day of Shawn’s sentencing hearing. Markus had phoned her up to continue the discussion. To invite her for a drink, to invite her to dinner, and give old Kyle the night off. Martha was a sweetie. Even, Markus wanted Ted to know, physically demonstrative. From where Martha sat, it seemed that a bloodthirsty Viking was almost as cute as a pirate, and she found Markus’s driving thrilling enough without the Jolly Roger eye patch. Give her this: she’d got Markus’s mind off Shawn by and large. She took her message of victim/offender reconciliation everywhere. Markus was accompanying her to more and more of those appearances—Las Vegas next week, Copenhagen in July—to see how much he could find in it. And frankly, just to be with her.
Fine and dandy. Ted was happy his father-in-law had found his own way to cope. As long as Markus was following the wheeling evangelist, he wasn’t waving antique rifles around. And he wasn’t—thank goodness—advising Ted to start dating too.
The last of his morning coffee dripped from the filter into the pot. Ted filled a mug and sat at the kitchen table. Pulling towards him the fourth volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, he took a large bite of bagel smeared with cream cheese. That’s when someone planted a finger on his doorbell and left it there.
He padded down the front hall and peered out through the sidelights. A van painted in the colours and bearing the logo of a local television station was parked in front of the house. On the doorstep stood two individuals, a man in baggy clothes with a camera and a fashion mannequin with a microphone. Ted recognized her without a name coming to mind. The station newbie, he thought, still waiting for her first big assignment. This must be some sort of survey—what culinary specialty should be named for Mississauga? What’s your personal way of dealing with spring fever? Idiotic, but harmless. He disarmed the alarm system and opened the door.
“Mr. Boudreau?” said the woman. “I’m Jennifer Malcolm. Could we just get a comment from you on Shawn Whittaker’s death?”
“Excuse me?”
The reporter’s carefully manicured hand beckoned the cameraman to start shooting Ted’s reaction as she filled him in.
“Perhaps you haven’t heard,” she said. “It’s just gone on the wire in the past hour. Shawn Whittaker was found dead in his room at the Bath Institution this morning.”
Ted leaned against the door frame. He was surprised to find himself this surprised. Effect was so remote from cause as to seem coincidental, though it was no coincidence at all. Or was it? Whatever he must look like to the TV camera, he didn’t close the door in the crew’s faces because he wanted to know more.
“How did he die?”
“Correctional authorities aren’t saying at this time, but there are rumours of heroin overdose. One of the men that lived in the same cottage found a syringe by Mr. Whittaker’s bed. Do you think we could come inside, Mr. Boudreau, where we could sit down and all be more comfortable?”
“This is okay, thanks, Jennifer.”
Ted pulled himself together. Junk was a possible murder weapon. Shawn could have been conned into trying what he thought a beginner’s hit—or, if uncooperative, held down and gagged while the needle went in and until he lost consciousness. The authorities had never managed to keep drugs out of even maximum security prisons, and Bath wasn’t one of those.
“Was Shawn Whittaker to your knowledge a heroin user?” asked Jennifer Malcolm.
“No—but I haven’t seen him since he was sentenced.”
“Mr. Boudreau, Shawn Whittaker admitted to breaking into your home and killing your wife. He was given only four years. You didn’t do any interviews at the time, but did you think four years was long enough?”
Other media vans and cars had pulled up on the crescent. Other microphones were being shoved in front of Ted’s face when he made his reply.
“It’s turned out to be a life sentence, hasn’t it, Ms. Malcolm?”
“Are you happy he’s dead?” another reporter yelled.
“Happy, no . . . I’m afraid that’s all I have to say.”
Ted closed the door, turned the deadbolt, and reset the alarm. Paying no attention to the doorbell, he went down to the basement and sat on the bottom step. He looked up at the window opening into which he had fitted laminated glass and a set of metal bars. Then he forced himself to look at the concrete floor just in front of the step.
If we had happiness—the words came to him in Quirk’s voice—we wouldn’t need justice.
Epilogue
After the movie, Simon took Melody to a real old-style Ontario beer hall, where you didn’t have to order food with your pitcher—and, if you departed from the limited draft offerings, you wouldn’t get a glass with your bottle unless you asked for it. The smokers’ patio, already in use this cool May evening, was new. But the inside, where the couple had a wobbly table and two unsteady chairs, seemed to have last been redecorated before either of them had been born. Melody tried not to look too comfortable. She could have told the freshly-minted lawyer that if he was hoping to shock the student summer hire, he’d have to do better than this. She could have, but decided not to until she knew him better.
On a trip to the washroom, Melody recognized a leggy blonde in a leopard-spotted miniskirt—a slightly older woman who’d lived a hard life. For the moment, the two had the narrow space to themselves. Layla was trying to reglue a nail extension on her right thumb, a task for which she’d had a drink or four too many.
“Let me help. Why don’t you rest your hand on the counter here and hold it still so we get this sucker on target.”
Without giving her more than a glance, Layla did as Melody suggested.
“Thanks, honey. You know after all these years I’m beginning to think I’d rather be touched by a woman than by a man.”
“Do you remember me?” Melody ventured when she had got the cap back on the cyanoacrylate adhesive. She didn’t know if Layla would blame her for Scar’s death but was curious enough to chance it. She took off her steel-rimmed glasses and, when that didn’t jog Layla’s memory, unbuttoned her blouse to show Layla her snake-shaped navel ring—a keepsake of her weeks and months of undercover research. “I’m the server that scooped you out of a toilet stall two summers ago.”
“At the Grey Ma
re.” Layla smiled widely. “Ancient history. I don’t do horse any more—and from the way you’re dressed, I don’t guess you’re still waitressing.”
Melody shook her head. “Should I offer condolences—you know, about Scar?”
“Scar? Oh, he was cooler than cool and a real sex machine, but if he hadn’t got killed that night, I’m betting Chuckles would have arranged an accident for him.”
“Why’s that?”
“The gang blamed Scar for the leak that tipped off the cops. I can’t see it myself. Chuckles was jealous of the dude, was mostly what it was. Too bad old Chuckles couldn’t have been nabbed with the rest—he’s nasty—but really I don’t care any more. I’ve given up bikers.”
Layla apparently didn’t remember telling Melody gang secrets. The content of those sisterly confidences had faded into a haze of intoxicant-based amnesia.
Melody had always known that Ted Boudreau must have used what she’d given him to trigger the clubhouse raid. The prof had said he didn’t want to disclose her data until there was someone other than her to pin the leak on. Still, she didn’t see how he’d managed to put Scar behind the eight ball. She’d have to work that one out later.
“No more black leather,” Layla continued. “No more getting called ‘Ol’ Lady.’ I’ve come up in the world. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a young professional waiting for me out there tonight, so I’d better be getting back.”
Melody could count on the fingers of one hand the number of dates she had been on in her life; it was a thrill to be able to say to Layla—
“Me too.”
Author’s Note
As of 2005, Peel Regional Police was the third largest municipal police service in Canada. In real life, many more officers would have been involved in the investigation than are portrayed in these pages. To make the story easier to follow, I have assigned the work of various units to a fictitious Major Crime Unit, such as might exist on smaller forces, and have consolidated numerous investigators into the two named detectives Tracy Rodriguez and James Nelson. These and all other characters appearing in the novel are products of my imagination: none should be identified with actual persons living or dead. As for the place and street names, some are real—such as Mississauga and Cawthra Road. Some, like Robin Hood Crescent and Pebbleton, are invented. The University of Toronto’s Centre of Criminology should not be identified with my made-up Department of Criminology.