The first binder had all the technical stuff. Photos of the crime scene, the recovered bullet cartridges, a chip in the sidewalk by the side of the Tim Hortons, another in the wall behind, a third in the building across the way, a crushed empty bullet shell down at the corner of the lot, a scale drawing of the whole area, and lengthy medical reports.
On the last pages, she came to the photos of the young boy, including close-ups of where the bullet had entered his head. St. Clair, who’d been unusually subdued, grew quieter as he looked at the pictures.
She closed the binder.
“Shit,” he whispered.
“You know how the jury’s going to feel when they see this,” she said.
He bobbed his head up and down. “They’re going to hate me.”
“With a passion.”
He pointed to the second binder. “Let’s see what Dewey the Rat said.”
First there were witness interviews. Twenty-two people had been questioned, but most of their statements were only a page or two long. Only five had anything significant to say, and Parish went over these carefully with St. Clair.
“We need to map out the evidence against you at its highest,” she said after they’d read the last statement. “They’ve got you and Dewey sitting at the table by the door. Only one witness sees you two leave, and he doesn’t see you after that. The other witnesses are unclear on how many shots are fired, as many as nine, and no one can say for sure where they came from.”
“Nine shots?” he said, perking up. “The gun’s clip only held six bullets and one in the chamber. Seven max.”
“I know. That’s great evidence for us, if it stands up. I can argue there was another shooter. That the shots from the gun were fired in self-defense. The only shell they found was flattened by Jet’s Cadillac and he took off right away. That helps.”
He was nodding his head, fast.
“Don’t get too excited. They’ve still got you on that video stuffing something in your pants and taking off.”
“Doesn’t help that they found the gun at my aunt’s house, thanks to Dewey.”
He was smart and bitter, she thought. His attitude would be a lethal combination in front of the jury. They’d smell his anger.
Next in the binder came a large collection of officers’ notes that covered the night of the shooting, St. Clair’s arrest, chasing down Booth, investigating various leads, and finding the gun. There was the gunshot residue report from the day of his arrest. She showed it to him. “GSR was on your right hand, your right sleeve, and inside the front of your pants.”
His skin was dry and flaky. He picked at a scab on his hand. “It’s not a problem,” he said. “Pick a bunch of beautiful girls for the jury, and I’ll tell them I stuffed a chocolate éclair down there and the thing was radioactive.”
She started to shake her head at him, then she caught his grin. They both laughed.
Then came the forensic reports of the gun cartridges. This was bad news. X-ray photos of the barrel of the gun and the marks on the sides of the shell found in Kyle’s brain at the autopsy were a perfect match. Conclusive proof that the gun found in St. Clair’s aunt’s backyard had fired the fatal shot.
In every case there was always one piece of damning evidence that stood out. Here it was: Larkin St. Clair had stuffed the gun that killed a four-year-old boy down the front of his pants, took off, and hid the murder weapon at his aunt’s house. Unless they had an answer for this horrible fact, he was going to be convicted.
“Shit,” he said.
“I agree,” she said. “Shit.”
They were almost at the end of the binder. The only windows in the jail were long and narrow, covered with bars on the outside. She could see the snow bashing away at the heavy glass.
Larkin closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into his forehead. “Where the fuck’s Dewey’s statement?”
“I don’t know.” She turned the pages and came upon a signed piece of paper titled “Agreement Re: Mr. Dewey Booth.”
“Here it is,” she said.
“Let me see, let me see,” he said.
“Like I told you, Armitage signed a deal with Phil Cutter, Dewey’s lawyer. Dewey’s whole statement is a one-page affidavit sworn by Cutter’s law partner.”
“What’s it say? What’s it say?”
She read it slowly. “Your buddy told them you were the shooter. The deal is, Dewey takes them to the gun and if the gun tests, which it did, and he testifies in court against you, charges are dropped against him now and forever.”
“Let me see.”
“Be my guest.” She turned the binder so he could read it. “The Crown didn’t even cross-examine him or get a sworn video statement. Shows how desperate Armitage was to get the gun.”
“No. Desperate to get me,” St. Clair said after he’d read the affidavit. “That phony hates my guts.”
“Maybe so …” Parish’s mind was going in a thousand directions at once, trying to figure out what this would mean. “We knew this was coming. It’s real bad.”
She looked hard at Larkin.
“What if Dewey says in court that he was the shooter, not me?” Larkin asked.
“Was he?”
Larkin wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m just asking.”
“Then the deal’s off. He gets charged too. With murder and perjury. There’s no way he’s going to change his story.”
“What if I take the stand and say he was the shooter? What happens?”
“Depends. If the jury acquits you, the Crown might say, ‘Hey, Dewey committed perjury,’ and the deal will be off. Then they’d prosecute him.”
“Oh.”
Larkin looked even more unhappy.
“We call it a cutthroat defense when two accused point at each other. Only works one in a million times. There’s a dead little boy lying in a Tim Hortons parking lot across the street from the courthouse. The jury’s not going to give a shit if you pulled the trigger or if you were helping Dewey. Either way you were a party to the offense. Equally culpable in law.”
St. Clair jumped out of his chair and clapped his hands to his head. He started rotating around his left leg, as if it were stuck to the ground.
Parish slammed the binder shut. “Time to talk the talk,” she said.
“I’m not guilty,” he said.
“You keep telling me that, but you haven’t told me what happened. Dewey threw you to the dogs. Why are you protecting him?”
He stopped rotating. She could feel the tension coming from her oldest client. The competing calculations between the truth, whatever that was, and his survival, which would include making sure he didn’t get on Dewey’s bad side.
“If you lie to me again I’m getting off this case,” she said. “I don’t care how long I’ve been your lawyer.”
He shook his head. “Then I’m not going to say anything. You’ve got to find some way of winning this case without me testifying.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer.”
She was acting shocked, but she’d expected this. “Okay. I’ve got a few theories.”
He sat back down, stiller than she’d ever seen him.
“Theory one. You owed Dewey. Your last crime together, when you two robbed that pharmacy, he said you were outside as the lookout. He took the hit for three years and you only got a year plus probation. Jet’s girlfriend Suzanne dumps him while he’s in prison and starts dating Jet. Your payback to Dewey is to take a potshot at Jet. Not kill the guy, that’s not your style, just scare him. But things go terribly wrong.”
St. Clair folded his arms. “If the jury believes that, what happens?”
“Guilty of manslaughter, bare minumum. Even if you didn’t mean it, once you’re firing that gun whatever happens goes back to you.”
“Theory two?”
“Same as one, but it’s Dewey who’s doing the shooting. Harder sell because you’re the one who took off with the
gun in your pants and hid it in your aunt’s backyard. Maybe taking the gun was payback for Dewey taking the three-year rap.”
“Where does that get me?”
“Same place. Even if you didn’t pull the trigger, as long as you knew he was going to shoot then you’re a party to the crime. And by the way, also guilty of accessory after the fact for hiding the gun.”
“Any other brain waves?”
“Last one. Jet spots you two guys and fires first. There’s a bullet hole in the wall behind where you and Dewey were standing and the only blank cartridge they find is a flattened-out one down at the end of the parking lot where his Cadillac was. He’s shooting, and you or Dewey fire back in self-defense but slip on the ice. Et cetera, et cetera.”
“Theory three have a chance?”
“A slight one.”
St. Clair unfolded his arms and reached for the one-page affidavit. “Dewey doesn’t say anything about Jet shooting first,” he said.
“You’re right. He’s pretty vague about the whole thing.” She stared at him. “Why won’t you tell me what happened?”
“Because I’m not going to lie to you anymore.”
She’d never seen him look so serious.
“I still don’t get it,” she said. “He ratted you out.”
St. Clair leaned across the metal table, all sense of life drained from his face. “Nancy, you know why I’ve got to keep my trap shut. Dewey goes down for this because of me and I’m dead meat. You’ve got to find another way to get me out of this.”
31
Ari Greene sat on the hard metal stool in the visitors’ room of the Toronto East Detention Centre taking the measure of the man sitting across from him, who was wearing the standard prison-orange garb and a rather dirty turban. It was eleven thirty in the morning, and Officer Darvesh looked thin and tired. A large tinfoil package was in front of Greene. He unwrapped it to reveal a collection of East Indian breads—paratha and sesame naan, which was slathered with butter—as well as a plastic container of chicken curry and yellow Indian rice.
“Your mother asked me to bring you this.”
Darvesh pulled off a tiny corner off the naan, dipped an edge in the curry sauce, and popped it in his mouth. Then he folded the foil back up to cover the food. “Tell her I ate it all,” he said, passing the package over to Greene. “You can have it. I can’t risk eating something this pungent.”
The young officer was right. Inmates all ate the same bland, starch-rich diet. If the prisoner they knew as Alisander Singh went back to the range smelling of curry after he’d supposedly been meeting with the immigration board, the jig would be up.
“Has St. Clair said anything yet?”
“Nah. Nothing.”
“Think he suspects you?” Greene asked.
Darvesh shook his head. “You made a smart move putting me in the wagon with him from day one. He’d never think a skinny brown guy like me would be a cop.”
“What’s he talk about?”
“Not much. The first few days he was the loudest guy on the range. Then day three he met with his lawyer, and since then he’s hardly said a word.”
“Day three he would have found out that his buddy Dewey had turned on him,” Greene said.
“He met her again last night. Put him back in a foul mood.”
“What did he say about it?”
“That he’d seen the disclosure and it was all bullshit.”
“He would have seen the deal Armitage made with Dewey’s lawyer all laid out in black and white.”
“That must have been it. Boy, was he pissed. Throwing things around the cell. Screaming at the guards.”
Greene stood up. Being in a jail cell always brought back to him the time he was arrested in the South of France. Trying to speak French. Trying to explain. Those few hours in custody on that horrible day never left him. Never would.
“Did Larkin say anything about Dewey?” Greene asked.
“Yeah. He said Dewey needed a brain transplant.”
“Anything else?”
“No. I thought if I acted too curious it would be suspicious.”
“Good call. Don’t push him. I’m sure he’s been warned to keep his trap shut. But people’s basic personalities don’t change. He won’t be able to stay quiet forever.”
Darvesh stretched.
“How’re you doing?” Greene asked.
“I’m fine.”
“I won’t tell your mother how thin you look.”
Darvesh laughed. He eyed the wrapped package of food by Greene’s elbow. “I need another bite,” he said.
Greene unwrapped it and Darvesh dipped a corner of bread in the curry. He lingered over the food, savoring the smell. “The worst part of this is the prison food. It’s so bland.”
“Dinner’s on me anywhere you want in Little India, as soon as you get out,” Greene said.
Darvesh folded up the aluminum foil. “How do you white people survive eating such boring food?” he asked.
“It’s a challenge.”
“You probably won’t believe this,” Darvesh said.
“Try me.”
“I miss spices almost as much as I miss sex.”
Greene laughed and stood to leave. “I guess,” he said, “you’ve got a double incentive to get Larkin to talk.”
32
Daniel Kennicott wasn’t a joiner. He didn’t care for team sports, preferring to run marathons, bike ride long distances, swim for miles up at the lake at his parents’ cottage. He’d never been someone with many friends, in part because as a child he’d spent so much time with his family. Even when they were adults, he and his older brother Michael had spoken at least once a day, before he was murdered.
And then there was the question of women. The truth was, he much preferred their company to hanging out with a bunch of guys to play hockey, watch sports, or drink beer. In law school and at his law firm, he’d been popular enough, but leaving that all behind and becoming a police officer had mostly cut him off from his old life. And he didn’t exactly fit on the police force: a cop who’d been a lawyer and lived in a funky neighborhood downtown instead of a cozy commuter suburb, to say nothing of his penchant for wearing quality clothes and handmade shoes.
Jeremy Pulver was the one exception. He and Kennicott had met in a philosophy class at university and gone to law school together. After graduating, Pulver headed straight to the Crown Attorney’s office, where he’d been a very successful prosecutor for almost a decade.
Whenever his shifts allowed him the time, Kennicott would drop into Pulver’s tiny office at the end of the court day. Usually just to say hello, but sometimes, like now, when he needed to think something through. For the last few weeks they’d been talking through the Wilkinson case, or “the Timmy’s shooting” as the nonstop press insisted on calling it.
It was just before five in the afternoon, and Pulver was behind his desk. This was a hilarious sight because the government-issue furniture was small, and Pulver was six foot eight. Skinny, skinny, skinny, with a bleached white complexion and a crop of kinky, unmanageable hair. He was packing his briefcase and had to leave in fifteen minutes to meet his partner, Arthur, at the gym they went to every night.
“We’ve been looking for this Jose guy, the baker at the Tim Hortons who took off after the shooting.” Kennicott leaned against the side wall. “We’re pretty sure he’s here illegally.”
Pulver rolled his eyes. “Good luck. We had a seminar on illegals in Toronto a few weeks ago. The ministry estimates there are seventy-five thousand of them.”
“Guy told his employer he was Portuguese, but we don’t believe it. He speaks all sorts of languages, and it sounds as if he’s real smart. Our hunch is that he’s Romanian.”
Pulver gave him a sardonic smile. “Well, that probably narrows your search from seventy-five thousand to about ten.”
“You’re a great help,” Kennicott said.
“Philosophy 101, play it back from the beginning.”
At university they’d had a demanding professor, Thompson Chamberlain, whose hobby was horses. “You train a horse one step at a time, always going back to the beginning and moving forward. Same thing with philosophy.” He’d written those words on the blackboard the first day of class and had repeated them at the beginning of each lecture. After surviving his class, law school had been easy, mostly because Chamberlain had taught them how to analyze problems. How to think.
“Why did your man Jose take off?” Pulver asked.
Kennicott put a finger in the air. “First possibility is that he was somehow involved in the shooting. Doesn’t add up. Dewey Booth is the one with motive to gun down his rival while Jet was picking up Suzanne, his ex-girlfriend.”
“Keep going.” Pulver rifled through a stack of files, jamming a few more into his briefcase.
Kennicott put another finger up. “Jose was threatened by the shooter. Years ago, Booth and St. Clair did a home invasion and scared the witness into not coming to court. There’s a bullet mark in the wall behind where the two clowns were standing. Maybe they took a potshot at him. Scared him off.”
“Then why didn’t they kill him?”
Kennicott shrugged. “Too dark to see him? Too messy? However this went down, they couldn’t have meant to kill that little boy.”
Pulver looked up from his papers. “I buy that.”
This was what made his friend such a good Crown, Kennicott thought. He had perspective. Didn’t see every human foible as proof of some grand conspiracy of evil.
Third finger. “Sometimes the most obvious answer’s the right one. Like I said, guy gave a false name to his employer. He’s illegal, doesn’t want to get deported.”
“That works too.” Pulver looked at his watch. He stood, towering now over the minuscule-looking desk. “Arthur keeps asking when are you coming over.”
Pulver’s partner Arthur loved trying to set Kennicott up with every woman he knew. He worked as a booker at a talent agency and was on a first-name basis with every actress and model in the city. Loved to brag that he had “access to the top tier.” He was five feet tall, if he was lucky, which made Arthur and Jeremy the most mismatched pair you could imagine. And the happiest couple Kennicott knew.
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