02 - The Guilty Plea

by Robert Rotenberg

A young female police officer with a dark complexion approached them. “Detective Greene,” she said. “He’s demanding that you talk to him and no one else. His family down at the grave can’t move. He told them he’d jump if they did.”

  “Good work, Officer Mudhar,” Greene said.

  The young officer smiled as they ran past her. Was there anyone in this city Greene didn’t know? Kwon wondered. Up ahead there was the man on the bridge, his car parked up on the sidewalk behind him.

  Greene stopped at the set of stairs leading down to the cemetery and grabbed his cell phone: “Kennicott, I see him. I’m going to try to talk him down. The wind’s coming toward me so sound will carry in this direction. Sneak up and grab him. Tackle him. Get him off that bridge.”

  He clicked off his phone. “Margaret, stay here. This is serious.”

  She brushed her hand against him as he ran past. “Ari, good luck.”

  He looked back for a moment. “Thanks.”

  Once he was on the bridge, Kwon started down the stairs to the cemetery. At last she was going to catch up with April Goodling.

  74

  “Detective Greene, welcome to my farewell party.” Jason Wyler was standing up on the concrete barrier on the side of the bridge. He’d jammed his two canes in between the parallel metal railings that ran atop it. The canes provided meager support for his stunted body. “You heard I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Jason,” Greene shouted, running at full speed. “I know what happened.”

  Wyler yanked one of his canes out and pointed it at Greene. “Stop,” he screamed. “Don’t come any closer.”

  Greene pulled up. The wind seared his face.

  Wyler swung his cane down toward Terrance’s grave, where the four women and Simon were staring up at him in horror. “Such a lovely family reunion.”

  “I know you went back to Terrance’s house.” Greene glanced up the road. There was no sign of Kennicott.

  “So nice to see all the Wyler women one last time. I told them they had to stay there and be quiet or I’d jump.”

  “I just checked your license plate on the Highway 407 records.”

  “Bad luck again. Had it right from birth. Four murders in one night and every other highway’s blocked.” Wyler’s voice was forced, each sentence clipped.

  Greene cupped his hands so his words would carry. “I kept trying to figure out why you left the court when Dr. Burns was being cross-examined. Now I see Ted DiPaulo was right. This wasn’t murder. You stabbed your brother by accident. Your family will understand.”

  “My family. Ha. The Wyler clan. I’m the defective one, don’t you see that?”

  Greene took a step forward. “An accident isn’t murder.”

  “I drove back to see Terry after I took the nanny home. He was cutting fruit for Simon’s breakfast. My family had talked him into turning down Samantha’s offer. I was going to lose everything. All I wanted was to keep Sam as a friend. Terry wouldn’t listen. He kept cutting and cutting and cutting. Wyler Fresh. Wyler fucking Fresh. I grabbed the knife. He tried to pull it out of my hand. But I’m stronger than people think. And I slipped.”

  Greene took another step.

  “Don’t.” Wyler swung his cane back at Greene.

  “I’ve stopped.” Greene held up his hands as if Wyler had a gun. Out of the corner of his eye he looked again for Kennicott and still didn’t see anything.

  “If I loosen the second cane,” Wyler said. “Bingo. It’s more than fifty feet to the concrete. I measured it. You might survive this fall. Not me. Not a chance.”

  “You slipped on the kitchen floor. It was an accident,” Greene said.

  “No. I slipped on this.” Wyler slung the free cane under his arm and pulled a small model train out of his back pocket. “Thomas the Tank Engine.”

  “Simon’s favorite,” Greene said. How many times had the boy asked what had happened to his Thomas?

  “He must have left it on the floor,” Wyler said. “I stepped on it with the knife in my hand and it came up right into my brother’s neck. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Climb down. You can return the train to your nephew.” Greene caught his first glimpse of Kennicott. Two long blocks away at least. He was running full out.

  “It’s crushed on one side.”

  “This is your family.” Greene pointed to the gravesite. Margaret Kwon had arrived. Oh, no, he thought. She’s going to take pictures.

  “My mother. Look, now she has another perfectly healthy grandchild. She’ll be so glad to get rid of her defective son,” Wyler said. “I knew April was pregnant. And I figured she’d come back here on her birthday. Say goodbye to Terry. I did the same thing the day Sam was supposed to plead guilty. That’s when I came up with this plan. And now my dear mother can see all this happen. Live and in color.”

  Greene watched Kwon put her arms around the women and Simon. She was turning them away. He stole a look up the street. Kennicott was coming fast, but still had more than a block to go.

  “What will this accomplish?” Greene asked.

  “Everything.” Wyler looked back at Greene. “Terry was bleeding so hard. There was no way to save him. ‘Damn it,’ I yelled at him, ‘don’t fucking die.’ Made me so mad. He always had everything. And now he was ruining it all.”

  “Jason, listen to me—”

  “I cut and I cut and I cut him.”

  “Jason—”

  “When it was all over I used his BlackBerry. I sent e-mails to Sam pretending I was Terry so she would come to the house. It was the perfect crime.”

  Greene looked at the rubber stopper on the bottom of Wyler’s cane and thought about the mark and the wisp of blood low down on the door frame. “You parked behind the house and left by the back door.”

  “I could never use those steep front steps. After, I drove my car around the block and hid behind a tree in a place where I could watch the street. A while later Samantha walked by. Then nothing happened. I wasn’t sure what to do. I think I fell asleep. Suddenly it was late. Then all those highways were blocked. I had to take the 407 to get home before the stupid gardeners arrived.”

  Greene remembered the silly plastic sign on the Wylers’ manicured lawn. “Early-Bird Lawn—Weekly Maintenance—Monday, August 17, 5:00 a.m.” He’d wondered why someone as smart as Jason had taken the toll road.

  “Your family will support you.” Greene sneaked another look. Kennicott was a block away.

  “A crime against the Wyler family is unforgivable,” Wyler said. “Unless you’re Terry. He can take off, come back years later, start his own store to compete against us. No matter what, he was always welcomed back. Our very own prodigal son. You know why? Because he was clean, not deformed like me.”

  Kennicott was about half a block away now.

  “Samantha was your friend. Why did you do this to her?”

  “Best friend? I was supposed to be her best friend. All those nights we’d talk together. The two of us all alone. Not one goddamn kiss. But she could run off and screw that teenager. How fair was that? I was going to do this the day after she pleaded guilty. But when she changed her mind, I thought, let her suffer a little more.”

  “She wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  “I was a coward. Letting her stand trial like that.” He yanked the second cane halfway out. His body wobbled over the edge before it flopped back, like a puppet let loose, then pulled up by its strings.

  Kennicott was maybe thirty feet away, running crouched over like a cat. Greene had to keep Jason looking at him.

  “Nathan loves you,” Greene said. “You’re the only brother he has left. He won’t want—”

  “If Sam had won the trial, everything would have been perfect. This is my Plan B. I just had to wait for April and her baby to show up. I’m almost dead anyhow. Samantha’s suffered enough. She should be free.” Wyler’s voice was angry now.

  “Jason, we can talk.”

  Kennicott was at the back of
Jason’s car.

  “She’s innocent.”

  “Okay, Jason. We’ll release her.”

  Kennicott was about twenty feet away.

  “You promise?”

  “Yes. Now stop—”

  Kennicott was almost there.

  “This is what everyone wanted, isn’t it? The guilty plea.” Wyler jerked his second cane all the way out.

  “No!” Greene yelled.

  With all his support gone, Wyler’s small body jackknifed forward like a deflated life-size doll, bending fast at the waist. He disappeared over the railing, his jagged feet flipping up in the air like a swimmer doing a deep-sea dive.

  Kennicott lunged for him. Threw his arms over the railing. Greene ran up. Kennicott’s hands came back. Empty.

  The crashing, tumbling sound exploded from the concrete below, carried by the cold wind.

  “I was so close,” Kennicott said, gasping for breath. His hands clenched in frustration. “So, so close.”

  75

  There are the blues. There is the night. There’s darkness. And then there’s losing a case.

  Ted DiPaulo had many sleepless nights during Samantha Wyler’s trial, but they were nothing compared to the night sweats he’d been going through for the past six weeks since the guilty verdict. Night after night, like clockwork. Two-thirty every morning he’d snap awake, his T-shirt soaked, his hair wet, his head pounding. It was like a great infection raging through his body and he was powerless to combat it.

  What if he’d pushed Samantha harder to take that deal? What if he hadn’t let her testify? And, my God, what if he hadn’t picked juror number twelve? His stomach ached when he thought how close his client had come to going to jail for twenty-five years. What if, what if, what if?

  After the verdict, everyone in DiPaulo’s life had been supportive, just as they had when Olive died. Said the usual platitudes—you did a great job, it was a tough case, don’t blame yourself, there was nothing more you could do with a client like that.

  For a few days he hid in bed, blasting Nirvana CDs at full volume. He broke things off with Chiara, telling her that he wasn’t there yet. Not ready to really commit. When he dragged himself back to the office, among all the usual boring mail there was a thin rectangular package. Inside was a beautiful silk tie and a note from Chiara: “You are a good man, a great father, and an excellent lawyer.”

  On his first day back in court, DiPaulo ran into Clarke Whittle in the lawyers’ robing room. Whittle had on yet another pair of stylish glasses, made of thick gray steel.

  “Excellent effort, Ted.” He clapped DiPaulo on the back. “Remember what Casey Stengel said when he managed the 1962 New York Mets, one of the worst teams in baseball history.”

  “What was that?” DiPaulo cringed as he waited for the punch line.

  “‘I managed good. They just played bad.’”

  Everyone in the room laughed. It said it all.

  “Courage, mon ami.” Whittle had a credible French accent. He was cleaning his glasses with a light orange cloth. “You’ll bounce back.”

  Everyone said things like that. At least tonight he wasn’t alone in his bedroom. DiPaulo pulled himself up from his window seat in the airplane and made his way to the small washroom at the back of the cabin.

  He looked at his unshaven face in the tiny bathroom mirror. He was wearing a button-down blue shirt and Chiara’s tie. Pushing down hard on the little taps, he tried to get out some hot water but it wouldn’t really heat up. He lowered his head, and as he splashed his face, the plane jerked, spilling water all over him. “Damn it,” he growled through clenched teeth. This anger. He couldn’t get it out of his system.

  Thank goodness for my children, DiPaulo thought, wiping his face with the rough paper towel. He tried without success to dry off his shirt and tie. His son and daughter had conspired with Nancy Parish to plan this trip. He was being shipped out, like a FedEx package. Urgent delivery. One big, broken-down lawyer. Destination: April in Paris.

  Back out in the cabin all the other passengers were asleep. He checked his watch. It was 1:45 Toronto time. The plane was only about a third full, so he had his own three-seat row. Sitting down, he looked out the window into the deep darkness.

  Sleep. Ted, when will you sleep?

  “Sir, I am very sorry to be bothering of you.” The air hostess came from out of the darkness. She was bent over the empty seats beside him.

  Air hostess. The term felt awkward. But stewardess was out of the question. Some words felt wrong. Like widower. It sounded like an add-on to the real word: widow.

  “I see you are not sleeping.” She had a lovely French accent to go with her Air France uniform.

  “I don’t sleep much, I’m afraid,” he said. She was attractive, not beautiful, but there was a gentleness to her.

  Sleep. Everyone he knew in the world was asleep right now. The kids were asleep. His partner, his colleagues, the Crowns, the judges, his clients, even Samantha Wyler at the penitentiary for women. For a few hours she’d be asleep.

  He was the only one awake. And now this pleasant woman. Don’t be silly, he told himself. She’s more than pleasant. In the plane’s half-light she looked pretty.

  “You are Mr. DiPaulo, that is correct?”

  “That’s right.” He wondered how she knew his name. The passenger manifest, he supposed.

  “I have a message for you—”

  “Something wrong?” My kids, DiPaulo thought, his spine seizing up.

  “Oh, non. Pardon. Excuse me, please. Nothing is wrong.”

  Was she blushing? Hard to tell. He noticed for the first time that she had a piece of paper in her hand.

  “We have a message to be given for you. The copilot wrote it in his English. A detective in Toronto, Monsieur Greene, said to give it to you as soon as you are awaken.”

  “Monsieur Greene?” I sound foolish, he thought. And charmed by her French accent.

  “Yes. He said telephone to him when you are arriving in Paris.”

  DiPaulo could feel his pulse jump as she handed him the paper.

  “You will be staying in Paris, no?”

  “Yes.” He straightened up.

  “Here,” she said. He heard a click overhead. A cone of light came on, illuminating for a moment her shoulders and her breasts in the crisp uniform.

  Ted

  Wanted you to hear this right away. It appears Samantha didn’t kill Terrance Wyler.

  Wyler’s brother Jason confessed. Looks like you were right. He killed Terrance by accident with a knife. Then stabbed him six times after in anger. Set Samantha up by using Terrance’s BlackBerry.

  Sadly, he committed suicide.

  I’ve called your partner Nancy Parish. We will get your client into court tomorrow so she can be released.

  Call me when you land. I’ll explain all.

  Paris me manque.

  Ari

  P.S. April Goodling was pregnant with Terrance’s baby. A boy she named after him.

  DiPaulo stared at the piece of paper in the airplane’s dim light. Samantha not guilty. Jason the killer, by accident. He’d committed suicide. April Goodling had Terrance’s child.

  His hands were shaking. “We will get your client into court tomorrow so she can be released … Paris me manque.” I miss Paris.

  “You are okay, Mr. DiPaulo?”

  Who was speaking? Oh, it was the stewardess. The air hostess. The woman with the beautiful accent.

  “Thanks, yes. Fine. Nice of you to give this to me.”

  He wanted to touch her arm for a second. Convince himself this wasn’t a dream.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom.” Half standing, the way you do on planes, he brushed his hand against her forearm. The material was coarse. Real.

  Back in the airplane bathroom, he smelled the forced air. He took off Chiara’s tie, rolled it up, and put it in his back pocket before turning on the water. It was that same lukewarm temperature. He wet his face a
nd used the greasy little bar of soap. He felt its harsh smell, almost acidic.

  “Looks like you were right. He killed Terrance by accident with a knife.” This wasn’t a dream. It fit. DiPaulo remembered Jason Wyler leaving the court while he was cross-examining that arrogant pathologist, Dr. Burns. The clatter of his canes. The swatch of blood at the bottom of the back door. The other person in the house.

  The air hostess was waiting for him in the aisle when he got back to his seat. She was holding a blanket and a pillow. No one else in the plane moved. They were all asleep.

  I was wrong, he thought. Everyone else in my life is awake, not asleep. Samantha Wyler walking her cell for the last night. Nancy Parish, up with excitement. Jennifer Raglan, padding the floor, confused that she’d used all her skill to convict an innocent woman. And Ari Greene. Thank you, Ari.

  “A pillow? A blanket?” the woman asked.

  “That would be lovely.” He slipped past her to his seat. Perhaps he could ask her to sit beside him for a moment. He was shaking.

  “You are certain you are okay?” she asked.

  “Shocking news,” he said. “Good news. But it’s a shock.”

  “Here is the pillow,” she said.

  Shock. He thought about Sam. Finding her father dead in the service bay of the garage when she was a teenager.

  “Would you like to read something, perhaps?” the air hostess asked.

  Read. Like Samantha reading all those medical books. Trying to figure out for herself what had happened. How Raglan had used them to destroy her in cross-examination. He remembered that engineer as the foreperson.

  He thought about Jason Wyler. Poor man. Exposed during the trial as Samantha’s secret correspondent. A traitor to the family compact. His confession made sense. A lonely, dying man. He was in love with Samantha. How could he live with letting her suffer for his mistake?

  Out the window he searched the sky for a sliver of light, but it was only black. DiPaulo thought of the last thing Samantha had instructed him to say to Jason when he was on the witness stand. She’d insisted on the words being said exactly as she’d written them: “Thanks for your courage and honesty not only today, but always.”