“Ready, milord,” says Buddy.
A glitter in Kroop’s anthracite eyes as he gazes down at Arthur. He’s inviting him to crawl, to grovel for an adjournment. Before brushing him off, Kroop will scold him like a child who soiled his pants, express shock and dismay at his late repentance while jury and witnesses wait eagerly to do their duty to their country. Arthur will look like a fuddled, irresolute fool.
“I am content,” he says.
Kroop has a reputation for eating clerks alive, and his favourite meal is Gilbert F. Gilbert, whose name has caused him to be mocked, making him timorous, easy meat for the Chief Justice. But he starts off fine with his proclamation that all witnesses must leave the courtroom until called upon to give evidence.
Perhaps fearing Ears will be of limited use at counsel table, Buddy seeks an exception for the case officer, asks if Jasper Flynn may sit up front to help with exhibits. Since the sergeant is to be the Crown’s first witness, Arthur has no objection, and the officer ambles ponderously to the table. That leaves it overbalanced, a crowd at one end, Arthur friendless.
As Sheriff Willit leads the jury panel into court, Arthur watches for smiles, signals of benign temperament. Brian has crossed off names of those to be peremptorily challenged, one of them shown in the city directory to be a police officer’s wife. But little else is known of this Vancouver hoi polloi. He has always preferred the U.S. system, where prospective jurors face friendly questioning.
“Read the charge,” says Kroop.
Gilbert reads out the single count of murder. The burglary offences are to be tried later.
“Well, Mr. Gilbert?” says Kroop.
“Yes, sir?”
“Are you ready with the plea?”
“The plea, sir?” Gilbert may wonder if he’s been mistaken for the accused.
“The plea. Where the accused does not answer, the court shall order the clerk to enter a plea. Section 602. Get on top of it, Mr. Gilbert, enter your plea.”
“Not guilty, milord.” He’s flustered.
The process of empanelling the jury takes half the morning, Arthur exhausting all his challenges, eliminating one jeweller and two store managers, and using caution with anyone with expensive watches or decorations of gold, silver, or pearl.
He is satisfied with the final crop of seven women, five men, of age twenty-five to sixty-five, devoid of sourpusses. But not ethnically balanced, Buddy seeming intent on standing aside anyone with a dark complexion or a suspect name such as Abdullah or Singh.
Buddy launches into his opening address, a workmanlike job, portraying the crime scene with sad-eyed solemnity, tracing with triumphant sarcasm the culprit’s attempt to flee the scene, his pretence of being a Dutchwoman, his flight from justice and jail. He promises devastating evidence from Father Réchard but avoids mention of Adeline Angella, keeping her in his pocket, hoping the aging opponent in the other corner has overlooked this crucial aspect of his case.
The jury listens intently until Buddy picks up a sheaf of notes and begins a confusing explication of DNA profiling, and they lose all attention when tinny music sounds, two bars of “You Are My Sunshine.” Arthur turns around, seeking its source, and sees smiles being stifled. The refrain repeats. Buddy stops midway through an exposition of vaginal smears.
“What is that infernal sound?” Kroop rasps.
Arthur is suddenly, abundantly aware that these incessant, simple chords are coming from his open briefcase on the floor. He pulls out a tangle of adapter cord, reeling in the phone as he might a fish, fumbles among the myriad buttons. A known voice speaks: “Yo, Arthur, what’s happening, man?”
For a metaphysical few seconds, Arthur is transported to Blunder Bay. He knows a crisis is occurring. “Stoney? What the hell have you done now?” He shouts this, as if fearing the little device may not pick up his words.
“Hey, man, cool. I’m backhoeing your pond, okay, and suddenly there’s this, like, stink coming from the septic field.”
Arthur blinks, he’s back in Court 67, goggling at this impertinent contrivance, trying to find a button that will take him off the air. Kroop seems rendered speechless, as if an affront has been committed that is beyond words of reproach, but there’s loud laughter from the young lawyers in the pews.
“You at some kind of party? Sounds like a real donkey roast…” Ears comes to the rescue; Stoney is disconnected.
“Because of your hiatus from these courts, Mr. Beauchamp,” says Kroop, “you might not have heard how I normally deal with cellphone offenders. Repeaters are not given suspended sentences.”
“My only defence, milord, is that I am telephonically challenged.”
Kroop cranes his neck in a vain search for the person snickering. Arthur can only hope there is an upside to his inept display–hearts could go out to the outgunned old fellow at the end of the table; all the world loves one who flounders at skills they’ve mastered.
Kroop waves a hand in dismissal, as if flicking away a mosquito. “You have been warned.” Arthur is surprised the judge didn’t take off an inch of his skin.
Buddy tries to pick up where he left off, but loses his way when a page of his notes slips free and flutters to the floor. The remainder of his opening is a monotonic medley of the science of identifying deoxyribonucleic acid and the benzodiazepine called Rohypnol–it has the jury stirring in discomfort or staring at walls or, in a couple of cases, offering Arthur timid smiles. One of them is the foreperson, Ellen Sueda: a teacher, warm, intelligent eyes. Another is Martin Samples, third from the right in the back, who runs a Web site devoted to obscure noir films, which he rates on a five-star system. Maybe he will see Faloon as immersed in a Kafkaesque quagmire. Four and a half stars.
“We’ll take the noon break,” Kroop says.
Buddy follows Arthur out like a grouchy dog, snorting at his heels. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t set up, that freaking phone call. While I’m up there sweating.” He continues on down the stairs. Stubb trots along behind him, with his pointless unabating smile.
On the way to the El Beau Room, Arthur fiddles with his phone, determined to master it, dialling, holding it to his ear in imitation of several passersby, hearing it ring, feeling accomplished, modern.
One of the new Japanese Woofers answers and turns him over to Reverend Al, who has volunteered to run Bungle Bay for the next two weeks. Yes, Stoney is out there, at the controls of the backhoe, calling encouragement to Dog, who is replacing the shattered outflow pipes, up to his knees in fecal matter. It is a scene so evocative of the picaresque carnival of his island that Arthur feels a tickle of nostalgia.
Reverend Al tells him arrests have slowed in Gwendolyn Valley. Agile protestors have taken to climbing trees during predawn hours, and the RCMP are loath to pursue them. The tactic is to wait them out until they give themselves up at day’s end. The Mounties have begun to see their endeavours as untypical of their many noble causes, and are showing signs of frustration–especially as the public mood is against them. This morning they busted Flim and Flam for getting in their faces with their cameras.
“Have there been any calls from, ah, overseas?”
“Nope.”
Gaining confidence with the cellphone, Arthur rings Doris Isbister. No long-distance calls to his office either, a number Faloon committed to heart long ago.
Brian is waiting for him in the restaurant, drinking a potion called near-beer, which Arthur has always avoided: too near for him. Brian looks through the jurors’ names. “I wonder if you want so many women, they sank you at Faloon’s last trial.” Eight women in that case, but the result was surely an aberration.
Brian has been on the line to Adeline Angella’s priest–a flimsy ruse, an anonymous client seeking to remember the parish in his will. While chatting, he dropped the name of an acquaintance. Ms. Angella is one of his faithful, said the priest. He recalled that she won a prize at the April 1 bingo, a gift certificate from a flower shop.
“‘How lovely,’ I said as my heart wa
s sinking into the mud. But let us pray. The bingo started at noon, and she owns a car, a little Chev. After doing the dirty, she could have caught a morning ferry to Vancouver.”
Assuming she found a way to cross the Bamfield Inlet at two o’clock in the morning. How might she have done that?
As Arthur returns to the Law Courts, “You Are My Sunshine” burbles merrily from his suit jacket pocket.
“Reporting in.” Lotis Rudnicki in Victoria, taking a breather from court. Mewhort released Flim and Flam without conditions after a lawyer for the Civil Liberties Association carried on about irresponsible and baseless arrests of journalists. “Only three other new cases, the cops are pooping out.”
At the Law Courts, he remembers to turn his phone off.
Buddy stands by the jury box, shifting on his toes, peppier than when last seen, ready to parry more low blows. “The Crown calls Staff Sergeant Jasper Flynn.”
The officer takes the oath, standing tall and square-jawed. Arthur hopes to make some hay with his sloppiness at the crime scene. A dumb cop, Buddy said, yet he seems disposed to lean on him for help.
The witness establishes his credentials: on the force for nineteen years, a staff sergeant for three, based in Port Alberni for the last eight months.
“And before that?”
“Here at Thirty-third and Heather, General Investigation Section, Serious Crime Unit. I liaised with some of the outlying detachments, co-ordinating evidence.”
“You have a family?”
“Two strapping boys, fourteen and sixteen.”
“And you’re a kids’ hockey coach?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ve done volunteer work in schools?”
“I’ve done about fifty school visits, talking to kids in class.”
This is to arm Flynn against what’s to come, his sheltering of Holly Hoover. Arthur dares not object, but Kroop saves him from having to. “We have only two weeks, Mr. Svabo.”
“I note a couple of commendations on your…”
“Please, Mr. Prosecutor. We all accept that he’s a sterling fellow.”
Pleased with that gift, Buddy desists. “All right, is the Village of Bamfield within your jurisdiction?”
“Yes.”
Area maps are produced, showing the long bent finger of Alberni Inlet, the web of logging roads that lead to Bamfield. Photographs of the Breakers Inn, Nitinat Lodge, Cotters’ Cottage, the crime scene: Dr. Winters’s body, supine, a puff of cotton extruding from her mouth, the undergarment that blocked her airway. Most jurors glance quickly at these photos, distressed, but Martin Samples, the film noir buff, studies them with narrow-eyed concentration.
Close-ups of the Chablis bottle, uncorked, about ten ounces remaining. A grey smear of fingerprint dust, suggesting the surface was wiped by a cloth. Two clean glasses in the sink. Near the fireplace, a chair with bra, jeans, an outdoors shirt. A bath towel lying loosely on the bed. In background, from the wall, the cougar stares malevolently.
The murder weapon is passed among the jurors in a zip-lock bag. Serums and blood samples will be identified later, but are given exhibit numbers. The swab with the suspect semen is 52.
Kroop makes no attempt to alter the flow, rarely seeking clarification. Ears remains an unnoticed fixture at counsel table. With his handsome ears and his habit of chewing the ends of pencils, he brings to mind a rabbit.
Flynn is prompted to describe his doings on April 1, arriving by launch with two officers, first stopping at the Breakers Inn to investigate the thefts, then trudging up the rutted road to the cottage.
Arthur can see why Buddy wanted Flynn at counsel table despite his missteps: he is well rehearsed, organized, relaxed, even amiable. This notorious trial is the highlight of the officer’s career, and he’s giving it his best.
After sealing the cottage and calling in the Ident Section, Flynn went to the Nitinat Lodge, missing Faloon but finding a makeup kit and, in a trunk, garments of disguise. When he finally returned to Alberni, Faloon was in the lockup, in women’s garb. Efforts to take a statement were fruitless, the suspect staring close-mouthed at him.
Buddy shows photos of Faloon, staring moronically, pretending illness. “You’d met him before?”
“I introduced myself when I was posted to the area. Paid him a visit.”
“Why?”
Arthur is on his feet. “Before the witness responds, may I suggest we give the jury time off for good behaviour? A break until tomorrow, it’s been a long and tiring day.” It is almost half past four, and Arthur is weary himself.
Kroop cautions the jury, sends them to their homes, then says, “What answer do you expect to your last question, Mr. Svabo?”
“Sergeant Flynn knew the accused had a horrific criminal record, including a previous brutal rape and scores of thefts and break-ins. So he was checking him out. Like any responsible officer.” Almost imperceptibly, Flynn nods.
“I have often doubted the wisdom of the rule, Mr. Svabo, but evidence of previous misdeeds remains beyond the pale.”
“This isn’t just bad character. It’s a lifestyle. Faloon has shown up on police blotters around the world. Banned from at least half a dozen hotels in this very city. It all points to him being the person who did a nighttime foray through the Breakers just before the murder.”
“He’s being prosecuted for a murder, not a lifestyle,” says Arthur, but with only half a heart. The jury has heard about Faloon’s disguises, they will hear about the gangland-style jail breakout. They will not think he is a paragon. Especially after Adeline Angella tells why she sought him out for an interview.
“The objection is sustained.”
“Okay, I’ve run out of questions.” Buddy isn’t unhappy, he was merely hoping to prejudice the judge against Faloon, paint him in villainous colours.
After court breaks, Arthur watches Buddy and Ears give kudos to Flynn for his fault-free performance–and probably encouragement for tomorrow, when he’ll undergo Arthur’s first cross-examination in six years.
24
Again, on this grey morning, Arthur does his health walk, along the seawall to Brockton Point, where totems rise above the mist of dawn. He’s more at ease now that he’s wet his toes, got that first day behind him.
Back at Elysian Tower, he spends several minutes hunting for his reading glasses–they’re under Plutarch, where he ought to have looked in the first place. He put down the essays last night upon finding new and distressing meaning in the famous proverb: When the candles are out, all women are fair.
Candles are the illuminators of choice for Margaret and her band of merry Robin Hoods, that’s how they light their way to bed. He shivers with disgust at his insistent, ridiculous suspicions. You’re too young, darling, we have to stop doing this…He’s appalled at himself. The Annabelle Syndrome.
Margaret could have come home weeks ago, they smuggled the rope ladder back up. It’s hubris and stubbornness that keep her in that tree. But now she must compete with Arthur Beauchamp for the rave reviews. Day Two!
As the judge is summoned, Buddy Svabo leans to Arthur’s ear. “After you’re through with Flynn, I’d like to do the folks from Topeka. They’re in the Hyatt, costing us a freaking fortune.”
“Anything to help the struggling taxpayer.” For whom Buddy isn’t showing that much concern. He doesn’t need half those witnesses.
Kroop enters, fluffs his robe, and settles like a contented hen on a nest. He’ll grow more cantankerous as the trial progresses, but today he shows the jury a small puckered smile.
Buddy tells Flynn to retake the stand, and bows to Arthur. Be my guest.
“We’ll be a few minutes,” Arthur says, “so you may want to sit.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stand.” Flynn, who was on his feet all yesterday afternoon, reacts by standing taller. The jury seems to have taken to the handsome, burly officer: forthright, easygoing, the sort of fellow who’ll sit down with your teenager and straighten him out.
; “Officer, the last time we saw each other was in Bamfield.”
“That’s right, sir, a couple of months ago.”
“You had business there?”
“Routine patrol, as I recall. Some of the boys in the bar get boisterous on a Saturday night.”
“Did you have a little chat that day with Holly Hoover?”
He purses his lips, and his generous moustache moves in concert. “I think I said hello to her.”
“Is she the young lady who was sharing barstools with Dr. Winters only a few hours before she was murdered?” This is the first mention of Hoover to the jury; Arthur wants to put her in the picture quickly.
“That’s right.”
“In your report, you describe her as ‘unemployed, single, a local.’ The fact is, she’s vigorously employed, is she not?”
Another twitch of moustache. “Not in a legitimate sense, I guess. She does a lot of entertaining of men.”
“Less timidly put, she’s a prostitute.”
“I don’t think she’s ever been arrested for it. It seemed fairer to call her unemployed.” The officer is showing decency, letting the jury know he’s not one to add to a woman’s soiled reputation.
“Surely you know she hires herself out to loggers up and down the coast from a boat called the Holly Golly?”
“Never had a complaint.”
“Who would you expect to complain?”
Again Kroop fails to locate the perpetrator of a poorly smothered laugh. Buddy is in close, deep conference with Ears–can it be that Hoover’s career as demimondaine comes as a surprise to them?
“Mr. Beauchamp, I cover a huge jurisdiction, I don’t have a lot of manpower.” A helpless face. “We have to concentrate on what bothers people most–property theft, assaults, domestic violence.”
Arthur confronts Flynn with his snippet of a report about Hoover and Winters chatting about music, hiking, and the weather. “These pages don’t offer the slightest hint Ms. Hoover operates a motorized bawdy house up and down the coast. Did you not think that may be of interest to this court?”
April Fool Page 27