Kroop greets that with, “Quite right. It’s time we put this shameful digression aside.”
“No more questions,” says Buddy.
Kroop thanks Flynn, who briskly heads back to his station. “Is your case finally in, Mr. Svabo? What about these Whalley Wanderers, shouldn’t they be called?” He winces, touches his lower jaw, but he’s toughing it out. He can abide weakness in himself no less than in others.
Arthur tires of being ignored. “A slight housekeeping matter, milord–the usual practice is to invite opposing counsel to cross-examine.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. An oversight. If you have some questions of Sergeant Flynn, just say so.”
“I do.”
Flynn lumbers back to the stand. Arthur must go at this with utmost care.
“Sergeant, we have on record that Eve Winters reserved Cotters’ Cottage in November. It wasn’t any great secret. Surely somebody mentioned it to you?”
“Not at all.”
“According to Ms. Hoover, when she first spoke Dr. Winters’s name to you, you said, ‘Who’s she?’”
“That conversation never occurred.”
“You had in fact heard of Doctor Eve?”
“Yes…I’d never met her.”
“She was well known to you from her syndicated column. You might have seen her as a guest on television.”
“Okay, yes. I might have read a couple of her pieces.” His eyes finally leave Arthur, focus elsewhere, a hint of deceptions to come.
“You won’t dispute that Holly was excited about this chance to bump into the famous Doctor Eve.”
“Maybe so.”
“Yet you say this loquacious young woman didn’t mention it to you?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Well, what in the world did you talk about during your many friendly chats?”
“What people were up to, the local troublemakers. General things.”
“Ah, yes, and the weather, I suppose, and the latest hockey scores.”
“Sometimes. Or we’d just joke about this and that.”
“And she’d ask how your boys were, your two young hockey stars.”
“That sort of thing.” Definitely uneasy. Now release the pressure.
“You’ve told us that you were posted to Port Alberni–when was that, eight months ago?”
“Late October. I went there to fill in, the senior man in Major Crimes had fallen ill. And I guess I stayed.” Talking fast, relieved to be off the topic of Doctor Eve.
“Before that, you worked out of RCMP division headquarters here in Vancouver.” Arthur slips on his glasses, quotes from the transcript. “You testified, ‘I liaised with some of the outlying detachments, co-ordinating evidence.’”
“A pretty tedious job, Mr. Beauchamp. Important, though. Major Crimes.”
Pushing paper, he’d called it. Brian Pomeroy is trying to gather proof it was more than that. If necessary, he’ll serve a subpoena duces tecum, with documents, proving the chain of possession, what officer handled what exhibit.
“You co-ordinated physical exhibits?”
“Materials for testing, cartridges, serums, paint scrapings, that sort of thing.”
“How does the system work?”
“You have to make sure the item goes to the right forensics person. Then make sure it gets back to the exhibits custodian in the outlying detachment.”
Lotis settles beside him, her phone calls done. She posed a solution months ago. Someone from forensics could have planted Nick’s ejaculate in Winters. Or a cop. Arthur hadn’t listened. It galls.
“Is it fair to presume you had high clearance, and with it access to the exhibit locker?”
“Here in Vancouver? No, sir, that’s off-limits except for our exhibits custodian.”
“However, exhibits would be signed in and out by you. They’d go through your hands.”
“Packaged for delivery, sir. I never touched them. I was like a switching station.”
Arthur feels a nudge, looks down to see Lotis’s capitalized note: ASK ABOUT TRASHING OLD EXHIBITS. Presumably relayed from Brian.
“In closing out a file that’s been through the courts, all appeals exhausted, you would destroy the exhibits, yes?”
“Records section would notify the exhibit custodian that a file has been concluded, as we call it. Some exhibits might be returned to the owner, otherwise they’re destroyed locally. Blood samples, that sort of thing.”
“Do you hop to it right away, or do these notices pile up?”
Hesitation. “They collect. Every once in a while, when there’s some down time, my staff would aid the custodian in a housecleaning.”
A sound from the bench like low, distant thunder, bad weather coming. Cross-examination shouldn’t be an excuse to romp all over the playground.
Arthur will ignore him unless he says it out loud. Another note. HE WAS BACK HERE IN JANUARY.
“After your posting to Port Alberni, did you return to Vancouver headquarters from time to time? Business to clean up, that sort of thing?”
“No, not really.”
“What does ‘not really’ mean?”
“I came back for a couple of weeks to help with a backlog, but that’s all.”
“When was that?”
“Mid-January…around there.”
Kroop has been watching the clock. “I suppose you have some relevant point buried in all this, Mr. Beauchamp, but how long is it going to go on?”
“That will depend on the witness.”
“We’ll take ten minutes.”
Arthur and Lotis walk up to the seventh level, for privacy while they call Brian. On the tier below, they can see Buddy also on his cell. Getting clued in.
Brian talks fast. “I’m so coffee’d up I’m ready to scream at the next droid who asks me to be patient. This can’t possibly be a secure line, our every word is being digitally analyzed, so I’ll be short. No one is confirming or denying. A flying squad of Crown attorneys has arrived. Also I hear ACU has been alerted. But that’s between you and me.”
“ACU?”
“Anti-Corruption Unit.”
Below, heading for the exit, presumably for a smoke, are Hoover and Claudette, friendly, old transgressions forgiven. Alone in the Great Hall is Jasper Flynn, composing himself. Hoping Arthur is just sniffing around.
Buddy Svabo never really cottoned to the man, despite his meticulous preparation for this prosecution. He had a dangerous ex-con in his jurisdiction, a thief, a rapist, and he didn’t warn the community. Flynn didn’t want to scare Faloon off. He had a use for Faloon.
Arthur hopes he has it right this time. Finally, after so many blind alleys, he has a plausible chronology. Almost exactly a year ago, early summer, Desirée began seeing Eve Winters–professionally, but the relationship soon altered. At some point, she fled her husband. In October, she and Eve parted ways, and Eve took up with her graduate student. That same month, Jasper was rushed to Port Alberni to relieve the Major Crimes chief. Work was left undone, paper left unpushed. It jogged Flynn’s memory–perhaps as he was checking out Faloon–that records section had “concluded” a case relating to this same infamous felon, a rape conviction.
As he summarizes this for Lotis, she nods, smiling up at him. Respect. He has her respect.
“In January, Holly lets out that Eve was planning a spring break in Bamfield. Eureka, it came to him, a plan for the perfect murder. He found a reason to come back to Vancouver briefly, to work on the backlog. Helped the exhibits custodian with a little housecleaning.”
“Is that enough, do you think?”
“Enough to convict him? Doubtful. A jury will demand proof he knew of the affair between Daisy and Eve.”
“Ask him. Ask him how he felt when the mother of his children got turned into a queer by her therapist.”
“It’s critical that we talk to Desirée. Keep after her lawyer.” There’s a new presence in the courtroom: a gentleman of apparent author
ity, crisply attired, closely shorn. If Flynn’s jumpy reaction is read rightly, he’s a redcoat of high rank, probably inspector. The Anti-Corruption Unit. A law degree too, because he has taken a chair in front of the bar that separates barristers from the unwashed laity.
Presumably, Buddy has talked to this officer, has been put wise, knows the defence hopes to subpoena paperwork that could tie his aide-de-camp to a coolly planned murder–one lacking any mitigating circumstance, the investigation a charade. Buddy won’t be forgiving if he decides he’s been duped.
Kroop, though, is not in the loop, and his baleful glare tells Arthur he doesn’t want him continuing his smear campaign against a veteran officer. But his Lordship has returned to court armed with only his top teeth, as evinced by a wobbly lower lip, so his nuisance value may be limited.
Lotis is still outside on the phone. Faloon, who’s quietly enjoying his redemption, has almost become the forgotten man of this trial. He could casually walk out and no one notice. Flynn is still declining to sit, though he seems tense and shaky. He’s expressionless, looking straight ahead, though seemingly at nothing.
“I was pleased to hear, officer, that there’s a pleasure we share. Fishing. Trolling for salmon. You do that out in the Alberni Inlet, I suppose. Barkley Sound.”
“The boys and I, sometimes their friends. When I get a day off.”
“A basic runabout, that’s my rig. I imagine you have something snappier. With power.”
“A Cormoran 850 inboard inflatable, it can get around.”
“What sort of dinghy?”
“A small Zodiac.”
“You have all the latest, I suppose. Up-to-date GPS. Sonar.”
“That’s right. I don’t believe in risking lives.”
“Where do you keep her?”
“Small marina just down our road.”
“Hockey is another favourite sport? You’re a proud hockey dad.”
“The boys are pretty good at all sports.”
“I’ll bet they have a proud mother too.”
“Well, I guess so, yes.”
“But she’s not at home with you.”
“We’re separated.”
“And in the process of divorcing, I understand.”
“Mr. Svabo!” Kroop cries out, demanding that this lifeless prosecutor get on the ball. Buddy complies by objecting to these personal matters, but without much heart.
Arthur reminds the court that Flynn was introduced as a man of integrity. “The Crown has put Flynn’s character in issue. And with all due respect to the court, I intend to test it.”
Kroop has no answer. “Please don’t be all day.”
“Am I right, sergeant? You’re being divorced?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of, it happens to the best of us. When did your marriage start falling into trouble?”
“It hadn’t been working well for a few years. We stuck it out for the boys. It, ah, got worse last summer.”
“Were you seeking help for it?”
Flynn has been holding himself from playing with his moustache–Arthur once kidded him about it during a break–but gives in, working it, buying time, as if any response might imperil him. “Frankly, I felt the problems were hers.”
“Were either of you seeking help last summer?”
“Not me. I can’t speak for her. Don’t know what she did with her day, except she worked part-time at a drugstore.”
“Ah, and where would that be?”
“I don’t know. Down on Marine Drive.”
Lotis is back, at Arthur’s ear. “Still waiting for Daisy’s lawyer to phone. I’ll get a list of Marine Drive pharmacies.” And she’s gone again.
“You were posted to Alberni about mid-October?”
“Yes.”
“What about your family?”
“I encouraged the boys to come with me, and they did. Switched schools.”
“And your wife?”
“She, ah, no, she stayed in Vancouver.”
“Desirée.” The name hangs there, in large letters, like a lurid movie poster. Arthur is on overdrive, focused, his personal concerns stowed safely away, no longer rubbing at him. “Desirée, that’s her name? Desirée Flynn?”
Flynn fingers the moustache. “Right.”
“But everyone called her Daisy.” Pens working at the press table, a rustling in the back.
“I called her Desi.”
“But she didn’t like that name either, did she?” This is a calculated guess, but Flynn seems taken aback, as if Arthur has insider knowledge. Maybe he called her Dizzy.
Flynn looks at the visiting RCMP inspector, then quickly away, and amends, “A couple of her friends called her Daisy.”
“That’s what she preferred?”
“Maybe, we didn’t discuss it.”
“Dear Daisy. That’s whom we’re talking about, isn’t it? The diamond in the rough with the abusive husband.”
“That…I’m sorry, but that’s total nonsense, sir.” It’s all or nothing for Jasper now, and he rises to the occasion with dramatics, with sputtering astonishment. “I am grossly offended, sir, if you’re suggesting I had something to do with the death of Dr. Winters. I didn’t know the woman. I had no reason to dislike her.”
“Surely you were aware your wife was receiving counselling from her?”
“I don’t know what Desi was doing.”
A noisy stirring in the back, as Ruth Delvechio shuffles past her seatmates and out the door, in obvious distress. Buddy is staring at Flynn with concern, fighting the realization that all along he’s been running a bogus prosecution. The jury seems to be falling out of love with Flynn too. But Kroop’s in denial, making sulky faces, unable to entertain the notion that a stalwart veteran of a cherished institution has committed an unpardonably evil act.
Arthur confronts the witness with Eve’s old appointments calendar, the name Desirée written in twice for July. A tussle with Kroop follows over whether it can be filed as an exhibit, but the defanged jurist relents when Arthur offers to call the deceased’s secretary.
He leads Flynn through the chronology: his visit to Faloon, his return to Vancouver to pilfer an exhibit that would falsely incriminate him. Flynn claims not to remember seeing a notice to conclude the old Faloon case. If there was one, the exhibit custodian would have acted on it. Documents would be on file in his office.
A switch, back to Flynn’s sports boat. “Did you take your Cormoran inboard for a spin on the night of March 31?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“Where were your two boys that night?”
“They were, ah, in Vancouver for the weekend. I sent them off with tickets for a Canucks game.”
“They were with their mother?”
“I assume. She has them a weekend a month. The lawyers work it out.”
“You don’t talk to Daisy?”
“Desirée and I do not communicate, haven’t for months.”
“When did you finish work on that Friday?”
“Close on to eighteen hours.”
“Six p.m., then? Some of us old-timers have an aversion to the twenty-four-hour clock.”
“Five-thirty, six. I had a drink with a female member, and later that evening I popped into the detachment.”
“What time was that?”
“About eight.”
“So maybe you had a couple of drinks with this female member.”
“Okay, two drinks.”
Three or four, probably. To sedate him, lower tension, give him courage, the balls to go through with his plan. “And then you went home.”
“Yes.”
“And how long does it take, going all out, for a fleet craft like yours to get from Alberni to Bamfield?”
“Ninety minutes. I would never run her all out at night, Mr. Beauchamp.”
Arthur is working at a fast rhythm, allegro vivace, snapping each question after the last answer. Flynn is finding little room to sulk, to play
at being wrongly accused, but he is far from being broken. Arthur has spun a sticky web, but is it enough? The jury may see this as just another example of a counsel’s shifting tactics, accusing almost every witness of being Dr. Eve’s assassin.
The clock nears 12:30. Arthur has more punches to throw, but no knockout blow–unless Daisy comes out of hiding. But he’ll leave the jury with something to chew on over lunch.
“Officer, help me out with this difficulty. When you and Constable Beasely attended at the crime scene, you went directly to the bedroom.”
“Yes, initially we saw the deceased through the window and so…yes, we went right to the bedroom.”
“The first thing you did after looking for vital signs was to put on latex gloves?”
“That’s standard, sir.”
“And you kept them on as you did a cursory check of the cottage?”
“Yes, of course. To avoid contaminating evidence. Procedure is to ribbon a dwelling off after you’re satisfied there’s no one else inside.”
“And you waited outside for the Identification team to fly in.”
“Exactly.”
“Then explain why your right index fingerprint was lifted from the refrigerator door.”
“It…it was where?”
Arthur recalls to him the evidence of yesterday, the fingerprint specialist who took the lifts in Cotters’ Cottage. “‘Known Individual JF, upper refrigerator door.’ You are known individual JF.”
“Well, I may have looked inside the fridge…I must’ve taken the glove off, they can get itchy. I’m sorry, I can’t imagine why that happened.”
“Try imagining you were there the previous night. Imagine you wanted a late snack.”
“Don’t answer that,” says Kroop. “We’ll take the noon break.” The witness stand isn’t far from the door to his chambers, where he pauses, studying Flynn, having trouble accepting this man as a bad guy, this wise, gruff cop with his fifty school visits. We all accept that he’s a sterling fellow.
32
It’s 12:30. Hubbell will have picked up Margaret by now, to escort her to the city, to his posh suite where she’ll be uncomfortable, it’s aseptic, inorganic, unwelcoming. The reunion will be edgy, difficult.
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