“Maybe you need to,” I press gently.
“She was a nice girl. The usual schools, good grades, socially active, nothing exceptional for our sort.” He pauses, fork poised. “Except, looking back, she had a way of making unusual choices. She studied art history in New York—nothing different there—but instead of the Italian Renaissance, she focused on Indigenous art, came back and did a masters in Salish carvings at UBC.”
He takes a bite, chews, swallows. “She did all the charities, balls, the lot. But then, in the last couple of years, she got really intense about feminism and missing women on the Downtown Eastside.” He puts his fork down. “Way too deeply, some of the family felt. It’s one thing to cut a check here and there for some charity; it’s another to work at the shelters, hand out money on the street. She always seemed pretty much mainstream on the surface, but when you looked closely you could see she was restless.”
Bent on changing the world, I think, remembering Vincent’s lament. Maybe she got too close to someone bad, someone who wanted more than a twenty on the street corner.
“You were close to her?” I pick through the arugula.
“When we were kids. She was a little older than me—beautiful, kind. I sort of revered her.”
“And Vincent?”
“Didn’t ever get to know Vincent Trussardi,” Mike says thoughtfully. “Family wasn’t pleased when she announced she was marrying him. They could see what brought them together—her interest in Indigenous art, his passion for his collection. Quite exceptional, I understand. It was just that”—he looks down—“well, he was not quite right for the St. John clan. His family came from Italy after the war. Milan, I think, somewhere in the north.”
“First-generation wealth,” say I, who cannot claim a generation, much less wealth. “Never quite good enough.”
“No, that’s not it.” Mike meets my gaze. “The Trussardis were hardly your typical immigrant family that lost everything in the war. They were very upscale, some distant offshoot of the old manufacturing clan—leather goods, that sort of thing. Rumor has it Vincent Senior got too cozy with Mussolini’s Black Shirts, and the family had to flee when the Fascists lost the war and the Allies took over. Just gossip, but it didn’t endear him to Laura’s father—old Cedric won a Victoria Cross for valor in the Italian campaign.”
“Impressive.” I mull over Mike’s inside knowledge. “You’re much more informative than Google.”
“Pleased to be of service,” he murmurs, as our waiter returns to drop off our entrées. When he’s gone, Mike reaches for my hand. “Don’t take this case, Jilly,” he whispers. “Too close. Too nasty.”
“Mike—”
“Okay, okay, your business.” He lets go and digs into his confit de canard. “This isn’t bad. We should eat out more often, Jilly.”
I nod and we move on—no need to spoil a perfectly good evening with a spat. We’ve learned over the years when to push, when to let go. I take his cue, rattle on about the campy café that just opened across the street from my office and how I can’t seem to keep Debbie happy.
But my mind won’t let go of the case. The sun is setting, low light filling the restaurant. I’m looking across at Mike’s face, but thoughts of Trussardi and Laura race through my mind.
Mike senses my disquiet. His hand moves across the linen to cover mine and he gives me a lopsided smile. “Let’s go, Jilly,” he says.
CHAPTER 8
AFTER DINNER, WE DRIVE TO the leafy crescents of Shaughnessy where Mike lives alone in his big mansion.
When Mike’s parents died a decade plus ago, he called the Salvation Army and told them to take out all the furniture except the grand piano and a love seat. We were in law school then, and as I watched him shunt the class notes I delivered each night across the barren floor of his room, I would plead, Mike, do something. In time, he recovered enough to order a bed, a TV, a desk, and a bank of computers, which he installed in two of the rooms upstairs. That’s how it’s been ever since and how it always will be. Correction—come Monday the gorgeous Plaskett will hang over the massive marble fireplace.
I settle in on the couch and Mike disappears in the direction of the distant kitchen. He returns with two glasses of something bubbly, hands me one, and takes the other to the Steinway. He starts slowly, his long fingers stroking the keys tentatively, a few chords merging into my favorite, Debussy’s “Girl with the Flaxen Hair.”
I sit back, eyes closed. My thoughts inevitably float to Trussardi and Laura St. John, my lover’s beloved cousin. A rich woman, yes, but also a restless woman not content with the safety of her affluent life, a woman drawn to dark streets and unaccustomed byways. My mind catalogues the possibilities—an affair, an addiction, a sentimental susceptibility to those who prey on the naïve. A woman who might somehow put herself in harm’s way. I remember the grief-stricken stranger outside the church. Is he connected? My case suddenly seems slightly less hopeless than before.
I catch Mike’s gaze moving from the piano to me—soft, the hint of a crooked smile. Then he turns back to the piano and moves on to something else—Chopin, I think, a nocturne. I know the routine better than the music. In a while he will leave the piano and come over to sit beside me, put his arm around me, kiss me, and take me upstairs to his bed.
Lying quietly in Mike’s arms afterward, I feel his kiss on my shoulder.
“That was nice,” I whisper.
“It’s always nice, Jilly. With you.”
“Yes, but this time was different.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been together so long, Mike, thirteen years. It’s like we’ve fallen into a rut—you know, cordial and businesslike. Tonight felt meaningful.”
“As in the ‘L’ word?”
“Yeah,” I say, pulling his arm tighter around me. “Might even go that far.”
Somewhere, in my hair, I hear him murmur. “You and your words, Jilly—cordial and businesslike—make us sound like an old married couple. Maybe it’s time we talked about the future.”
I turn toward him, prop my head up under my hand. “I like it just the way it is, Mike. You’re my best friend and lover.”
“Yes. But it could be even better.”
“Like?”
“Like you could move in with me, see how it goes. If you like it, we could get married.”
So this is what it’s all been about—the casual introductions to the St. John clan (what better occasion than a funeral?), the Plaskett, the dinner, the tenderness of lovemaking. Sure I said I might go as far as the “L” word, went along with like an old married couple. But that was sentimental play. To alter my life, share it with Mike on a full-time basis—I can’t go there, not yet. I think of my work, the perpetual careen from crisis to crisis, of my condo, full of bright light and pictures. I think of never having to ask permission or say I’m sorry.
I feel my throat filling. Get a grip, Jilly, I tell myself. Handle this situation. I push myself higher against the pillows.
“Mike, I would make a terrible wife. I won’t inflict that on you.”
“It’s not like I’d expect you to make dinner for me every night,” he whispers. “I understand your work and how important it is to you. We’d have a housekeeper, maybe a maid or two. You could come and go as you like.”
“You just want more sex,” I say, trying to lighten things.
“I admit that would be nice, but it’s not just sex. I want you—your company, Jilly.”
“You know I’m there for you, like I’ve always been. But—”
“Then marry me, Jilly. We don’t have much time. If we want to make a life together, want to make a family, it’s now.” He stops. “Or maybe never.”
I bury my head under the sheets.
“Jilly?”
“Don’t push me, Mike. I’m not ready. Not ready for forever, not ready for marriage.” I hesitate, offer a sop. “Maybe when the Trussardi file’s closed.”
Mike’s voice cracks when he
answers. “There’ll always be a case, Jilly, always be something more important.”
We lie still for a long, anguished moment, room for two bodies between us. Then he reaches toward me, places his hands on my naked shoulders. His eyes are closed. I cannot read his mind. He pulls me in a fierce embrace, lets me fall back. I search for his gaze, for his lips, but he’s turned away from me.
“Jilly,” he whispers.
I know what’s coming. He’s going to tell me how much he needs me, and for once I, Jilly Truitt, wizard of words, will have nothing to say, no way to say I can’t deliver. “Mike, hush.”
He falls asleep, or pretends to. No matter. I lean over his back, kiss his cheek. He does not move.
I slip out of bed and search the floor for my shoes and scattered pieces of clothing, stoop to retrieve the Hermès scarf for old times’ sake. I glance back at his recumbent form, the shape of his back still impassive beneath the sheet, before I close the door behind me.
I find the bathroom down the hall, shower and dress. I fish my iPhone from my bag and call a cab. For some reason I’m crying. I slam my bag on the sink and find a tissue to dry my face, a compact to restore my façade. I am Jilly Truitt, defense attorney, thirty-four years old and seasoned in love and the ways of the world. Suck it up, I tell myself, and make my way downstairs to the waiting car.
The cabbie cranks the car into gear and cranes his neck to inspect me—a knowing leer as he takes in my face, tear-streaked in the light of the street lamp. “You okay?” he asks. A call girl, he’s thinking, bad gig at some rich toff’s place. We pull out of the porte cochere.
I paste my face against the window. Gray dawn, bleak shadow, light but no light. The leafy crescents of Shaughnessy blur into the black fronts of Granville’s empty shops. Around the corner from my condo, the cabbie passes a news shop, brightly lit in the dark street.
“Let me out.” I hand him a bill and wave off the change. For some reason I feel the need for the Saturday paper. I reach for the Sun on the rack, but what I see sends me hard back against the newsstand. There we are, top corner of the front page, Mike and I, climbing the steps of the cathedral, hand in hand. MICHAEL ST. JOHN AND JILLY TRUITT ENTER HOLY ROSARY CATHEDRAL FOR FUNERAL OF LATE LAURA ST. JOHN. Then below, in smaller print, MR. ST. JOHN IS A COUSIN OF THE VICTIM; MS. TRUITT IS SAID TO BE ACTING AS DEFENSE COUNSEL TO VINCENT TRUSSARDI, CHARGED WITH FIRST-DEGREE MURDER IN THE SLAYING.
I pay the cashier and numbly stumble home.
CHAPTER 9
IMPRESSIVE GAMS,” CY SAYS AS he slaps a copy of the Vancouver Sun on the counsel table in courtroom fifty-six. It’s Friday, the last day of the Cheskey trial. Typical Cy. Saves the paper for seven days so he can throw me off my game just as I’m set to address the jury. Emily, who has been waiting patiently for Cy, looks up inquiringly, pretending she hasn’t seen the photo.
“A little early in the day for sexist comments, my friend,” I respond.
“How about something PC and legal, then? Like”—Cy rolls his massive head back so he can stare at the ceiling—“let’s see, St. John–Trussardi, conflict of interest?”
“Mike and I are no longer an item, Cy. No interest, no conflict.” A truth I’m slowly beginning to comprehend. For the first time in a decade plus, Mike won’t text me, won’t return my calls.
“Poor Mike, excess baggage under the circumstances. No choice but to throw him over. Always liked him, though.”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” I start to say.
I could tell Cy, if I had the time and inclination—which I don’t—how it really was, how it is. Or could I? How do you describe absence, how do you explain empty? Maybe hollow does it, maybe numb. Diminished. I still walk, still talk—but I am less than I was before. A part of me has been severed, a part for which I ache in the night. Gone forever is that quiet place I could visit without invitation and find a crooked smile and a cocked brow—What’s it now, Jilly?—a place where gangly arms reached out and gathered me in.
In the early hours of the morning after I left Mike’s house, it came to me that perhaps it was not too late. I could go back, tell him it was all a mistake. I went to my closet, hauled my suitcase from the upper shelf, threw in my jeans and a suit, and zipped it up. As I heaved the suitcase out the door and into the corridor, it hit me. What about Trussardi? he would ask as I stood at his door, and I would turn around and leave. I hauled my bag back in.
All for the best, I thought as I waited fitfully for sleep. What future is there for a girl with a word for every situation and a guy who hardly talks? A girl who faints for a Motherwell and a man who just bought, tentatively, his first gentle Plaskett? A girl who likes the edge and a guy who can say “like an old married couple” and think it’s a come-on? I told myself we were doomed from the start, told myself it was time to move on. Next week you’ll be in court, a life in your hands Get over it, Jilly.
But the ache went on.
A door slams and brings me back to the present. Cy heaves his body into his chair. Across the room, the guards are leading Damon Cheskey to the prisoner’s box. His face is down, You can drag my body wherever you want, but you can’t make me look at you. I think of my foster homes; I know the feeling. Then, unexpectedly, Damon looks up, searches the benches, halts at his aging parents. They stare back, uncomprehending in their bewildered pain. How would it be, I wonder, to have parents bound from birth to care, love, suffer? I will never know. Damon’s blond coif, carefully clipped for the trial, falls over one eye. He’s trying to look cool and collected in his sharp blue blazer, but the fear and shame show through.
It’s been a tough trial, a tough week. The prosecution has been measured, the judge has been fair. The jury has listened attentively. The problem is the evidence. Five bullets pumped into the body while the whole street watched.
We sit waiting for the judge. Maybe Cy’s bored, maybe he’s planned it. Whatever the reason, he makes his second move. It’s hard for him to get out of his chair, so he motions to Emily to bring something to me—a plain brown eight-and-a-half-by-eleven manila business envelope. I open the flap, tug at the pages. What I glimpse is enough and I shove them back inside. Photos, crime scene, Laura Trussardi. Color photos—the ashy white of dead flesh, the scarlet red of spattered blood.
I shoot Cy a venomous look and bury the envelope under my Cheskey papers as Justice Orrest marches in. This is neither the time nor the place. Cy smiles, then shifts his attention to the legal pad in front of him.
I’m up. Ninety percent of the job is getting the sympathy of the jury—convincing them they want to find for your client. Ten percent is showing them how. We’ve got an uphill battle on both counts.
I leave the defense table and cross to stand in front of the jury box. I take a deep breath and look at each of them in turn before launching myself.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” I pause. I want what comes next to sink in. “The fate of a young man—a promising young man with his whole life before him—lies in your hands. But on the evidence you have heard, you will find your decision easy. There is only one verdict the law permits—you must, and you will, find Damon Cheskey not guilty of the charge he faces.”
The insurance executive sits back in apparent disbelief; the salesman and the mechanic exchange a skeptical glance. But our forewoman—Betty O’Shea, a housewife from east Van—is listening intently. All it takes is one. I plow on.
“Damon stands charged with first-degree murder, the most serious offense known to our criminal law. The Crown must prove every element of that charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The simple fact is, the Crown has failed to do this. This case is rotten with conjecture, riddled with doubt.”
Behind me, Cy gives a cynical snort, and twelve heads turn in his direction. I’ve lost them. Cy, you bastard. I lean in toward the jury.
“It’s clear that Jinks Lippert, the dreaded drug enforcer who had killed and maimed so many before, died as a result of bullets fired from a gun by Damon, and that the let
hal bullet was fired while Lippert lay prone on the sidewalk. The defense does not suggest otherwise.”
Then how can you say he’s innocent? the jurors’ stares ask. I need to hook them in.
“What is in doubt—grave doubt—is the state of Damon’s mind when he fired those bullets.” I offer the hint of a sad smile, as though I’m talking to my friends. “Before you can convict this young man of murder, you must conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that he deliberately fired the lethal bullets with the intent to kill Lippert. On this point, the evidence—the only evidence—is that Damon did not intend to kill Lippert.”
I’m on a roll. The adrenaline kicks in. The jury shifts in their chairs; they’re with me. “Damon was terrified that Lippert would kill him because Damon had inadvertently sold drugs on the territory that Lippert’s boss, Kellen, claimed. Damon, if he wished to preserve his life, had only one choice—to get a gun to defend himself. And so that is what he did.”
I slowly walk along the length of the jury box. “Damon Cheskey—a nice boy from a God-fearing family—told you what happened that fateful night. Scared out of his mind, he had hit up on amphetamines. He doesn’t do drugs now—he’s been to rehab and put that behind him—but then he was sick. Put yourself in Damon’s mind—imagine his terror. Lippert swaggered over to him and told him he was dead meat. Damon saw him reaching for his gun. Damon panicked and fired. It was fire first or die.” I reach the end of the box, stop. “There can be no doubt—Damon Cheskey fired on Lippert in self-defense. If Damon shot to defend himself, you must acquit him.”
I see the jury softening, bending my way—some of them, anyway. The insurance man looks straight ahead, unmoved. But Betty O’Shea’s brow is creased in a sad way, and the barista sends Damon a teary look. Damon gives her a tragic half smile. Good, I think, no harm in a little chemistry.
“Mr. Kenge will tell you that each shot required two deliberate acts—cocking the gun and pulling the trigger. He will ask why, if Damon feared that Lippert would kill him, did he not stop shooting after the first two shots to the chest? He will tell you that Damon fired the fatal shots into the head of a man who, at that time, posed no threat, and that Damon cannot claim to have killed Lippert in self-defense. It is a powerful argument,” I glance at Cy; he’s not amused. “But it overlooks the evidence that those last three shots were a continuation of the first two. You listened to Damon tell you, tears in his eyes, that the shots came in blind succession—it was all a blur. Other witnesses put only a second or two between the shots to the chest and the shots to the head. Dr. Effington, one of this city’s most respected psychiatrists, testified that you or I might have made a measured decision that Lippert no longer posed a threat, but Damon was incapable of making that judgment in his amphetamine-crazed state of panic. And to eliminate any residual doubt you might have, one of Vancouver’s finest and most experienced police officers, Sergeant Petrov, told you that even with a single-shot gun, rapid fire syndrome can make all five shots virtually automatic for a farm boy like Damon, who grew up shooting gophers for Sunday target practice.”
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