Arthur guessed Brian had hidden the ring and forgotten where. He did his own desultory search, room to room. These quarters were far grander and more tasteful than the spare, cell-like rooms at the Alcohol Addiction Centre, in which he’d gone fairly mad himself. A balcony view of dark forest, pelting rain. Camera, cellphone, computer, printer, a few paragraphs of foolscap in the tray, proof of some productivity.
Here were the bound transcripts of Regina v. Gilbert F. Gilbert, presumably research material. Encouragingly, there was evidence of rehabilitative effort: an addiction manual lying open on the desk, a fifteen-step course book. Even some psychiatric texts. The Diagnostic Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. He was seeking answers–an interesting task given his delusional state.
“They’re connected, you know.”
“Who?”
“Those two pricks. Darrel Naught and Whynet-Moir. Everything is connected, but they’re especially connected. Not the way you think, not in an obvious way. You have to dig deep for this one.”
Arthur quit the hunt. “Brian, we found a seemingly errant page from your manuscript.” He read from it: “‘He and Florenza were in her sitting room with Heathcliff, the Doberman.’”
“That was Lance. You’re too late, you’re not going to get anything from him. He’s dead.” He pulled a page from his printer. “His secret died with him.”
Arthur perused a long paragraph in which Lance Valentine met his bloody end, torn apart by a junkyard pit bull.
“I warned Wentworth this was going to happen.”
Someone else is going to die.
“I’m finally free of him.”
APRIL FOOL
“Surely, doctor, the presence of trace amounts of diometamicrobials in the bloodstream, despite the Category Three oxidation rate, proves that deceased had inhaled a lethal dicyanogen at least ninety minutes prior to his body being discovered. I take it you’ve read Clark and Tree’s definitive study, ‘Parameters of Cyanogen Oxidation Rates.’” As the so-called expert bowed his head in defeat, Wentworth turned to see his leader smiling with pride…
How unlikely that scenario seemed in the cold light of dawn as, on a drizzly Tuesday, Wentworth Chance wearily pedalled his aluminum-frame click-transmission Outback 310 past CN’s sprawling railway yards, past the train station, up into the old city, Chinatown, skid road, Gastown. He had dug all night into forensics manuals, autopsy procedures, bodily fluids analyses, studied with morbid fascination the police close-ups, the body in the tidal wash, naked on a morgue slab, awaiting the knife. He’d slept only three hours, a sleep disturbed by gory dreams.
He’d compiled sixty legal-size pages of notes for his cross of the pathologist and serologist. He’ll prove…well, he’s not sure what he wants to prove. Maybe that because Whynet-Moir landed on his head, he must have intended suicide. He has a list of poisons, he’ll ask if they tested for them.
He locked his bike in the rack outside Club d’Jazz. Or what was Club d’Jazz–workers were dismantling the sign. Pasted inside the door was a notice: “The Gastown Riot–Opening Soon.” What kind of deal was this? “Heavy metal is BACK! Opening Wednesday, Blood’n’Guts!” He assumed these new tenants would be even louder than the brass sextet that was going all hours last night, probably their eviction party.
In the waiting room, the frazzled receptionist was fending off a pair of sports-jacketed thugs demanding to see “a goddamn lawyer, any lawyer.” Macarthur was in Holland; Sage in Thailand; Brovak in a week-long appeal; Pomeroy in a ding ward; and Wentworth, still in helmet and rain gear, looked like a courier, so they paid him no attention.
He escaped to his office, changed into his suit, twisted the cap from a bottle of Zap energy juice, and began a final read-through of his cross-exam notes. He hasn’t even started ploughing through the eight hundred pages of transcript the old rancher gave him. He hasn’t had a chance to track down Carlos the Mexican. Now the boss wants him to interview a guy named Rashid, the guard at 2 Lighthouse Lane. He’s also supposed to spend time with the client, prepping him for the stand. Junioring his god has not become the glorious lifetime experience he’d anticipated.
Arthur came to his door looking dead serious.
“I am going to have Hank Chekoff busted from the force. Come with me.”
He joined him in Pomeroy’s office, where April Wu was seated stiffly on a chair. Brian’s cellphone records were on the desk, a January 9 call circled with a marker.
“Let’s go over this again. Brian called you from Ms. LeGrand’s house.” She didn’t respond. “You spoke to her, to confirm Brian’s identity.”
“Very well, yes, I remember.” Wentworth was blown away, this sounded grave.
“Bad chi, Ms. Wu. You might not have been caught had you not left this behind in the copy machine.” Flourishing the page of manuscript, the unfinished scene with Pomeroy, Florenza, and Heathcliff the Doberman. “A little carelessness can make for great undoing.” That fetched a resentful look; she’d been out-maxim-ized.
“I had no intention of stealing it. I was simply making a copy.”
“For whom?” Met again with silence. “Whom do you report to? Sergeant Chekoff?”
She looked at Wentworth as if for help. He shuffled uncomfortably, embarrassed for her. She picked up her handbag, made as if to leave. “I presume you won’t be wanting my services any longer.”
“Ms. Wu, you have committed a criminal offence. Close the door, Wentworth.” He stood against it with arms folded, feeling foolish. April gave him a look he’d never seen before, cold, as if measuring him for a karate kick to the groin.
Arthur read from the Criminal Code: “‘Anyone who wilfully attempts to obstruct, pervert, or defeat the course of justice is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.’ I can’t imagine you want to do penitentiary time, Ms. Wu.” The boss softened his tone, that’s how he does it, tough, then cool and confiding. “I suspect you’d rather come clean with us.”
She whirled to say something to him, thought better of it, sat again, and muttered something in Cantonese. “You will allow me to walk out of here if I…”
“If you’re truthful about what you’ve been up to. You can walk out of this office with a head start but I intend to raise the matter in court. Wentworth, make notes. Oh, first call the Registry and let them know we may be late.”
He connected with Kroop’s clerk, explained something had come up, something he couldn’t discuss. Which was that the firm had been infiltrated by an enemy agent. She’d been hired just before Christmas, after phoning to ask if there was an opening. Wentworth began to pace. Despite his exhaustion, he was thrilled, this was scandalous, heads will roll in the West Van cop shop, it could even abort the trial.
“Please settle down, Wentworth.”
“I’m not a police agent.” April drew a wallet from her bag, and a card from that. Ace Private Investigation Services, an address in Kowloon. “I’ve been with them only a few months. Before that I was a legal secretary. I was retained by Florenza’s parents to find out if Mr. Pomeroy knew anything incriminating about her.”
Arthur raised his eyebrows. “I should like proof of that.”
“There’s nothing in writing.”
“There’s always something. How do they pay you?”
“Cash in advance.”
“In thousand-dollar bills, I suppose.”
“They pay very handsomely.”
“How was your ticket from Hong Kong paid?”
“In U.S. dollars.”
“How do you deliver your reports, the documents you copy?”
“To a lawyer’s office.”
“Shawn Hamilton’s?”
“I believe so. I know it as Viglio, Hamilton, and Prescott.”
“Is anyone there privy to this?”
“I don’t know. I drop them off with the receptionist.” This was coming rapid-fire. Wentworth wished he had April’s shorthand skills.
“The LeGrands have all the relev
ant files?”
“Only as they relate to their daughter.”
“I take it you haven’t kept from them, as you did from us, the fact that Brian met with Florenza, presumably to get her side of the story.”
“They know that.”
“And they have Cudworth Brown’s entire statement. Such as it is.”
“Yes.” She was probably desperate to grab the next flight home.
“Well, it seems they haven’t got good value for their money, Ms. Wu.”
“It was not for want of trying, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Florenza’s parents still have no idea what she might say at the trial–is that what it comes down to?”
“She has refused to communicate with them.”
“Do you have any idea?”
“I have no more idea than you.”
He turned to Wentworth. “What about your last interview with Cud?”
Wentworth patted his briefcase. “I haven’t had a chance to dictate it.”
“Minimal damage. Please read Wentworth’s notes, Ms. Wu, clarify anything you need to, and initial each page. Then you may leave, but I can’t say this won’t come back to haunt you.” The process took several more minutes, and by now it was a quarter to ten. Nine-thirty on the dot, the chief had said.
Sure enough, Kroop was doing a slow burn when court finally convened at ten-fifteen. He flexed his fingers and scowled, took a bead on Arthur, a schoolmaster ready to administer five on each hand. “I take it you have something to say?”
“Regrettably, a matter of great urgency came up about which I intend to alert Crown counsel. In the meantime, milord, full speed ahead.”
Kroop was not expecting such a confident little speech and didn’t have a good counter. “It had better be good, Mr. Beauchamp.” Abigail and her crew were whispering, exchanging shrugs. The jury also seemed confused, and you could tell the press was thirsting for more. Cud was gaping, silently mouthing “matter of great urgency,” it looked like. All the way from the third row, Wentworth could feel his vibrations, dying to be in the loop.
Professor Chandra returned to the stand. Wentworth had almost forgotten about her. So had Arthur, who murmured, “I’m a blank.” He looked over Wentworth’s shoulder as he flipped through his notes.
“Ah, yes.” Arthur straightened, turned to the witness. “Yesterday, madam, you described seeing my client in conversation with the host.”
“As I walked to my car.”
“In low tones, you said, while enjoying a cigar. This was hardly an excited or passionate conversation?”
“No.”
“They could have been talking about the price of tea in China.”
“I suppose.”
“It would be quite uncivil, wouldn’t it, for the host not to pass time with his remaining guest and wish him a good night?”
“I wasn’t suggesting there was anything sinister about it.”
“Of course not. Now let’s go back to your dinner conversations with Judge Whynet-Moir.”
“I trust we’ll not get into a lot of hearsay here,” Kroop said.
Arthur studied the wall clock. “Shall I proceed?”
“Yes, move it along.”
“Thank you. What did you and the judge talk about?”
“Well, politics.”
“Help us out. Politics in what sense?”
“The shakeup in the federal cabinet.” Chandra reflected. “He asked my opinion of the new justice minister. His predecessor, Jack Boynton, had died recently; we talked about that.” A sharp look at Arthur, a sly smile. “Had we known your wife would be running to replace him, we might have talked about that too.”
A whispered buzz from the back. Arthur smiled broadly. “Indeed she is, and putting on a vigorous campaign, I think you’ll agree.”
“Tuesday will tell the tale.”
“A day that will not come too soon for me.”
That brought chuckles, but not from Kroop, who looked impatient.
“I take it you knew Jack Boynton, Ms. Chandra?”
“I’d met him several times, interviewed him.”
“And did Whynet-Moir know him?”
“Mr. Justice Whynet-Moir,” said Kroop.
“Did Mr. Justice Whynet-Moir mention that he had an old association with the minister?”
“There we are, hearsay.”
“Milord, if you intend to make your plane to Ottawa, fewer interruptions will help speed you on your way. This is not hearsay, it is part of the res gestae, as are all the deceased’s conversations that night.”
The chief could barely still his fury. “What do you say about this?” he asked Abigail.
“I tend to agree with my learned friend.”
The judge went redder still, embarrassed now, you could hear the clacking of his false teeth. “Continue.” He barely got the word out.
Arthur went on amiably. “Thank you. Did the deceased indicate he knew Jack Boynton?”
“As I recall, Justice Whynet-Moir worked for a while in the nineties as Jack’s parliamentary aide, before he entered cabinet.”
“Ah, close friends.”
“Presumably.”
“And did he have anything further to say about the late minister?”
“Oh, a story or two about his addiction to junk food. Couldn’t pass by a hot dog stand without stopping. He said, ‘Good old Jack,’ laughed, and then said he’d rather discuss my book.”
“Changed the subject, did he?”
“I suppose, yes.”
The press table was busy. It wasn’t that Chandra looked smug or anything, but Wentworth had the sense she was sneakily pleased, she’ll be in the news, it won’t hurt book sales.
“So how long did Whynet-Moir work in Boynton’s parliamentary office?”
“Barely a year and a half, then he returned to his Vancouver practice. I believe he had enough of Ottawa.”
“I don’t blame him.”
The boss was playing to the crowd, getting his laughs. Cud was finally looking more relaxed, here was the grizzled gunfighter in action, taking on the Cattleman’s Association.
“Counsel, I beg your indulgence–where is this going?”
“I’m as eager to find out as you, milord. No more questions.”
Wentworth turned to see a tall, lanky, and dour gentleman, dressed like a banker, approach the counsel bench with a burglar’s soft walk: Silent Shawn Hamilton, here on a watching brief for Flo LeGrand. Or maybe for her parents. Wentworth found it hard to believe such an experienced lawyer would have hired April Wu as a spy; he’d be in serious breach of ethics.
“Call Lynn Tinkerson.”
She walked in, an older woman, smallish and trim in a pant suit, no decorations, little makeup. An important novelist, Cud had called her. Wentworth had looked her up: her novels were mostly about heroines in emotional crises. “A keen observer of human foibles,” said one critic on the Web. “Strips bare all pretension, leaving her characters naked and shivering in the cold glare of authorial appraisal.” Prompting recall of an embarrassing checkup Wentworth had for a groin itch several years ago.
Tinkerson had a direct manner on the stand. “I went up to Mr. Brown, introduced myself, and we had a brief chat. He asked me which of my books I’d recommend that he read. I suggested he’d find The Fishmonger’s Daughter the most accessible. I congratulated him on his shortlisting for the Governor General’s, and he said it gave him the courage to go on. He said it was a hard life being a professional poet, and that he had to play all the angles.”
“Any further discussion?”
“I asked him where he was staying, and he said, ‘I’m bunking right here; they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’”
Wentworth was relieved that finally came out, the jury may have thought Cud stayed on as an unwelcome guest. The keen observer of human foibles wasn’t much help with the all the petting and footsying under the table, though she noticed Cud and Flo were relating “in a very cordial manner.”
/> Whynet-Moir was engaging and affable, and complimentary about her writing. “He’d bought several of my books and said he was ‘delightedly speeding through them.’”
Arthur took his turn. “While you were at the table, madam, with the unstoppably affable host, did you note that his attention was often drawn to his wife?”
“Occasionally.”
“No slippage in his engaging manner when he did so?”
“What do you mean?”
“No frowns of discontent?”
A long pause. “Perhaps once.”
“Did you not get the impression, Ms. Tinkerson, that the hostess was making other offers to Mr. Brown that he couldn’t refuse?”
“You needn’t answer that question,” Kroop said.
“Then I have no more.”
At the morning break, Arthur drew up a chair beside Abigail, and they began an intense conversation. Wentworth assumed it was about April Wu, but didn’t feel invited to attend. Another smile from Haley as she left the room. She was pretty, sexy in a plump sort of way. It looked like those freckles extended down her bosom.
Again he studied his cross-examination notes. Three hours’ sleep, he had to suck it up, this could be his breakthrough, his chance to find favour with Arthur, who’d been standoffish. Not unfriendly. Sort of indifferent. Cud was on his feet, staring at Arthur, waiting to be noticed. Finally he tamped out a cigarette and walked out with it dangling unlit from his lips.
Haley led in Sergeant Chekoff, an iron-pumper if those chest muscles meant anything, a square head with worry lines. He joined the huddle, and as he got filled in, he looked shocked, and put his hand to his heart as if swearing to the truth. Wentworth didn’t think it was a put-on act.
The boss was beckoning Wentworth…no, Shawn Hamilton behind him, who got up and conferred with Abigail. She retreated with her cellphone. Wentworth couldn’t stand it any longer. He joined the scrum, Arthur and Shawn and Chekoff and Haley.
Kill All the Judges Page 21
