“He was upright?”
“Yes, as if craning to see someone or something. He didn’t look all that steady, and I was worried for him.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then a man came…almost out of nowhere, running along the deck, and as he reached Rafael, he just gave him a shove, with both hands, like this…” She pushed her hands forward and slightly upward, forcefully. “It sent him right off the chair and…oh, it was horrible, I’m sorry…”
“Shall we take a break, Miss Leich?” Kroop said.
A tissue to her eyes, a brave smile, a sip of water. “No, I’ll be fine. It’s, well, I’ve had nightmares, but I was told this could be…an appropriate way to purge them.”
Told by a therapist? Arthur stood to lose, not gain, if he made an issue of that. He ought not to whale away at this entirely too bright and engaging witness. After she identifies Cud Brown, as assuredly she will, he must beg the jury to believe she made an honest mistake.
With the pained look of one forcing down bitter medicine, Leich composed a graphic scene of Raffy spilling headfirst over the railing, a strangled, phlegm-thick wail, a sickening thud. When she went silent, Arthur could almost hear the slapping of the waves on those bloodied rocks.
“I think you’re over the worst of it, Ms. Leich,” Abigail said, solicitous but obviously pleased, entertaining thoughts of pulling it off, a surprise win for the Crown. “And what about the attacker? What did he do?”
“Well, he stumbled against the railing and knocked the chair over. But he steadied himself, and he didn’t look over the railing, didn’t look down there, and…he ran to the staircase and down to the pool area. I called the police.”
“Describe the attacker.”
“Well, I would say he was the same man I saw earlier. Whom Rafael addressed as Cudworth.”
“Thank you, but describe his appearance.”
“Well, same build, hair, blue jeans…I couldn’t see their colour, to be honest, but they looked like the same pants, the shirt too, the shirttail was out. When he hurried off, he passed right under one of the night lights, and I could make out his face. It was the same person. His suspenders had come loose, they were just dangling there, and he was holding up his pants as he went down the stairs.”
Intimate detailing that added telling verisimilitude. Arthur shook his head, as if to clear it. Why was he buying all of this so readily? He was lapping from her cat dish, nearly as captivated as Wilbur Kroop. She may have rehearsed this disarming manner, spent hours, days, weeks in front of the mirror. A final turn under the spotlights for her last great role, witness for the prosecution.
“I am looking at the clock, Madam Prosecutor.” It was well past the afternoon break.
“Almost done, my lord. Ms. Leich, I would now ask you to look about the courtroom and tell us if you can see the man who propelled Mr. Justice Rafael Whynet-Moir to his death.” Spoken with brio, Abigail feeling her oats.
Leich looked first at the prisoner’s dock, as if expecting the accused to materialize there. She next checked out the defence table, quickly rejecting Wentworth as a possibility. She studied the dozen barristers in front of the bar, and fixed for a long moment on Silent Shawn Hamilton–so long that Shawn shifted uneasily. She looked at the jurors, as if half-expecting the culprit to have been set among them. Then the press table. Loobie bowed his head, scribbled a note, looking splendidly guilty.
“Ms. Leich, are you wearing your contacts?” Abigail was showing impatience.
“Yes. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to look.”
“The whole courtroom.”
“Oh, I see.” She began scanning it, front to back. A telltale squint.
“Madam, please feel free to step down from the witness stand and move about the courtroom.” Kroop gallantly spreading a cloak over the puddle of her confusion. “You may simply point to the man you have described.”
Leich stepped from the witness stand, hesitant, as if she’d been tossed a last-minute script, an unrehearsed scene. She again looked at Silent Shawn, and Arthur saw a likely reason why: his jacket was askew, a few inches of a blue suspender showing.
Leich went about her tour slowly and with great deliberation, aisle by aisle, row by row, face by face, ignoring women–except one husky lass keeping her pants up with wide brown braces.
All the men, even the aged, short, and overweight, earned a few moments of scrutiny, occasionally longer, seven or eight seconds for Dalgleish Ebbe. No braces showing, his suit buttoned tight.
The room was as silent as interstellar space. And then, ominously, a smothered hiccup at Arthur’s ear.
“Your pipe,” came Wentworth’s muffled plaint. “Must be in your pocket.” His face taut, his eyes bulging with the effort to stifle the next one.
Arthur whispered: “Get them under control or you’re fired.”
Wentworth’s face began to turn purple as Arthur redirected his attention to Leich, who had progressed to the third last row, Cud’s row. Arthur’s view was from an awkward angle but he was careful not to stand–that might tell Leich she was getting warm.
People shifted to give Leich room as she worked slowly past them and finally confronted Cud. He boldly met her gaze, expressionless. She tarried, stared, a breathless time.
Arthur worried that Wentworth might explode, though he emitted not a peep. But there came a sound from the gallery, a whimper, Felicity Jones daubing her eyes with a handkerchief. Arthur fought to suppress fury, this silly girl had signalled that Leich was not just getting warm but hot. But she didn’t look Felicity’s way, stayed with Cud. A slight nod of affirmation, as if she’d decided to tuck that one away.
Her pace accelerated down the penultimate row, mostly young Cuddites, no one qualifying for the medal round. In the final row, she stopped short on seeing Hank Chekoff, a kind of doubletake. The apparent message: Where have I seen this man before? “Oh, you!” she said, as she recognized the detective who, for the last four months, had been all but living with her.
Pomeroy was to Chekoff’s right, playing along, it would seem, being sensible and not acting out some wild paranoid delusion. But instead of meeting Leich’s eye, he was looking straight ahead. At Arthur, in fact. Looking at him with his trademark sardonic smile. He was letting Arthur know this was his book, his plot.
The witness stepped in front of Pomeroy, hampering Arthur’s view, but he could see April taking in the silent byplay, and was startled to see her go wide-eyed as Leich turned to the bench and said, “This is the man.”
Pomeroy’s smile had evaporated somewhere along the line, and he seemed in some kind of trance, mesmerized by the index finger pointing at him, with its manicured red nail.
Several silent seconds followed. April put a hand to her mouth, hiding a smile, a gesture that triggered a solution for Arthur that came with lovely clarity. Leich had assumed Chekoff had purposefully put himself next to the accused, to guard him perhaps, to prevent escape–or simply as a signal to pick the fellow on his right.
Though Brian had cleaned up his appearance, shaved off his moustache, he must have been imprinted in her memory from when she’d spied upon his extraordinary foray to Château LeGrand. A remake of an earlier scene, the same setting but in daylight, without a climactic death.
Abigail looked woebegone. “You are pointing to the man in the blue suit beside Sergeant Chekoff?”
“Yes, that’s him.” Confidently said, but she must have twigged from the tension in the room that something was amiss.
From behind Arthur, an undefined rumbling that resolved into the shape of words. “For the record…” Kroop cleared his throat. “For the record, the witness has identified Mr. Brian Pomeroy, a barrister known to this court…” His voice slowly rose to a terrible roar. “And who shouldn’t have been here in the first place!” Kroop slammed his desk book shut. “We’ll take the break!”
ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE
A traffic jam, reporters, and other smokers forming a flyi
ng wedge at the door, pushing past the health nuts, everyone on their feet but Wentworth. He tried to boost himself up, but his knees weren’t obeying. He twisted around, saw another frozen, seated figure, Hank Chekoff, alone, deserted, no colleagues to comfort a brother with his head on the block.
Pomeroy had been among the first wave out the door, April sailing along behind him, clutching his arm. Cudworth wasn’t far behind. Arthur wandered out, the remaining spectators opening a path for him, some of them bowing, like vassals of the king.
Get them under control or you’re fired. Somehow, this low, ferocious command had jolted Wentworth’s breathing apparatus, forcing open his recalcitrant glottis. He couldn’t remember a more fearsome threat since his mom dragged him to church and the pastor damned masturbators to suffer the eternal fires of hell. As a weird fallout he felt cured of his malady. He should go out with the smokers and test that thesis.
The prosecutors were sheltering Astrid Leich, who looked distraught, apologizing or explaining herself. Wentworth felt badly for her, she’d been upfront, self-effacing. She’d almost settled on Cud before happening on Pomeroy, who’d been sitting wrist to wrist with Chekoff, as if cuffed. Shifty-eyed, not meeting her gaze.
Haley sauntered over with fake nonchalance. “She wants to say she made a mistake.”
“It’s obvious she made a mistake. Why does she have to say it?”
“She’d like a second chance.”
“Mr. Beauchamp won’t let himself be sandbagged like that, not in a blue moon.”
“Abigail just wanted to know.”
He excused himself, ran off to warn the boss about this attempt to plug the dike. In the great hall, he met Cud Brown parading about with Felicity, playing the vindicated martyr to the two dozen satellites swept up in his orbit. “Who do we sue, Woodward? The cops, the Attorney General, the provincial government? Seven figures, pal, we’re not going lower.”
April was looking out the glass door, keeping an eye on Pomeroy, who had two cigarettes going, one in each hand. The boss was with him, listening patiently to a harangue.
“April, who the heck are you working for?”
“Brian has rehired me.”
“Brian isn’t doing any hiring. Brian is delusional. Have you told him who you really are?”
“A retired and hopelessly inadequate private detective. I am applying for immigrant status and have secured a work permit.” As the door slid open, she touched his arm. “By the way, Wentworth, I’m not homosexual. That was a cover. Can that be our secret?”
Wentworth almost tripped as he wrong-footed his way outside. Brian, butting one of his cigarettes, raised his arm to steady him, talking all the while. “It’s not supposed to end this way, Arthur. My readers will feel cheated. What have we got? An attention whore whose comeback bombed.”
The still air was dense with smoke. No hint of a hiccup. A miracle.
“Arthur doesn’t get it, Wentworth, he doesn’t know the genre. We’ve left out the twist that comes out of nowhere. Just before the end.”
“Good point, Brian. Arthur, I’ve got to talk to you about some shenanigans they’re trying to pull.”
He pulled him away, looked back at April and her crafty smile. What was her game? What was she trying to get out of him?
Arthur puffed his pipe as Wentworth griped that Leich had been coached into doing a repairs. The boss nodded, blew a perfect smoke ring. “Well, poor Abigail has a job to do. To be fair to her, she has let me run amok. A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi.”
“Meaning?”
“She’s between a rock and a hard place. Literally, a precipice in front, wolves behind. She can’t be seen to roll over completely, Wentworth, we can’t deny her a bit of patch work. In any event, our moonstruck chief justice will be unmoved by a plea that Ms. Leich not be shown the lineup photo, and there’s ample law to support him in that.”
“You’re not even going to object?”
“Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit.”
Wentworth gave him another blank look.
“A wise man does not urinate against the wind.”
Leich seemed embarrassed on resuming the stand, couldn’t look at Kroop, even though he was doggy-eyed with sympathy. But she turned on a stiff-upper-lip smile while the lineup photo was circulated to the jury. She didn’t study hers for long. “Number six. I made a mistake earlier.”
“And do you see that man in the courtroom?”
She was explicit: third row from the back, eighth seat to the left, in the brown cardigan with leather elbow patches.
“For the record,” said Abigail, “identifying the accused.”
“No more questions.”
Leich heaved herself up with great relief and left the box. She looked like she was about to make a complete getaway until Kroop hesitantly called her back. “I’m sorry, madam, but there is the little matter of cross-examination.” He was looking darkly at Arthur, sending a message that he’d better go easy on her or else.
Arthur slowly rose, and all through the room you could feel the tension rising with him. This was going to be the cross-examination of a lifetime.
“I have no questions.”
Wentworth pedalled the long way around, looping by the southern belly of the West End, taking time to ponder why Arthur hadn’t cross-examined, a letdown, like air hissing from a balloon. The boss hadn’t wanted Leich to embellish her revised version. But choosing not to object to the lineup photo–couldn’t that boomerang?
And then there was the weird thing with the chief justice, how he mooned over Astrid Leich, thanked her with even more applesauce than usual–she’d bravely come forward, she’d done her best under stressful circumstances. Wentworth, who hadn’t got over his mauling by the chief, wanted to throw up.
Leich had stuck around a while in the gallery, but couldn’t have been too impressed with her admirer, watching him tussle with the boss. Kroop insisted on recessing halfway through the afternoon and starting fresh on Saturday with Flo LeGrand. That made Arthur livid; he’d made urgent plans for Saturday. His best line: “May I congratulate Your Lordship for having been cured of your obsession with running this trial as if it were the Olympic hundred-metre dash.”
“This court is adjourned,” said the chief.
“He wants to rush me, wants me ill-prepared,” Arthur had complained as they left the courts. “He correctly has assumed I’d planned to be with Margaret for her debate tomorrow. Damn him to hell. When is his turn?”
For what? His turn to die? Arthur didn’t expand, though he did explain why he’d been called away to Garibaldi. Then he went off to the quiet of his club to prepare for Florenza LeGrand.
His bike secured, Wentworth took a moment to read the notice on the door of the former Gastown Riot. “God Loves You. Welcome to the Leap of Faith Prayer Centre.” Opening this weekend, that was fast. “Rev up your spirits with Pastor Blythe at our grand opening on the coming Lord’s Day.”
Wentworth tried to look on the bright side. At least these guys won’t drive everybody nuts with amplified heavy metal. The broken window had been replaced. A couple of people hanging bunting on walls, setting up chairs. One of them spotted him, opened the door. “Are you sick, brother?”
“No, I’m fine, I bicycle every day.”
He fled to the elevator. Upstairs, at the front desk, April Fan Wu was filling in for the receptionist, who’d gone on stress leave. A group of Ruby Morgan’s backers, his financial team, were waiting for Brovak, valises at their feet. Wentworth recognized all but one, a pink, shiny, bumlike face, a neatly trimmed beard, a suit of the latest cut. Maybe he was security, the guy with the gun.
April rattled him with her sultry look, a pucker of smiling lips. He didn’t have a clue why she seemed to be hustling him. There was nothing she could get from him. The lesbian thing had been a cover, okay, but why was that “our secret?’” Maybe she didn’t want the Animal to know she was straight. Or that other womanizer, Pomeroy.
He bent
toward her. “What did you do with Brian?” As she slipped off her headset he smelled something nice, like apple blossoms.
“I took him to his psychiatrist’s office. I expect she drove him to his treatment centre.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“We had a few private moments. She’s afraid he may be bottoming out. That may cause him to snap back to reality. Or he could go under.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Destroy himself. Apparently, writing is the only thing that keeps him from giving in to dangerous impulses. That is why I’m doing this.” She gestured at her monitor. “Brian’s manuscript. He’s been dictating it to disk.” Wentworth twisted around to read the line just transcribed: “It is time, dear reader, before we close our list, to meet our final suspect…” In his descent, Brian had turned to flowery prose–in the manner of that writer he favoured, Widgeon.
Brovak walked in, hung up his helmet and his Harley jacket, ignoring his clients. “Augustina checked in yet?”
“Ms. Sage is in her office,” April said.
“About fucking time. I’m exhausted from running this show alone.” Alone? Had Wentworth turned invisible?
Brovak looked over the several faces uplifted in inquiry. “Bail has been set, gentlemen. Five hundred kilos for Señor Morgan, smaller change for the peons. Please proceed to my office so we may discuss my own financial needs.”
He sent them down the hall with their valises, grinned at Wentworth, as if to say, This is how it’s done, kid. He gave April a head-shaking appraisal before following them. “What a waste.”
The bumface stayed in his chair, unsmiling, flipping through New Yorker cartoons. Wentworth said, “Excuse me, are you here to see someone?”
“I was hoping to catch Mr. Beauchamp.”
“He won’t be in today. Can I help?”
Kill All the Judges Page 31
