by Peggy Blair
The guard opened a door for him. Celia Jones sat alone in the room at a wooden table with two metal chairs. Her laptop was open and booted up. She was reading through a pile of documents as he walked in. She wore small square red-framed glasses, the type one could buy back home in any drugstore to magnify print. She’d pushed her brown hair behind her ears.
“Hello, Mike,” she said, and stood up. She removed her glasses with one hand and shook his hand with the other. “How are you holding up?”
“Honestly? I’ve been better.”
She sat back down, invited him to sit on the other chair. “I’ve been reading up on Cuban law, but I’ve only had time to skim through the police reports Inspector Ramirez gave me a few minutes ago.”
“O’Malley told me he would try to get you to come here. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see someone I know.”
“Yes, Miles called me right after he spoke to you. He told me to get my ass down here, actually.”
Ellis tried to smile and felt his mouth turn down. O’Malley wore his political incorrectness like a badge of honour.
“I have to tell you, Mike, I’m completely shocked by these charges. Are they treating you okay?”
“No one has beaten me or anything. But if they transfer me to a prison, I’m not sure how long I’ll last. And are we safe to talk about what happened? I saw someone from the embassy last night.” He leaned over and lowered his voice. “Completely useless. But he warned me that people could be listening.”
“Solicitor-client privilege,” she said, frowning. “We should be covered. It applies in Cuba, too.”
“Thank God.” Ellis exhaled. “So what exactly are my legal rights here, Celia? I keep hearing I don’t have any.” He whispered again: “The consular guy, Dunton, thought I might need to bribe someone to get out of this.”
Jones shook her head. “Mike, forget all that stuff, okay? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And you don’t want to go back to Canada with that kind of cloud over your head, believe me. But I have to admit, what I’ve read about Cuban law so far isn’t encouraging.” She pulled out some papers. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. It seems to be based mostly on the Soviet system. There are no individual protections, not in criminal matters, anyway.”
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms prevented unreasonable arrest, search, and seizure, and allowed suspects to remain silent, among other things. Once detained, a suspect had a clear, constitutional right to counsel; once accused, the right to a fair and impartial trial. Other procedural protections had been developed by the courts.
But Cuban law wasn’t remotely similar. The police could arrest almost anyone, even someone they merely considered “likely” to be dangerous in the future. “Pre-dangerous” charges, they were called. It reminded Ellis of the movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise was part of a futuristic police force that arrested people before they actually committed any crimes. Just for thinking about it.
“Castro has taken a very hardline position on sex crimes,” she explained. “He’s increased the penalties drastically, particularly where offences involve minors. If there are special circumstances, the rape of a child can be punished by firing squad. And if they charge you with murder, that’s almost automatic. But they haven’t done that, Mike, so let’s focus on the rape charge. After all, it’s the one we have to deal with.”
“Celia, I didn’t rape that boy. I’ve been charged for something I didn’t do.”
“Not formally charged yet, Mike. That’s what will happen if the indictment is issued tomorrow.” She glanced at her watch. “Let’s go over these police reports together, shall we?”
She translated parts from Spanish into English for him. The police evidence seemed overwhelming. It was an inquisitorial system. It was up to Ellis to rebut the facts, and the onus was on him to establish his innocence. The opposite of the Canadian criminal justice system.
“I think they’ll have problems getting an indictment on murder,” she commented, as if that was good news. “They don’t have a murder weapon. They don’t even know where the boy was killed. Their pathologist says the body was moved. Coroner, pathologist, lab technician, and everything else: it looks like all this forensic work was done by one expert.” She flipped open the report again. “A doctor. Hector Apiro.”
“We never had a car,” Ellis pointed out. “Hillary and I never rented one.”
“Inspector Ramirez has admitted as much. His theory is that you had an accomplice. We need to find evidence to support your alibi. And we need to show who might have framed you and why. It’s going to be tough,” she cautioned. “You understand, Mike, that even if the murder charge doesn’t proceed, the sexual assault of this child was accompanied by force. A court can’t — won’t — ignore the fact the child was killed a few hours later. If they convict you of this, the prosecutor is going to ask for the death penalty anyway.”
Ellis nodded. He knew the stakes.
“This really is a life-or-death situation. I need to know everything. Everything. Don’t hold anything back. I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to type while you speak. Start by telling me about the boy.”
“He was just a little kid who followed us around on Saturday. Begging for money. There are hundreds, thousands, of them here. Hillary wanted him to leave us alone; she said I shouldn’t give him anything. We had quite an argument about it. And then she told me she was leaving Cuba. Leaving me.”
But Jones wanted to know the details, so he went through what he remembered. The argument, how he ended up in El Bar, the near-fight with the British tourist. And then the woman.
“What happened in the bar, after the man who threatened this woman left? You were alone with her then, right?”
“Yes. But that’s where it gets blurry. I’m sure she walked me back to the hotel. I could have sworn she came inside, but Miguel, the doorman, says she wasn’t with me.”
“Forget what he says. Tell me what you remember.”
He thought back, grasped at shadows. “Someone held my arm to keep me upright when I got into the elevator. I thought it was Miguel. I couldn’t find my room key. I remember fumbling through my pants and shirt pockets before I realized I’d lost it somewhere.”
He’d had to get another one at the front counter where a disapproving receptionist frowned at his companion. “The woman, I remember her standing outside my hotel room door while I tried to put the key in. She was laughing at me because I was so clumsy. I couldn’t make the key work.”
She finally took the plastic card from him and slid it in the slot until the green light blinked. The door clicked open. He lurched into his room, took a few steps, and fell heavily on his back on the freshly made-up bed. The ceiling spun madly above him like a top. After that, he had just the smallest fleeting memory of sinking into the pillows and then nothing, not even blackness.
“Did you have sex with her, Mike?” Celia Jones asked.
“I don’t remember. I don’t even know if she came inside. Maybe. Probably. Is it important?”
“It could be,” Jones said. “They seized your sheets. If you did, there could be evidence on them that proves she was with you that night.”
“I don’t know,” Ellis shook his head. “I just have impressions of what happened, and they could be wrong. I know for sure that someone helped me walk into my hotel room. I could hardly stand up. I thought it was her. But the rest of the night — nothing. It’s like I was sleepwalking.”
“Well, her being with you may not help you either way, now that I think about it. She could be your alibi. Or she could be a possible accomplice, if you look at it the way the Cuban police are. Do you know if she had a car? Did she say?”
“I wouldn’t know. But I remember walking, not driving.” He concentrated, tried to clarify the cockeyed images of that night, images as skewed as the Crazy Kitchen at the Museum of Science and Technology back home. That was exactly what it felt like, he thought. As if the ceiling switched places
with the floor. He shook his head. “No, that’s all I remember.”
“Miguel Artez gave a statement saying you came back to the hotel alone.”
“He may be right. That’s what’s so confusing. Cuban women aren’t allowed in the hotels. Neither are Cuban men. They have security all over the place to keep locals out except the ones who work there. Big guys, with walkie-talkies. I’ve seen them tell women who hang around the park across the street to stay away from the front door.”
“So Cubans can’t come in even if they’re with a foreigner, as a guest?”
“No, it’s illegal. Like a lot of things here.”
Jones flipped through the pages of the file until she found Miguel Artez’s statement. “He says you came back to the hotel sometime before midnight, towards the end of his shift. Maybe eleven or eleven-thirty. But definitely before midnight. Does that sound right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Ellis said. “I heard car horns. Bells. That could make it closer to midnight. The celebrations come to a head at midnight here, like New Year’s Eve at home.”
Jones flipped through her notes. She changed the subject. “Had Artez ever seen Hillary with you?”
“Sure. Several times.”
“So he would have known this woman wasn’t your wife if he saw the two of together.” Jones shook her head, disappointed. “Maybe he’s just mistaken. Christmas Eve, busy night. He may have confused it with another night or confused you with someone else. But it means we have to find someone who saw that woman with you on Christmas Eve. Or find her somehow. The boy’s death, according to this report,” she tapped the autopsy report with her index finger, “happened sometime between ten and twelve, likely closer to midnight. The body was moved a few hours later. That fits the time frame when you say you were with her. If she confirms that, it gives you a viable alibi. Do you remember her name?”
He shook his head.
“Well, you think about it. Maybe something will come back to you.”
She tapped away on her keyboard for a few minutes, then looked up at him from the screen. Her reading glasses had slipped down on her nose. She took them off and placed them on the table.
“They have a pretty tight time limit to turn their case file over to the prosecution. It has to be filed by tomorrow afternoon at two or they have to let you go. But they also have pretty strong evidence, Mike. I need to know the truth. Did you have sex with that boy?”
“No.”
“You’re sure of that? Your statement to the police was equivocal, to say the least.”
“I don’t know what was going on in that interview. I couldn’t think straight. I agreed with just about everything they said to me.”
Ellis looked out the window. The blue sky over the brown metal turret pointed to a beautiful day, the palm trees swaying lightly in the breeze. A group of tourists stood in front of the iron fencing, taking photographs of each other, mugging for the camera. A policía ran over and admonished them. He saw him take their camera away and remove the film, then hand the camera back, still wagging his finger.
“Is there any chance you were drugged in that bar? Or later, at the hotel maybe, by that woman?”
“What are you thinking, Celia?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m really just thinking out loud. But let’s assume the woman you picked up actually picked you up and that she planned to drug you and steal your money from the beginning. I’m willing to start from the assumption that she was with you that night and that Miguel Artez is wrong.”
“What difference does it make?”
“It would explain a lot of things: the way you blacked out, your suggestibility during the interview the next day. It would account for the capsule the police found in your room. It might help us get your statement excluded as unreliable if you were still under the influence of a drug when they questioned you. It doesn’t explain away the other evidence, like the blood they found, or the stains. But at the moment, this mystery woman is the only person who had access to your room. I don’t think we can honestly suggest that one of the maids was involved in setting you up. More likely to be the woman from the bar, right?”
Ellis concurred. “Look, I can’t explain how that kid’s blood ended up on my clothing. He wasn’t bleeding when I saw him. Maybe the forensic guy just got it wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time a pathologist screwed up evidence.”
There were several notable cases of wrongful murder convictions in Canada where forensic evidence had turned out to be not just mistaken, but concocted.
“I agree. I think we have to approach this the way you eat an elephant: one bite at a time. Let’s start by breaking things down. You say you can’t remember much of what happened. Have you ever had an alcoholic blackout like this before? I need to eliminate everything else before I suggest to the police or the court that I think you were drugged.”
“This is all confidential, right?” Ellis asked.
“Like I said, solicitor-client privilege,” said Jones. “Chief O’Malley told me to help you. For the moment, that makes me your lawyer, not his. I won’t disclose anything you tell me without your consent. Agreed?”
Ellis nodded his assent.
“Good. Now, answer the question. Don’t make me nag.” She smiled, but she was deadly serious. “Blackouts?”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve been drinking pretty hard for months. Since Hillary lost the baby in June. I’ve had a few.”
“Enough to forget a whole night like this?”
“Parts of it.” He exhaled. There. One secret was out. The first step to recovery, he’d heard, was admitting he had a problem.
“As bad as this time?”
Ellis reflected back on what he remembered of the night. “Close, but nothing quite like this. It may sound silly, but it was almost like I was in a trance. Maybe she did drug me so she could steal my wallet. My safe was open the next morning and all the money in it was missing. I thought Hillary took it, but maybe the hooker did. But I don’t know how she would have gotten the combination to the hotel safe. We set it ourselves as soon as we got in.”
“She could have got it from you. That’s the whole point of a drug like Rohypnol, Mike. It makes people compliant; they do whatever they’re told. Women pose for pornographic pictures, have sex with complete strangers, then can’t remember anything about it. They act like zombies. You realize that if this woman drugged you, though, it raises a whole new set of problems. The police think you had an accomplice. It could have been her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She might have told you to rape and kill that boy, Mike. Maybe for a snuff film or hard-core child pornography, who knows? And it could be that you just don’t remember the details.”
THIRTY - THREE
Inspector Ramirez had thought about putting the female lawyer in the mirrored room, where he or Rodriguez Sanchez could watch her, but decided that might be too obvious. Instead, he posted an English-speaking guard outside the interview room to listen through the door.
The Canadian lawyer was smart, thought Ramirez, reflecting on their earlier meeting. She had, in only a few questions, exposed the only weaknesses in his case: the lack of a crime scene, weapon, transportation. He agreed with her analysis. He suspected, in fact, that Señor Ellis did have an accomplice. One with a car. One who might have killed the boy.
Not that it made any difference. Murder and conspiracy to commit murder carried the same penalties in Cuba. A death sentence was neither long, nor short: it was infinite.
Ramirez had pondered briefly whether to give Celia Jones copies of the police file but could see no harm in it. Hector Apiro’s work was solid; so were the interviews.
The lawyer, if she believed his evidence was sufficiently strong, could possibly persuade Señor Ellis to plead guilty and lead them to his co-conspirator. That would please the Ministry of the Interior: a quick resolution to a politically ugly situation. It would please Ramirez too; he wouldn’t have to explain to the prose
cutor that he still didn’t know exactly where the boy was killed or with what.
Celia Jones once again sat in Ramirez’s office. Ramirez put the CD in Sanchez’s laptop and hit “play.” The dead man stood behind him but fled when he saw the photographs.
“There are almost nine hundred images of children. Most are out of focus, but the content is unmistakable. None are of the dead child.” That made it worse somehow, the fact that so many other children had been violated brutally too.
They looked at the photos for a while together, until the lawyer said she’d seen enough. “Sadistic bastards.”
“Then perhaps you can understand why we are so cautious here about the internet. Castro wants to try to keep material like this out of Cuba.”
“I can understand the objective, Inspector. I’m not sure I even disagree with it. But the internet can be a highly useful source of information. More than just for distributing this kind of vile pornography.”
Ramirez nodded his head slowly. “Perhaps. But we are finding that more and more of these photographs are making their way into our country. It is a cause of great concern.” He sighed. Sanchez was busier all the time monitoring pornography on the internet. “Tell me, Señora Jones, would you like to see your client again before you leave?”
“I’m wondering if it might be possible to call him a bit later. I have some things I need to do at the hotel.”
Ramirez considered this for a moment. It was easier for him to eavesdrop on their phone conversations than their visits. “I don’t see why not, Señora Jones. You will need to call the cell guards first whenever you would like to speak to him, so that a guard can arrange to take Señor Ellis to a room with a telephone.”
“Thank you very much, Inspector. I appreciate all your help.” “Not at all.”
Ramirez escorted her to the stairs, told her to show herself out and to make sure she signed the log-out registry when she left.
Then he called in the guard to find out the details of what she and her client had discussed.
