She concludes: “Just in case Angella did keep Nick’s discharge in her sperm bank, we should ask Dr. Sidhoo to have another look at the sample. I’ll call tonight and we’ll kick it through.”
Maybe computers have their uses after all–Arthur had almost given up on that theory. The Case of the Loosely Fitted Condom. Or it may have broken, as Lotis suggested. Probably a dead end. Arthur prefers the looter-in-the-trash idea.
Here’s a final message, from one Richard Stiffe. Does Arthur know a Richard Stiffe? He reads with alarm: “Your credit card will be billed at $22.95 weekly. A free CD three-pack of Sultry Sexteens is shipping to your billing address. Please confirm…”
A hideous case of mistaken identity? Was this intended for a different, shameless Beauchamp? He is halfway across the room to summon Doris when he stops, feeling foolish. Junk mail. It floods the computer-driven society. This is the brave new world.
That evening, he watches the news hour on Hubbell Meyerson’s wall-mounted, flat-screen television. The trial’s coverage leans to the lurid, quoting Arthur’s lines: “floating bordello,” “the cozy arrangement” between hooker and cop. Viewers may get the false impression Arthur came out unscathed.
Lotis phones to say Dr. Sidhoo has actually found a trace of an unknown third person in the semen sample, and will try to build a DNA profile. Ruth Delvechio? Someone else with whom Eve may have been intimate? Or Adeline Angella? The tissues Brian pocketed during her crying jag will provide a control sample.
Arthur has only a scant knowledge of microbiology, and can’t imagine how an analyst might find a sprinkling of vaginal cells in a bit of swab. But he supposes there may be tens of thousands of the little beasties there. Lotis has assured him an expert can build a profile from the most minute specimens.
“Hey, according to the news, you shot out the lights today.”
Not.
25
Exhaustion imprisons Arthur in his bed until half past seven–he’s rising later each day, adjusting to the rhythm of the city. He squints at the pen drawings, a man’s head buried between a woman’s splayed legs, then rolls awkwardly from bed.
Bagels, tea, and morning paper. He refuses to read about his disaster in Court 67. Gwendolyn is buried in the middle pages, six more arrests. Trial dates for the protestors are clogging the court calendars. The authorities are fast running out of leg bracelets for their electric monitoring program. Something is going to have to give.
As spied upon last week through powerful binoculars, Margaret looked thin, wasted, ragged. His badgering note about her physical and emotional health, her state of comfort and cleanliness, got this airmail response: Arthur, you must stop worrying about me. I’m better off than hundreds of millions of women on this planet. She’s keeping in shape, she’s equipped, harnessed, she’s been in the canopy, it’s exhilarating.
He’s too late for his morning safari to Lord Stanley’s park, but has time to stride briskly to the Law Courts through the dense checkerboard of the West End. The day of summer solstice blooms warm under filaments of fading mist, a day when he ought to be picking asparagus, not enduring the bitter harvest of the courtroom.
A news camera follows him up the courthouse steps. He smiles, waves, assumes a guise of confidence.
Before court sits, Buddy, his manifest of witnesses already in disarray, announces another schedule change. “The pathologist asked if I’d move her ahead. Not, I said, I have some heavy-hitters due up. But it turns out she’s got a trial conflict. So I guess we’ll have to get to the good folks from Kansas when we get to them.”
This procrastination argues something has gone askew. Yesterday these good folks were costing a freaking fortune, now they’ll bide their time.
Dr. Rosa Sanchez has added grey to her hair since Arthur last met her. A senior forensic pathologist, competent and casual, she lacks the stiff mannerism of many professional witnesses. She’s helpful to juries, translating medical jargon into recognizable English.
Buddy Svabo rushes her through the autopsy, as if finding it morbid or tasteless, then asks her opinion on the cause of death.
“Asphyxia due to occlusion of the trachea. In simple terms, her airway was blocked and she expired for lack of oxygen.”
The indicia included heart congestion and cyanosis: blue discolouring of the lips, which were also marked by slight contusions. Not severe enough to be caused by a blow to the mouth, nor bearing any relation to the chipped front tooth. Both wrists had minor abrasions, as if pressure had been applied. No other soft tissue injury other than light bruising around the lower abdomen.
“Given that her blood alcohol reading was .04 at the time of death and that she’d been consuming wine, what conclusions do you draw?”
“That reading would be consistent with her having had three or four glasses of wine within the previous two hours.”
“But on top of that, we have…” Buddy struggles with a word from her report. “Flunitrazepam…I’ll use the trade name, Rohypnol. Tell us about that.”
This potent sedative, she explains, is on the banned list here but used in Europe and in Latin America, most often as a sleeping pill, but occasionally as an anaesthetic. Its use as a date-rape drug is widely known. It may cause impaired judgment and motor skills, short-term memory loss, blackouts, and even coma. “The intensity of effect depends on dosage, elapsed time after ingestion, and varies with the individual.”
“Okay, given that this drug was found in Dr. Winters’s bloodstream, what can you tell us about how much she ingested?”
“That’s a hard one. Flunitrazepam metabolizes rapidly. We don’t know when she ingested it.”
“Okay, let’s say Mr. Stubb here–he’s about Dr. Winters’s height–let’s say he popped a couple of…what are they, a milligram each?”
“They come in one or two milligrams.”
“Will he black out if he takes, say, more than three milligrams?” Perhaps concerned that Buddy will pull out a packet of rochies and employ him as lab rat, Ears drops a half-chewed pencil and becomes comalike himself, a smiling upright cadaver.
Dr. Sanchez studies Ears for a moment. “Yes, he might. But the deceased may have been semi-conscious and putting up at least token resistance. The abrasions to the wrists and chipped tooth suggest that.”
“Excuse me.” Buddy huddles with his coach, Jasper Flynn, who sends in a new play. “Okay, the light bruising around the lower abdomen. Could she have received a blow to the stomach?”
“It is possible.”
“A blow that could have incapacitated her?” Buddy boldly demonstrates, a low, sweeping uppercut.
“At least temporarily.”
“Especially when her senses were already dulled by this powerful drug?”
“Yes.”
“And she could have been gasping, out of breath?”
“The resulting trauma could have been that severe, it is difficult to say.”
“And the bruising to the wrists, is that consistent with an assailant seizing and gripping them tightly?”
“Possibly but not likely. The bruising was solely on the interior aspect of her wrists, near her palms.”
“Well, let’s say she’s on her back, and he’s straddling her, kneeling on her wrists, and she’s struggling to free herself.” Buddy illustrates with another visual graphic, turning again to his junior counsel with an apelike posture, knees bent. Ears makes himself small, fearing he will be called upon to play the role of Eve Winters. “And her horrible nightmare ends when he stuffs the panties down her throat.”
Making objection to these dramatics would only signal Arthur’s concern and give this theory added stress. Martin Samples is awed by Buddy’s shtick, a coup de théâtre transcending anything seen on film. However clownish and gruesome, the mime will indelibly remain with the jury: a credible reason why Winters, already woozy with Rohypnol, was unable to resist, to push or scratch or flail or kick. It explains the lack of defensive wounds, of fingernail scrapings, of blood stains, o
f hair pulled out by the roots.
Could Adeline Angella have delivered such an incapacitating blow to the solar plexus? A picture of this uptight, tidy woman performing with such violence refuses to take on definition. The chipped tooth bothers Arthur. It’s as if she had bitten not a finger but something hard, metallic.
In cross-examination, Arthur stresses the minimal nature of the injuries. Dr. Sanchez agrees they could have been sustained on the trail, from slips and falls on roots and creekbed rocks.
“No trauma to the vaginal area?”
“No, there wasn’t.”
“In fact there was no bruising anywhere on her body that might normally be associated with a violent sexual assault, isn’t that so?” The point is vital to his case that Eve Winters wasn’t raped.
“I would agree, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Thank you.”
Kroop, sensing a possible hole in the Crown’s case, moves to plug it: “Clarify for me, doctor–would you expect bruising to the deceased’s private parts if, during copulation, she was beyond all mortal capacity to resist her assailant?”
Dr. Sanchez looks around as if for help. “I’m…sorry, my lord, I didn’t follow that very well.”
“If she were dead.”
Behind Arthur, someone sucks in air. Sanchez responds with a shrug. “With all the variables, I couldn’t say.”
A telling reminder of why judges ought to stay out of the fray. Some jurors look slightly irritated by his Lordship’s crude intervention. Martin Samples, however, enjoys this black moment, a barely hidden smile.
“May I be allowed to continue, milord?” Arthur’s faux politeness causes someone in the gallery to snort.
“Do so, and don’t make a major issue of it.” Kroop is hunched back, scowling at Arthur with his ferrite eyes, blaming him, as if he engineered the awkward moment.
Arthur establishes Rohypnol’s notoriety as a tool of sexual predators, and asks Dr. Sanchez if it can lead to death.
“Yes. Particularly when mixed with alcohol, Rohypnol may cause respiratory depression, aspiration, or even death.”
“And certainly coma.”
“Yes.”
“And there is no way to be certain that Dr. Winters was conscious when she was asphyxiated.”
“I can’t dispute that.”
“It’s a uniquely powerful sleeping pill?”
“Yes, used mainly for sleep disorders.”
“Such as?”
“Insomnia, recurrent sleepwalking.”
The one question too many. You’re not supposed to ask. Arthur spins out his examination for a few minutes in an effort to bury the last answer, then packs it in. Nick Faloon wasn’t using medication for sleepwalking…Or was he? Did anyone bother to ask him?
Still avoiding the Topekans, Buddy brings in Constable Beasely, Flynn’s sidekick. He adds little but an echo of evidence heard. Beasely at the Breakers Inn, Beasely at the crime scene, Beasely at the Nitinat Lodge. Beasely finding nothing. Certainly no Rohypnol.
After Buddy’s store of questions is exhausted, he looks pleadingly at Arthur to take up the slack with cross-examination. “No questions,” Arthur says.
Buddy must clear his throat before addressing the judge. “I’m afraid that’s all I have for this morning.”
“Mr. Svabo, are you saying you have run out of witnesses?”
“At this point in time.”
“Mr. Prosecutor, at this point in time we are about to take the morning break. When we return in fifteen minutes I expect the stand to be occupied by a person prepared to give relevant testimony.”
He leaves, shaking his head. Kroop detests incompetence, abhors clumsy prosecutions, and might be incited to start sniping at the Crown. Carpe diem.
While the prosecution joins in frantic, three-headed debate, Arthur slips out to crack open the door of the witness room. It’s full of Topekans.
Still buying time for some unstated reason, the Crown has dredged the holding cells in the bowels of the Law Courts, where Father Yvon Réchard has been awaiting his call to duty. This bald, lugubrious penitent lacks the collar, but has been permitted a black suit. He has a haunted expression–as if knowing he’s hellbound. Fallen, like myself, so far from grace. He takes the oath with the Bible in both hands.
Buddy lightly touches on Réchard’s sinning ways–the jury learns only that he’s awaiting sentence on morals offences. Ellen Sueda, who is Catholic and instructs grade fivers, is already looking at him coldly, perhaps guessing the worst. Jasper Flynn is bent over a pad, doodling, fretful about this unsavoury witness.
As Réchard recounts talking to Faloon about faith and philosophy, his lawyer makes clamorous entry, still knotting his tie, face muscles bunched with indignation. Howie Solyshn, known as the Dealmaker, a large, loud, and windy rascal. He steams past the bar of the court, roaring at Réchard. “Don’t say another word!” The witness recoils.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Solyshn?” Kroop’s eyes have sunk into their sockets.
“I represent Father Réchard, who I was assured was not on today’s witness list.”
“You have no standing at this trial.”
“I have every right to advise my client about self-incrimination.”
“You would interrupt the proceedings of this court and have the jury twiddling their thumbs while you finally instruct a client who has been ten weeks under subpoena. Ample opportunity, Mr. Solyshn.”
“I’m making a motion to adjourn.”
“I cannot hear your motion. I cannot hear you.” With each syllable, Kroop’s voice rises. “You do not have standing. So sit down!” A screech.
Resigned to his fate, the rambunctious Dealmaker plumps down on the bench behind Arthur.
Buddy must now go into bullying mode with Réchard, who’s been so cowed that his voice has dropped, his words less intelligible, his French accent more pronounced. Haltingly, he tells of finding Faloon in a pensive mood one day, inviting him to unburden himself, then taking confession several hours later. Réchard glances at Arthur, at Solyshn, a silent plea for mercy.
Arthur has a perfectly valid explanation for Faloon’s words: She was beautiful, I just couldn’t help myself. He was sleepwalking, sleeptalking, his unconscious mind on his guilty night with Holly Hoover. But Arthur won’t rely on that. More profit lies elsewhere.
To Buddy’s final question, Réchard repeats a phrase from his statement: “I felt it was my duty to come forward.”
A tap on Arthur’s shoulder, the smell of Solyshn’s salty breath. “Help me here, pal, ask for a recess.”
Arthur stares him back into his seat, rises to face Réchard. Shallow breathing. A repeated grimace, like a tic. Staring at his hands.
“You felt it your duty to come forward. Pity you didn’t feel such a citizen’s duty about your own crimes. Look at me!” Réchard does so with difficulty. Arthur snaps his suspenders. “Witness, one of the reasons you’re in jail is that eighteen years ago you sodomized an eleven-year-old boy who was in your care.”
“That’s one of the…yes.”
“This occurred at a Native school where, among other subjects, you taught religion. The words of Jesus Christ.”
“Yes.”
“As well, you’re charged with forcibly using a nine-year-old the following year.”
“I face that charge too, yes.”
“You’re guilty of it.”
“Yes. I am. Yes.”
In this manner, occasionally seeking elaboration, Arthur takes him through each of his seven counts. Still sour at the priest’s presumptuous lawyer, Kroop lets Arthur run unleashed. Jurors are looking askance at the witness. The press is busy, but the gallery still. Neither Buddy, the pencil beaver, or the doodler dares look up.
“And you pleaded guilty to these seven charges?”
“I did.”
“There was a plea bargain? The Crown dropped another eight charges?”
“I would not say a bargain…Okay, yes.” This after a furtive lo
ok at his lawyer.
“When did you enter these guilty pleas?”
“I think maybe late in March.”
“Three months ago. Some in this room may be wondering why it’s taken so long to get you properly put away.” A low rumble of assent from the public area. “If you perform for the Crown here today in Court 67, you’ll earn a recommendation of leniency. Am I not correct?” His voice has been rising.
He doesn’t catch Réchard’s full response, only the words, “He told me to…”
“With the coin of perjured testimony, you expect to buy early freedom from your crimes against innocent children, is that not the deal?”
Arthur is building to a crescendo, but already there’s surprising impact: the witness has turned white, is rising from his chair. He extends a shaky arm, points to the Dealmaker. “He told me to do it.” Réchard looks pleadingly at Arthur, at Kroop, like a friendless begging dog. “I didn’t want to.”
“Hold on there, partner.” Howie Solyshn is back on his feet, fingers of both hands curled tightly, as if around a neck.
“Mr. Sheriff, please escort Mr. Solyshn from this courtroom.”
Solyshn glares at the judge, waves off Barney Willit, and strides angrily away.
“You made me do it,” the ex-priest calls.
“No more questions.” One of the great skills of cross-examination is knowing when to stop.
“Take him away,” says Kroop. He has the politeness to wait until Réchard is removed before saying, “Disgusting, Mr. Svabo. Disgusting.”
Arthur feels much recovered from yesterday’s debacle. The jury must be wondering why Buddy would be so desperate as to call that fellow.
Buddy is fixed on the clock, as if willing the hands to move. Kroop has his pencil poised, ready to fill more pages of his journal. “Mr. Svabo, please get on with your case, we have twenty minutes of precious time left.”
“I thought Mr. Beauchamp would take up the rest of the morning.”
“Well, he didn’t, did he? May I be so bold as to ask why you keep running out of witnesses?”
April Fool Page 29
