Hearts of Stone

by Brad Smith

  Dunbar was there but Pulford wasn’t. Dunbar had called Carl the night before to see if he would be attending. He said he wanted to talk to him afterward. After the prisoners were led away, he and Carl walked the four blocks back to the station, where they sat in an empty room. Dunbar had stopped at his desk and picked up a file.

  ‘I want to go over your statement once more to make sure I have everything,’ Dunbar said. ‘Unfortunately, this is the part of the process where everything slows to a crawl. But I want to nail down everything you saw and everything you heard before we hand your statement over to the defense.’

  ‘When’s the preliminary?’ Carl asked.

  ‘A couple of months, maybe three,’ Dunbar said. ‘We have to deliver our case to the defense and give them time to go over it.’

  ‘What about bail?’

  ‘These guys aren’t making bail,’ Dunbar said. ‘I doubt they’ll even ask.’

  ‘And how long between the preliminary and the trial?’ Carl asked.

  Dunbar shook his head. ‘That’s the tough part. It will be a year at the very least. And it could be as long as two years.’

  ‘I expected that.’ Carl indicated the paperwork. ‘So what do you need?’

  Dunbar opened the file. ‘We need you to be rock solid on the stand during the preliminary. The memory can be a tricky thing, especially involving something as traumatic as what you went through. After a few months things can get foggy. So we’re going to go over everything again. I’ll print it out and give you a copy of the statement, the same copy we’ll be giving the defense. That way, whatever they throw at you on the stand, you’ll be ready.’

  ‘OK,’ Carl said.

  Dunbar led him through the night in question again, going slowly. Carl found that he recalled a couple of things he hadn’t before. The third man – Billy Taylor, they were calling him now – wore black sneakers that night. He also remembered that Murdock wore a ring; Carl had seen it when the man had been coming on to Stacy, running his hand up her leg. He remembered no details about it though, just that it was silver.

  He and Dunbar talked for over an hour. When they were finished Carl drove to the hospital. He told Frances about the new arrests and he also told her that she would have to be patient. There was a long road ahead of them.

  ‘At least they’re not out there anymore,’ he said.

  He drove home with that thought in his head. He needed something to hang on to in the coming months. He was feeling let down for some reason. Up until now all he had been able to think about was finding the three men. And while those men were now sitting in jail, they were getting three squares a day. Joking and laughing, playing cards, working out. While Frances remained unconscious and Stacy was just ashes.

  Carl was right when he told Frances to be patient but he needed to take his own advice. There was a difference, however, between patience and complacency. He couldn’t allow the passage of time to dull how he felt about the three men in custody. That was not about to change in twelve months or twenty-four, or however long it took.

  For now, all he could do was work. He wished that Frances would wake up. He wished she would come home, where she belonged. Carl could cook for her, help her to get her strength back. It wouldn’t take long. Once she came out of the coma, it would be a matter of a week or maybe two for her to recover. Then she would be back at work, precisely where she needed to be. Where the two of them needed to be.

  Maybe she’d be back in time for maple syrup season. The sugar shack was nearly finished. He’d found an evaporator for sale near Windsor and he called the man and told him he would take it, sight unseen. He planned to head there later in the week to pick it up. He needed to prod the insurance company again about the house. He wanted construction to begin. When Frances woke up she would need a place to live and Carl didn’t think she’d be overly thrilled about moving into the motorhome. Then again, she might be fine with it, as least temporarily. She was never all that interested in material things.

  When Carl got to the farm it was growing dark, too late to head back to the bush lot. Norah was gone for the day. He went into the motorhome and opened a beer. He needed to call Kate and give her an update but it was nearly midnight in Scotland. He’d call her in the morning. There was no reason for her to come home at this point, not with the trial being so far away. She could fly home then. Carl would like that, and so would Frances.

  He drank the beer and opened another. The worst times were when he had nothing to do. When his mind was otherwise occupied he could keep his thoughts at bay. On occasion his subconscious would suggest to him that in due time everything would be back to the way it was. But his waking mind knew better. He needed to leave behind the way it had been and look forward to the way it could be in the future.

  ‘The way it will be,’ he said, sitting in the dimly lit trailer, beer in hand and dark thoughts in his head.

  Dunbar was wrong when he predicted to Carl that there would be no request for a bail hearing. Pearce Walker insisted on a joint hearing for his two clients. There was no such request from Billy Taylor, who was being represented by a lawyer Dunbar had never heard of, a woman called Lafleur.

  At the time of the hearing, Walker had received partial discovery from the police. The hearing was set for a Wednesday morning at nine o’clock. Dunbar had promised Carl that he would keep him in the loop with whatever happened and he’d called a few days earlier to let him know. Carl was at the courthouse. Both Dunbar and Pulford were there, sitting in the front row, a few feet behind the prosecutor Mathews. The judge was the same man Carl had seen earlier, the older guy named O’Brien. Chino and Bug were shuffled in from the back room, both wearing blue jumpsuits from the detention center.

  There was a considerable media presence and it was obvious that Walker was aware of it. He made a long speech about the questionable nature of the charges and the sketchy evidence, as he described it. As he spoke he constantly turned away from the judge to address the reporters at the back of the courtroom.

  When he was finished the judge set bail at five million dollars apiece and left the room.

  Walker had no illusions about the hearing going in. He merely wanted to test the air around the case. When he came to trial he would do everything he could to get another judge in the chair. He didn’t want O’Brien anywhere near it. Before they took the prisoners back out to Clark County jail, he met with them in a duty counsel office on the second floor of the courtroom.

  ‘Five million, for fucksakes,’ Bug said when they came in.

  ‘Sit down,’ Walker told them.

  Bug, always compliant, did so. Chino remained on his feet. He wasn’t about to let the lawyer order him about. Walker was working for him, not the other way around. Apparently there had been considerable back and forth between Walker and Vanhizen and the farmer’s lawyer over the twenty-five grand. It had finally been paid, after a bunch of paperwork, and Walker had charged Chino an additional two grand for his role in it.

  Walker looked at the two men for a moment. ‘So – either one of you boys sitting on five million, or do we just let that slide?’

  ‘Funny man,’ Chino said.

  Walker smiled. ‘All right then. Looking forward to the preliminary. From what I’m seeing so far they have two things. One, Mr Murdock’s truck was parked a quarter mile from the farmhouse that night. That means nothing. Two, they have the eyewitness Burns. This guy’s got red flags all over him. I’m pretty sure I can take his story apart on the witness stand. Now there’s supposedly a second eyewitness, the woman who owned the house, one Frances Rourke. She was injured in the fire and apparently she’s still in the hospital. I heard a rumor that she’s unconscious. Whatever’s going on, there’s no statement from her in the discovery.’ He paused. ‘Keep in mind that I don’t have everything yet. But at this point, to put you two in the house that night, they have Burns and nothing else. Is that how it seems to you, gentlemen?’

  Bug looked at once to Chino. Walker could see
how it was between the two.

  ‘That’s right,’ Chino said.

  ‘I’m not going to receive any surprises down the road?’ Walker asked.

  ‘We weren’t there,’ Chino said.

  ‘We was never there,’ Bug repeated.

  Walker stood up. ‘Have a nice trip back, gentlemen.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  A month passed. Winter arrived and with it a good deal of the work at the farm came to a halt. Carl kept himself busy with the chickens and the brood hens. It had been apparent for some time that the farm couldn’t keep up with the demand for eggs. Once Carl no longer needed the sling on his arm, he expanded the brood house by half again and brought in another four dozen laying hens. He took over the delivery of the eggs himself, enlarging the route to supply markets and wholesale outlets as far as fifty miles away. Anything to keep busy.

  He drove to Windsor for the evaporator and installed it in the sugar shack. On a whim, he decided to rewire the old machine shed, getting rid of the tangle of extension cords and forty watt light fixtures installed by Frances’s father fifty years earlier. As he worked, he waited for an answer from the insurance company on when construction could begin on a new farmhouse.

  And he visited Frances daily. There were other doctors on the case now, other surgeons. Without actually telling Carl, they seemed to have come to the conclusion that something needed to be done at this point. Frances was showing no signs of waking up. One doctor, a woman named Aluz, appeared to be at odds with Harkness as to exactly what type of surgery was required. Harkness was hedging his bets, saying now that the fluid was not the source of the problem. It seemed, though, that everybody was of the opinion that surgery was needed.

  ‘We have to relieve the pressure on the brain,’ Aluz told Carl. ‘Whether we do it now or later doesn’t change anything. It has to be done.’

  Frances was growing smaller in the bed. Her eyes were sunken. It seemed to Carl that she was a different person lying there. For the first time he wondered if she was actually gone. He began to ask the various doctors and staff when the surgery would happen. He received vague replies. Apparently nobody wanted to be the one to make the call.

  Carl was walking along the corridor one afternoon, heading for Frances’s room, when he looked up to see the lawyer Pearce Walker at the nurses’ station talking to one of the staff. Carl waited until he was gone and then approached a nurse sitting behind the desk. He knew her by sight if not by name.

  ‘That guy that was just here,’ he said. ‘He’s a lawyer named Walker. What did he want?’

  The nurse hesitated, as if weighing the ethical concerns of a reply. Apparently she decided there were none. ‘He was asking about Frances Rourke.’

  ‘Why?’ Carl demanded.

  The nurse shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He’s been here a couple of times. He seems concerned about her condition.’

  When Carl got back to the motorhome he called Dunbar and told him.

  ‘You sure it was Walker?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Carl said.

  Dunbar didn’t say anything for a moment.

  ‘What does he want from her?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Nothing would be my guess,’ Dunbar said. ‘Precisely that.’

  It was a couple of days later that Dunbar got the call from Mathews saying that Pearce Walker was asking for a meeting. She set it up for a Friday afternoon in her office, after court was done for the day. Dunbar and Pulford walked over to the courthouse from the station together. After a balmy morning the day had grown cold, with flurries in the air, tiny pellets driven sideways by an east wind. Both cops were poorly dressed for the weather and they were chilled to the bone on the walk. When they arrived at the office Walker was already there sitting in an armchair, legs crossed, a black folder balanced on his knee. He was dressed down for Pearce Walker, a brown suit and white shirt. No lapel blossom.

  Mathews had coffee for them and she poured for everybody except the lawyer, who declined.

  ‘You have the floor,’ she told him once everyone had settled.

  Walker tapped the folder. ‘I’ve been going over this discovery. I have to say it’s pretty thin.’

  ‘How is it thin?’ Mathews asked.

  ‘In every way.’ Walker smiled at Mathews. ‘You want to go down the list? Let’s start with these charges of arson. You have a fire, cause unknown. The fire marshal suggests that there was a gasoline can found near the hot spot. However, the hot spot just happened to be beside the fireplace, where they have determined a fire was lit at the time. The fire could very well have started accidentally, sparks from the burning logs, whatever. Which means that the arson charges are very iffy. Now, the young woman died as a result of the fire. If the fire was accidental, then so was her death. Is that not accurate?’

  He paused, as if expecting someone in the room to agree with him. He’d be waiting a long time for that. He shrugged contentedly and continued on.

  ‘OK, so let’s forget about the murder indictments for the moment. What else do we have? Well, robbery and extortion. No money was ever found in my clients’ possession. Where’s the proof that they were involved?’ Walker tapped the folder again. ‘Show me where you’ve connected my clients to the money. You don’t have them in possession of it, you don’t have them spending it, you found nothing incriminating in either of their houses. You have nothing there.’

  Again he paused for effect. Dunbar drank his coffee, watching the lawyer quietly. Pulford looked at Mathews, who was sitting back in her chair, fingertips pressed together in front of her face.

  ‘Still no comment, eh?’ Walker said. ‘Well, you know what they say – the truth hurts. Let’s see – we also have allegations of a home invasion. Based on one piece of evidence, and that’s the supposed eyewitness statement of this guy Carl Burns. Now isn’t he an interesting character? Three years ago we wouldn’t even be talking about him because at that particular point in time he was in prison for shooting a former mayor of this city down in cold blood.’

  ‘You’re referring to the rapist who was at the time attacking Burns’ daughter?’ Dunbar asked.

  Walker waved away that detail with a flick of his hand. ‘What else do we know about the man’s past? Well, it turns out that he was also in prison a previous time. I’m trying to recall what that was for. Oh, I just remembered—it was arson. Now isn’t that a coincidence?’

  Dunbar glanced at Pulford. He knew that Carl’s arson charge would surface at some point. Walker was rolling now.

  ‘And then there’s this strange story about the man’s behavior the night of the fire. Something about an attempted murder/suicide. The woman was beaten and then Burns tries to off himself by slitting his wrists? I’ve been told by the fire marshal that you guys knew about it but didn’t bother to follow up.’

  ‘We did follow up,’ Pulford said. ‘In the end we decided to prosecute the people responsible. Two of whom are your clients.’

  Walker smiled again. ‘I don’t know if the story has merit or not. But I would certainly allow a jury to consider it. You know, in the interest of fairness and transparency. Just as I suppose that the prosecution will paint a picture of Mr Murdock and Mr Carter as being a couple of lowlifes, in and out of jail, known to the police. The problem with that is – I can paint a pretty similar picture of Carl Burns.’

  Walker had been leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and now he sat back and crossed his legs again, perhaps to indicate that he had finished his discourse. He deliberately looked at the three of them, one at a time, as if conducting a census of sorts. Mathews reached for her coffee cup.

  ‘So – did you call this meeting so you could share your defense strategy with us, counsellor?’ she asked after she drank.

  ‘Hardly.’ Walker held the file up. He had not opened it since arriving. ‘I called this meeting to see if we can’t whittle this list down somewhat. As I think I have shown, you have no chance for a conviction on the arson or murder charges. And the rest are, quite fran
kly, contingent on the testimony of this Burns character. You have yourself a one-trick pony here, Diane. So what do you say – can we pare this thing down and save the taxpayers some money in the process?’

  ‘Worried about the taxpayers now, are you?’ Mathews asked.

  ‘Oh, my concerns are many.’

  Mathews snorted through her nose before glancing quickly at Dunbar and then Pulford. Both were sitting quietly, watching Walker, their body language such that she didn’t need to ask the question.

  ‘The charges will remain,’ she told Walker. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ Walker said after taking a moment to feign disappointment. ‘There is something else. My clients are anxious to move on this. Any chance this preliminary could be fast forwarded?’

  The request took Mathews by surprise. ‘This office was under the impression that you weren’t ready.’

  ‘Wrong again,’ Walker said, getting to his feet. ‘I was born ready. So why don’t you check your dance card and send me the date, Diane? As quick as quick can.’

  ‘I will do that, counsellor.’

  Walker let himself out. When he was gone, Mathews stood and poured more coffee for herself. She offered the carafe to the two cops but they refused. It was five o’clock. Dunbar, after listening to Walker, was thinking a couple of ounces of Scotch might better clear the taste in his mouth.

  ‘So what was that?’ Mathews asked.

  ‘Good question,’ Pulford said. ‘Did he think he was going to walk in here and convince you to drop some of the charges? Is this guy stupid?’

  ‘He’s a lot of things,’ Mathews said. ‘Stupid isn’t one of them. I can’t figure it. Unless he was just fishing, trying to get an idea of how strong we think we are on the evidence. It’s interesting that he brought up the murder/suicide rumor. I think he was hoping that we might tip our hand as to how we’re going to handle it.’ She paused to take a drink. ‘By the way, how are we going to handle it?’