We whisk along the causeway through the preserved wilderness of vast Stanley Park, then slow to a crawl on the clogged First Narrows Bridge. The preliminary is being heard in the courthouse of West Vancouver, a wealthy suburb on the North Shore, its pompous eyries terraced upon the rocky slopes above English Bay. High up live thehaute bourgeoisie;those who have not quite made it to the top;arrivistesand mere professionals, like Jon O’Donnell, live lower down.
Several media vans are parked in front of the court building, andcameras follow us to the doors. A quarter after ten: There is time for a last cigarette in the free fresh air. Gowan goes inside to track down our client while I joust good-naturedly with some of the reporters about matters irrelevant and frivolous. They are here solely upon a watching brief — evidence at preliminary may not be reported.
All heads turn as a taxi pulls up. Patricia Blueman steps out, followed by a striking woman in brown braids, obviously the traffic-stopper Kimberley Martin, then followed by a man in his mid-thirties, of medium height, handsome in the manner of a model for a Jockey shorts billboard: a dimpled chin, a square, almost prognathous jaw. Dark glasses. A cellular phone in his suit jacket pocket. Mr. Clarence de Remy Brown, I presume.
Kimberley is smartly dressed in a white blouse and a long skirt that catches the tawny colour of her hair. She is smiling, but I detect she is doing so with effort — the rims of her eyes seem slightly raw, her posture strained and rigid. Her hair is done up in those strange Jamaican braids — what do you call them? Dreadlocks. There is a kind of Hollywood panache about her. The actress Kimberley Martin.
For some reason, she halts her progress and looks at me with an intensely quizzical expression. I smile. She rears a little, like a startled colt, then quickly follows her fiance into the building.
Patricia Blueman shoos away the press so we can talk.
“And what bringsyouhere, Arthur? I thought you’d retired.”
“How better than to spend my twilight years sitting around courtrooms, Patricia.”
“So O’Donnell finally had the good sense to fire that obscenity Cleaver. I have to give him some credit for brains after all.”
Patricia Blueman is in her late thirties, spare, and spindly-legged. Myopic behind monstrous black-rimmed spectacles, she has a presence that can be best described as bookish — though why that adjective should have a pejorative meaning, I don’t know. I have always found her brittleness and self-consciousness appealing.
“I have been dragged by wild horses, Patricia, into thisoperabouffe.Kicking and screaming”
“I am complimented. The defendant must be feeling the heat.”
“No more than Saint Joan, I suspect. You have her all fired up and ready?”
“She’s telling the truth, Arthur.”
“And why are you so sure of that?”
“For one thing, last week she volunteered for a lie detector test and she passed with flying colours.”
“Oh, have they figured out how to make those things work?”
“For another, Ibelieveher. I’ve spent some time … oh, you know all our secrets, don’t you, Arthur? You heard her tapes. Candid, isn’t she? No, I don’t mind at all that I was ordered to copy them for you. That’s Kimberley Martin, unrehearsed and real. Same as you’ll get in court, chum. Ready when you are.”
She is about to go inside, then pauses. “Oh, do me a favour. When you’re cross-examining Kimberley on her tapes, bring out that business where Judge Pickles is called a sexist pig.”
She goes inside. I butt my cigarette and follow her.
The waiting area is thronged with gawkers, mostly older women who have abandoned their morning soaps to take in a live performance. I have been warned that a cadre from the Women’s Movement would be here, Ms. Martin’s support group. I see her standing there, sheltered among them, Venus amidst her mischievous train of Loves and Graces. Clarence de Remy Brown is talking on his cellphone but glowering fiercely at Jon O’Donnell.
I join Gowan and my client, who are sequestered in a hallway, our students standing a respectful distance away. There is little time to waste on idle chatter — a sheriff’s officer is summoning us into court.
“Ready, gentlemen?”
“Showtime,” says Gowan.
“Barnum and Bailey,” says Jonathan. “Bring on the clowns. I’m the high-wire act.”
His manner is relaxed, but his demeanour grave. No glazed-over eyes, no essence of intoxicants. He seems in better mental health now that he is purged of his former deceit. I will do what I can for him. I may wear the horns for him, but he is my client, and knows some Latin poetry.
Jonathan’s attention is suddenly elsewhere, and I turn to see Kimberley Martin, on the arm of her swain, hesitating at the courtroom door. She looks at Jonathan, then at me, then at Jonathan again. Suddenly, with a cocky toss of her head, she smiles, then turns away, and walks in. I cannot read this smile: confident, vain, a mask to hide her fear?
In the courtroom, William Pickles is at roost upon on his dais, bawling out a sullen young revolutionary who apparently defaced a bank building with a spray-on slogan encouraging the eating of the rich.
“Thirty days,” says Pickles. This stoop-shouldered, rheumy-eyed gentleman long ago rose to the level of his incompetence — he has been gracing the low-court bench for at least fifteen years, watching younger and brighter men and women pass him by.
“Regina versus O’Donnell,” calls the clerk.
I stroll to the counsel table, my client in tow. Pickles looks surprised to see me.
“Mr. Beauchamp, you’re appearing in this case?”
“Quite so, your honour. I shall be counsel for the accused today, assisted by Mr. Cleaver.”
“Fresh blood. That should promise some entertainment. Always delighted to see you. Miss Blueman, are we ready?”
“Yes, and I call Kimberley Martin to the stand.”
I sit, and Jonathan joins me to my left, Gowan to my right. Kimberley walks to the witness box with seeming self-assurance, yet something tells me she is not as relaxed within as she appearsin exterior.
She responds to the standard opening questions about age andbackground with a voice that is measured but musical, reminding me of a precisely tuned cello. Well rehearsed? It is difficult to say. William Pickles, the judge-in-our-pocket, stares sternly at her over spectacles riding low on his nose, then busies himself with pen and bench book.
A transcript will be available, so I am making only mental notes — it is more important now to observe the language of the body and the eyes.
“You are about to move into your final year of law?” the prosecutor asks.
“If I pass two exams next week. I’m being allowed to rewrite them.”
“Last fall you were taking lectures in property law?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And who was your teacher?”
“Professor O’Donnell.”
“Do you see him in court?”
Her eyes slowly turn to my client, and she studies him solemnly.
“That is him.”
“Identifying the accused.”
Curiously, her look does not waver for several seconds. Nor does Jonathan’s in response — and I have a sense of some silent, angry conversation.
In a subdued, unfaltering voice, the complainant relates, with little embroidery, her early dealings with O’Donnell, in the classroom, on the campus, in his office — sketching a series of scenes of avid though not discourteous male pursuit.
I catch Jonathan at one point shaking his head. “But she brought her coffee tomytable,” he whispers.
I softly admonish him not to show reaction.
As to the events of November twenty-seventh, her version varies little from that of her tapes, though she is more forthright about the amount of alcohol she consumed — doubtless Patricia Blueman has cautioned her to avoid straining her credibility on that issue. Clearly,Kimberley is a witness prepared to amend her lines. But most witnesses, even the fundamentally truthful, tend to repair and varnish their stories. One waits and watches for the big lies.