“Yeah, here and there.”
“Did you ever share it with anyone?”
“With Kimberley and the Chinese girl. I have a little spurt of a memory there. I think they each blew a couple of lines.”
“But you don’t know if it was cocaine.”
“Not for a fact, no.”
“Oh, come, Mr. Chornicky, we weren’t born yesterday,” says Wally, who seems incapable of honouring his pledge to stay out of the arena and above the fray. “Did you really think it might be powdered milk?”
“Well, you do get ripped, but, yeah, it was probably cocaine.”
“Surely your supplier told you that’s what it was.” A tone of impatience: Wally will teach this ruffian a lesson.
“Not really, your honour.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“All he said was it was pure Ivory Snow, and had never been stepped on.”
“Stepped on?”
“Like, it was very powerful. Never diluted.”
“M’lord, has your cross-examination concluded?” Patricia asks. “Or is there more inadmissible evidence you’d like the jury to hear before this finds its way to the Court of Appeal?”
I marvel at her boldness. A shock wave seems to pass through Wally, who has the horrified expression of one who has observed a dead rat in his soup. The magic words, Court of Appeal — their lordships love to put the whip to new judges — seem to cause him to reflect, and he says petulantly, “I was just clarifying, counsel.”
Wally is doing such a fine job for the defence that I worry the jury may conclude we sleep together. I’d actually feel more comfortable if he was well on the other side of the bed.
“Your witness,” says Patricia. “For what it’s worth.”
I do not want to risk another debacle by cross-examining Chornicky. I have been dealt good cards and will stand pat. “Thank you. No questions.”
“Not many questions left, are there?” Patricia glares at the judge, who has begun to look worried: His fly is open and his bias is showing.
“Call Constable Gavin Peake.”
He enters, a cordial, husky boy in blue with an Arizona tan who I sense is not unsympathetic to his fellow white male in the dock. He tells his tale efficiently, describing his reception by Clarence Brown at a few minutes before six o’clock in the morning, his long wait while the couple conferred, then finally his visit to the bedroom, where he awkwardly accepted Kimberley’s offer to view her scrubbed and bruised bare bosom.
I rise and snap my suspenders for luck. Do this right. No more bumbling, Beauchamp.
“A weird business, constable.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not your usual sort of West Vancouver mischief.”
“No, sir. Although you’d be surprised.”
A sprinkling of laughter from the jury: a hopeful sign some of them may not be taking this case too seriously.
“Mr. Brown was in quite a fury when you showed up, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cursing, carrying on, vowing revenge, that sort of thing?”
“That’s right.”
Never ask a question without knowing the answer — the primary rule of cross-examination. But sometimes it must be broken.” ‘I’m going to get that son of a bitch’ — did he say something like that?”
“Close.”
“How close?”
“He said, ‘I’ll kill that fucking son of a bitch.’”
“Thank you.” A pause to let this surprise gift sink in. “Mr. Brown had a red substance on his hands and clothing, did he not?”
“Yes, some lipstick he got from — ”
“Be careful,” Wally warns. “That sounds like it could be hearsay.”
I give him a warning look: Stay out of my yard. “Let’s assume it’s this Shameless-brand lipstick he got from being in contact with Miss Martin. On what part of his clothes was it?”
“Well, he had on a white shirt, and the front and sleeves were discoloured. He changed into a fresh shirt before we went up to talk with Miss Martin.”
“No lipstick on her?”
“No, sir. She’d bathed.”
“It was obvious she had been drinking?”
“I smelled it on her breath, yes.”
“From a few feet away.”
“Yes.”
“Any other signs of intoxication?”
“Her words were somewhat slurred. I had a little trouble getting a sense of what happened.”
“You’re not alone. Thank you, that is all.”
I sit with a grunt of satisfaction. I shot accurately enough, managed to miss my foot.
Augustina seems relieved. “Good show.”
At the recess, courtesy requires me to dally awhile with Gowan Cleaver, who has dropped in, gowned, from another courtroom.
“Good God, Arthur, I thought I advised you to avoid that Jackson-Blyth woman at all costs. She’s your bloody foreman.”
“I think I must admit to a tactical blunder. How bad can she be?”
“Well, try on for size an article she wrote in. . I don’t recall, some left-wing rag. I think it was titled ‘Assaults the Law Ignores.’ About so-called unwanted touching. In the workplace and in the home. Ultra-militant stuff: you have to get down and beg for it, that’s her attitude. Please, darling, pass the nookie. Anything else is rape.”
I proceed outside and hide myself in the gloomy shroud of my pipe smoke.
As the jury returns, Hedy Jackson-Blyth looks at me with puzzlement, as if curious why I would even dream of letting her on the jury. A union boss — she will be arguing that her jurors stand on principle, in solidarity with aggrieved women everywhere.
On the other hand, she may not be sympathetic to that corporate exploiter Clarence de Remy Brown, who has been known to hire strikebreakers at his northern mines. He, not his future wife, may be the key to winning this juror’s heart and mind.
Brown walks in aggressively. As he takes the oath of truth, he thrusts out his wide, dimpled chin like a salute. Patricia leads him through the preliminaries: he is thirty-five, holds a degree in business administration from the University of Alberta, and has been engaged to the complainant for almost a year.
Patricia asks, “Do you know the accused, Professor O’Donnell?”
“I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” A deep baritone edged with malice. He looks at the man who defiled his spouse-to-be as one might study a turd the family dog had deposited on the rug. “I was aware he was one of Kimberley’s teachers.”
“During the final week of November last year, where were you?”
“I was in Venezuela. We were negotiating purchases of some mining leases. The trip came up suddenly.”
“When did you plan to be back in Vancouver?”
“Early on the Friday, on an overnight from Caracas. I’d promised Kimberley I’d be back for her dance. That turned out not to be possible.”
“She was expecting you that morning?”
“Oh, yes, we talked on the phone every day.” His voice alters abruptly: con spirito, tenderness and devotion. On early impression he seems not a man in whom reside deep wells of altruism; there is something mean and crabby behind that manly facade. The jurors, however, seem far too non-judgemental. Instead, curious, perhaps overly impressed — he has wealth, he has looks, he has power.
“Excuse me,” says Wally, “you and she talked long-distance every day?”
“At least once or twice.”
“Did you talk to her on November twenty-seventh? The day of the dance?”
I am liking this as little as Patricia. We may have to bind and gag our frustrated former counsel.
“We. . yes, I believe I called her that morning.”
“Then she knew you wouldn’t be back for the dance.”
“Yes, I think I told her I wouldn’t be getting in until midnight.”
“Thank you, “Wally says. Having elicited this unadulterated hearsay, he looks at me and nods smugly. Does he wish to do my work, or merely impress me?
“May I continue, m’lord?” Patricia says acidly.
“By all means.”
“So she was expecting you to be late?”
“Yes, I told her to enjoy the dance, and I would go straight home and wait up for her.”