Stray Bullets (28 page)

The transformation was extraordinary. By getting Wilkinson to talk about normal things in his life, he’d turned into a perfect witness. Clear, cogent, trustworthy. The rustling in the jury box stopped.

For the next half hour, he led Wilkinson through the events of the evening and how every small and insignificant action ended up as an unintended yet fatal decision: if only he hadn’t taken Kyle for a doughnut but instead had gone straight to the hospital as planned; if Kyle hadn’t slipped on the sidewalk a minute before, they would have been safely inside when the shots rang out; if it hadn’t started to snow at just that moment, Kyle wouldn’t have stopped to look. If, if, if, if. The tragic horror of circumstance. The jurors were respectful and still. A few quietly cried.

He’d made the right decision to call Wilkinson after all, Armitage thought. Now the jury would think of this loving father and his enormous loss throughout the trial. “Finally, sir,” he said once the whole story had been told, “do you have any idea how many shots were fired?”

Wilkinson shook his big head. “I keep replaying those moments over and …” For the first time since he’d started testifying, he faltered. He looked up toward the ceiling. Tears popped into his eyes, and one trickled down his wide cheeks. “At first I heard that bang sound, and I couldn’t believe it was a gun. I mean we were downtown, going to buy a doughnut. Then there were more shots. I don’t know how many.”

The court had become still. People were crowded into every seat, and no one moved a muscle.

Armitage couldn’t resist looking over to Nancy Parish to see how this was ruining her day. She was looking right at Wilkinson. Beside her, St. Clair was staring at Wilkinson too. Blinking his eyes. A tear, then another, rolled down his cheek. He tapped Parish on the arm. She looked surprised, fished around in her vest pocket, pulled out a scrunched-up piece of Kleenex, and slipped it over to him.

Someone cleared his throat.

He looked up. Judge Rothbart was trying to get his attention. He’d gotten distracted by the little drama at the defense table. The whole jury had been watching Larkin St. Clair cry. Up on the witness stand, Wilkinson was waiting for him.

He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Those are my questions.” Armitage fluffed up his robes, sat down, and looked at Nancy Parish. “Your witness,” he said.

He was sure she’d say, “No questions.” What the hell could she gain from cross-examining this poor man?

Instead she stood and walked in front of the prosecution table, right up beside the jury, and looked at Wilkinson head-on.

She was a gutsy lawyer, but wasn’t this a suicide move?

“Mr. Wilkinson,” Parish said. “You studied engineering at Stanford University, correct?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Then you got your MBA at Berkeley, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You wrote a thesis entitled ‘Everyone’s Got a Job to Do,’ about the importance of people understanding their various roles in the corporate structure.”

“Yes,” Wilkinson said again. He looked confused.

What the hell did this have to do with anything, Armitage wondered.

“Then you worked for Lipton in Sacramento for your whole career. You’ve been in various positions, including research, marketing, personnel. Always lived in California until you moved up here last September.”

“That’s right.”

“When you were made president of Lipton Canada.”

“Yes.”

Armitage had to smile at himself. Some defense lawyers just had to hear themselves talk. She was making this grieving father even more likeable. This was only going to help the prosecution.

“Would I be correct if I said that last year was your first Canadian winter ever?” she asked.

Wilkinson smiled. He hadn’t done that when Armitage questioned him.

“Sure was.” In an instant his face turned sour. He threw his hands over his eyes. “That night, Kyle was so excited to see snow for the first time.”

The man’s emotions hit the courtroom with a wallop.

Armitage was sure Parish was going to sit down now and stop questioning him. But she waited, motionless.

“Excuse me,” Wilkinson said, once he’d regained his composure.

“Nothing to apologize for,” she said. “I’m sure you understand that I have to ask you a few questions.”

“I know. You’ve got your job to do.”

Now Armitage saw where she was going with this. “Everyone’s got a job to do,” and Parish was using Wilkinson to tell the jury, “Don’t be mad at me, I’m just doing my job.” Even worse, somehow she had a better rapport with Wilkinson than he did. Shit.

“You told us that Kyle slipped on the sidewalk as you were walking over to the Tim Hortons. Would I be right that the reason he fell was because of the sudden change in the weather? It had gotten very cold that afternoon, and there was ice on the ground.”

“That’s exactly what happened. Winter in Canada was all new to him. And me. We were both wearing sneakers.”

Armitage could feel the shift in the courtroom. Parish had turned Wilkinson from being an emotional witness to an objective one. The engineer who was going to stick to the just the facts, ma’am.

“You remember that first gunshot.”

“Yes.”

“But after that, you can’t tell how many more there were, can you?”

Parish was using Wilkinson to establish her best defense. That there were many shots, and therefore there could have been more than one shooter. And perhaps the shot that hit Kyle was fired in self-defense. Or some kind of accident. Or both.

“No idea,” Wilkinson said.

“Some of the witnesses the Crown Attorney’s going to call”—she
looked back and waved her arm at Armitage—“say there were six gunshots, one says there were nine. You can’t say if that is right or wrong, can you?”

“No, I can’t,” Wilkinson said. “There were a lot of shots, that’s all I know.”

She’s spelling out her whole case through my star witness, Armitage thought. Wilkinson looked strangely relaxed. Perhaps happier to be talking about the bits of objective evidence he was sure of. The jury was going to believe every word he said. Her tone was so gentle. He had to admit it was very effective. Just like the old adage about cross-examination: you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.

“I hate to ask you this, but I must. Do you have any idea which shot hit your son Kyle? Was it the first one?”

“I have no idea. It all happened so fast.”

“I understand, Mr. Wilkinson. Thank you very much, I don’t have any other questions,” she said in a voice that was soft with compassion.

“Mr. Armitage, any questions in reexamination?” Judge Rothbart asked.

Armitage stood. He wanted to get Wilkinson off the stand as fast as possible. “None, Your Honor.”

Wilkinson looked at the judge.

“Thank you, sir.” Rothbart gave Wilkinson his most sympathetic look. An Oscar performance if I’ve ever seen one, Armitage thought.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.” Rothbart was speaking in his most melodious baritone. “My deepest sympathies to you and your family.”

A totally inappropriate thing for a judge to say in a first-degree murder trial. And great for the prosecution.

If a picture was worth a thousand words, then Nancy Parish knew that a real live object was worth ten times more. Something to show the jury. Something for them to not just see or hear about but feel. Touch. Bring back with them to the jury room as an exhibit at the end of the trial when they started to deliberate.

That was why, ten minutes before the trial was about to resume after the morning break, she was setting up a big easel in the courtroom at an angle where the judge, the jury, and the lawyers could all see it.

On the easel she placed a blown-up scale drawing of the scene of the murder, which showed the street in front of the Tim Hortons, the parking lot, and the doughnut shop itself. She then layered over the top of this the first of five see-through acrylic sheets that were at the end of her desk. Each piece had two holes on top that corresponded with little pegs at the top of the easel, guaranteeing that they would all sit as clear overlays in the exact same position.

Back at her counsel table, she unsheathed a collection of five different-colored markers and spread them out.

The special barrister’s door beside her opened and Ralph Armitage and Ari Greene strode in.

“What do we have here, Nancy?” Armitage asked, coming right up to the display.

“You’ll see soon enough,” she said.

He fingered the pieces of acrylic and the markers. “Five see-through sheets, five colored markers, five eyewitnesses.”

The man was not as dim as some defense lawyers assumed, she thought. Never underestimate your opponent. “Good counting, Ralphie.”

“On good days, I can get all the way to twelve, so I can pick a jury,” he said. Big grin on his face.

Well, the guy can laugh at himself, she thought.

The constable opened the main door, and like tap water filling an ice cube tray, a rush of people took every available seat in the courtroom. The big oak door beside the judge’s dais swung open, and the
clerk marched in, Judge Rothbart behind him. Both looked at Parish’s display, but neither said a word as they took their seats.

The last people in were the jury. When they were settled, Mr. Mohammed, the first eyewitness who’d testified for the Crown before the break, went back to the witness box. Parish stood up to cross-examine.

“Ms. Parish,” Rothbart said, still eyeing the display board but not commenting on it. “Proceed.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” She grabbed the colored markers and walked directly up to the witness. Mr. Mohammed was a little man, almost hidden in the tall box. Beside him stood an equally small court translator.

“Sir, I have in my hand five different-colored markers.” Parish showed them to him. With her free hand she pointed to the easel. “In a moment, I’m going to ask you to step down from the witness box and draw out for me exactly what you saw.”

“I would be most pleased to do so,” Mohammed said through the translator. Unlike many people she’d seen testify, Parish had noticed this morning that he had the patience to wait until his words were translated without trying to respond directly in English. It made him an impressive witness.

“Why don’t you choose a color?” she asked.

“May I have blue?”

“Certainly.” Parish noticed a few of the jurors smile for the first time since they were sworn in.

She had the little man and the little translator walk over to the easel. “Now, sir, you can write on this clear piece of plastic. Please put the number one where you were situated when you heard the first gunshot.”

Mohammed drew the number in a precise hand, placing it inside the door.

“Now put number two where the little boy was shot, and a three where the father was located.”

He wrote numbers for the location of the two men, one with long hair and one with extremely white skin; for the big car he saw drive into the corner of the lot; for the woman who ran across to the car.

“One final question, sir,” she asked when Mohammed stood back to admire his handiwork. “How many shots did you hear?”

He shut his eyes. “Bang, then bang, bang, bang. Then one or two more.”

Parish counted the bangs out on her hand for effect. “So you heard five or six shots,” she said.

“Objection, Your Honor,” Armitage shouted out behind her, bolting to his feet.

She turned toward him, feigning confusion for the sake of the jury, shrugged her shoulders, and turned toward the judge. “I’m only repeating what the witness said.” She opened her palms by her sides, trying to act innocent.

Judge Rothbart might have been an actor in his day, but to her relief he was taken in by her routine. He turned to Armitage. “Mr. Crown, what’s the problem?”

Armitage had turned beet red. “The problem, Your Honor, is this witness testified he heard ‘bangs,’ not ‘shots.’”

Parish threw her hands up in mock frustration. “Bangs, shots,” she said, trying to sound as dismissive as she could. Of course, there was a world of difference. A shot was a shot, but a bang could have just as easily have been an echo. Ralphie Armitage is no dummy, she told herself yet again.

Rothbart turned an angry eye at her. He didn’t like being shown up this way in front of the jury. “Ms. Parish,” he growled, “Mr. Armitage is right. Rephrase that immediately.”

“Apologies, Your Honor,” she said, all contrite, smiling inside because she knew the jury got it. Create doubt, Nancy, she told herself. Every chance you get, turn black and white into gray.

“Mr. Mohammed,” she said with a smile on her face. “You heard five or six bangs, correct?”

“I did, ma’am.”

“Please put ‘5–6’ in the very bottom right-hand corner.”

He obediently wrote in the numbers.

Parish took the pen from him, like a schoolteacher collecting her things at the end of a class. “Those are my questions,” she told him as she took down the marked-up acrylic sheet from the display.

By now everyone in the courtroom knew what she was doing. The next four eyewitnesses would get different-colored markers to draw on their own see-through pieces of acrylic. They’d all seen things differently. For example, Mohammed had put the Cadillac on the right-hand side of the lot, whereas three others put it on the left. The last witness said there was no car at all. She knew that in her closing address to the jury, when she finally put them all together, the contradictions in the testimony would be manifest. Literally there for all to see.

The Crown’s case, she thought as she sat down and fingered the second clear sheet, was going to look like a plate of spaghetti.

For three days now Ari Greene had sat at the Crown counsel table and watched Ralph Armitage call his five eyewitnesses, and for three days Nancy Parish had each one draw out their evidence on her see-through acrylic sheets. She was very precise in her questions, getting each one to agree that, yes, they weren’t sure exactly how many gunshots were fired; yes, it was dark; yes, the streets and sidewalks were slippery; and yes, everything happened so quickly they couldn’t be sure about all sorts of things.