The Endless Knot (10 page)

I met his gaze. “So have I. Are there any developments there?”

Zack shook his head. “Nope, I talked to the cops this morning. No progress. Norine’s getting together a list of clients who have Looney Tunes potential, and she’s got workers coming in today to start the cleanup. Everything’s taken care of. Time to move along.”

Arden checked her watch. “So, the boardroom in two hours, right?”

“Right,” Zack said, but he wasn’t looking at Arden when he spoke.

I turned to Pete. “Could you drive the girls home in my car, and let Charlie take your truck?”

“Sure,” he said. He grinned at me. “You’re blushing, Mum.”

“So are you,” I said. “Now give me a hug and get out of here.”

After everyone left Zack turned to me. “It’s a forty-five-minute drive back to the city and that gives us an hour and fifteen minutes – ample time for a heavy-duty love sesh.”

“What are you talking about?”

We moved into the bedroom. “Something a client of mine told me about,” Zack said, unbuttoning his shirt. “My client’s theory was that a heavy-duty love sesh cleared the toxins from the body and made a favourable impression on the jury.”

“That’s insane,” I said.

“Maybe, but I leave no stone unturned.” He shifted his body from the chair to the bed and patted the place beside him. “Come on. We’re wasting Sam Parker’s money.”

Sam got his money’s worth that afternoon. When we left Lawyers’ Bay, Zack and I were both relaxed and content. We drove home listening to a Beach Boys
CD
. Zack kept hitting number twelve – “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – a plangent anthem to the joys of being married because it meant spending the night together and having kisses that were never-ending. When we pulled up in front of my house, Zack leaned over and kissed me. “So did the Beach Boys convince you?”

“That we should be married?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “So we could be happy.”

“We’re already happy,” I said.

“Agreed,” he said. “But if you’d been listening harder, you would have learned that if we were married, we wouldn’t have to go to school.”

I could hear Taylor’s music pounding from halfway up my front walk. No need to fumble for my keys; my daughter was in residence. Before I opened the door, I checked the mailbox. For once I was rewarded with more than flyers and the community newspaper. There was a padded envelope inside – obviously hand-delivered. It was addressed to Taylor. I tucked it under my arm, opened the door, and followed the beat of the drums.

Taylor was curled up on the couch with her cats, doing homework. I turned down the decibels and glanced at the notebook in front of her. “Math,” I said. “Well, better late than never, I guess.”

She gave me a corner-of-the-mouth grin. “So have you done all your homework for the trial tomorrow?”

“Not a scrap,” I said. “What do you say we order a pizza and get caught up together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said. She scrunched her face. “What’s in the envelope?”

I handed it to her. “Something for you,” I said.

She glanced at the address but didn’t open it.

Clearly, she wanted some privacy. “I’ll go check our messages,” I said. “Let me know when you’re hungry.”

There were ten new messages – a surprisingly high number considering that I’d had my cell with me all weekend and that Taylor’s friends knew how to reach her at the cottage. The mystery was soon solved. There was a curt message from Jill, saying she’d hoped I’d watched the Kathryn Morrissey interview and she’d call me after I’d done my report the next day. The rest of the messages were from Howard Dowhanuik, who had apparently forgotten the adage “Never drink and dial.” He had started phoning me Sunday night just as Kathryn’s interview aired. From his slightly off-centre articulation at the outset, it was obvious he’d fortified himself against the ordeal of watching Kathryn turn on the charm coast to coast. Judging from his speedy descent from toasty to drunk, Howard’s bottle of Canadian Club had never been far from his side. By the time he made his last phone call Sunday night, he had moved from belligerence to lachrymose affection. I was, he assured me tearfully, his last goddamn friend in the world. Given the fact that he had spent the evening berating me for failing to protect him from himself, the fact that he was friendless didn’t come as news.

Howard’s final phone call had come at 7:05 Monday morning. He didn’t waste time apologizing for his behaviour the night before. It was clear that with the drunk’s breathtaking efficiency, he had simply wiped away the memory of his previous calls and moved along. He was now strategizing. His new plan was to track Kathryn Morrissey. From now on, he assured me, she wouldn’t take a goddamn step without him knowing what she was doing and who she was seeing. I would be getting regular reports. I could count on that.

As I erased his final message, I was optimistic. In his previous life, Howard had been a lawyer. It was plausible that he had retained some knowledge of the laws governing stalking. Whatever the case, if he was hanging around the bushes eyeballing Kathryn Morrissey, he would be away from the rye bottle. Besides, the fresh air would do him good.

CHAPTER

6

The first day of the trial our city was hit by a freak snowstorm. As I stood at my bedroom window watching the wind whip the branches of the evergreens in our yard and the snow pelt the window, I felt my nerves twang. Anything could happen. From his place beside me, Willie stared at the blizzard, unperturbed.

I scratched his head. “ ‘Winter is iccumen in,’ ” I said. “ ‘Lhude sing Goddamm.’ ” Literary allusions were lost on Willie; nonetheless, he cocked his head thoughtfully and followed as I went to the basement to unearth the storage bin that held our boots and the larger one in which we stowed winter jackets, mitts, and toques. I found our parkas, Taylor’s new boots, and my old Sorels, went back upstairs, and started layering up. Finally, equipped to battle the elements, I opened the front door and stepped into a suddenly wintry world. The streetlights were still on, and snow was swirling through the halos of light they cast. It was a familiar sight, but one I wasn’t ready for.

Nor, as it turned out, was I ready for the sidewalks. Before we reached the Albert Street Bridge, I’d slipped twice. I gave Willie’s leash a tug. “We’re cutting our run short, bud.” We covered half our route, doubled back, and came home to a silent house. I filled Willie’s dog dish, poured myself a cup of coffee, and went back up to my bedroom to check my e-mail. There was a note from Charlie, thanking me for my hospitality and wishing Zack luck. I scrolled down to the quotation Charlie had chosen for his e-mail signature:
Life is Painless for the Brainless
.

As he’d promised, Charlie had attached an MP3 file of excerpts from his interviews with the
Too Much Hope
kids. I clicked it on and went over to the chair by the window to watch the snow and listen.

What I heard shouldn’t have shocked me. I had read Kathryn Morrissey’s book. I knew the histories of her subjects: the ones who had been discarded like toys their parents had acquired on eBay and had tired of; the ones who had been caught in the crossfire of toxic marriages; the ones who had been freighted with their parents’ baggage or whose lives had been appropriated by their parents to fulfill their own needs. And I had read Kathryn’s meticulous accounts of her subjects’ confused, raging, blighted lives. What I wasn’t prepared for was the agony in their young voices. Clearly whatever their failings, Kathryn’s subjects weren’t brainless.

I was so absorbed in the voices on the tape that I didn’t hear Taylor come in.

She was still in her pyjamas, and she was exuberant. “It’s snowing,” she said. She ran to the window seat and knelt among the cushions so she could peer out the window. “Sweet, eh?” she said.

“Sweet,” I agreed.

For a few moments she knelt with her back to me watching the snow, then the voices on the computer entered her consciousness and she turned to face me. “What’s that you’re listening to?”

“An MP3 file that Charlie sent me of his interviews with the people in
Too Much Hope.”

Taylor settled with her back against the window, her legs crossed in front of her. When a female voice began to describe how, within weeks, she had gone from model child to truant, sexual predator, and druggie, Taylor wedged her hands between her thighs and leaned towards me. “That’s Olivia Quinn, the one who got raped.” Taylor’s lips were tight. “She tried to tell her mother, but her mother didn’t believe her.”

I walked over to my computer and turned off the interview. “Taylor, you know you can tell me anything, don’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I know.”

I sat beside her on the window seat. “Is something wrong?”

She was still for a moment, tense with indecision. Then she leapt to her feet. “There’s something I need to show you.” She came back with the padded envelope I’d taken from our mailbox. It had been opened. I reached inside and took out
Soul-fire: A Hero’s Life, Part IV
. Like its predecessors, Part IV opened in the grey world of alienation and nihilism. Finally, shunned and miserable, the hero takes the pentangle from its secret place in the crypt, drapes the emblem around his neck, and is transported into the brilliantly coloured world of Soul-fire. The enemies Soul-fire encountered were familiar to me from his earlier exploits, but this time, he was not alone. On this quest, he was joined by Chloe, a light-boned young girl with huge brown eyes and fashionably hacked dark hair. The comic ended with Soul-fire and Chloe hand in hand on a verdant sanctuary called the Island of Celestial Light. Behind them, the city was burning.

Taylor was watching my face. “What do you think?”

“Ethan’s very talented,” I said carefully.

“What do you think about Chloe?”

“I think Chloe’s you.”

Taylor’s voice was small. “That’s what I think too,” she said.

“If this is too much for you, I could talk to Ethan – or maybe to his mother.”

“No! That would just make things worse. I can handle it.”

“Okay,” I said. I slid my arm around her. “When I saw it was snowing, I brought up the new boots we bought you last spring at Aldo.”

In one of those quicksilver mood shifts that signal the onset of adolescence, Taylor was suddenly ecstatic. “The orange ones? Sweeeet. I
love
those boots. This is going to be the best day.”

I wasn’t so confident.
Soul-fire: A Hero’s Life
might have moved off Taylor’s personal screen, but Ethan’s disturbing portrait of the artist as a young man had stayed on mine. I was reading through
A Hero’s Life
seeking reassurance when Zack called.

“Finally,” he said. “I’ve tried this number about forty times. I thought you were stuck in a snowbank somewhere.”

“Sorry. I forgot to turn my cell on. Did you try our land line?”

“Yep, and it was busy forty times.”

“Taylor must have left it off the hook,” I said.

“As long as you’re safe,” Zack said.

“I am – I’m sitting here reading a comic.”

“The Adventures of Pentangle Boy?”

“Right,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“Lousy. It’s snowing like a son of a bitch, which means my chair is probably going to get stuck and my car is going to get stuck and I’m going to get stuck.”

“ ‘Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm / Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.’ ”

Zack chuckled. “What the hell was that?”

“The last stanza of Ezra Pound’s ‘Ancient Music.’ Anyway, it made you laugh. Anything wrong apart from the weather?”

“I’m facing a jury trial – that always makes my stomach churn.”

“After all these years?”

“After all these years. Jo, every lawyer is edgy before a jury trial. People are unpredictable – hammering out a settlement with the other side is a lot easier than taking a case to a jury. Of course, it’s also less fun. Actually, I was explaining all this to your younger son five minutes ago.”

“You were talking to Angus?”

“He phoned to wish me luck.”

“Lawyer to lawyer,” I said.

Zack chuckled. “Something like that. I haven’t heard so much legal lingo since I was in my first year at law school.”

“Did he make any sense?”

“Not a bit, but it was fun listening to him. He loves what he’s doing, Jo.”

“That’s what he tells me, but Angus has a way of channelling only good news my way.”

“Well, relax, because he’s happy in his work. As am I. I love my work, and I love my woman,” Zack said. “I’m a lucky guy. But it’s time to make tracks.”

“In that case,” I said, “I will see you in court. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” he said. “And, Jo, try to keep things in perspective. I’m going to do everything I can to get Sam off, but whatever happens, when the trial’s over, I’ll be coming home.”

“So I should relax.”

“You’ve got it,” he said. “Just relax and enjoy the show.”

On the courthouse stairs, I ran into Ed Mariani. The collar of his winter jacket was up, the ear-flaps on his Irish walking cap were down, and his cheeks were pink. He beamed when he saw me.

“Come to see your boyfriend in action?”

“No, actually, I’m
Canada Tonight’s
eye on the Sam Parker trial.”

Ed’s smile faded. “Nice gig,” he said, stamping the snow off his feet. “I wouldn’t have minded getting it.”

“At this moment, I imagine Jill is wishing she’d offered you the job.”

Ed removed his hat and brushed away the snow. “Why?”

“Jill is concerned about my bias.”

“Because of the boyfriend.”

“No, because I find what Kathryn Morrissey did in her book morally repugnant.”

“That
could
be a problem.”

“Maybe I’ll just stick with safe topics. Maybe tonight I should lead with the inside info on that mural over there.”

“Look out, Peter Mansbridge.”

“Peter Mansbridge was never a parent-helper on four separate tours of this courthouse. Did you know that the mural is a mosaic of 125,000 pieces of Florentine glass? Did you know that the gent holding aloft the arms of the balance of right and wrong is a symbolic God of Laws? Did you know that the females flanking him represent Truth and Justice? Do you want me to continue?”

“God, yes. If you’re that boring tonight, your job is mine.” The mirth disappeared from Ed’s face. “Talking about truth and justice won’t be easy in this one, Jo.”

The Sam Parker trial was taking place in Courtroom C, the largest of the building’s courtrooms. Those of us with media passes were directed to two rows that had been reserved for us. As we filed into our places, there was only one topic of conversation: the weather. No one had arrived in Regina prepared for winter. Smart fall suits and expensive footwear had been wrecked by the snow, and journalists were not amused.

I was wedged between a slender, trendily dressed young woman whose increasingly frequent bylines on increasingly more important stories suggested she was on her way up in the world of print journalism, and a square-jawed, deeply tanned, ex-anchor who was clearly on his way down. The young woman’s name was Brette Sinclair; the ex-anchor, who was a foot shorter than I’d imagined him to be in his anchor-desk days, was Kevin Powers. As soon as he was seated, he leaned across me to confide in Brette. “This suit is pure worsted wool, and it’s totally fucking ruined. I had it made in Hong Kong – cost me the equivalent of $785 U.S.”

Brette smoothed her silky black hair. “You should have bought Canadian,” she said sweetly. When Kevin straightened and turned his back to her, Brette silently mouthed the word
asshole
, then removed a notebook and a pen from her tiny fabric handbag, settled in, and waited for the curtain to rise.

On the school tour, I had learned that the judge, the jurors, the lawyers, and the defendants all came into the courtroom through separate entrances. It was an arrangement that made for good theatre, and as the lawyers entered, the buzz of anticipation subsided.

The Crown prosecutor was a tall, slim redhead named Linda Fritz. Zack said she was a formidable opponent: smart, quick, and fearless. She took her place at the counsel table, opened her briefcase, and began arranging her files without fuss. Within seconds, Zack and Sam Parker entered and went to the defence table, but before Sam took his chair he gazed around the courtroom. He wasn’t looking for his wife. Beverly Parker had decided against attending her husband’s trial. Officially, she was overwrought; in truth, she had refused to be in the same room as Glenda. But if Beverly had chosen to shun her child, Sam was drawing strength from her. When Sam’s eyes found Glenda, the connection between them was electric. Clearly, they were counting on each other to get through the ordeal ahead. Finally, Glenda gave her dad the thumbs-up sign, and he smiled and sat down. It was all very low-key. He and Zack chatted until court was called to order with Mr. Justice Arthur Harney presiding.

Like many other facets of the trial, the selection of a jury was a grindingly mundane process. The jury panel was brought into the courtroom. There were perhaps fifty people on the panel and they were asked two questions: were they related in any way to the accused or the witnesses? Had they read the transcript of the preliminary hearing? When no one responded in the affirmative, each member of the jury panel came forward and was either accepted or rejected. The Crown had four peremptory challenges, plus forty-eight “stand asides”; the defence had twelve peremptory challenges.

From my perspective, Linda Fritz and Zack seemed to accept or challenge the jury candidates pretty much on the basis of instinct. I didn’t know how much digging the Crown had done into the background of the members of the jury panel, but I knew Falconer Shreve’s investigations had been casual. Zack’s firm had possessed the panel list since Labour Day. It included the ages and occupations of each potential juror. The obvious bad fits had been culled, but Zack believed in common sense and gut reaction, and it seemed Linda Fritz did too. In a little under three hours, the jurors who would try Samuel Parker on the charge of attempted murder were selected.

Zack had rolled his eyes about the impossibility of finding a jury of peers for a right-wing fundamentalist millionaire who made no bones about the fact that he would do anything to protect his transgendering child. As I watched the jury members take their places in the box, I wondered how Sam Parker would fare with the six men and six women who were solemnly assuming their new and unfamiliar roles as “judges of the facts” of his case. They were as typical as any random group you might find searching for videos at Blockbuster on Friday at 5:00 p.m. There was a dapper little man with a scowl and an aggressive combover; two pleasant-faced women with gently permed white hair and seasonally patterned cardigans; a tall, imposing woman with a pale oval face Modigliani would have lusted to paint; two men in three-piece suits; a woman with a Lucille Ball explosion of red curls and a smile that looked slightly demented; two young people, one male, one female – both of whom squirmed and looked distinctly unhappy; a silver-haired gent who turned out to be a serious notetaker; a cocky, meaty man who sprawled in his chair, seemingly defying all comers to explain why they weren’t wasting his time; and a woman about my age, wearing a vintage granny gown, lace-up shoes, and the last rose of summer in her glorious salt-and-pepper mane.