Under the Bridge (40 page)

•   •   •

During the breaks in the trial, Kelly, Nevada, Kelly's mother, stepmother, father, stepfather, stepsister, aunt, grandmother, and grandfather formed a large and very blonde and white contingent. They would
sit near the end of the long hall, far away from the pack of media and the Virk family. As she was waiting for Dr. Laurel Gray to testify of bruises and froth, Kelly walked away. Nevada was reading
Vibe;
Nevada's hair still fell to her shoulders in strawberry blonde ringlets.

There was a carpeted platform along the bottom of a stairwell.

Kelly began to walk across this platform as if it was a balance beam. Suddenly, she did a pirouette. And then she turned, smiling, to see if Nevada and her sister were watching, for the two girls sat together, slumped and restless, on a sofa.

“Stop dancing!” her father ordered, aware the inappropriate image might be observed by the media. But Kelly continued to raise her leg, and she raised both arms, as if testing her balance, and she did not tremble nor did she fall.

•   •   •

The jury was not present when Warren was brought into the courtroom before Madame Justice Morrison. For months, he'd been so nervous about being brought back before a judge that he'd begun eating food voraciously. “I packed on about thirty pounds,” he would later say. “I was a fat motherfucker.” His head was shaved now, all his curls gone, and the court artists who'd seen him at his own trial were startled by the disappearance of the doe-eyed elfin boy. He looked miserable, he looked surly, he looked like jail hadn't been good to him at all. Large shadows darkened the skin below his eyes; a black tattoo was visible through his pale T-shirt. He still did not look like a thug, but he looked more thuggish than he ever had before. Derrill Prevett did not look kindly on the young boy. He'd brought him in so he could be charged with contempt. Perhaps the boy would reconsider when he found himself facing two more years locked up. Perhaps he'd have a change of heart.

“I don't want to testify,” Warren told Judge Nancy Morrison, “I don't understand why I'm being brought here. Me being here puts my life in jeopardy.”

This was not an idle excuse. The code against ratting was even stronger in prison than it was at his former suburban high school. He was no longer in the presence of wannabe gangsters like Erik and Rich, but instead he shared his days with necrophiliacs and pedophiles and Hell's Angels and white supremacists. A man who'd literally cut the
heart out of his wife lived down the hall. A man who'd doused his daughter in gasoline and watched her burn lived in a cell near his own.

Warren did not tell Nancy Morrison this: the guys inside more or less told him he'd “be taken out” if he committed the transgression of being a Crown witness. “They told me, ‘You'll be going out of here one way or another, either in an ambulance or a body bag.'”

•   •   •

Kelly took the stand in her own defense, and her hair was cut in a demure pageboy. She spoke in a voice a little like Dusty s—a little girl's voice, the voice of Betty Boop or Shirley Temple. Her manner was both aggrieved and bewildered, the manner of someone truly dismayed to find herself in this unfortunate predicament of being on trial for second-degree murder.

“We saw the meteor shower going over us,” Kelly recalled softly, “and we talked.” The night at Shoreline School had begun so innocently on the field and under the falling lights. “We were just mingling,” she said sadly.

Under the bridge, she'd punched Reena only because Reena had tried to hit Josephine. “I was just protecting Josephine,” she said apologetically.

“Reena fell into me, almost knocking me over. I pushed her back into the group, and they continued to beat her. Later we walked up to the Comfort Inn. Everyone was talking about the fight like it was a big rush,” she said, as if disgusted by their callous pride.

“Who was the most aggressive during the fight?” Adrian Brooks asked her, for all the previous witnesses had told the jury she was the main aggressor.

“I believe Dusty was the most aggressive,” Kelly said, primly. “Dusty seemed to be punching her hardest, with the most force.”

She told the jury her version of the murder of Reena Virk:

On the bridge, she'd seen Dusty and Josephine. They told her to leave. She walked away and saw Reena, a girl walking away from her attackers, a girl on the bridge.

“Reena, are you all right?” she had screamed helpfully.

“Fuck off! Leave me alone,” Reena had replied.

She'd wandered about for a bit then. Dusty and Josephine clearly
didn't want her around, and she'd wandered to the Mac's and used the bathroom, and then she'd wandered to the bus stop and talked to Laila and some friends.

Suddenly, as she was heading home, under the streetlights, she'd heard a boy calling her name.

“Kelly,” Warren Glowatski called, emerging from the darkness, standing alone, just above the Gorge. The boy was smoking and he said he had something “important” to tell her.

He told her this: “We went back after her. We followed her. Josephine and me beat her up some more. Dusty was just watching.”

There was moonlight on the pavement, the red embers of the small boy's cigarette. The black waters of the Gorge glimmered with the reflection of the moon, below them both.

“Is she okay?” Kelly asked him. “Is Reena okay?”

Warren told her to look down at the black abyss. He told her the girls were still down there with Reena, in the water.

She looked down to the black water.

“I couldn't see anything,” she told the jury.

Warren walked off then, with only this stern warning: “If Syreeta asks you about the blood on my pants, tell her I beat up a Native guy.”

He left her then. He left her “without even saying good-bye.”

Alone, she'd walked to her father's house. The night was very dark, and perhaps she was troubled and stressed out by the story of the second beating in the darkness near the old white schoolhouse. Perhaps this was why she'd told Billy, the fireman's son, that “they beat up a girl and she was put in the water.” She'd gone home and changed into her pajamas, and gone outside to say good-night to her stepmother and Tammy, drinking wine in the warm water of a hot tub. In the morning, she met up with Dusty and Josephine. “We talked about the fight. Josephine thought it was funny. Dusty was bragging.” She didn't mention Warren's story “because I didn't want Warren mad at me.”

And then, at Shoreline, every unpopular girl's worst nightmare unfolded: she had become the scapegoat, the patsy. Rumors floated and reeked. “They said that I had gone back after Reena, and I was denying all of this. I was saying, ‘No. No. It was not me!'”

Kelly cried for the first time as she recalled the way she was tormented in juvie. “They called me all kinds of names,” she said, while
pulling at the sleeves of her sweater. How must that have felt? To be a normal schoolgirl and then to be in prison with heroin addicts and hookers? “Lily told me I was sick. She gave me dirty looks all the time. I said to her, ‘It's not fair that everyone is blaming me,'” Kelly said, crying at the memory of her persecution.

“Did you kill Reena Virk?” Adrian Brooks asked her.

“No,” she said, shaking her head, rapidly.

“Did you tell anyone you had killed Reena Virk?”

“No!” she said, while her mother wept and the judge looked down at her with what seemed a great and obvious sympathy.

Ruth Picha stood up to cross-examine Kelly. She was not a seasoned prosecutor, and Adrian Brooks would later admit to being quite startled that she, not Prevett, stood up to handle the most important part of a murder trial.

“All these people have come forward and told us that you said you killed Reena. Why would they do that?”

“I don't know,” Kelly said, genuinely hurt at the long list of accusers.

The judge looked down at Kelly now, as she had looked down at Richie D., Lily, Dusty, and Tara. When the defense lawyers brought up their previous crimes or past lies, she often seemed truly dismayed.

And now, she looked down at Kelly.

Meanwhile, Ruth Pichas listless cross continued. “Well, were they collectively conspiring against you?” she asked, sarcastically.

“I don't know,” Kelly said primly, as if she was reluctant to speak badly of her former schoolmates.

“Was there anything about you that makes you important to frame in this murder?”

“No,” Kelly said, with the sadness of a true martyr.

•   •   •

“This case is based entirely on rumor,” Adrian Brooks said, with great conviction, in his closing statement. “The Crown has given you no DNA, no fingerprints, and no bloodied clothing. There is no evidence to put Kelly Ellard at the scene. Rumor plus rumor still equals zero. Zero plus zero still adds up to zero. Ladies and gentlemen, throw this all out. It doesn't mean anything.”

*

Judge Nancy Morrison cautioned the jury once more: “There are no witnesses who have seen the accused kill Reena.” She asked them to consider the witnesses very carefully. “Was that witness annoying?” “Did they have their own motive?” “Did some have their own agendas?”

Before finding Kelly Ellard guilty, she cautioned from her perch above, “Be sure. Be very sure.”

•   •   •

The jury began deliberating Wednesday at 11:45 and returned with a verdict on Friday at precisely 4:00.

“She's going to walk,” a feminist advocate monitoring the trial whispered, bitterly.

“It's April Fools day in India,” her friend replied, with pessimism.

She's going to walk, the youth of View Royal predicted as they waited by their TVs. At Brady's Fish and Chips, Syreeta told Diana, “I always told you they wanted Kelly to walk and Warren to fry.”

Rushing into the courtroom, Mark Jette and Adrian Brooks buttoned their cuffs and straightened their white collars. Derrill Prevett's gown was ripped under the arm. Judge Nancy Morrison looked deeply pained. Kelly's father chewed his lip, and the veins on his neck were livid and engorged. Six sheriffs entered the courtroom and lined the doorway, warily, like some nervous cavalry.

The words, when announced, seemed to hover in the air and not resonate as truth for several seconds. Everyone in the courtroom seemed held by disbelief.

“Guilty.”

Nevada let out a loud shriek, while Kelly herself gasped.

A chorus of the word rose from outside the courtroom as twenty reporters simultaneously announced the verdict to their editors and producers. “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! She's guilty! It's guilty! Guilty!”

Kelly's mother remained in her seat, pale and broken and weeping.

Mukand tried to call his daughter, Suman, but he was not sure how to use the cell phone a stranger had lent him.

Kelly's mother remained still and sobbing, and Reena's grandmother, noticing this, walked over to her slowly and held her hand to the crying woman's heart.

*

On April 20, 2000, Kelly returned to the courtroom to face Judge Nancy Morrison. She now wore a blue sweatshirt with the name of her prison emblazoned across the back. Her hair was lank, and a certain heaviness caused her every feature to look protuberant.

The newspapers had nicknamed her “Killer Kelly.” The boys in her prison mocked her with this catchy adage.

On this day, Honorable Madame Justice Morrison would set “how many years Kelly Ellard must serve in prison before she is eligible for parole.” She noted that “if the decision depended only on the brutal murder of Reena Virk … then a decision would be a very easy one: seven years.” The minimum was five years.

Judge Morrison stated her intent to “take other factors into consideration as well.” She must, she said, “view the accused as an individual and look carefully at her age and her character.” She noted “Kelly Ellard has an extraordinary network of family and friends, a large and loving close extended family.”

“She has a way with the elderly and with children. There is a lack of racism in her makeup. She no longer associates with her former peers, and there is no suggestion that she is attempting to reunite with those persons…. She's making a commitment to better herself. She's achieved good marks. She's spoken and demonstrated remorse for this terrible event. There is no history or signs of violence before this event or after. She has always had and remains having an overwhelming love of animals, gentle and caring with them.”

She then sentenced the “fifteen-year-old with no record, and an otherwise good character” to “the lower number of five years.”

The judge looked directly at the young girl. “Kelly, you are young, intelligent, and you have a wonderful family. They believe in you, and I can only say that you must never let them down and, more importantly, you must never let yourself down again. I think you owe it to Reena Virk to live a life that is exemplary. And now you owe that to yourself.” Her last words were a wish.

“I hope you do well.”