Authors: LH Thomson
Jessie considered what she’d just been told and put another spoonful of sweetener into her coffee, then walked back over from the machine to her office desk. Cobi was in the seat across, his hands in an arch as he waited for her reaction.
“So they talked at the scene about blood loss and whether he’d been moved; but none of that is in the arresting officer’s report. The tech’s report mentions massive blood loss, but doesn’t discuss where he was shot, making it sound vaguely like that was the scene,” she rehashed.
“Add that to it being Paul Sidney’s own block, and it smells pretty bad,” Cobi suggested.
Jessie smiled. “The very fact that they were discussing his possible involvement before they went to his door might make the whole search ‘fruit of the poisoned vine.’ ”
He looked uncomfortable, unfamiliar with the term.
“That’s when they break the law to gather a piece of evidence that leads to more evidence. The further evidence is considered tainted and useless.”
“So how does that apply in this case?”
“If they knew before they approached the door that they wanted to search Paul Sidney’s house, because of a tip that he might be the shooter, they should have gone and gotten a search warrant; in the eyes of the court, that would be their real reason for going inside, potentially.”
“Instead of….?”
“The arresting officer claimed they smelled pot smoke near the door and knocked, then claimed he saw something suspicious once the door was opened and went in.”
“Really?”
“Basically there’s a clause that allows them to search on reasonable suspicion of drug activity.”
“And they used that to gain entrance,” he said. “So if you get that tossed…”
“No gun, no money, no pot in evidence. Their case basically disappears.”
It was clever. She was a damn sight smarter than Buddy. “You think a judge will buy that?”
“Depends entirely on which judge we get,” Jessie attempted to explain. “And we’ll need one of the officers on the stand to admit they targeted Sidney before going to the door, establishing the need for a warrant.”
“You think they set this guy up to take a fall?” he said.
“In Edmonton? I doubt it. There’s some colorful history with the police here – they called them the
Irish Mafia
for several generations and some of them were as greasy as it gets. But it’s a pretty clean city these days. More likely, they took the easy arrest when it presented itself and just took a quick route to getting there; they probably didn’t even consider other possibilities.”
“What does that tell us?”
“Well, to start with, I can pressure the Crown to ask about the warrant and why there isn’t more scene evidence to support Sidney as a suspect. There were no fibers from his house or car, no blood spatter, none of his DNA on the victim. There was just the gun and the money. What we really need to do now is figure out what Brian Featherstone was doing in that neighborhood or where he was before he was dumped there.”
Cobi smiled. “Does that mean I get the job?”
“I must admit, I had my doubts. But you did really good work today.” She crossed her arms, self-satisfied at having given him a shot. “I can pay you twenty dollars an hour, and we have a group insurance plan for non-profits that we pay into.”
He didn’t want to push his luck, but the money was an issue. “Any chance you could make it twenty-five? Just to keep up with my current employment.”
“We have a pretty limited budget and not much flexibility, which is why I normally just contract out,” she said. “I can revisit it in a couple of months at the end of the fiscal year; we’ll get our grant notice in May, so by then at the latest.”
It wasn’t a yes, Cobi figured, but it was a start. “Okay. It looks like you’ve hired an investigator.” He stood to reach across the desk and offer a hand to shake.
She returned the gesture. “If you don’t mind my asking: what made you change your mind about your ‘security’ job?”
“Bad company,” he said concisely. “He wanted me to beat up on a kid who has probably had pretty much nothing but his whole life. So I needed a change of scenery.”
Not the best show of judgment,
Jessie thought. “Why get mixed up with a guy like that in the first place?”
Cobi didn’t like the tone, but he held his tongue. “Well… it wasn’t exactly as advertised, you know? And it paid pretty good. I’ve got support payments to make, so…”
“You took what was available.”
“Pretty much.” Was she being cool with it? Cobi wasn’t sure. She wasn’t easy to read.
“Well, like I said, you did well today…”
“I do try.”
“Just be careful. Don’t lead people too much with your questions; don’t insult police officers or the Crown prosecutor; don’t bully anyone. Get your statements on tape and with a witness if possible. This is a serious job, Mr. Tate.”
“I’ve had serious jobs before. When you’re in front of fifty thousand fans …”
Jessie cut him off. “You were in front of fifty thousand fans of a game, people cheering and eating popcorn; those were people who got to go home at the end of the night to see their loved ones. Our client gets to sit in a lousy Remand cell surrounded by some very difficult and troubled people, any one of whom could potentially end his life before he’s even had a day in court to defend himself. THAT is a serious job, Mr. Tate.”
“Okay.” She had a direct way about her, no doubt.
“I think we need to do some research. It’s time for you to hit the library and the internet while I talk to a friend of mine who knows the oil industry and see if I can rattle the Crown a little. It’s time to find out more about Brian Featherstone and who had reasons to want him dead.”
The cafeteria below the courts building was pragmatic and popular, a large open room with two cashiers and a buffet line, serviced by Formica-topped tables and cutlery tossed on orange plastic serving trays. The food wasn’t exactly spectacular, but good for a quick bite if you were a busy lawyer or bureaucrat.
“You know, when you said you’d buy me lunch, I was thinking something a little more upscale. like maybe the Hardware Grill or something along those lines?” Jessie’s friend Sherry Turner looked unenthusiastically at the options under the warming lights. She wore a tan business suit and styled her blonde hair in a practical, short cut. She looked older, as if more than the lone year had passed since they’d talked.
The paper hat-wearing server waited for Sherry to make a choice. “I’ll have whatever that is, I guess.” She motioned towards a cutlet in gravy.
“You want veggies and rice with that?”
“I’ll get the French fries,” Sherry requested. She half-turned to warn Jessie. “Don’t get the veggies. They steam them to the point that they taste like wet cardboard and you don’t want to know what they do to your tummy.”
“Duly noted.”
They got a table away from the rest of the room, towards the tall windows that looked out onto the infrequently used courts patio. The light cut across their table and accentuated Sherry’s weariness, Jess thought, the extra lines, the slight puffiness under her eyes. Working as a Crown attorney was a thankless, tiring occupation.
“So what’s this thing that has you so excited?” Sherry asked. “Forgetting the fact that you only seem to call me these days when you need a favor. Whatever happened to us having a good time, anyway?”
“Awww, sweetie…” Jessie said. “You know you’re still my study buddy.” They’d spent three years living in the same residence in college.
“Then how come we haven’t had a good weekend out in, like, a year? Seriously, we need to go on a serious tear, a bender. Dancing, drinking, a couple of dangerously hot guys… I could use the stress relief after two years of doing this.”
It sounded tempting; it also sounded like the sort of thing that would drive Jessie’s mom crazy. “My mother would kill me. At least while I’m working on this case, anyway.”
Sherry nodded knowingly. “She’s still on you, eh? Wow. Some things never change no matter how old you get. Is your father still…”
“As far as we know he’s a year sober. He’s always on the road, so the temptation is pretty high. Who knows, right? Look… I’m hoping you can help me with the Paul Sidney thing.”
The cafeteria was busy, a minor din of voices keeping things fairly private as they ate, but she looked around anyway to see who was there. Sherry had been expecting it. She loved Jess to death, but she also knew her friend had a one-track mind when it came to her clients.
“I figured that’s what it was. You know I’m not on that at all, right? I mean, I can only do so much. And I’ll have to tell Ray about anything and everything…”
“You work for the Crown and you have access,” Jessie said. “We have serious doubts as to Sidney’s guilt, evidentiary doubts.”
“Do tell.” Sherry was sure Jessie thought all of her downtrodden clients were innocent. That optimism was one of her strongest characteristics. It was naïve, as anyone handling public prosecutions learned in the first six months on the job. But it was admirable.
Jessie didn’t like the look she received. “No, I’m serious. We think before you guys make asses of yourselves on this one backing up the police, you might want to take a look at a few things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the complete lack of DNA evidence tying my client to the body. No fibers on him, no DNA or fibers on the victim, no fibers in my client’s vehicle, no blood spatter on his clothes. Nothing. Nada.”
“We have the gun,” Sherry reminded. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but your guy elected a jury trial, remember? They’re going to eat that up. Fibers? DNA? Please. He lived thirty yards from the body and he had the murder weapon in his waist band. It’s a slam dunk.”
“Sure. But we also have a witness who says the boys in blue jumped to conclusions at the scene. They had a tip from this witness, a neighbor, that Sidney was a drug dealer and a suggestion they check him.”
“They had probable cause on the search…”
“For drugs,” Jessie said. “But that wasn’t why they approached the home in the first place. Their real intent was already stated to be finding out whether Sidney had anything on the murder.”
Sherry smiled, put down her fork and leaned back for a second, offering mock applause. “Oh bravo, counselor! So you’re going for fruit of the poisoned vine, I take it?”
“Hey, if the fruit fits…”
“Sneaky, Jess. Very sneaky. You figure the big pile of weed on the table had nothing to do with why they went in?”
“It’s not why they wanted to catch Paul Sidney.”
“The wife opened the door!”
“The arresting lead, Carver, is a twenty-year homicide vet, and he’s got a rep for being aggressive. You think he was going over there to make a drug arrest? I don’t think a judge will buy that.”
“Depends which one we get.” Sherry sawed into the cutlet once more then studied it with disdain as it balanced atop her fork.
“On top of all of that, the witness says the officers at the scene were clearly discussing whether the body had been moved from another location, due to a lack of sufficient bleeding around it. But that wasn’t in the investigator’s report.”
That caught the Crown attorney by surprise. “Really? We hadn’t heard that.”
“Like I said, study buddy, this one doesn’t smell right.”
Sherry considered the weight of possibilities, the chance that it was important information. Jessie wasn’t above working a friend for an advantage, but she wasn’t dishonest. “Okay, I’ll take it to Ray, see what he thinks. Maybe we can ask a few more questions before this thing gets really heated. But don’t expect me to push anything too hard. I like being employed and, university or not, we’re not on the same side, Jess. As far as I’m concerned, Paul Sidney is going down for murder.”
Cobi loved taking his son Michael to the library, watching his face light up. And Michael loved stories. To the boy, the Edmonton Public Library might as well have been a toy store. They’d read picture books together and look at kids’ magazines and albums. Cobi and the library assistant would help guide his son in the “Makerspace,” an electronic playground of Virtual Reality goggles, computers, music recording rooms, video games, 3D printers and more. Michael’s eyes would widen, his mouth dropping open in wonder at the colors, the imagery, the games, the older kids making music, working the green screen…
So Cobi knew the library well, even though spending time there also caused him regret for not taking advantage of educational chances when he was younger. He felt awkward there, and he knew he shouldn’t. Sometimes he wondered if he was even in the right city with these people.
Sometimes, but not often. Detroit had been a tough place to grow up, with more temptations than teenagers had strength and two working parents who were rarely around. Every time he worried about moving forward, he tried to take a moment to look back, to remember his brother and realize how much worse things could have been.
He parked in the theatre’s underground lot across the street and made his way through the crowded sidewalk that fronted the blocky, modernist building. It was across the road from Sir Winston Churchill Square, and multiple bus stops served passengers from both, making the area constantly busy, a melting pot of average workers, city bureaucrats, lawyers, hipsters and street folk.
Inside, Cobi headed straight for the reference section and grabbed a pair of
Who’s Who
directories, then got help pulling digital archive copies of newspaper stories on Brian Featherstone, PetroMas, and any references to crime in and around Beverly Heights, the neighborhood in which he was found. At the least, he figured, knowing the names of some of the area beat officers might impress or worry someone, shake something loose in case it was just a neighborhood dispute of some sort. There might even have been another shooting in the recent past with the same gun, if it was gang or drug related.
He sat at a reference table and looked at the pile of material, reminding himself to bill Jessica for the photocopies. He began cataloguing similar items into piles, scanning items quickly, prioritizing his search time. Then he stopped for a moment, struck by his own methodical behavior; it reminded him of his father, working old cold cases at home.
He stared at the headline on the piece in front of him, a story from the Calgary Herald about PetroMas investing in a huge new Chilean gold field and whether investors would be happy with such a broad and expensive piece of diversification.
Featherstone and PetroMas President Peter Kennedy ―also a former football player, as well as provincial member of the legislature ―had recruited a series of pop culture figures to promote investing in the new mine, which was half-owned by the Chilean government. In the accompanying photo, Featherstone stood next to a beaming Kennedy, who had an arm around the shoulders of Darren “Deathtouch” Reed, a contender for several Mixed Martial Arts titles.
“Reed, the only Canadian in the group, was the first of three celebrities to sign on as Au-rex shareholders, joining Seniors’ golf tour legend Frank Frost and the children’s show host Mr. Wombat in helping the firm woo investors,” the story read.
So maybe the gold mining game wasn’t the windfall they predicted.
Cobi made a note to check on the status of Au-rex, but didn’t have to bother. The next clip was from six months later, a story about a Chilean official going to prison for faking the Au-rex results. There were no more follow-ups for a year, then a series of stories about investors suing but ultimately being rejected by the courts, with collective losses estimated at over four hundred ninety-two million dollars; it seemed PetroMas’ corporate officials held no official position with the gold company other than as investors. “We were taken in more than anyone,” Kennedy was quoted as saying. “It was only on the quick thinking of corporate services VP Brian Featherstone that we managed to get out before our losses were crippling, as they were for some.”
The author apparently tried to track down Featherstone without success, and quoted a Chilean official as saying the maze of offshore accounts controlled by their Chilean private partners could take years to unravel, if ever.
Perhaps someone out there thinks Featherstone stole their money
, Cobi thought.
Maybe the location he was dumped at wasn’t a key issue. Maybe it was just convenient to whoever dumped him
.
A failed goldmine started the long list of reasons why people disliked Featherstone. He’d also feuded with animal rights activists and environmentalists after increasing PetroMas’ stake in fracking – rapid injection drilling that uses water pressure to fracture the Earth and release recoverable natural gas. A picture of him next to a dead elephant from a safari twenty years earlier later surfaced on social media, compounding his image issues.
There were positive clips, too, dinners and charity events and awards, a home design piece from
Avenue
magazine on the family’s palatial spread near the upper-middle-class suburb of Beaumont. But there was no doubt that Brian Featherstone acquired plenty of enemies – hundreds, even. Maybe that would make his partner nervous. Maybe that would make Kennedy willing to talk.
Then there was the wife, Deidre. She barely made the clips, barely seemed a blip in his career plans. She actually had a better pedigree than he did: rich family, former politician father, an heiress. The pictures showed a thin blonde woman with various hairstyles from various public events over twenty years, a smiling socialite.
Cobi went outside to the sidewalk in front of the library and called Jessica. The day was bright and sunny, despite the sub-zero temperatures, and Cobi watched the steam rise from the commuters’ mouths and noses as they waited for the next bus. The noise of the city created a constant background din of vehicle and voices, truck brakes, buses, sirens and horns.
She answered on the second ring. “Jessica Harper.”
“It’s Cobi.” He spoke up as he filled her in on his findings. “So who do I talk to first?”
Jess thought about it.
Who’s most likely to be tough to get later, once everyone knows Mr. Tate is digging around?
“Start with the wife,” she suggested. “It won’t take more than a day of you asking questions and they’ll shelter her for purely compassionate reasons. Then it becomes hard to get a useful statement without a deposition or on cross-examination. Then try the partner. We need to know if the two men were tight, or just thick as thieves.”
“Cool. I guess I’m heading to Beaumont, then.”
“Beaumont? I thought the file gave his home address as an apartment near the Legislature building, downtown?”
“Yeah. I think that was just his city place or something, because they own one big-ass house out in the country.”
Edmonton is a sprawling metropolis, some forty miles across geographically and with over a million people in the city and suburbs; so it takes a while to get somewhere from city center, and Cobi had lived there long enough to expect it. From the glass-and-steel towers of downtown, over the Dawson Bridge, the lowest of several wrought-iron-and-rivet spans to cross the North Saskatchewan River, pieces of a more pragmatic history. Through and between the evergreen-covered parks of the enormous River Valley, which dwarfed the comparatively tiny Central Park in New York. Up the steep hill to the south side, past new condos, around one of the city’s many traffic circles installed by an enthusiastic British-born planner many decades earlier, fronted by upper-middle class homes so picturesque they’ve made it into Hollywood movies. Along a busy avenue of homes and businesses to industry-heavy Fiftieth Street, near the east-side oil refineries, chimneys aflame, then south on Fiftieth, past franchises and filling stations, directly to the two-lane highway that led to Beaumont.
New housing developments flanked the highway for the first few miles to his right; then there were empty fields that would doubtless suffer the same fate. Private property fronted by trees passed to the left, with just the occasional gap for a homestead or hobby farm. Once out of the city proper, the smaller town was a ten-minute drive through snow-covered countryside, past desolate, wind-swept fields, an escape from the noise and urban hustle. The odd copse of pine and spruce trees broke up the landscape, along with maples stripped naked in the winter months. The afternoon was in full force, and the sky became overcast and grey, the sun barely a white smudge through the haze.
The Featherstone mansion was on a side road, just a couple of minutes before the town proper but set ten acres back from the main highway, for privacy. A wide asphalt driveway, plowed down to the surface, continued for perhaps a mile, past rows of towering aspens that, even without foliage, obscured the house from view.
A tall wrought-iron gate had been left wide open.
If that’s not an invitation, I don’t know what is
, Cobi figured.
He turned the car onto the driveway, following it until the building came into view, fronted by a large parking lot. The lot’s surface was lightly dusted with snow, and much more was pushed off to the right side in a neat row of banks.
It was a gargantuan home, perhaps five thousand square feet of three-story stone-and-wood splendor. The roof consisted of a huge gradual curve of wood timber beams, towering thirty feet above the ground. Balconies surrounded each level, backed by tall tinted glass.
Part of Cobi told him it was excessive, ridiculous. The Featherstones didn’t even have kids; no one needed or used that much space. Another part was just a little jealous, the part that knew he could have had all of it and more, or at least the money it would take, enough to let him make his own decisions.
All four cars in the lot were high-end: a BMW, a Lexus, another BMW but in SUV form, an older Jaguar in good shape. Cobi guessed there were more in the six-car garage located off to the left, away from the main house. He pulled his old sedan across the lot, the snow and gravel blend crunching under its tires as he found a space. As he climbed out, a woman came out of the home’s front door, down its short flight of front steps and walked towards the SUV. She was middle-aged, strawberry blonde, and tall, wearing a white wool coat over a grey skirt and boots.
“Mrs. Featherstone?” Steam drifted from his mouth as he called out.
She stopped in mid-stride and looked around quickly, as if worried it was just the two of them. The sun was beginning to go down, the twilight accentuating the sense of isolation, as if there was no one else for miles. “Yes?” She looked around nervously for support. The wind gusted, blowing the top layer of fine snow off the surface of the parking lot. “Sir, this is private property.”
Get her curious; float something out there
. “My apologies, ma’am. Your gate was open, and I needed to speak with you about the upcoming trial.”
“Are you a reporter? I can’t speak with the press…”
“No, ma’am, my name is Cobi Tate, and I work for Jessica Harper. She’s defending Paul Sidney.”
She began walking again, towards one of the other cars, the Lexus, her gait deliberate and defensive, poised. “I don’t have to talk to you, Mr. Tate. In fact, I really don’t think I have anything I would like to say to you that would be polite. Can you please contact my lawyer for anything you require? Thank you.”
She reached the door and fumbled with her key remote to unlock it. She looked agitated.
Need something to keep her engaged and talking.
“You listed your official residence for the police as an apartment downtown? I just needed clarification.”
Deidre stopped fumbling and turned. “You drove out to Beaumont for that?” She looked surprised. “Why…?” She sighed. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. The apartment was my father’s, from his time in the Legislature. We lived in Calgary so he needed a place to stay. We use it… Brian used it when he was in town working late, or when we’d had a few too many with dinner downtown. Is that all, Mr. Tate? Because I genuinely do find this bothersome. The police have caught my husband’s killer, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Did the police mention to you that it appeared your husband’s body had been moved to where he was found?”
The question caught her off-guard. Her eyes flitted from side to side.
Is she looking for an answer? “
I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble, Mrs. Featherstone…”
“They may have mentioned it, I don’t recall,” she wavered. “The days after Brian’s death were very traumatic and I’m still trying deeply to cope with it, Mr. Tate. Now, this is causing me quite some anxiety, and I would much rather not make a scene on my own property. Are we quite finished?”
“Did you love your husband, Deidre?” He asked it to provoke, to gauge the authenticity of her reaction and whether she could be honest about her husband.
Her mouth dropped open for the merest of moments, and she looked slightly taken aback, not answering right away, the pause seeming like a self-indictment. “That’s a terrible question to ask someone, and I would ask that you leave immediately.” Even angered, she remained formal, prim. But she looked just a little like she might begin to cry.