Kill All the Judges (23 page)

Stoney wasn't sober after all, or so absorbed in his sales pitch that he forgot Arthur was present–his voice faded as he turned to see him hovering with his bags. “Of course that depends on, I gotta make, like, satisfactory arrangements with the, ah, registered owner.”

“The Fargo is locked in the garage, Stoney.”

“I won't touch it, I promise.” He raised a hand. “I swear.”

Arthur heaved his suitcase into the trunk. Lots of room for the disassembled bicycle too, which Wentworth carefully set inside.

“I had to fill the tank, set me back about sixty easy. Them vultures at the gas station are taking advantage of the worldwide fossil fuel crisis.”

“Stoney, we have an arrangement. Three hundred dollars a week, a full tank at the end.” He greased Stoney's palm and got behind the wheel, beckoning Wentworth to join him.

“You got me wrong.” Stoney got in the back. “A deal's a deal, eh, I'm not gonna smirch my good name by reneging. It's just something to keep in mind when you're considering the tip.”

The car lurched forward when Arthur nudged the accelerator.

“You got to use a gentle touch on this baby, Arthur. Pretend you're making love to her. The radio's broke. Probably could use new wiper blades, especially the right one, which don't work
at all. Otherwise she's street legal.” He got out at his driveway.

As they rounded a bend by the ferry dock, Wentworth said, “What's going on there?” He was pointing to a twenty-foot structure, the lower half hidden by draped black plastic, a complex armature above. A local sculptor, Arthur explained, was paying his debt to society.

“I got the creative spirit, b'y,” Hamish McCoy had said when Arthur stopped to visit. He'd tried to peek at the plans, but McCoy rolled them up. “Artist at work,” said his sign. “Keep out.” He slept there at night, guarding his tools, his bags of plaster. A departure from his preferred métier of bronze or stainless steel.

From the ticket booth, where they had a better view, they made out that McCoy was welding: above the sheeting, a shower of sparks fizzed out between two thrusting arms of welded rebar. Wings? An angel? The
Goddess of Love
, he'd told the unreliable local news outlet.
Oi'll give them joy.

The ticket seller wouldn't accept Arthur's money. “Lane two. You'll be first on, Mr. Beauchamp; I been asked to give you priority loading.”

There came the sound of bagpipes, increasing in wheezy vigour as they headed to the ramp–the Garibaldi Highlanders' innovative version of “Amazing Grace.” Near the Winnebagel, the ferry lunch wagon, were five kilted pipers, a drummer, and life-jacketed Kurt Zoller riffing on an accordion, along with four score festive islanders–Arthur was getting a send-off.

Here came Nelson Forbish, camera and burger in hand. “‘Old warrior goes to battle for island ally.' It's the lead story, Mr. Beauchamp.”

Zoller laid down his evil instrument. “I saw on the Internet that the judge was actually killed by a government hit man. We're counting on you to avert a terrible tragedy of justice.” A cover-up, a hit man–these were the theories the blogs were wildly propounding, shadowy conjectures without a kernel of proof.
Nullius in verba
, Horace counselled–rely on the words of no one.

The howl of bagpipes had the compensating benefit of drowning further exchanges, but Arthur was forced to shake hands all around. “Free Cud Brown” signs and buttons everywhere. Defence counsel was finding himself under a disagreeable amount of pressure.

As the
Prince George
berthed, Cud's cheerleaders jumped into their cars, led away by Zoller in his jeep. Arthur craned up at McCoy's work-in-progress. There was the sculptor himself atop a ladder, pissing downwind, in the direction of the jeep.

From the aft lounge, upper deck, he watched his island slip away and bemoaned his lot. He'd planned to be with chickadees on this rare sunny day, and the other winter birds that hung around the feeder by the greenhouse. A ruined weekend now, to be spent in stuffy law offices and libraries. And in his equally stuffy club, the Confederation on West Hastings, where he'd reserved an honourary members' suite.

He frowned over Cud's account, ten typed pages transcribed from April Wu's shorthand notes. “Why do you suppose, Wentworth, that it ends abruptly in a steam room?”

“Maybe he blacked out.”

Arthur's own experience attested to that possibility–he'd once awakened in the drunk tank with no memory for the previous forty-eight hours. “Extraordinary time to blank out. Whynet-Moir had just caught them fornicating in the steam room, their adrenaline must have been flowing.” Arthur didn't want to hear that Cud was amnesic. If he couldn't firmly deny this homicide, his claims of innocence would sound hollow.

“‘Help me escape.'” The three little words that concluded Cud's account. “What do you make of that, sir?”

“Please do not call me sir. Let us hope Cud wasn't so snockered that he blindly did her bidding. It doesn't help him a whit if he
slew Raffy at her instigation–he's no less guilty for having been in mindless rut. Surely there was more conversation than this.”

Wentworth made a note.

The Crown dossier included a photo of the lineup, eight men of similar build, of whom Astrid Leich had identified the most woebegone, number six, Cuddlybear. “That's the man,” she'd said confidently, and wrote down a big curlicue
6
. Astigmatic, according to several old interviews, short-sighted even thirty years ago, in her heyday on the stage. Wears contacts or glasses, but the latter never in public. Was she making use of either shortly after 3:00 a.m. on October 14?

That was when she claimed to have seen Cud pitch Whynet-Moir over the railing. Her call to 911 came in four minutes before the Aston Martin met the cypress tree.

Leich was a fitful sleeper, easily awakened–the noise that aroused her was “like something slamming, maybe a door.” How that would persuade her to go out to her balcony was a puzzle. For reasons unclear, Whynet-Moir was standing on a chair by the railing when, according to her, number six rushed at him and sent him flailing onto the rocks below. She heard the victim's dying cry and the crunch of his body. The perpetrator stumbled off, down the outer staircase toward the pool and garage. She lost sight of him and hurried inside to phone.

Arthur will have to be extremely deft in his cross-examination of this appallingly observant eyewitness. If, as is likely, she fingers Cud in court, Arthur will have a fall-back position: in raptly following this case, Leich has surely seen him in the papers, the newscasts. It hasn't been Cud's style to hide under his poncho while running the media gauntlet–he has actually courted them–so Leich's evidence could well be tainted. Mind and memory are easily prey to such influences.

Much more intriguing was Florenza LeGrand's role in this grand
guignol
. Still a hippie at thirty-three, said Eric Schultz. Rebellious youth, stint in an ashram, affair with a Mexican drug
dealer. Her blotter included, more recently, a hit-and-run and an assault. Shawn Hamilton, Q.C., had acted for her on both, had beat the latter.

Arthur expected to see him in court on Monday. Silent Shawn was an odd duck among counsel, one who thought long and carefully before he spoke, if at all. A competent defence counsel who also did prosecutions for federal Fisheries. A Tory with lucrative Ottawa connections.

Whynet-Moir's blood alcohol was point zero seven at time of death. Cud blew point two four, three times the threshold for impaired driving. At the very worst, a drunkenness defence was available. But that leads to manslaughter and a possible twenty-year residency as a guest of Her Majesty, hardly a clear win.

Arthur would prefer to prove someone else did it, though it might be easier to make a case for suicide. But Whynet-Moir didn't match the population most prone to it: depressives, alcoholics. The conspiracists didn't like suicide, they preferred the bizarre–payoffs, government hit men.

Wild theories about a corrupt payment to the justice minister from a wannabe judge didn't make much sense as a murder motive. “A cover-up,” Eric Schultz had hinted, implying Whynet-Moir was eliminated to bottle up a scandal. He wondered whether he dared taint Whynet-Moir's reputation with hints he paid his way onto the bench. Maligning the dead is generally a bad practice, and when neither admissible nor provable can boomerang.

One of the calls Arthur hadn't answered was from Charles Loobie of the sensation-seeking tabloid the
Province
, with his, “I've got a couple of theories.” The veteran reporter always had theories. “You should talk to an old guy name Vogel.” The rancher from Hundred Mile House allegedly defrauded by Todd Clearihue–Loobie had obviously got the same e-mail that had so exercised Nelson Forbish. But a link to Whynet-Moir's death seemed tenuous.

There remained a possibility Raffy was somehow tied to other judges who mysteriously died. A demented serial killer wronged
by the courts. One case has been solved, however: the provincial judge who wandered from her cottage at Honeymoon Bay was spotted two weeks ago, working as a waitress in a gas stop restaurant in Dawson Creek. Alzheimer's, though it didn't seem to affect her judicial duties.

“Was there no blood alcohol done on Ms. LeGrand?”

“I don't even know if she gave a sample.”

“It would be interesting to know if Florenza was having an affair.”

“What? Sorry.” Wentworth had drifted off again. Where does he go?

“Let's assume Florenza had a lover.”

“Well, she did, sort of. Cudworth.”

“Assume he was playing third fiddle, duped into being stud for the night, set up as prime suspect. That neatly deflects suspicion from her real lover. Let's say her boyfriend was hiding, waiting for his chance.”

“God, that's brilliant.” Wentworth made a note.

Arthur found street parking on skid road, not far from the scene of his descent to the depths, a ramshackle street front where he'd swigged gin and defended bums for two years, living off legal aid. Though there'd be a substantial fee for this case, it will go to the community hall fund–he'll not profit from Cud's misfortune.

A five-minute walk took them to Gastown, Maple Tree Square, and to the old brick three-storey whose top floor long hosted Pomeroy, Macarthur, Brovak, and Sage. The cavernous space that occupied the balconied floors below was cursed, a graveyard of such failed businesses as a comedy club, a spiritual therapy centre, and an Irish sing-along pub. Its current tenant and likely next victim was a jazz club. A trio was rehearsing as they entered the elevator.

Through the locked glass doors of the office, Arthur could see a slender beauty, April Wu, running documents through a copier. When Wentworth inserted his key she jumped, then waved. Instead of coming to greet them, she quickly collected her papers and disappeared down the hall.

Wentworth proudly showed Arthur the firm's extensive criminal library, then his office, an overheated cubicle with a view of the fire escape. “In case you thought I was just trying to butter you up…” He unlocked a drawer, showed Arthur some expander files. “All your trials. Your life.”

Arthur shuddered to see his entire career stuffed into expander files. “When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat.”

Wentworth looked at him expectantly.

“Dryden.”

“Wow.”

Arthur didn't think he could take much more of this. He will seek ways to get the young man out of his hair. Keep him busy being Cud's interface. Busy in the library. Arthur needed time alone to think about the case, to hone his strategy. He liked the third fiddle theory, but who might Florenza's real lover be? The file yielded no clues.

Pomeroy's office was on the sunny south side, facing the lively square. Pigeons patrolled the outside window ledges. A depressing place, though the sprawling desk was tidy, thanks presumably to Ms. Wu, who entered and extended her hand.