Kill All the Judges (32 page)

A rosy blush. “When she withdrew it, he had…I think he had a…”

She couldn't say it, so Arthur did, “An erection.”

“I would say, yes.”

“You didn't assume he'd stashed a cucumber in his underwear?”

Kroop quelled the laughter with a grunt of displeasure. “Mr. Beauchamp,
please
.”

“What did you next observe?”

“I returned to the kitchen, and when I came back a while later, I saw Mr. Brown's, ah, crotch area was kind of…all greasy, and he was zipping his fly and then he wiped his hands with a serviette.”

“Thank you, miss, you've been most forthright and helpful.”

Abigail said her next witness would be Dr. Rosa Sanchez, the pathologist. Wentworth sat upright, aquiver with anticipation. He was about to take the stage, his name would be in the papers. He ordered himself to be calm as he dove into his briefcase for his notes. If he pulled this off, he could win the award for best supporting lawyer.

“How long will this witness be?” Kroop said.

“‘He weighs time even to the utmost grain.'” That was Arthur,
sotto voce
. Wentworth must check where that came from, probably Shakespeare.

“A little over an hour,” Abigail said.

“It's almost noon break. Can we pick up the pace? I'd like to recess at four o'clock today; I've been conscripted to attend a rather special event this evening.” Wentworth had seen the notice, a bar
dinner to honour the chief for his upcoming Order of Canada. Only a hundred dollars a plate.

“Bear with me a moment, milord,” said Abigail. She leaned on Wentworth's shoulder to talk to Arthur. “You going to this dinner?”

“Fortunately, I have other things to do.”

“I'm on the menu, have to give a sucky speech. Listen, for some stupid reason, Brian wanted the jury to hear the whole post-mortem. Do you really need Dr. Sanchez?”

“What I don't need, my dear, is to have the jury looking at all those grisly photos.”

Wentworth knew those photos too well. Whynet-Moir's broken skull, his death mask.

“Okay, no post-mortem pics, and you'll let the autopsy report go in?”

“I can't see a problem.”

“And what about the other stuff, serum analysis, the DNA guy?”

“I don't really suppose we're much interested in that either, are we, Wentworth?” Without waiting for a reply, Arthur rose and said, somewhat grandly, “Mindful of the pressing demands on Your Lordship's time, the defence will admit all forensic evidence.”

“Thank you. Adjourned till two o'clock.”

Wentworth continued for a while to look dully at his sixty pages of cross-examination notes, then swept them back into his briefcase.

 

THE CARNIVAL COMES TO LIGHTHOUSE LANE

O
n his way out of court Arthur was almost knocked over by Felicity, barrelling up the aisle in tears. He turned to see Mrs. Brown looking censoriously at her wastrel son. Arthur couldn't find much sympathy for Cuddles, who'd reaped what his hyperactive libido sowed. Better to be a tepid lover than suffer an unregulated sex drive.

Margaret's remark still bothered him.
He did make a pass, Arthur.
A
pass
–the word encompassed all manner of repugnant undertakings.
I rebuffed him.
Of course Margaret would say that. Then he abruptly rejected his imaginings as unworthy and false.

Arthur was no sooner out the door when he saw Charles Loobie aiming for him like a torpedo. He tried evasion tactics, pulling Wentworth into an alcove as if they had critical business to discuss.

That didn't deter the bad news bear, who cornered them. Resistance was futile. “I got my headline, ‘Bawdy Poet's Banana Peeled and Buttered at Banquet.' Juicy stuff about Boynton and Raffy, keep it coming. Hey, Artie, I'm real sorry about Whitson; my source turned out not to be as informed as he claimed. But I got another theory.”

“Charles, I'm hungry, and I already have indigestion from one of your theories.”

“Okay, but I ask you, why do two Supreme Court justices get dumped two months apart? I think we're looking for a guy who
had a motive to kill both. Maybe you should key on Judge Naught. Maybe he had some corrupt dealings with Whynet-Moir.”

Arthur was minded to brush aside this latest speculation, but Pomeroy's words came back:
They're connected, you know, Whynet-Moir and Naught…Everything is connected, but they're especially connected.

“I found out they knew each other since law school,” Loobie said. “There's a pattern, both those guys were flung into the drink. No weapons, same MO.”

“Interesting, Charles, but that and a dill pickle don't make a sandwich.”

“This is off record, you guys, but when I was covering the Naught trial, one of the cops told me off record Naught was being investigated for frequenting high-end pros like Minette Lefleur.”

“All the more reason why he may have taken his own life.”

“When he died, so did the file.”

“And how does all this relate to Whynet-Moir?”

“I got a deep gut sense those two deaths mesh. Maybe Whynet-Moir was blackmailing him, or maybe the reverse; maybe they each put out a contract on the other.” A lowered voice: “Try this on for size, Artie–maybe Raffy personally rubbed him out.”

Arthur would prefer proof over gut sense, but no harm exploring this latest dubious theory. Again he wondered at Loobie's persistence in directing traffic for the defence. Time and again he'd sent them down blind trails.

“Order a transcript of Naught's inquest, would you, Wentworth, then brief me on it. And take Charles to lunch at the El Beau Room.”

Loobie agreed to meet him there. Wentworth went off to change, paused in his tracks, returned to Arthur. “I'm in pretty solid with Minette Lefleur.”

Arthur recalled him mentioning he'd won her bawdy-house case, his first trial. “Of course, I'd almost forgotten. Excellent. When you have a moment, you might go over her account with her.”

“When I have a
moment
…”

“How about this evening if you have nothing on?”

Wentworth looked woefully at his heavy briefcase but took a deep breath and hastened away. A little hard work never hurt anyone, that's what Arthur believed. He spied Cud sidling toward him, seeking attention, and he escaped into an elevator.

He took lunch in the Law Courts Inn, joining a couple of judges of long acquaintance, Ken Singh and Bertha Rudweiler, both of whom felt he'd overreached with his sniping at Kroop.

“Lay off him, Arthur,” said Rudweiler, an ill-tempered appeal judge better known to the bar as Rottweiler. “He's being feted tonight. He retires this summer, let him go in peace.”

“Yeah, why antagonize the old bugger?” Singh said.

“Because I need an enemy. I can't get keyed up for a case unless I'm tussling with someone. Abigail Hitchins isn't even putting up a front of opposing me.”

“Bending over backward with her legs spread, the way I heard it,” said Singh, then yelped as Rudweiler stabbed him in the ankle with the point of her shoe.

“I suspect Abigail is waiting in the weeds for Florenza LeGrand,” Arthur said.

“She must have a shitty case against you,” Singh said.

“Meantime, we are racing to get the chief to the Governor General's soiree on Monday.”

“I worry he'll have a cardiac first,” said Rudweiler. “He was carrying on about you and Abigail ganging up on him. Profane language.” The censorious justice went on to talk about her current appeal, the Ruby Morgan case.

Arthur listened with discomfort to her complaints about the “mutinous lot of brigands” who were the defence crew, finished his sandwich, excused himself, and headed outside for a pipe
and a couple of calls, the first to Dr. Alison Epstein, to tell her he'd talked to Pomeroy last night.

“What was your impression?” she asked.

“He wasn't entirely unresponsive. He has maintained his slashing wit. But conspiracies abound, and he seems to be lost between this world and a fictional one of his creation.”

“That's perceptive, Mr. Beauchamp, but there may be more to the puzzle than that. I may not have mentioned some strange language he used when he was on cocaine: ‘They're after me,' he said. ‘I know too much. I know who killed the judges.' Paranoid utterances maybe. He said all the clues were in his manuscript.”

“Does he remember anything of a visit with Flo LeGrand last month?”

“He says not. He may be withholding. Or some major event or disclosure may have caused a memory block.”

He next tried Margaret, who must be peppier now that the NDP vote was collapsing. She'd turned off her cell but left him a message. “I have just heard the noon news, Arthur.” He was taken aback by the cool, clipped tone of her rebuke over his repartee with Professor Chandra, his quip about election day not coming too soon for him. The phrase was “flip, impolitic, and implied a lack of support.” Arthur was hurt–no such innuendos were intended.

She should be
pleased
he was dragging the Conservatives through the mud–he'd lowered himself, engaged in the grimy game of politics (for her!) with his blunt hints that Whynet-Moir bought his judgeship. The press had gobbled it up.

He was dolefully packing his pipe on the steps when he heard voices from below, by a fountain around which reporters had convened. “Yeah, right now it's a work-in-progress, but I'm hoping it'll hit the shelves for Christmas.”

Arthur hurried down the steps, saw the poet in his poncho by a cement railing, behind a bouquet of microphones, holding a sheaf of verses.

A reporter asked, “What's its title?”

“
The Day the Hall Burned Down.
My publisher already sent me the cover copy. ‘Laden with subterranean meaning and subtle subtext mined from the coal-pits of painful memory.' I'm also working on a memoir about this case, called
Scapegoat
…”

Arthur yelled, “Cut!” and broke up this impromptu, leading Cud away. “Damn it, you're not on a book promotion tour.”

“Give a starving artist a break, Arturo, a big publisher wants my story; I got to strike while the anvil is hot.”

“The only poem you ought to be interested in right now is ‘Reading Gaol.'”

“How's it go?”

“‘Pale anguish keeps the heavy gate, and the warder is Despair.'”

“Nice groove. Hey, what was all the fuss about this ‘matter of great urgency?'”

“All will be revealed.” Arthur wasn't about to tell him yet about April Wu's subterfuge for fear he'd put it on the street. He led him past his cheering section, past a young couple holding a banner, “Poetic Injustice,” and back into the building.

“So how's it looking, are we beating back the forces of reaction? The only honest witness for the last two days was a lowly wage-earner, the waitress; the others must've been told their eyes would be gouged out if they saw anything. So what do you think, compadre, what does the big picture look like?”

“The prosecution has drawn the curtain on the literary evening. The next stage will be police evidence, then forensics. The big-ticket items, Astrid Leich and Florenza LeGrand, are being saved for the end. Then you testify. Maybe. Depending on what they say. I'll want to confer with you about that.”

Cud's fan base had decreased by one: no sign of Felicity Jones. But he was not wanting for admirers–a pair of rose-lipped cherubim were on the courtroom terrace offering thin volumes for his willing pen.

Within was Wentworth, unpacking his briefcase. “Loobie had beans all to add to his double-murder theory. I don't think it hangs together. The good news is, when I mentioned Carlos, he gave me this.”

A photocopy from the
Province
, November 1992. “Teenaged Heiress Jailed in Mexico.” It began: “Wealthy heiress Florenza LeGrand, 17, was arrested on drug charges yesterday near Guadalajara, Mexico, eight months after she disappeared from her Vancouver home.”