Authors: Gail Bowen
Despite Zack’s somewhat lackadaisical approach to jury selection, once he had a jury, they were his focus. From the moment they were sworn in, the members of the jury became players in the legal drama, joining the judge, the defendant, the lawyers, and the witnesses on the other side of the fourth wall, that invisible curtain that, in theatre, divides actors from their audience. On that first day, Zack’s eyes wandered towards me, but he never established eye contact. Later he told me that only inexperienced, showboating lawyers play to the back of the room. Experienced lawyers remember who makes the decisions, and they keep their focus on the judge and the jury.
When the jurors were seated, Arthur Harney read the jury some elementary points of law and announced that we would recess so the jury could select a foreperson and we could all have lunch.
Brette Sinclair slid her notebook and pen into her vintage bag. Kevin Powers, obviously over his snit, leaned across me again and addressed her. “Do you think there’s a decent place to eat around here?”
“I’m sure there is,” Brette said. She gave my media identification tag a sidelong glance.
“Joanne
and I arranged to have lunch. I’ll give you a report on the restaurant when we get back.”
Kevin glared at her. “You do that,” he said, and he got up and stomped off.
When he was out of earshot, Brette picked up her bag. “Sorry,” she said. “Super-stud and I have some history I’m not anxious to repeat.”
I knew Zack would be eating with his client. “I don’t have any plans for lunch if you’d like to join me.”
She squinted. “Seriously?”
“Why not? What do you like?”
Her eyes sparked mischief. “Cake.”
I slipped the strap of my purse over my shoulder. “I know just the restaurant for you,” I said. “Follow me.”
In its previous incarnation, Danbry’s had been the Assiniboine Club, a gents-only place where men with deep pockets could sit in leather chairs, sip Scotch, read their papers, and escape women. Sense and shifting sensibilities had been the death knell for clubs like the Assiniboine, but an enterprising developer had seen the potential in the graceful old downtown building, and that wintry day, Brette and I walked into a restaurant of real charm. We arrived without reservations, but we were in luck – not only were places available, they were prime – in front of the fireplace in the high-vaulted dining room. Brette shrugged out of her trench coat. She was wearing nicely fitted blue jeans, a white shirt, a black cardigan, and a long string of pearls. Her outfit was a theme that would appear with variations throughout the trial.
The server came, took our drink orders, and handed us menus. “What’s good?” Brette asked.
“Everything,” I said. “But the lamb burgers with gorgonzola are amazing.”
She snapped her menu shut. “I accept your recommendation,” she said. We ordered and she leaned forward. “So what’s your take on this case?”
“Too soon to have a take,” I said.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’ll know after the opening statements.”
“That soon?” I asked.
She wrapped her pearls around her forefinger. “How many trials have you covered?”
“This is the first,” I said.
“Everybody has to start somewhere,” she said equitably. “Anyway, the conventional wisdom is that 75 per cent of cases are won or lost in the opening statement.”
“Because you never get a second chance to make a first impression?” I said.
She smiled. “My mother used to say that. Anyway, I’ve never seen Linda Fritz, but I have seen Zachary Shreve, and he’s a trip. I covered a trial where he was defending a Hells Angel named Lil Joe. Even slicked up for his court date, Lil Joe was a gorilla, but in his opening statement, Shreve wove this touching story about Joe’s kindness to widows and orphans. Of course, he failed to point out that Joe was responsible for a lot of those widows and orphans becoming widows and orphans, but no matter. Shreve got the jury on Lil Joe’s side.”
“That must have been a killer opening statement,” I said.
“It did the job,” Brette said dryly. “More importantly, Shreve managed to keep the jury on side. It must have been tough sledding for him. One of the Crown’s witnesses – hostile, needless to say – quoted the defendant as saying, ‘If you mess with the best, you die like the rest.’ ”
“Scary stuff,” I said.
“Yes indeed, but Shreve got the jury to buy his theory about the facts in the case, so Lil Joe got off. Afterwards when we were doing the post-trial scrum on the courthouse stairs, a contingent of Angels roared past on their bikes. They were carrying a banner: ‘Ride Hard. Die Free.’ ”
I shuddered. “Sounds like a great moment in Canadian justice.”
“From what I hear, Shreve is responsible for a lot of those,” Brette said.
The server arrived with our drinks and Brette raised her glass. “Thanks for rescuing me from Kevin. I grew up watching him read the nightly news. Doing him was on my life list.”
“Like hiking the West Coast Trail,” I said.
“Exactly,” Brette agreed. “Except they give you a certificate for that. Anyway, onward and upward. What do you know about the judge in this case?”
“Arthur Harney? He’s a farm boy. I heard him give a speech once, and he said he became a lawyer because shovelling shit was shovelling shit, and the law paid better than farming. The lawyers I know like him. He’s fair. He’s not a showboater. He trusts the lawyers to do their jobs. When he quit smoking, he took up origami to keep his hands busy.”
“The origami’s a nice touch. Mind if I copy?”
“Not at all,” I said.
“I’ll trade you,” Brette said. “I’ll bet you tomorrow’s lunch bill that at some point this afternoon, Zack Shreve will give Sam Parker a LifeSaver.”
“A LifeSaver?”
“Yep. Shreve and Lil Jo must have gone through a dozen packages during his trial. The intent is to show the jurors that the defendant is just an ordinary guy.”
“I have a lot to learn,” I said.
“Stick with me,” Brette said. “I’m young, but I’m savvy.”
When court reconvened, the jury announced that they had chosen a foreperson. I’d put my money on one of the three-piece-suit men, but the jurors picked the earth mother. Given the many complexities of Samuel Parker’s case, an aging hippie with flowers in her hair was probably as good a choice as any.
Linda Fritz’s opening address to the jury was admirably economical: no theatrics, no emotionally loaded language. Her summary of the facts of the case was concise and concrete. Samuel Parker’s only child was a transsexual, making the transition from male to female. Glenda Parker had given an interview explaining the process to Kathryn Morrissey. The interview had been intense, and its appearance in Kathryn Morrissey’s book
Too Much Hope
had repercussions. Publicly humiliated and hounded by the media, Beverly Parker had been hospitalized for exhaustion; Glenda herself had considered suicide. Samuel Parker had attempted to have publication of the book stopped, but when his lawyers told him he had no legal recourse, he had taken matters into his own hands. The Crown would prove that Samuel Parker had, with forethought and intent to kill, fired a pistol at Kathryn Morrissey. Linda Fritz then gave a quick sketch of the evidence the Crown would bring forth, including that of a witness who heard Samuel Parker utter threats against Kathryn Morrissey and who saw Samuel Parker take aim and pull the trigger.
I noticed that Linda Fritz stood very close to the jury box during her opening statement. In her barrister’s robes with her smoothly coiffed red hair, she was a striking figure, and the jury was attentive. Only once did she change position, but once was enough. Towards the end of her opening, she began to sneeze. When she went back to the counsel table to get a tissue, her connection with the jurors was broken. Zack, who had been watching Linda Fritz carefully, noticed that the jury’s attention had wandered momentarily towards the defence, and he pounced. More accurately, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a package of LifeSavers. The jury’s eyes were on him now. When, very slowly, he unwrapped the package and offered a candy to Sam Parker, everyone was watching. Sam took the LifeSaver and smiled his thanks. It was a small moment, but a nice one.
Beside me, Brette Sinclair whispered, “Bingo.”
Linda Fritz finished her opening statement with the assertion that the job of the Crown is to see that justice is done. It was a powerful statement, but the jury’s attention had been diluted. They listened respectfully, but Linda knew she had lost momentum, and as she resumed her place behind the Crown prosecutor’s table, her shoulders were tense.
Zack’s opening was quiet. He wheeled over to the jurors and in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper, he introduced himself. “My name is Zachary Shreve,” he said, “and I’m Sam Parker’s lawyer. My task is to show you the kind of man Sam is and to show you what was in his mind and heart on the afternoon of May 16. It’s a duty I’m proud to undertake, because Sam Parker is a decent man.
“My learned friend, the Crown prosecutor, has done a commendable job of laying out the facts in this case, but you and I know that facts without context are like paving stones before they’re set in sand. Until they’re anchored, you can make paving stones point in pretty much any direction you choose. With all due respect, I think my learned friend is pointing the stones in the wrong direction. So I’m going to put the facts into context – anchor them down. I’m trusting that you, as ‘judges of the facts,’ will make certain that we come out in the right place.
“You have a serious responsibility ahead of you. Serious responsibility is something that Sam Parker understands. Sam is a father who loves his child. That’s why he’s in this courtroom today. When Glenda Parker confided a matter of the utmost privacy to a journalist, and she betrayed him, Glenda’s father acted. That’s what parents do for their children. That’s what a father does for his son.”
Before that moment, Zack had always been careful to refer to Glenda in the feminine. The reference to Sam and Glenda as “father and son” had been a slip, but the jury, which to this point had been dutifully attentive, was now alert. Zack picked up on the change in the emotional temperature immediately. He shook his head and a little half-smile played on his lips. “There’s a primal bond between a man and his son,” he said, and his emphasis on the word
son
was unmistakable.
Beside me, Brette breathed the words “son of a bitch.”
As he continued, Zack’s voice was sonorous, pitch perfect for the tale he was telling about a decent man thrust into unthinkable circumstances who was guilty of a grievous error in judgment but not of attempted murder.
I glanced across at Glenda Parker. Her outfit for court was smart and androgynous: grey slacks, a black turtleneck, and an unstructured black jacket. Her only jewellery was the heavy gold band she wore on her ring finger. When Zack first used the phrase
father and son
, Glenda flinched, but from that moment on, she was stoic. All of the horror – the pictures of her competing as a male swimmer, the unpacking of her private life – everything she feared most was coming to pass, but it was in aid of a good cause. Her father’s trusted barrister had found a note that resonated, and so Glenda swallowed hard.
Zack wheeled close to the jury. “Sam Parker loved his son,” he said. “That was his crime. That was his ‘sin.’ Four hundred years ago, a poet lost his first-born son. He wrote about a father’s anguish. ‘Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; / My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.’ ”
The meaty man rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
Zack went to him. “The poem makes me weep too. But those lines didn’t make Kathryn Morrissey weep. For her, they were just material. She needed a title for her book, so she took what she wanted from a father’s heartbreak. She needed a best-seller, so she took what she wanted from the broken lives of young people who trusted her. All Sam Parker did was love his son. He did not attempt to murder Kathryn Morrissey.”
The courtroom was silent. Linda Fritz stared studiously at her files.
“Bull’s eye,” Brette said admiringly. “Also bullshit.”
When Zack wheeled back to his place behind the counsel table, he touched his client’s arm and said a few words. Glenda Parker was sitting directly behind them. She stood, squeezed Zack’s shoulder, then bent to kiss her father’s head. The gesture delivered a message more powerful than words. “Whatever it takes,” the kiss said. “Whatever it takes.”
Later, as I stood on the courthouse steps with Rapti Lustig running through the points I was going to cover in my report of the trial for
Canada Tonight
, I didn’t mention the kiss. But as the snow swirled around me, and Rapti dabbed at my imperfections with Max Factor, the memory of Glenda’s pain was sharp. So was the memory of the gusto with which Zack had played his trump card. But when he came through the glass doors of the courthouse, his focus had shifted from the trial to me, and I remembered why I loved him.
He glowered at my bare neck. “Where’s your scarf?”
“I couldn’t find it this morning.”
“How long do you have to stand out here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably another ten minutes.”
He reached up, flicked off his own scarf, and handed it to me. “Take this.”
I knotted his scarf around my neck.
“Better?” he said.
“Much,” I said. “It’s still warm from you.”
“Anytime you need a little body heat.”
Rapti scowled. “Hey, you two – get a room.”
Zack raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I wish?” At that moment, Linda Fritz came through the courthouse doors, and Zack called her over. Without her barrister’s robes, Linda looked surprisingly vulnerable. It was clear from the hectic glitter in her eyes and the rasp in her voice that the volley of sneezes in court had just been a prelude: Linda was well on her way to the miseries of a cold.
She took in the scene. “What’s up?” she said.
“I wanted Joanne to meet you. Although since she’s already seen you in action, I guess we can skip the formalities.”
“You were terrific in there,” I said.