Stray Bullets (19 page)

He had been a basketball star right through high school, university, and law school, and he still played with his high school friends every Tuesday night in the gym at their old private school. He took the rolled-up paper in his hand, pivoted, and eyed the garbage can in the corner.

“Listen, Albie. I know everyone in this office thinks I’m afraid to do a big trial and that all I can do is make deals.” He raised his right arm above his head and flexed his wrist back, in perfect form for a jump shot. “Do me a favor. If we’re going to work together on this case, I need you to back me up. Clear?”

“Clear,” Fernandez said.

Armitage tossed the paper ball in a graceful arc. It landed squarely in the garbage can.

“Good.” He allowed himself an unseen grin. “Now I’ve got to kick you out of here.
Canadian Lawyer
magazine is sending a reporter to interview me for another cover story.”

“Merry Christmas, Nancy.” Larkin St. Clair settled himself comfortably into his seat across from Nancy Parish in the interview room at the Toronto East Detention Centre. The East was a big, institutional jail and it felt as if the wind was blowing right through its thick concrete walls. “How’s your mom’s home cooking?”

“Delicious,” she said.

“No family squabbles I hope.”

A few years ago, in another weak moment, she’d complained to Larkin about her difficult relationship with her mother. Huge mistake. He never let her forget it. “It was a Kodak moment, wish you could have been there,” she said.

“Me? No way. We got roast beef and mashed potatoes and peas. Special meal. My favorite prison guard, Rachel, even gave me an extra portion.”

“I’m sure it was the highlight of her Christmas,” she said.

He let out one of his patented guffaws. But his eyes were on her thick briefcase, which was bulging at the sides. “What’ve you got there?” he asked.

“I just picked up the disclosure and came right over here,” she said.

“What took them so long?” he asked, stroking his hair. In the six weeks since his arrest it had grown back down close to his shoulders.

She hauled out two big evidence binders. “This is fast for a murder trial.”

“I only care about one thing,” he said. “What did that rat Dewey say?”

“Hold your horses,” she told him. “I haven’t even looked at this yet. Let’s start from the beginning.”

She’d come to visit him twice a week since his arrest and he’d steadfastly refused to discuss what had happened in the Tim Hortons parking lot until he saw what Booth told the cops. She was frustrated but experienced enough with Larkin to know that if she pushed him he’d just make up more lies.

Over the years she’d learned the best way to do a complex case was to go over every piece of evidence with her clients in painstaking
detail. They always knew more than they told you, and sometimes they’d legitimately forgotten things. Besides, Larkin had made her wait long enough. She was going do this her way.

The first binder had all the technical stuff. Photos of the crime scene, the recovered bullet cartridges, a chip in the sidewalk by the side of the Tim Hortons, another in the wall behind, a third in the building across the way, a crushed empty bullet shell down at the corner of the lot, a scale drawing of the whole area, and lengthy medical reports.

On the last pages, she came to the photos of the young boy, including close-ups of where the bullet had entered his head. St. Clair, who’d been unusually subdued, grew quieter as he looked at the pictures.

She closed the binder.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“You know how the jury’s going to feel when they see this,” she said.

He bobbed his head up and down. “They’re going to hate me.”

“With a passion.”

He pointed to the second binder. “Let’s see what Dewey the Rat said.”

First there were witness interviews. Twenty-two people had been questioned, but most of their statements were only a page or two long. Only five had anything significant to say, and Parish went over these carefully with St. Clair.

“We need to map out the evidence against you at its highest,” she said after they’d read the last statement. “They’ve got you and Dewey sitting at the table by the door. Only one witness sees you two leave, and he doesn’t see you after that. The other witnesses are unclear on how many shots are fired, as many as nine, and no one can say for sure where they came from.”

“Nine shots?” he said, perking up. “The gun’s clip only held six bullets and one in the chamber. Seven max.”

“I know. That’s great evidence for us, if it stands up. I can argue there was another shooter. That the shots from the gun were fired in self-defense. The only shell they found was flattened by Jet’s Cadillac and he took off right away. That helps.”

He was nodding his head, fast.

“Don’t get too excited. They’ve still got you on that video stuffing something in your pants and taking off.”

“Doesn’t help that they found the gun at my aunt’s house, thanks to Dewey.”

He was smart and bitter, she thought. His attitude would be a lethal combination in front of the jury. They’d smell his anger.

Next in the binder came a large collection of officers’ notes that covered the night of the shooting, St. Clair’s arrest, chasing down Booth, investigating various leads, and finding the gun. There was the gunshot residue report from the day of his arrest. She showed it to him. “GSR was on your right hand, your right sleeve, and inside the front of your pants.”

His skin was dry and flaky. He picked at a scab on his hand. “It’s not a problem,” he said. “Pick a bunch of beautiful girls for the jury, and I’ll tell them I stuffed a chocolate éclair down there and the thing was radioactive.”

She started to shake her head at him, then she caught his grin. They both laughed.

Then came the forensic reports of the gun cartridges. This was bad news. X-ray photos of the barrel of the gun and the marks on the sides of the shell found in Kyle’s brain at the autopsy were a perfect match. Conclusive proof that the gun found in St. Clair’s aunt’s backyard had fired the fatal shot.

In every case there was always one piece of damning evidence that stood out. Here it was: Larkin St. Clair had stuffed the gun that killed a four-year-old boy down the front of his pants, took off, and hid the murder weapon at his aunt’s house. Unless they had an answer for this horrible fact, he was going to be convicted.

“Shit,” he said.

“I agree,” she said. “Shit.”

They were almost at the end of the binder. The only windows in the jail were long and narrow, covered with bars on the outside. She could see the snow bashing away at the heavy glass.

Larkin closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into his forehead. “Where the fuck’s Dewey’s statement?”

“I don’t know.” She turned the pages and came upon a signed piece of paper titled “Agreement Re: Mr. Dewey Booth.”

“Here it is,” she said.

“Let me see, let me see,” he said.

“Like I told you, Armitage signed a deal with Phil Cutter, Dewey’s lawyer. Dewey’s whole statement is a one-page affidavit sworn by Cutter’s law partner.”

“What’s it say? What’s it say?”

She read it slowly. “Your buddy told them you were the shooter. The
deal is, Dewey takes them to the gun and if the gun tests, which it did, and he testifies in court against you, charges are dropped against him now and forever.”

“Let me see.”

“Be my guest.” She turned the binder so he could read it. “The Crown didn’t even cross-examine him or get a sworn video statement. Shows how desperate Armitage was to get the gun.”

“No. Desperate to get me,” St. Clair said after he’d read the affidavit. “That phony hates my guts.”

“Maybe so …” Parish’s mind was going in a thousand directions at once, trying to figure out what this would mean. “We knew this was coming. It’s real bad.”

She looked hard at Larkin.

“What if Dewey says in court that he was the shooter, not me?” Larkin asked.

“Was he?”

Larkin wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m just asking.”

“Then the deal’s off. He gets charged too. With murder and perjury. There’s no way he’s going to change his story.”

“What if I take the stand and say he was the shooter? What happens?”

“Depends. If the jury acquits you, the Crown might say, ‘Hey, Dewey committed perjury,’ and the deal will be off. Then they’d prosecute him.”

“Oh.”

Larkin looked even more unhappy.

“We call it a cutthroat defense when two accused point at each other. Only works one in a million times. There’s a dead little boy lying in a Tim Hortons parking lot across the street from the courthouse. The jury’s not going to give a shit if you pulled the trigger or if you were helping Dewey. Either way you were a party to the offense. Equally culpable in law.”

St. Clair jumped out of his chair and clapped his hands to his head. He started rotating around his left leg, as if it were stuck to the ground.

Parish slammed the binder shut. “Time to talk the talk,” she said.

“I’m not guilty,” he said.

“You keep telling me that, but you haven’t told me what happened. Dewey threw you to the dogs. Why are you protecting him?”

He stopped rotating. She could feel the tension coming from her oldest client. The competing calculations between the truth, whatever
that was, and his survival, which would include making sure he didn’t get on Dewey’s bad side.

“If you lie to me again I’m getting off this case,” she said. “I don’t care how long I’ve been your lawyer.”

He shook his head. “Then I’m not going to say anything. You’ve got to find some way of winning this case without me testifying.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer.”

She was acting shocked, but she’d expected this. “Okay. I’ve got a few theories.”

He sat back down, stiller than she’d ever seen him.

“Theory one. You owed Dewey. Your last crime together, when you two robbed that pharmacy, he said you were outside as the lookout. He took the hit for three years and you only got a year plus probation. Jet’s girlfriend Suzanne dumps him while he’s in prison and starts dating Jet. Your payback to Dewey is to take a potshot at Jet. Not kill the guy, that’s not your style, just scare him. But things go terribly wrong.”

St. Clair folded his arms. “If the jury believes that, what happens?”

“Guilty of manslaughter, bare minumum. Even if you didn’t mean it, once you’re firing that gun whatever happens goes back to you.”

“Theory two?”

“Same as one, but it’s Dewey who’s doing the shooting. Harder sell because you’re the one who took off with the gun in your pants and hid it in your aunt’s backyard. Maybe taking the gun was payback for Dewey taking the three-year rap.”

“Where does that get me?”

“Same place. Even if you didn’t pull the trigger, as long as you knew he was going to shoot then you’re a party to the crime. And by the way, also guilty of accessory after the fact for hiding the gun.”

“Any other brain waves?”

“Last one. Jet spots you two guys and fires first. There’s a bullet hole in the wall behind where you and Dewey were standing and the only blank cartridge they find is a flattened-out one down at the end of the parking lot where his Cadillac was. He’s shooting, and you or Dewey fire back in self-defense but slip on the ice. Et cetera, et cetera.”

“Theory three have a chance?”

“A slight one.”

St. Clair unfolded his arms and reached for the one-page affidavit. “Dewey doesn’t say anything about Jet shooting first,” he said.

“You’re right. He’s pretty vague about the whole thing.” She stared at him. “Why won’t you tell me what happened?”

“Because I’m not going to lie to you anymore.”

She’d never seen him look so serious.

“I still don’t get it,” she said. “He ratted you out.”

St. Clair leaned across the metal table, all sense of life drained from his face. “Nancy, you know why I’ve got to keep my trap shut. Dewey goes down for this because of me and I’m dead meat. You’ve got to find another way to get me out of this.”

Ari Greene sat on the hard metal stool in the visitors’ room of the Toronto East Detention Centre taking the measure of the man sitting across from him, who was wearing the standard prison-orange garb and a rather dirty turban. It was eleven thirty in the morning, and Officer Darvesh looked thin and tired. A large tinfoil package was in front of Greene. He unwrapped it to reveal a collection of East Indian breads—
paratha
and sesame naan, which was slathered with butter—as well as a plastic container of chicken curry and yellow Indian rice.

“Your mother asked me to bring you this.”

Darvesh pulled off a tiny corner off the naan, dipped an edge in the curry sauce, and popped it in his mouth. Then he folded the foil back up to cover the food. “Tell her I ate it all,” he said, passing the package over to Greene. “You can have it. I can’t risk eating something this pungent.”

The young officer was right. Inmates all ate the same bland, starch-rich diet. If the prisoner they knew as Alisander Singh went back to the range smelling of curry after he’d supposedly been meeting with the immigration board, the jig would be up.

“Has St. Clair said anything yet?”

“Nah. Nothing.”

“Think he suspects you?” Greene asked.

Darvesh shook his head. “You made a smart move putting me in the wagon with him from day one. He’d never think a skinny brown guy like me would be a cop.”

“What’s he talk about?”

“Not much. The first few days he was the loudest guy on the range. Then day three he met with his lawyer, and since then he’s hardly said a word.”

“Day three he would have found out that his buddy Dewey had turned on him,” Greene said.

“He met her again last night. Put him back in a foul mood.”

“What did he say about it?”

“That he’d seen the disclosure and it was all bullshit.”

“He would have seen the deal Armitage made with Dewey’s lawyer all laid out in black and white.”

“That must have been it. Boy, was he pissed. Throwing things around the cell. Screaming at the guards.”