Tell Anna She's Safe (34 page)

24.

I
SAT OUTSIDE COURTROOM 32
. I had a response rehearsed for Sergeant Quinn. I would be cool, polite. I wouldn't get drawn into conversation, or flirting, or whatever approach he tried. As for Mr. Blair….

The sound of heels clicking on the granite floor brought me out of my thoughts. The Assistant Crown Attorney, Deanne Fortier, was coming toward me, her sympathetic smile at the ready.

She sat down beside me and spoke
sotto voce
in her slight accent. “I am not supposed to be talking to you, but I just wanted to tell you not to worry. You were fine on Friday. Are you alright?”

I nodded my lie.

Deanne stood up and looked down the hall. “There's Sergeant Lundy. I will leave you to him, then.” She smiled again. “Don't let Mr. Blair unravel you.”

I looked down the hall. Sergeant Lundy was strolling toward us. I hadn't seen him since the memorial service, months ago. I wondered if his coming here today meant….

Deanne paused long enough to speak a few words to Lundy, then she flashed one more smile my way and went back to her office.

Lundy eased himself into the seat beside me. He never quite smiled, but the natural expression on his face was kind. “Ellen,” he nodded, by way of greeting.

“Hi, Sergeant Lundy.”

“Al,” he said and suddenly grinned. It was a full-on grin. One eye-tooth was chipped. For a moment the tough guy was gone.

I took the hand he offered. It was the size and texture of a leather work glove. “Are you taking over witness hand-holding today?”

Lundy dropped my hand. “Yeah, and general slave to the Crown. Quinn called in sick this morning.”

“Oh,” I said. Intense relief.

“Yeah, so they fished me out of my bed.” Lundy heaved a sigh that made his belly balloon out and in. He shrugged.

“Naive of me to think they'd let me sleep. Even if there's been a bit of a lull lately. The murderers in town have killed everyone they want to. And those we haven't caught seem to have gone on vacation.” He winked. “The wife wanted to go on vacation too. She was kind of reluctant to let me out of bed this morning.” He spoke without a trace of self-consciousness.

I couldn't help laughing. “I don't think I'd like to be a cop's wife. When you're never home.”
When you might not come home.

He shrugged again. “She knew what she was getting in for when she signed up. We went through a rough patch last year, when we were trying to gather evidence on Brennan. Seemed like me and the Roach were on the case twenty-four hours a day—no rest for the wicked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He sucked in the words in quick succession. “Had to have a talk with the wife.”

I suppressed a smile at the thought of Al Lundy being a communicator in a relationship. But what did I know?

“Must have been tough,” I said.

He shrugged. “She's young, she'll heal.”

And he was young too. The realization was something of a shock. Beyond the extra weight and standard haggard cop look, he was probably not much more than forty-five. The same age as Lucy.

I watched the lawyers file past us into the courtroom. The Senior Assistant Crown Attorney nodded at me solemnly, respectfully, from behind his owl glasses.

“Technically,” Lundy was saying, “I should be here every day—me or the Roach. But before all the town murderers went on holiday it was pretty busy for us, and Quinn was familiar enough with the case.” He nodded at me. “You had some dealings with him one night, I recall. That's what got him in on it in the first place.” He seemed not to notice the sudden colour on my face.

“Doesn't he have his own cases?” I tried for a casual tone.

“Naw—not our Quinn. Not now anyway.”

“Ms. McGinn.”

I jumped.

The court attendant was standing at the door.

I drew in and let out a deep breath and stood up. “Well, at least there are no high-school students today.”

“Oh, they'll be in after the break.”

He held the door for me. “Roach'll probably be by later. If you're done by noon, we'll take you to lunch.”

I couldn't imagine ever being done.

The judge was nodding at me as I came up the aisle. “Good morning, Ms. McGinn. I hope you had a good weekend.” Her friendliness took me aback.

“Oh, yes.” I couldn't help the wry tone.

“You haven't been sworn in yet, Ms. McGinn, but we still like to hear the truth.”

I laughed in spite of myself and took my seat in the witness box. Appreciating her attempt to help me relax.

The judge turned to the clerk. “I think we'd better swear in Ms. McGinn as soon as possible,” she joked.

The Crown's side of the court was all smiles. The defence looked disapproving. I glanced over at Tim Brennan in his glass box. He sat without expression. Gone was the sympathetic innocent. Quinn had called him evil. Was he? Today he just looked sullen and guilty.

Mr. Blair stood up. He put on his glasses and peered at his notes. Then he took off his glasses and aimed volley number one my way.

“Ms. McGinn, I understand from what you've told us that you don't consider yourself to be a close friend of Lucy.”

I took a deep breath.
Answer only the question asked, Ellen.
“That's correct,” I said.

“But you had gone through at least a period of time where she would confide in you.”

“That's correct,” I said again.

“And confided to the extent that you were familiar with her relationship with Tim Brennan.”

“I was familiar with his past. I wasn't familiar…. After Tim got out of prison and moved in with her, I didn't hear very much about their relationship from that point on.”

“Alright,” said Blair. “But you did speak to her from time to time.”

“I did, yes.”

“Okay. And you were specifically, I think, asked by Agent Godbout, who took your statement I think on the twenty-fifth of April, about whether you knew of any problems in their relationship, and specifically I think you were asked to address whether she had problems with him. Do you recall that?”

“I do recall that, yes.”
Here we go
.

“Okay. And you told him that as far as you knew they never had any big fights.” He put on his glasses and quoted from my statement. “‘I never saw any marks on her as if he'd beaten her, nor did she ever hint that it was an abusive relationship.'”

He looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “And that was indeed your best recollection and best information you could give Agent Godbout at that time.”

“That's right.” I wanted to say more—I wanted to qualify it—but I barely had time to gather my thoughts. Blair was on to the next question.

“You also told the court how Lucy spoke to you about having anxiety attacks and panic attacks.”

“That's correct.” Was I going to spend the whole session agreeing with his statements? I seemed to have no choice. I didn't dare look at Deanne.

“And at times couldn't leave her home.”

“Well, she told me she would sometimes
be
out and have to come home.”

“And you say that she went for massage, and … reiki, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if the massage and reiki treatments were related to the anxiety attacks and panic attacks?”

“I think she would have—I'm speculating here—I think she would have had the massage and reiki treatments as a healing treatment.” I wasn't speculating. But I couldn't reveal that I knew.

“Was she someone who seemed to have a lot of complaints about life and about things, her state of health and so forth?”

I had not been expecting these questions about Lucy. It hit me with a jolt of realization: Lucy was on trial too. But who was representing her? The answer hit me with another jolt.

“Well, about her state of health, yes,” I said. “I wouldn't say she had a lot of complaints about life, because I saw her as somebody who felt that this was just all part of it and tried to tackle her problems.” I had not known this with such certainty until this moment.

“Did she tend to perhaps dwell on physical ailments, physical problems a bit?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“In the sense of being maybe somewhat of a neurotic?”

“No.”

“Hypochondriac?”

“No.”

“Or anything like that?”

“No, not in that way, no.”

“You didn't feel that.”

“No.” It was another unknown truth coming out of my mouth .

“You told the court that in late fall of ninety-four, I think you said, you decided to shut down your friendship with her because she had got mad at you for being happy—something to that effect.”

“Yes.”

“Can you expand on what you meant?”

“She was angry with me because I told her I was doing fine. And she said something like ‘Well, I don't know how you've managed to escape it. Everyone I know is going through something right now.'”

“Okay. She seemed to be, then, sort of genuinely of the view that it was some kind of bad time, that everybody should be having a bad time.”

“Yes—I don't know for sure, but she may well have thought there was something in the air that was causing people to go through a bad time. Everyone who was sensitive to it,” I added.

“Does that not suggest that perhaps she was a little neurotic about things?”

“No, I don't think so.” I considered. “Neurotic. Can you define neurotic for me?”

Blair shrugged. “Someone who sees a lot of problems where there may not necessarily be problems. That's not a clinical definition, but….”

I nodded. “No, I don't think with that definition that I would describe her as neurotic.”

“Okay.” He sounded mildly impatient. “Is there
any
definition of the word that you understand that might fit her?”

Lucy Stockman, neurotic. Did she invent problems where there were none? Were her ailments all in her head? I looked straight at Mr. Blair. “I would not describe Lucy as neurotic.”

Mr. Blair changed tactics. “To return to your statement you made to Agent Godbout. You stated that Lucy told you that she thought Mr. Brennan was a very gentle soul.”

“That's right.”

“In fact, you related to this court that that was what you saw too—when Lucy showed you a picture of Mr. Brennan in her kitchen.”

“Well, I wouldn't have used the term ‘gentle soul' myself.”

“But you saw kindness, gentleness….”

“Yes, I did. It changed after—”

“Well, I'm sure it changed after you had begun to have
hallucinations
.”

My stomach knotted. “It changed after I saw—”

Blair didn't give me a chance to finish. “Now I just want to go through with you what happened—”

The Assistant Crown stood up. “I wonder if my friend would let the witness continue her answer.”

Mr. Blair made a gesture of acquiescence.

“It changed….” My mind went blank. “I didn't see it the night we found the car,” I finished. It wasn't what I wanted to say.

“Well, we'll get into that,” said Blair. “I just want to go through the events you related to us with respect to the scene when the Suzuki was recovered. You've told us you had to very carefully give Mr. Brennan directions, because you understood that he had a bad sense of direction, you'd been told that by Lucy before.”

One by one, Mr. Blair took me through all the ‘odd things' that Deanne Fortier had asked me about. The questions droned on and on. There seemed to be no point in them. No obvious winner, no obvious loser in each exchange. I couldn't figure out where he was trying to go, what he was trying to get me to say. The effort of listening to his words, and weighing mine, was exhausting. But it was a relief to be staying on the track of the ‘odd things.'

“You told the court that after you invited Mr. Brennan back to your house, on the way back it suddenly crossed your mind that ‘This man has killed somebody before and am I being stupid inviting him back to my house'—that sort of thing.”

“Yes.”

“But all the time Tim was with you—at the site, in your house, you described to us how shaky and teary he was—genuinely upset.”

“He
seemed
upset,” I said.

“Yes, you say that now. But it didn't occur to you at the time that it was anything but genuine. In fact, in a conversation with your friend that evening you say to her—” He glanced at his notes and quoted my words: “‘Either he's innocent or my world has turned upside down and I can't trust my judgement anymore.' Is that correct?”