I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (28 page)

“So no one was there but you and Constable Jettles?”

“I don't remember seeing no one.”

“Okay, let's not play games. Not only was this meeting prearranged, it was instigated by the
RCMP
. Brad Jettles phoned you to meet at the usual place, isn't that right?”

That caused Wall to pause. “That was a few months ago. Maybe he did … No, I must've called him. I'd been meaning to, so I must've.”

I took him back to Saturday the twenty-first. He was hazy about when he'd got up and about what he'd done that morning. He was “pretty sure” he'd slept in till noon, because he'd been up late with pals.

“You were hungover?”

“You could say.”

“And of course you took a couple of drinks to relieve the pain?” An assumption based on my own expertise.

“I may have added something to the coffee.”

“Okay, so we have you recovering from one hangover and getting a good start on another as you take off in your Nash Metro. When did you set out?”

“Just before two.”

“You weren't wearing a watch.”

“No, it got stole.”

“And though you were drinking and had no watch, you maintain you saw Gabriel Swift at around two o'clock.”

“I seen him walk across the road with a gun.”

“Was that where the road cuts through the Cheakamus Reserve?”

“No, sir, it was nowhere near the reserve. Where I seen him was four or five telephone poles from the Mulligan driveway.”

“And what did you think he was doing with that gun?”

“Deer hunting, like everybody does illegally up there.”

“Did he cross the road in front of you or behind you?”

“In front.”

“How far in front?”

“Maybe fifty yards.”

“So obviously he must have seen you. Or at least your Nash Metro.”

“Yeah, he waved –” Cancel that thought. “No, that had to be another time. No, he wouldn't of seen me, I was too far back of him.” The image of a friendly wave from a man on a murder mission was unhelpful to his patrons on the force. Skepticism was writ large on the face of the foreman, hockey coach Ozzie Cooper.

“How many times that day did you drive down to Squamish?”

“Just that once.”

“Did you see anyone else while you were on the road?”

“I don't recollect no one in particular.”

“Irene Mulligan?”

“I seen her sometimes having her walk, but later in the day.”

“Did you see her at her mailbox that Saturday?”

Long pause. “I can't remember.”

I had the court reporter read back to him Irene's testimony:
Around eleven a car like that drove by
.

“A red Nash Metro, Mr. Wall.”

The struggle to keep his flimsy structure from collapsing was too much for him; I saw surrender in his sagging shoulders. “Like I said, this stuff all happened over three months ago.”

Ophelia cheered me on with a smile.
Yes, my love, there is something I'm good at
.

“Mr. Wall, you're not sure whether you saw my client in the afternoon or the morning, or a day earlier, or in another week, right?”

“I guess anything's possible.” Total surrender.

“It's hard to tell the days and weeks apart when you're half in the bag from sampling your own merchandise.”

“Was that intended as a question, Mr. Beauchamp, or are you merely chopping wood?”

“I think I was chopping wood, milord.”

That produced a faint smile. “You have probably covered all the bases with this witness.”

Code for
Stop beating a dead horse
. “No more questions.”

Hammersmith beamed at me; we were on the same side for the moment. We all followed his gaze to the clock. “Nearly four-thirty, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin. Are we on time?”

“Most assuredly so.” And that was the end of Day One.

Ophelia and I didn't join the race for the door. “That was almost cruel,” she said, bringing out her pack of Players. “Smitty had the look of someone enjoying live theatre. He likes you – I think it's an avuncular thing.”

The clerk caught her lighting up and exiled us to the hallway, where we followed the trail of cigar fumes to the Law Library. He was flipping the pages of a thick reference tome, apparently looking for a quote source. “Ah, yes, Quintilianus. ‘A liar needs a good memory.' ”

“Mendacem memorem esse oportet,”
I said.

He looked up.
“Ipsissima verba
. You are no unfledged student of the great tongue.”

“Six years of it. Smitty, it was very generous of you to absorb the wrath of The Hammer. I hope I can repay you. Sounds like you had a great lunch with his Lordship.”

“And his granddaughter, whom he's pressing to go to law school. More and more of you lovely creatures seem to be doing that, Mrs. Moore.”

“Yes, we intend to desegregate the profession, infiltrate the judiciary, and ultimately take over the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Smitty and I laughed heartily. I asked, “Who won the battle for the bill?”

He stroked his Colonel Sanders goatee. “In such matters, my friend, as in most matters, I invariably win.”

Among those changing into civvies in the gentlemen barristers' room was one who'd not been returning my calls: Harvey Frinkell, who had just wrapped up a divorce. He'd heard about my day's efforts.

“Congrats, Artie. You just made number one on the all-time coppers' hit list. Stick to the back roads or they'll bury you in tickets.”

I told him I hadn't even started – wait till his cuckolded client was revealed as the killer. He reacted to that with excessive merriment.

I reminded him he'd yet to respond to my requests for copies of the photos showing Mulligan and Rita Schumacher at play.

“I only got one set. Ask Jimmy Fingers.”

“I don't want to have to subpoena you guys.”

“Tell your bitch associate to lay off of me and I'll think about it.”

In fact I didn't feel driven to seek a subpoena. That Mulligan had received Frinkell's letter threatening a suit was enough to make my point that suicide was a valid hypothesis. The Crown was no longer relying on the scandalous theories of a homosexual affair gone wrong. There was no point in needlessly embarrassing Irene.

Ophelia and I had a good time later, at the Green Door in Chinatown, a
BYOB
restaurant entered by a back lane. In those days there were a few such unlicensed restaurants behind the neon streets, known not by name but door colour: green, orange, red. Those crowded little joints offered astonishingly good food.

We were at an oilcloth-covered table in a space no bigger than most kitchens. In fact it was a kitchen, plus annex, full of steam and pungent smells and loud Cantonese. We drank only tea, but we celebrated a good day in court just the same, over mussels and squid and garlic ribs. We replayed the day's highlights many times, and after lightening my wallet by six dollars with tip, I suggested a drive to Second Beach to catch the sunset. I wanted this day to continue; I was feeling great about it – clearly Hammersmith had found Wall's testimony palpably false.

“Sounds swell, Arthur, but another night. I've got a date with Lenny Bruce at Isy's.” The supper club – the bawdy comedian was there for a run of several days. I wondered who her real date was. I told myself I really didn't care.

I dropped her off on Georgia, near Isy's, and went directly home, where I put on Ira's old Leadbelly disk that I'd been playing in my head.
Sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown
 … Suddenly exhausted, I flopped onto the bed.

The next morning in court was painful, too painful to recreate here, and so I defer to Wentworth Chance.

From “Where the Squamish River Flows,”
A Thirst for Justice
, © W. Chance

NO JOURNEY TO GREATNESS IS WITHOUT its stumbles, its snares and pitfalls, and the Swift trial, which I regard as a major turning point in Beauchamp's career, was to offer them in abundance.

He was too young, some said, too green to take on a murder case, and this author reluctantly shares that view. Criminal counsel, like opera singers, generally don't peak until their senior years – there are countless lessons and tricks to learn along the way. “But one has to start somewhere,” Beauchamp said musingly during our March 2009 sessions.

It was with Smythe-Baldwin's prophetic remark – “in most matters, I invariably win” – that things started going downhill, and with a speed that surprised Beauchamp, for he'd been riding high after the first day, inflated by glowing press reviews. He had underestimated the guile and adroitness of the enemy. A more seasoned counsel would not have faltered when the going got tough. That is my view, based on reading the transcript, and Beauchamp didn't argue with it.

Leroy Lukey, who took over the reins on Tuesday, was determined not to be as relaxed as Smythe-Baldwin about advancing the Crown's case. It would be altogether too easy not to give Lukey his due
^*
– he had obviously spent long hours rehearsing the Squamish police, and the first test of his efforts came with Constable Brad Jettles, who reeled off answers that were crisp and confident.

Beauchamp was flabbergasted at how this officer, regarded heretofore as a lightweight, held up coolly under
his fire. Though an air of self-flattery pervaded Jettles's incident reports, on the stand he was jokingly modest, confessing to having been the out-of-breath butt of his posse's humour. The jury quickly warmed to him.

Jettles didn't remember the accused saying anything when they caught up to him, and Beauchamp was content with that. Those seven fingerprints were a key concern, and he wanted the way open to persuade a jury that Gabriel had raced down there and, in a state of shock upon finding Mulligan's clothes, frisked them for a suicide note.

But why hadn't he made that explanation to Jettles? Why had he been so late offering it to his own lawyers? These were questions that had begun to plague Beauchamp, to infiltrate his stubborn faith in his intriguing client. Had Swift truly been looking for a suicide note or (a not so attractive possibility) something incriminating? Is that why he'd bolted from Jettles, raced off like a deer? Had he been telling his lawyers nothing but the truth or fudging it?

Jettles had been the lead officer in the questioning of Chief Joseph, wife Anna, and daughter Monique. Beauchamp had hoped to show the officer bullied them into making false statements, but he heard a candour that caused him to sense, as he put it, “a distant tolling of alarm bells.”

Ben and Anna had told Jettles that Monique was home all Saturday afternoon, helping to prepare for an Easter Sunday banquet. Fetched from her room, Monique had concurred with that, absent any parental prompting. The Josephs had explained they wanted to protect their daughter from all the turmoil; thus they sent her down to the States. Neither Crown nor court objected to this hearsay, “presumably because I was doing such a masterly job of damaging my own case,” said Beauchamp in his self-disparaging way.
^*

Jettles may have sensed, from the broken rhythms of that self-destructive cross-examination, that Beauchamp was floundering, and he became bold. Accused of joining Sergeant Knepp in a campaign of retribution against Swift, the witness explained, in tired but patient tones, that the Squamish
RCMP
did not go around framing people. That brought on a murmur of agreement in the jury box that caused Beauchamp to feel, as he put it, “that I was melting into my shoes.”

Jettles didn't appear offended by Beauchamp's accusation that he and Knepp assaulted his client in the cells: “When somebody told me that's what Gabriel was putting out, I just laughed.” Justice Hammersmith, who had been showing increasing irritation, warned Beauchamp again about maligning the police. But he pressed on, directing Jettles's attention to the report of prison doctor Guy Richmond and the photographs taken of Swift at Oakalla.