I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (34 page)

I was mumbling so loudly that two boys giggled as our paths crossed, repeating, “Where are his remains?”

A grey day, and from the heights of the Burrard Bridge I was denied one of my frequent pleasures on a summer's walk, a view of pretty girls in bathing suits on Sunset Beach. I was actually feeling refreshed that morning by a sleep of unexpected soundness. With the Crown evidence in, no surprises waiting, my brain had turned off its engines for eight hours. I expected my motion to be quickly disposed of, then to be granted the rest of the day to prepare my defence: a final run-through with Gabriel, a tough pretend cross-examination à la Cyrus Smythe-Baldwin.

But what chance would we have with twelve dutiful middle-class strivers brought up to be respectful to police, distrustful of
extremists, and chary of minorities, particularly our First Peoples? How could they possibly find the courage to believe veteran officers would perjure themselves so wantonly?

I thought again of Steven Truscott. Aged fourteen and sentenced to hang. A white kid, never in trouble. By the time I got to my building I was in the pits once more.

Pappas was just outside my office by the secretarial pool, propositioning a summer temp, a task he set aside to follow me in. I supposed he intended to lecture me again on how I was handling Hammersmith (An
old-timer might get away with it, not a cocky young punk like you; you got to learn to suck a little)
.

He unfolded the
Province
. “At least you're getting some ink off this sucker. ‘Cops Conspired to Lie' – that'll make the Palmer brothers happy. Shows them you got a healthy attitude. Guys like the Palmers, they respect a man who goes down fighting. Unless, of course, he goes down for the big count. That they don't respect.”

“My guy isn't going down.”

“Is there anyone in this town believes that? Including you, hotshot? Way I read it, your chances of bringing this stinker home are next to zero. I could've maybe got you a deal for non-capital, but that's slipping away.”

He turned to leave and met Ophelia coming in. They did a little dance in the doorway, Ophelia finally manoeuvring past him. She mimed washing her hands and shaking them dry.

“Smythe-Baldwin's office called. Case is being put down for an hour or so. Mysteriously, they want to meet us at the Coroner's Court.”

Now what? I affected nonchalance. “Gee, maybe they're conducting an inquest into their case.”

The Coroner's Court, a deco heritage building near the police station, is now a police museum, but in those days it also housed the city analyst's laboratory, the morgue, and autopsy facilities.

As our cab pulled up, we saw Lukey holding its ornate carved door for Irene Mulligan, who exited grief-stricken. She brushed off his attempts to comfort her and approached us, signalling our driver to wait. “It's his.” She daubed at her runny mascara. “I'm sorry. Oh, God, my Dermot …”

I couldn't form the words to ask her to complete her sentence, left it to Ophelia. “What do you mean, Irene?”

“His toe.”

Lukey barrelled toward us. “Come on, guys, she's in a pretty bad way.”

He held the cab door for Irene, who hissed, “Leave me alone. You didn't have to be so cruel.”

Leroy pulled a look of repentance as the taxi sped off. “Maybe we should've showed her a photo instead. Now we got to apply to recall her to the stand, making everything even messier, tougher on her.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ophelia said as he piloted us to the door.

“Goodness, deary, wash your mouth. That foot that washed up on Gambier Island a couple months ago? We got a match.”

We took the stairs, but to the morgue, not the courtroom. Smitty was there, along with Dr. Brenner, the city pathologist.

Smitty got right to business. “Please explain to our guests the process of ocean decomposition on the human body.”

“Sharks get most of the blame, but seals, crabs, and other sea creatures also feast upon a corpse. As well, limbs commonly detach as a body decomposes. Over several weeks and months, feet in particular undergo adipocere formation, the fleshy parts turning into a waxy substance no animal will eat. Feet do not normally float, but the shoe has been determined to be buoyant enough to be carried by whatever currents carry flotsam to the shores of Howe Sound.”

“Can you help our dumbfounded friends with an estimate of how long the body – or at least the foot – had been in the ocean?”

“I would hesitate to say on oath, but given the limited extent of adipocere formation, I would suggest a range of several weeks to
several months. Some more biochemical testing could be done.”

Lukey took over. “The runner is a men's size-eight Puma, right foot, which Irene confirmed he had a pair like this, but she couldn't identify the sock; there are only remnants left. Mulligan's boots, the pair found with his clothes, were eight and a half – close enough, I guess, given with boots he'd need thicker socks. Missing Persons wasn't interested in men because they thought it was a lady's foot – there was a speck of fingernail polish on the big toenail. Hey, who knows what secrets lie in the hearts of men? ‘The professor wore panties.' Sounds like an Ellery Queen title.”

He gave me a friendly poke, and to keep my balance I had to grab the stack of body drawers. One of them was open. A wrinkled white foot, on its side.

“So I'm thinking about those panties, and I figure what's there to lose – let's show Irene the foot. Okay, I handled it badly with her. Maybe I was a little flip …”

“Facetious, Leroy,” Smitty said.

“I make no defence. I couldn't stop cracking up when she said the baby toe was his. So look at the little toenail. Just a wee, hard pebble of a toenail – that's how she
ID
'd it. They're vestigial anyway – right, Doc? – our toenails, given we no longer hang from trees.”

Dr. Brenner kept out of it. The nubbin was the size of a small mole. I wasn't about to touch that cold, wizened foot. I was feeling nauseated.

“Definitely Dermot's right foot, says her affidavit.” Lukey extended a carbon. “Forgive my typing – I was in a hurry, she was kind of stressed out.”

Eight lines, concluding with “sworn by me this second day of August, 1962.” Her signature and that of a justice of the peace. All my rehearsing, all to naught.
If he is dead, where are his remains?
The last loophole filled.

Even the lack of socks on the riverbank site was explained. Presumably Mulligan brought extra footwear in case his boots got damp.

“Well,” said Smitty, “shall we carry on to court?” A solemn look my way. “Must we really put her through this?”

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

A SIDE NOTE: Those who prefer their humour black may be amused to learn that after the case concluded the foot was returned to Irene Mulligan, at her request, for burial at Mountain View Cemetery. There was even a small private funeral. Eric Nicol had a morbid take on it in his column in the
Province
. Would there be a second funeral if the rest of the body washed up? Would each part of Professor Mulligan merit its own burial ceremony?

Mercifully those questions have never had to be answered. The size-eight foot with the nubbly little toenail is all that has ever been found of Dermot Mulligan, D. Th., Ph.D.

O
phelia and I searched for reaction from Gabriel as we related the latest downturn in fortunes. Nothing. Not a flicker. All emotion swallowed, denied.

“Best for Irene that she finally knows,” Ophelia said. “She can get on with her life.”

I chimed in with another uplifting viewpoint. “Doesn't affect our main line of defence. Suicide. Enhances it, really; let's us focus on it.”

“Spare the bullshit, Arthur.” Gabriel's voice was low, monotonic. “It's another door closed, isn't it? So my dad was wrong. He was telling me last week Dermot went on the run because he'd done something evil, light years worse than screwing a faculty wife. Dad met him a couple of times, didn't like him.”

We said we were pleased to hear his father had visited.

“He came with Mom. Finally.”

Then his feelings betrayed him, a glistening in the eye. An awareness, maybe, that his dad, that cynical victim of white connivery, might not have lost the ability to love.

I looked away, at the wall.
Burn in hell, Scheister
. That complaint seemed somehow, arcanely, directed at me. The wet-behind-the-ears shyster who wanted this murder case for its supposed glory. Who didn't have the experience for it, the wisdom, the judgment.

I checked my watch – they'd be waiting for us in Assize Court. I called for the jailers to release us from the cell, which seemed to be closing in on me, a Lewis Carroll event.

Gabriel collected himself. “The truth will emerge decades after I'm gone.” Soft, toneless again. “There will be official expressions of regret. Unfortunately, they will say, the system sometimes fails. And then the system will just carry on failing for years, a century maybe, until it collapses under all its dead weight.” Another Riel quote:
“A century is only a spoke in the wheel of everlasting time.”

This was not a case of his martyr complex finding new life from an invigorated prospect of death. After our many swings of fortune, it sounded, finally, of the extinction of hope.

We would be seen by the jury as the bad guys if Irene was dragged back into court (
I'm sorry, Mrs. Mulligan, but they insisted)
. In any event, Gabriel felt concerned enough about her emotional health to instruct me to dispense with her viva voce evidence regarding the toe and its highly evolved toenail. In court, as Smitty solemnly filed her affidavit as the final exhibit, I watched the jury, imagined their minds snapping shut now that they had proof of death. Cooper, the foreman, turned to look at a juror behind him. An exchange of nods.

“That completes the case for the Crown.”

The jury went out and Hammersmith puckered his lips, as if offering me a sarcastic good-luck kiss. “You have the floor, Mr. Beauchamp. You may now seek to persuade me, with your usual eloquent oratory, that I ought to direct the jury to acquit. Explain to me, if that's your position, why you think the Crown's case is full of holes.”

“There is no evidence whatsoever aside from the lies of Corporal Lorenzo that the accused was at the alleged murder scene. Otherwise, the evidence is entirely consistent with suicide. It is the most rational conclusion available. On that basis, the defence moves for a directed verdict of acquittal.” There was no point wasting more breath.

“Judgment. I have heard ample evidence that if believed by a jury would almost inevitably lead to conviction. I need not review it. The case will go to the jury. Tomorrow you will open for the defence. If that involves a continued attempt to malign our enforcers of the law, so be it. Adjourned till tomorrow.”

“White man's justice!” Shouted not by my client but his father, his crutch raised like a war club. Celia Swift was weeping beside
him. Hammersmith looked coldly their way, then retreated to his chambers.