The Guilty Plea (15 page)

A nervous tic, Greene thought. He motioned to Kennicott. “Officer Daniel Kennicott is here to assist.”

Wyler was trembling.

Without hesitating, Greene clasped her shoulder. Gently. He always made physical contact with a suspect when making an arrest. There was something very human about it. Touch.

“Samantha Wyler, it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest for the charge of first-degree murder of Mr. Terrance Wyler.”

She brought her fist to her mouth and bit down hard on the middle finger. Her breathing was rapid, but her dark eyes never left Greene as he informed her of her rights. When he finished, she pulled her hand away from her face.

“Are there handcuffs? This is all new to me.”

“Not necessary now.” You’ll be shackled soon enough, he thought. “We’re going upstairs and you can see your son for fifteen minutes. I’ll be there the whole time you’re with him. No talking about what happened.”

“I know, I know.” Wyler nodded over and over. “Ted explained everything to me. Thanks for this.”

They all went together, in silence, up the elevator. Ocaya’s apartment was remarkably neat, even though an enormous number of things were stuffed into so little space. Spotless, just like Terrance Wyler’s house had been when she took care of it, Greene thought. The front door opened into the kitchen, where there was a sink, a hot plate, a small fridge, and, on a tiny table under the only window, a round rice cooker. A tall, cylindrical blue plastic barrel dominated the far corner.

Greene had seen similar barrels in many homes over the years, and they always impressed him. Immigrant families, usually working two jobs at minimum wage, stuffed into tiny apartments in far-flung suburbs, somehow scrimped and saved to fill these large containers with all kinds of goods—canned food, clothes, batteries, toys, tools, and other utensils—to send back home to their families.

Samantha and DiPaulo came in behind Greene. Kennicott stayed by the door. Billy barked, and Greene rubbed the dog behind his ears. Simon, who was playing in the adjoining living room, spotted his mother and rushed into her arms. “Mommy, it’s not your week.” He paid no attention to the other adults in the crowded kitchen.

Wyler clasped his little head to her body. “Mommy won’t be here next week. I have to go away for a while.”

“Oh,” Simon said. He wriggled free and led her into the living room. Greene sat at the edge of the kitchen, where he could see them. Simon picked up a building block. “I sleep on this couch. It’s comfy.”

Wyler kissed the top of his head. Her jaw was clamped tight.

Simon showed her a book,
Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo
. “It’s a baby’s book, but I can read some of the words,” he said.

“I’m proud of you.” She stroked his hair.

“Cely eats lots of rice. It gets stuck in my teeth.”

Greene glanced behind him. DiPaulo, Kennicott, and Ocaya were hanging back. He pointed to a sink and made a drinking motion, and Ocaya rushed over with a glass of water. “Thanks,” he whispered.

The fifteen minutes seemed to go by in a few seconds. Wyler must have felt the deadline approach, because as Greene was about to stand up, she held Simon. “Time for Mommy to go,” she said. The boy’s shirt had become crooked from her embrace, and she straightened it with both hands.

Greene looked back to Kennicott and DiPaulo and motioned for them to step outside.

“Bye-bye,” Simon said to his mother.

Her body seemed like a dead weight as she walked through the small kitchen to the front door. Ocaya slipped past her into the living room and went to hold the boy.

Greene followed Wyler to the door.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Simon yelled. He scooted past Greene and grabbed Wyler by the leg. “Did you find my Thomas?”

“Your Thomas?” Wyler turned. Tears were in her eyes. “No, I didn’t.”

“It’s missing. Uncle Jason told me he was going to go back to my Daddy’s house to look for it. Maybe he can find it.”

“I hope so.”

Greene stepped forward. “The police will search for it too.”

Wyler looked over the child’s head at Greene and mouthed the words “thank you.”

“The police always find lost things,” Simon said. “And bad guys too, don’t they, Mommy?”

Wyler put her hand on her son’s head. Her eyes were fixed on Greene. “They always try their best to get the bad guys,” she said. “But even the police sometimes make mistakes.”

“No, they don’t. They’re the police.” Simon looked up at Greene. “Isn’t that right?”

Greene knelt down so he was at eye level with the boy. “Why don’t you give your mommy the biggest hug ever.”

Simon squeezed his mother as hard as he could, the way a child does when he doesn’t want to say goodbye.

When they appear in Superior Court for serious charges, such as murder, Canadian lawyers wear black robes, white shirts, and white tabs. The tradition of “gowning” is a holdover from the British judicial system and Ted DiPaulo loved everything about it—his crisp shirt, gold cuff links, and the great swish of the gown that accentuated his big frame.

Like everything in law, there was a tradition to the legal robes. Years earlier DiPaulo had been appointed Queen’s Counsel, an honorific for veteran lawyers. Being a QC no longer meant a great deal. The only vestige of status was a subtle difference in the robes they wore. Junior lawyers’ gowns had a narrow sash across the left shoulder that had no apparent purpose. An astute observer would note a gap in the fabric near the top, designed so clients could discreetly deposit an envelope with payment enclosed. The robes of a QC were conspicuously flat across the back with no place to deposit funds. The reason: a senior barrister would never bother with anything so trifling as fees.

In the robing room during the tense minutes before court commenced at ten o’clock, the lawyers chatted away as they struggled with buttons and tabs. To an outsider the scene might appear to be quite genteel. But really it was no different from a boxers’ dressing room before a fight. Mondays were always busy. Every lawyer with a case on the trial list was summoned to court at the beginning of the week.

DiPaulo was keyed up. It had been more than three weeks since Samantha Wyler was arrested, and he was about to step into the ring for round one: the bail hearing. He opened his vertical locker, took out his blue velvet bag with the initials TLD written in flowing white script on the side—Lando was his middle name—and laid out his clothes on the long table in the center of the crowded room.

A thin man with streaked blond hair spotted him. “What’ve you got today?” His name was Clarke Whittle, a talented lawyer who always wore dramatic eyeglasses, of which he seemed to have an endless supply.

Like most defense counsel, Whittle loved to gossip. What’ve you got? was one of the two most common questions asked in the lawyers’ robing room. It meant: What are you doing in court—a bail hearing, a pretrial with a judge, or a trial?

“Bail,” DiPaulo said, as if the case were nothing unusual. “On a murder.”

Whittle pulled off his latest pair of glasses, a combination of wood and metal, and polished them with a special cloth. “Who you got?”

This was the second robing-room question. The “who” referred to the judge on the case. Most of the talk every morning was about judges, their foibles, their strengths, what they liked to see from counsel, and any other goodies that could be thrown into the mix.

“Norville.” DiPaulo unbuttoned his blue work shirt. Another thing he liked about wearing robes was that he could dress in casual clothes coming to and from the courthouse. No need to put on a suit and tie first thing in the morning.

“Madam Justice No Decision,” Whittle said. “Better you than me.” DiPaulo unzipped his jeans and hung them in his locker and pulled on his striped black and gray court pants. “Thanks,” he said.

Until her judicial appointment two years before, Irene Norville had been a family lawyer at a small, undistinguished firm with no trial experience in criminal matters. Her second husband, a partner in a downtown firm and a heavyweight in the Conservative Party, had lobbied hard to get her the job. The word on the street was that during trials, when a tough legal question came up, she’d phone him for advice—and would even get one of his juniors to do legal research for her—because she was too embarrassed to ask the more senior judges.

The upshot was that Norville was forever finding reasons to take breaks during a trial. It drove lawyers—Crowns and defense—crazy. DiPaulo found the best way to deal with her insecurity was to overwhelm the judge with legal precedents that addressed even the most mundane issues.

In preparation for today, he had filed with the court a thick case-book with all the relevant passages highlighted in yellow marker. There
were a surprising number of decisions in which people charged with murdering a spouse had been released on bail. Almost always they were women with no criminal record, like Samantha.

After a quick cup of coffee in the adjoining lounge, DiPaulo found a quiet corner and pulled out a clean pad of paper. He had two boxes of files back at his office, and his briefcase was packed with pretrial notes, but before going into court he liked to put everything aside and write all the key points on one page. If you couldn’t do it in a page, he had taught young lawyers for years, then you didn’t know your case.

At the top of a blank sheet he wrote, “Samantha Wyler, née Samantha Frankland, Bail Hearing, September 14:”

PLUSES

Mother, one child, Simon, age four

Thirty-five years old, good work history

No criminal record, no outstanding charges (note: can’t say “no police contacts” because of e-mails and voice mails she recently sent Terrance)

Plan for bail:

• Live with mother in Cobalt—small town in northern Ontario

• Report to local police station—daily if necessary

• Leave town limits only with express permission of police and in the company of her mother or brother

• Ask that she be able to use local libraries

• Surrender passport

Sam made no statements—only circumstantial evidence against her. No proof she had the knife. Question—do they have evidence she was in the house that night? Don’t know—be careful. Reason why Sam
must not testify at bail hearing
.