The Guilty Plea (19 page)

Keep smiling, DiPaulo screamed at himself. The key to this whole hearing was to get the judge to trust the person who was signing the bail. If there was even a whiff of suspicion that Frankland was hiding something, it was game over.

“You never told me about this?” In for a dime, in for a dollar, he thought. “Even when we prepared for you to testify?”

“That’s right. Sam might be mad at me, but I don’t see anyone from Cobalt or Liskeard here except her friend Lillian and my son.”

“Please. What is it?” he asked. As obsequious as a hotel doorman.

“Sam teaches reading.”

That’s it? The big secret? DiPaulo was ecstatic. But he had to keep calm. “Oh, I see. And do the children like her?”

“That’s the secret. It’s not children. Adults. They’re real embarrassed. Only me and Lil knows.” Frankland pointed back out into the audience. “Whenever Sam’s in town she meets with folks in the library basement who can’t read. Got to keep this quiet.”

Sure do, DiPaulo thought, suppressing the urge to whoop for joy. Run up and hug his witness. Norville was smiling, writing away.

“Thank you, ma’am. Those are my questions.” He sat down, the blood flowing again in his veins. He’d graduated to the Eisenhower line. Ike was first elected in 1952. About a fifty-fifty chance now. This was the greatest goddamn job in the world, when magic like this happened.

“Next witness for the defense?” Norville asked.

“No more witnesses needed.” He was determined to project confidence. “I’d be happy to make submissions right now.”

The indecisive Norville looked taken aback. She turned to Raglan. “Does the Crown wish to call any more evidence? A case like this, I’d like to hear everything.”

Norville was practically begging the Crown to give her more ammunition so she could take the easy way out and keep Wyler locked up.

Raglan made a show of looking at the wall clock. “Your Honor,” she said, standing up, her voice polite. “This has been a long day and the Crown would like some time to consider whether we’ll call further evidence.”

Norville beamed at Raglan. “Excellent suggestion. Further evidence and counsel submissions tomorrow morning. I’ll make my ruling in the afternoon.”

Plenty of time over lunch to pick the brains of the top young lawyers in her husband’s firm, DiPaulo thought. He scrambled to his feet, not wanting Raglan to get all the brownie points for good behavior. “I agree wholeheartedly.”

Norville smiled at him.

Good, DiPaulo thought. Rule number one in court: keep the judge happy.

Ari Greene always found the experience somewhat surreal. Here he was, sitting in a packed courtroom about to take notes on the next piece of evidence—the video of him in the child-friendly room at police headquarters, playing trains with Simon. Raglan had a big television screen on a movable stand and rolled it into position so the judge and everyone in the court could see.

After DiPaulo closed his case yesterday, Greene and Raglan had decided to play the videotape in court. Since Samantha wasn’t going to testify, there was no reason to hold it back, and it was powerful evidence that might get Norville to deny bail. And even more important, it might convince Wyler that the case against her was overwhelming and set up a guilty plea.

The video was made on the afternoon of the murder, before Simon’s family had told him the news. Up on the screen, the boy ran in through the door, holding a train he’d carried with him from home. The train’s name was Percy, he’d told Greene. He went right to the train basket. Greene saw himself come into view seconds later.

“Do they have Thomas? I lost mine.” Simon sat down on the carpet and grabbed an engine. “This one’s Henry.”

“I’m not sure,” Greene said. The squeak of little trains rolling back and forth on the wooden tracks and Simon making “vroom-vroom, choo-choo” sounds vibrated out across the courtroom.

Simon fished out some bridges and track and started building. The boy was humming contentedly, his falsetto voice occasionally interspersed with “clang-clang” and “choo-choo” sounds. After a while Greene opened a square refrigerator on the far wall and brought out two juice packs.

“Apple or orange?”

“Apple, please,” Simon said. They sat on the floor and unwrapped the little plastic straws.

“Simon,” Greene said between sips. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“I know,” he said.

“You do?”

Greene looked back at the glass, which was a one-way mirror. Daniel Kennicott was on the other side with the technician who was running the camera.

“That bridge.” Simon pointed to the one closest to him. “One of the parts is broken.”

Greene put his head near the carpet to inspect it. One of the connector nodules was missing. “You’re right. But it still works, if you’re careful.”

“I didn’t break it,” Simon said.

Greene watched himself smile up on the screen. “Simon, I want to ask you about your mommy.”

“Oh.”

In court, Greene looked at Norville. She was glaring down at the defense table. Greene glanced over. Wyler was staring transfixed at her son.

“This morning, when I met you in your bedroom, we talked. Remember?” This had been the toughest part of the interview. If his questions were leading in the least bit, suggesting an answer to the child, the whole exercise could backfire.

Simon lay down and reached for a train. He rolled it back and forth on the carpet, not bothering with the wooden rails, intensely studying the movement of the wheels. One of his feet flopped across Greene’s leg. This was painful to watch. The poor child. Somehow aware his world had changed, he had an innate instinct to protect his mother.

“Arceli doesn’t have any trains at her apartment.” Simon’s eyes were glued to the engine’s little wheels, the sound of them going back and forth a constant backbeat.

“She doesn’t?”

“There’s no Thomas here either.”

“We’ll have to get one.”

“My mom came into my room last night.”

Even though he’d seen the video at least ten times, Greene’s heart was beating. He remembered how he’d had to resist the urge to nod.

“What did your mommy do?” he asked, his voice almost cold.

“She kissed me and said she wouldn’t see me for a long time.” Simon rubbed his foot along Greene’s leg. “Can I go home now and get my trains?”

Greene saw himself glance at the mirror. Looking toward Kennicott.

“I heard you’re going to have a sleepover at your uncle’s house for a few days.”

Simon looked at Greene. “But there’re no trains there.”

“We can bring yours from home,” Greene said.

Simon considered this. He shook his head. “My mommy was crying. Why won’t she see me for a long time?”

“Maybe she has to go visit some people,” Greene said.

There was a sniffling sound in the courtroom. Samantha Wyler was holding a tissue to her nose.

“My daddy always wakes me up before he goes away on trips.”

“Perhaps he was in a hurry.”

On the screen Simon sat up, lifted a train, and rolled it in his hand. “This is Percy. I like him second best after Thomas. How long will mommy be away?”

This was the question Greene had dreaded. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Can I go now?” Simon asked.

“Sure.” Greene pulled him up from the floor in one motion.

Simon stared at Greene, confused. “First I have to put my toys away,” he said. “My dad always makes me tidy up.”

A sigh of affection went up from the audience behind Greene.

Raglan stood. “Your Honor, the tape goes on for a few more minutes.” She spoke over the bang-bang sound of Simon and Greene tossing trains into the bin. “We’ve seen the relevant portion.” She turned the machine off and the courtroom felt unnaturally quiet.

Greene sneaked another look at the defense table. Wyler’s face was buried in her hands. DiPaulo had a smile pasted on his face. Greene was sure the tape had taken him by surprise. DiPaulo would be glad he hadn’t put his client on the stand and have her come up with some
desperate, false alibi, claiming she hadn’t been in the house the night of the murder.

DiPaulo must have sensed Greene’s eyes on him. He looked over at the prosecution table. They locked eyes. DiPaulo nodded slowly.

Both men were experienced enough to understand what had just happened. With this evidence, there’d been a seismic change in the case. The question of Samantha Wyler’s guilt or innocence was all but settled. The only real issues left were: Which charge would she plead guilty to and how many years would she spend in jail?

Something as simple as a primary school report card could reveal an extraordinary amount about a person. Daniel Kennicott first learned this lesson in his rookie year as a cop. He was working on the case of a forty-nine-year-old pedophile named Herman Marchmount, who targeted girls between the ages of five and nine. A detective at the division suggested that Kennicott swear out a search warrant to get his report card. Sure enough, it described in vivid detail how at recess Marchmount dragged a girl from his grade-two class into the bushes and pulled her skirt up over her head.

And what am I going to learn about you, Samantha Wyler? Kennicott thought as he took his seat across from Corinne Tressider, head of guidance for Cobalt High School.

“We were all so shocked to hear about Sam—I mean Samantha.” Tressider sat comfortably behind a desk in her bright room. The school was on a hill above the town and the large windows on the east side looked out across the river beyond. “Everyone called her Sam.”

“You remember her?”

“Never had a student like Sam, and I’m in my thirty-second year of teaching. Take a look at these.” Tressider opened a folder labeled
SAMANTHA FRANKLAND—REPORT CARDS
.

They were on identical pages, their horizontal boxes filled in with precise handwriting. Funny they still call them report cards, Kennicott thought, since they weren’t on cards anymore, but on sheets of light blue paper. The letters in the boxes on the right-hand side jumped off the page: A−, A, and A+, for four straight years. Except for phys ed. In that she was a C student. According to the reports, she wasn’t a team player.

There was a cup filled with sharpened pencils on the corner of Tressider’s desk. She took one out and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger. “I went to school with Karl, her dad.”

“I understand he died in an accident.”

Tressider tapped the pencil on the edge of her desk, which was spotless. The whole room had a Windex-like smell of cleanliness about it. She gave the pencil one last, hard tap and swirled her chair around.

“In our last year of high school we were on a team together.” She turned back to Kennicott with a photo in her hand of four students in a television studio, two boys and two girls. “The show was called
Reach for the Top
. Everyone in the country watched it. Back then we had only two channels. It was what you’d call a trivia show today. Every topic you could imagine.”

She passed Kennicott a faded color picture in a black frame. It was obvious which of the boys was Samantha’s father. He had the same long neck, big eyes, good looks. Tressider had blond hair in a Doris Day bob and wore a flowery dress. They sat beside each other. A banner overhead read
REACH FOR THE TOP: NORTHERN ONTARIO CHAMPIONS
.

“Karl and I are on the right,” Tressider said without looking at the photo. “Harold, the other boy, went out to Alberta to work in the oil business. Hasn’t been back for years. Gwen was the smartest of all. She went to med school in the States but then got ovarian cancer.”

Kennicott put the photo back on the desk.

“We were finalists in the provincial championship. It was the biggest thing in this town ever. We did car washes, raffles, bake sales to raise money. Took the midnight train down to Toronto and stayed in the Royal York Hotel, across from Union Station.” Tressider’s eyes seemed to lose focus as she looked out the window.

“How’d you do?”

She snorted. Shook her head. “We were wiped out. This team from a Toronto school—Neil McNeil. They were so fast hitting the Answer button. Knew everything. Karl took it the hardest. Swore he’d go back to Toronto and make it big. He got into that bank program down there, but it didn’t work out.”

“What happened?”

“He’d never talk about it. The year he came back, I was away at teachers college. When I returned home, he was with Jacquelyn Cormier, and she was pregnant.”

Without warning, Tressider popped out of her chair and went over to the window that overlooked the town below and the train track running along the river. The sun was still low on the horizon and streaking in across the room. She brought the venetian blinds down almost halfway.

Kennicott looked around the office. Tressider had no other personal photos. No pictures of her and a man about her age. No snapshots of children. Often it was the things people didn’t say, or didn’t have, that told you the most about them.

“The first day Sam was in high school, Karl brought her in. She sat right in that chair you’re sitting in. He was so proud of her. The year before, he’d taken her out of school for a week and they’d gone down to Toronto. Stayed at the Royal York. Took her to see all the bank towers, the stock exchange, the museum, the art gallery, some musicals, a Blue Jays game.”

Tressider was speaking without looking back. She scraped the pencil across the mullion in the middle of the window. “Sam was a bright and fun kid. But when Karl died like that, she closed right up. Fourteen years old. A terrible time for a young girl to lose her father.”

Kennicott scanned the “comments” sections of the report cards. All said she was a dedicated student. “I’ve spoken to her college roommate. She said Samantha was a hard worker and a real loner.”

Tressider returned to her desk. She put the
Reach for the Top
photo back in its place before she sat down. “Sam didn’t make friends. She’d come here if she needed to talk.”

“What would you two talk about?”

“Schools. Scholarships. Her latest research project. She loved to borrow my
Newsweek
magazines. Sometimes she’d talk about her dad. How he didn’t want her to get stuck in Cobalt.”