The Guilty Plea (26 page)

There was a silence. Made more awkward because they were on the phone. It had been three months since that Sunday night in August when they’d been together on the island. The heat. Floating together naked, touching. They hadn’t made love, but in a way it was more intimate.

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

“To tell the truth, not great,” she said. “You?”

“Greene’s been working me night and day.”

“It’s probably good for you.”

He laughed, but it felt forced. Was this just a social chat? A goodbye Charlie phone call? “Probably,” he said.

“I came into the office, but they gave me the day off.” She sounded guarded.

“I’m off shift too.” There was no need to tell her that he’d met Jason Wyler at the cemetery.

“Can we go for coffee?”

“Sure,” he said. “How about the Dip. It’s just down the street from my place.”

The Dip was the Café Diplomatico, a neighborhood tradition in
Little Italy for more than forty years. He hurried over and took a private table in the corner. Summers came in a few minutes later. She looked exhausted. As usual, her hair was up, but it was flat, as if even it were tired. They gave each other a tentative hug.

The waitress came and they both ordered coffees. Turned out they both took it black. When they were alone, Summers looked him straight in the eye and smirked.

“Looks like I’m the one who didn’t call this time.”

“I figured it out. I was your alibi and you had to preserve that.”

She nodded. “There’s nothing I would do to jeopardize this case in any way. Ted DiPaulo’s a brilliant lawyer. Give him an inch and …”

Kennicott’s cell phone rang. He would have ignored it, except it was Greene’s special ring. He put his hand up.

“Jo, sorry this is so rude. But it’s Greene.”

“Great.” She lifted her coffee cup, inviting him to toast. He clinked her cup with his. “It must be over.”

“Hello, Detective,” he said into the phone.

“She didn’t plead,” Greene said.

“What?” Kennicott exclaimed, the word coming out louder than he intended. Across the table, Summers tensed.

“She wouldn’t admit the facts. Said she didn’t stab him. Norville’s expediting the trial. We’re on for January thirty-first. I have a few things to do. Meet me at the office in half an hour.”

This was classic Greene. No editorializing. Back to business.

Kennicott hung up and looked at Summers. She’d already guessed. “Samantha didn’t plead, right?”

“Said she didn’t stab him.”

“My God, Daniel,” she said. “What if she didn’t do it?”

Good for you, Jo, Kennicott thought. All he’d been thinking was that it would be at least another three months until he could see her.

“Trial’s set for the end of January. Greene wants me to get to the office.”

She looked ashen. “Daniel. Before I disappear on you again, I have to tell you something. Take this as a measure of my trust in you.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. It was cold as a stone.

“You think I was seeing Terry, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “It’s none of my business.”

She zeroed in on him. “But that’s what you think. Isn’t it?”

Summers was a damn good cross-examiner. He thought of saying, “That story you told the police about lunches and one dinner a year was unbelievable. The only reason for you even mentioning the dinner was because you knew I’d seen you two together that night before Christmas.” Instead, he shrugged. “I read your statement to the police. Your answers about you and Terrance were evasive.”

“I know,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Terry was my brother.”

“Your what?”

“Half brother. His mother. My dad.”

Kennicott was so stunned he didn’t know what to say.

“Raglan knows. It’s not relevant to the case. If this gets out it will destroy a lot of lives. I’ll do anything, even not see you, to make sure this case doesn’t go off the rails.”

Kennicott’s mind was running off in all directions. Jo’s brother was murdered, like his. The trial was starting at the end of January. Samantha said she didn’t stab Terrance. If it wasn’t Samantha, who? “Did Mr. Wyler know about this?”

“I don’t think so. He’s a dangerous man. It would be terrible if he found out. But I don’t trust her either.”

“Mrs. Wyler?”

“Totally two-faced. Puts on a big show about caring so much for Jason. But it’s all about her all the time. What’s her alibi?”

Kennicott had worked so hard on the file he practically had it memorized. “Typical Sunday-night alibi. Home asleep. The family had dinner at Terrance’s house. Left about eleven o’clock. You don’t think she’d kill her own son, do you?”

“If she thought her secret was in jeopardy, I don’t know what she’d do. The woman seduced my father to get what she wanted.”

Kennicott was still holding Summers’s hand. Now it was warm.

“When does Greene need you in the office?” she asked.

“Half an hour,” he said.

“You and me,” she said. “We have the world’s shittiest timing.”

She squeezed his hand and they both laughed.

“We have to get out of here,” Ted DiPaulo said to Samantha Wyler. She’d been curled up in her chair in the prisoner’s box, hands over her face, for about half an hour. The court had cleared out, except for the officer by the door, who was getting impatient.

“Okay.” She looked up at him and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

“The second we walk out that door the press will be all over us.”

“But the judge said they couldn’t publish anything.”

“This isn’t about what was said in here,” Nancy Parish said. “They want a picture of you walking outside the courthouse.”

Wyler shook her head. “It’s disgusting.”

“They call it the perp walk,” DiPaulo said.

“That’s grotesque. What can we do?”

“They can’t take your picture inside the courthouse.” DiPaulo pointed to Wyler’s red coat on the chair by the counsel table. He had insisted that she wear it yesterday when she waited for him during the judicial pretrial and again today. “Put that on.”

Wyler stepped down from the prisoner’s box, retrieved her coat, and slung it over her arm.

“No,” DiPaulo said. “Wear it.”

She slipped it on. Her hands were shaking.

The moment the officer opened the courtroom door, they were set upon by a throng of reporters. “Keep walking,” DiPaulo told Wyler as people pressed in on all sides, their questions coming fast and furious. “How are you feeling, Samantha?”

“What made you change your mind?”

“What happened to the guilty plea?”

“My client and I have no comment at this time.” DiPaulo used his size to push his way through.

The crowd followed them, coming within inches of their faces. DiPaulo had been in many press scrums like this. Reporters had no regard for normal social distance. They shoved microphones and cameras right up against your nose.

“Ted, if you’re not going to talk, which door you coming out?”

It was Zachery Stone, the aggressive little reporter for the
Toronto Sun
who looked like a cross between Danny DeVito and a Scottish terrier. He’d pounded the crime beat for the city’s only tabloid for more than twenty years.

“Can’t tell you.” DiPaulo kept moving. They were almost at the door to the barristers’ lounge, their safe haven where no reporters were allowed.

“Come on,” Stone said. “This much press, every door’s covered. We’re going to get the shot. Nothing’s worse than a perp walk when you’re running away. Make her look guilty as hell.”

DiPaulo put his hand on the door. Stone had wormed his way right in under his shoulder. “Okay, Zac,” he whispered. He checked his watch and raised his voice. “Everyone, I need a cup of coffee.”

“Which door?” a chorus asked.

“The elevator that goes down from here. The barristers’ exit,” DiPaulo said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The reporters rushed away, moving as one, tapping on their BlackBerrys to colleagues covering the outside of the building.

DiPaulo led Samantha and Parish into the lounge.

“I guess you had no choice but to tell them,” Parish said after they sat down on a long couch.

DiPaulo smiled at her. He turned to Wyler. “Sam, take your coat off and give it to Nancy, please.” He pulled a copy of
The Globe and Mail
from his briefcase and tossed it to Parish. “You’ll need this. And hand your briefcase over to Sam.”

As they spoke, a thin black woman in legal robes approached. DiPaulo stood to greet her. “Ms. Delacroix, meet Ms. Wyler and my partner, Nancy Parish.”

Parish and Wyler looked up at him, confused. He chuckled. “Sam, Ms. Delacroix will bring both of you into the women’s robing room, where you’ll put on Nancy’s robes.”

They sat in a tight circle as DiPaulo explained his plan. Wyler and
Delacroix, both dressed in robes and carrying briefcases, would take the lawyers’ elevator up one floor to the law library, walk around to the main set of elevators, and go directly to the basement. A tunnel ran between the courthouse and Osgoode Hall, the historic building that housed the main law library and the Court of Appeal. Once there, Delacroix would call DiPaulo on her cell phone and tell him when the coast was clear. DiPaulo and Parish—who’d be wearing Wyler’s long red coat—would take the elevator down to the barristers’ exit. They’d step into the glassed-in rotunda, where all the reporters could see them.

Parish picked up the newspaper. “Let me guess. I’ll have my face buried in this.”

“Ms. Delacroix, you’ll take my client to a cab on University Avenue that’s already waiting for you.” DiPaulo looked up at the three women and smiled. “Not bad?”

Parish laughed. “This has been a tough day. We deserve some fun.”

Delacroix and Wyler left, and DiPaulo got a cup of coffee.

“The press will be pissed that you lied to them,” Parish said when she returned from the robing room in street clothes and reached for Wyler’s coat.

“Ah, ah, ah. I didn’t lie. I told them that
I’d
be down in twenty minutes. I never said where Samantha would be.”

“Smooth. But how can you still represent her if she told you she was guilty?”

DiPaulo took a sip. The coffee was watery, and was too hot to boot. “Samantha Wyler never told me she was guilty. Just the opposite. At our first meeting she told me she didn’t do it. All I asked her, in your presence, was for instructions from her to enter a plea based on a set of facts. I never asked her if those facts were true.”

Parish laughed. “How many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin?”

“As many as it takes to win.” He took another sip and looked at his watch again. It had been twelve minutes since Delacroix and Wyler left. His cell phone rang.

“There’s only one reporter,” Delacroix said. “She looks Asian.”

“Good. I’ll call you when we’re downstairs. That should draw her up this way. Don’t move yet.” He turned to Parish. “Shall we,
Ms. Wyler
?”

They took the elevator down and walked into the glassed-in rotunda.
Parish, in the red coat, newspaper opened and covering her face, was beside him. Lightbulbs started flashing.

“Now we stop,” DiPaulo said. “The press will think you’re getting nervous. Lean your head against me and I’ll put my arm around you.”

DiPaulo looked over at University Avenue. After a few seconds he saw a dark-haired woman running up the road. He pushed a preset number on his phone. “I see the reporter. Go fast and keep your phone on,” he told Delacroix.

He gave the crowd on the other side of the glass a “wait a second” gesture. Through the phone he heard the sound of steps on stones, feet running, air rustling past, then a door opening, metallic, and Delacroix’s voice: “Three ninety Bay, please. That’s Bay and Queen, across from Old City Hall.”

He heard an East Indian–accented male voice say, “Mr. DiPaulo already gave me the address.” There was the sound of a car engine starting up and moving.

“Mr. DiPaulo,” Delacroix said. “We’re clear.”

“Great work.” He closed his phone with a snap.

“Ready?” Parish asked from behind her newspaper.

“Time to meet the press.”

They walked through the barrier and opened the door. Reporters started yelling. More flashbulbs. DiPaulo took the newspaper out of Parish’s hands.

The reporters gasped. “Fuck.”

“Shit, cover the other exits.”

“I don’t believe it,” he heard them say.

“Ted, you’re making me look bad,” Zachery Stone said.

“Sorry, old friend. I said
I’d
be out in twenty minutes.” He held up his watch. “I’m right on time.”

DiPaulo had a second cab waiting for them on University Avenue. When they’d shut the door, Parish turned to him. “Counsel, ready for cross-examination?”

“Certainly.” DiPaulo tried to sound innocent.

“You planned this a few days ago, didn’t you? Delacroix. The red coat. Two cabs on standby.”

Through the car window, DiPaulo watched the crowd of reporters recede. “Perhaps.”

“You didn’t think she’d go through with the plea, did you?”

He grinned. “I pushed Samantha as far as I could. In this job you always have to ride more than one horse.”

The cab rumbled past city workers dismantling the flower displays that had adorned the broad avenue throughout the summer and fall. The street felt barren.

“I bet you’re happy. You love trials.”

“I certainly do,” DiPaulo said as they bumped along on old shock absorbers. “But only if I win.”

“Come in, Detective, please come in,” the Honorable Justice Johnathan Summers, head judge of the Old City Hall Provincial Court, said. He jumped up from his red leather chair, slipped around his wide wooden desk, his black judicial robes swirling behind him, and pulled his office door all the way open for Ari Greene.

Greene had been in the big corner office many times and it always struck him that the judge’s chambers were as over-the-top as his personality. A boisterous, bossy man, he ran his courtroom with a sternness that rivaled Captain Ahab. Summers loved to brag about his two great passions, on display in equal measure throughout the room: hockey and sailing.