in my classroom when Carl had come to see me.
We found Carl sitting in a desolate room, at a particle board-and-veneer table with a half-empty cup of cold coffee in front of him. Despite the fancy new police headquarters, it was well known among employees and regular visitors to the police station that one area the new facilities had failed to address was the abysmal quality of the coffee provided. It was even worse than the brew found in teacher faculty lounges in public schools. Carl had wisely given up drinking the police department standard issue swill.
“Winston!” Carl jumped to his feet, suddenly reinvigorated when I entered the room.
“Hi, Carl,” I responded. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay, I guess,” he replied. He seemed happy to see me, which was understandable. Somehow my students haven’t yet begun to feel quite the same way.
“Good.” I turned to face the two detectives. “So what’s the story, Detectives? Are you going to lay a charge, or do we go home?”
“We still have nearly twenty-three hours, you know that,” Smythe gently reminded me. Under Canadian law, Furlo and Smythe could detain Carl for twenty-four hours without laying a charge. At that point, he would need to be charged with a crime or released.
“If you think you have enough evidence to charge him, what are you waiting for? I have class in the morning.” Sometimes being brash and up front was the best defence.
“Why don’t you ask your client how his fingerprints got onto Tricia Bellamy?” Furlo challenged.
“I told you,” Carl began.
“Carl! Just wait a moment,” I admonished him. “Exactly where were the fingerprints found?”
“Where?” Furlo asked.
“Yes, where. Where on the body were my client’s prints allegedly found?” Carl visibly flinched as I began referring to Tricia as “the body.” It couldn’t be helped. It was important to distance myself from the victim if I was going to mount a decent defence to what was looking like a stronger case.
“Your client’s prints were found on the victim’s watch and a partial print that looks very close to your client’s was also found on both of the victim’s hands,” Smythe responded to my question.
“That’s it?” I tried to sound confident. Homicide wasn’t my specialty.
“What more do you need?” Furlo sneered.
“Well, for starters, I understand Tricia Bellamy was strangled. How about fingerprints around her neck? Find any of those?” Carl was visibly paling by the syllable.
“No,” Smythe admitted, “we did not.”
“Ever heard of gloves, Counsellor? I refer you to U.S. v. O.J. Simpson,” Furlo quipped.
“I’ve heard of it, yes. Though it was a state, not a federal case, which makes it State of California v. Simpson. Your point being that you found no prints whatsoever on the victim’s neck?”
“That’s correct,” Smythe returned. “At this point, no prints of any kind, even partials, have been found directly on the victim’s neck.”
I turned to face Furlo, since he was the more aggressive of the two. I couldn’t even get a rise out of Smythe, which meant the likelihood of flustering her into a mistake was much less than with Furlo. “I suppose you have a scientific theory about the prevalence of prints located anywhere except on the one part of the body where death would have been caused?”
“Yeah, smartass, he put the gloves on so he could strangle her without leaving prints.”
“And the victim stood there calmly watching her assailant putting gloves on so she could be strangled? This is what you’ve got?”
“Or maybe, he felt remorse after he offed her, and while weeping over her body, removed his gloves to wipe his eyes.”
“Then ran his fingerprints all over the hands and her wristwatch. This, after having the foresight to bring gloves to avoid the detection of prints in the first place.” I stood up from the table next to Carl. “I guess it really is time to go.”
“Doesn’t it bother you, Patrick, that your client’s prints could be found on the body at all?” Furlo demanded angrily.
“What bothers me is that you’ve failed to even consider the myriad means by which a teacher’s prints could be found on a student. Classrooms are not big places. People make inadvertent contact all the time. A caring hand laid on a student’s arm to offer encouragement. A touch on the elbow as you say ‘excuse me’ in the stairway.”
“And on her hands,” Smythe reminded me, suddenly rejoining the conversation.
“Mr. Turbot told you during your earlier questioning that Tricia Bellamy had expressed some difficulty with the subject matter and had come in for tutoring. They were in a biology lab conducting science experiments. That a ‘partial’ print could be left on her hands is hardly grounds for detaining my client.” I was bluffing.
“It is when you consider the fact they were sleeping together,” Furlo sneered.
“And that, Detective, is the last I want to hear of those unfounded allegations. This was a troubled student who for reasons unknown alleged an inappropriate relationship. Until such times as you have some kind of corroborating evidence of such a relationship, you would be well advised to refrain from making any statements in that regard, or you may find yourself and your department staring down the business end of a civil defamation suit.”
Furlo, for once, was quieted by my threat. Smythe did not come to his aid.
“And furthermore,” I continued, “just how in hell did you get my client’s fingerprints for comparison?”
“He offered them when we brought him in,” Smythe explained calmly.
I looked at Carl in disbelief. His eyes turned pleadingly to me. “I didn’t know what to do. They said they wanted my fingerprints, so I gave them to them.”
“You brought my client in here because you found ‘some’ prints on the body?”
“Prints that turned out to be his,” Furlo demanded.
“Talk to Crown Counsel. Even assuming you can gather enough evidence to build a credible charge, I’ll have those prints thrown out as being collected improperly, without the advice of counsel, without an arrest warrant being sworn out.” I practically pulled Carl from his chair. “Carl, it’s time to go home.” Smythe and Furlo made no effort to stop me. “Goodnight, Detectives.”
“Good night, Mr. Patrick,” Smythe offered. Despite my staged hostility and indignity, she still had class enough to offer polite, closing niceties.
“Hey, Patrick!” Furlo sneered. “Why doesn’t your client give us a DNA sample, and we’ll speed things up immensely?”
“Not going to happen. Not now. Not ever,” I replied, though I knew if any more damning evidence came our way, obtaining a court order for Carl’s DNA would be relatively routine.
