I turned to face him. “Let’s get this clear. Do not offer anything—anything—to the police unless I’m with you. Not fingerprints, not answers to questions, not DNA samples, nothing. They know you have defence counsel. They know better.”
“I’m sorry,” he responded. “I panicked. I don’t get picked up by the police very often.”
“And you won’t again. If they come to see you, if they phone you, if they so much as send you an invitation to the police ball, you call me first, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “Is that true, what you said about getting my fingerprints thrown out?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I was making it up,” I confessed.
“Well, you sounded convincing to me.” He forced a smile.
“Terrific,” I said. “I should have been an actor.”
Eleven
By the time I had taken Carl to his home and me to my mine, it was well past midnight. And still I had not completed my marking.
I had managed to convince Carl it would be a good idea not to come to work on Thursday morning. In fact, I had called our “teacher-on-call” service even prior to going to the police station to ensure Carl’s classes would at least be looked after. Somewhere down the line since I had been a high school student, substitute teachers had changed their moniker to teachers-on-call in a bid to get more respect from students and colleagues alike. As far as I know, students still figured it was holiday time whenever their regular teacher was away. The only time I had ever been thrown out of high school during my own adolescent years was over the grief I had caused a “sub” during a Social Studies class. Back in the eighties, schools had no sense of humour. You told one substitute teacher to fuck off and you were outta there.
Fortunately, Carl was meticulously organized, and his lesson plans were prepared for someone to take over for him. It would have been hard for him to be prepared for the circus at the front of the school when I arrived on Friday morning. If news of Tricia’s death had brought out the best of Vancouver’s media machine, news of Carl’s questioning by the police had brought out the rest of them. How they even knew he had been picked up for further questioning was a mystery that wasn’t too difficult to solve. Detective Furlo would be going out of his way to make sure I had a difficult job defending the man he had already decided was guilty. He had even let it slip that a certain former lawyer turned teacher was acting in Carl’s defence. The moment I stepped out of my car, Cameron Dhillon, a local television reporter, was headed my way. I’d never met him, but he knew just who he was looking for.
“Mr. Patrick?” he began, cameraman in tow. “Are you defending Carl Turbot?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied lamely. I felt as ill-prepared as I had been during my first trial—which I had lost. Working with legal aid clients, it had been rare that the media took interest in any of my defendants.
“Has Mr. Turbot pleaded not guilty?” he pressed on. By now, a handful of other reporters had noticed the activity near the staff parking lot and were hurrying over to get in their two bits before I could make it to the doorway.
“Mr. Turbot has not and will not be pleading guilty or not guilty because he has not been arrested or charged with any crime. A plea would be premature at this time.” I used my snotty lawyer tone.
“Sir, why has Carl Turbot hired a lawyer if he isn’t guilty?” came a question from a print reporter. You could always tell. They still carried notebooks.
“I have no comment on Mr. Turbot’s decision to retain counsel. That is information that is privileged between solicitor and client.”
“Aren’t you a teacher at Sir John A. Macdonald high school?” Cameron Dhillon continued.
“I am, and I have classes to teach, so if you’ll excuse me.” I pressed forward through the gathering throng of media hounds and did my best not to hear the questions they shouted at me as I went by. It’s a curious phenomenon, the media scrum. What we often see on television is the tail end where reporters figure that the subject of their scrum leaving is a cue to start shouting as loudly as possible. How they figure that would help to hear their questions and respond to them any better is an enigma. I suppose when their bosses see the tape back at the studio, reporters want to be seen at least trying to get the all-important quote from their source.
Once I reached the doorway of the school, the press backed off. It is an unwritten rule—it may even be written for all I know—that schools are somehow sacred ground onto which reporters shall not tread without an engraved invitation. As a general rule, school administrators are all about avoiding negative publicity, so I was fairly confident Don would not be inviting the press in to ask questions. But of course, Don was waiting for me inside the doorway, just past the line of sight of the press. I pretended not to see him, despite his position in the middle of the hallway. That was pretty immature, I admit, but immaturity is an occasional unintended side effect of working with teenagers all day. Don didn’t look happy to see me.
“I see your client is not coming to work today,” Don began, foregoing a polite “good morning.” Don said the word “client” with a sneer, as though he found the word personally distasteful. I suppose from his perspective as the person in the school at whom the buck purportedly stopped, the word could be distasteful.
“I believe he was feeling a bit under the weather,” I reported to my supervisor. “And good morning.” I continued walking away from him, down the hallway towards the main office.
Don nearly snarled at me. “He was under the weather, or he couldn’t bring himself to show his face around here.”
I turned. “Are you asking a question or making an editorial comment?”
“I’m asking you. Is he sick? Is he quitting? What’s going on?” Sweat was forming on his nearly bald head.
“I don’t represent Carl with regard to his teaching duties. From what I understand, he called in sick, he has arranged for his classes to be covered. End of story. If you have questions about his health or the appropriateness of his sick leave, I suggest you take it up with the union representative.”
Don stepped in front of me to bring me to a halt. “You know something, Winston? I used to like you.”
“Thank you,” I interrupted. “That’s very nice to know.”
“You have an impressive resumé, you had a very good interview, I hear good things about you from the students,” Don continued.
“I feel a ‘but’ coming.”
“You’re damned right there’s a ‘but’ coming. ‘But’ you’re a smart ass. ‘But’ representing a teacher who may have been sleeping with and killed a student is a really odd way of endearing yourself to me. ‘But’ going out of your way to alienate yourself from me is not a good way to ensure a continuing appointment to this school or even this school district.” He was on a roll.
“Are you out of ‘buts’ yet?” I posed calmly.
“Don’t push me,” he hissed quietly, since a couple of teachers had rounded the corner and were doing a poor job of pretending not to listen to our exchange. I decided to take advantage of the audience to ensure the line was clearly drawn in the sand.
“I
