I demanded.
“At school,” he said, hanging his head again to avoid my incredulous stare. “It was the only time that ever happened.”
“So you and Tricia had sex the day she was killed?” He flinched when I used the term “had sex.”
“Yes. And then I went home. And that was the last time I ever saw her. I swear to God.”
He looked so pathetic, standing there pleading with me to believe his version of events. It was going to take an enormous amount of debunking of the police’s theories about my client.
“I’ll let the police in,” I told him, heading back towards the stairs as the front doorbell rang.
I headed down the stairs to meet Furlo and Smythe as Carl waited at the top of the stairs. I opened the door once again to the blustering rain. Furlo stood leaning against the doorjamb, handcuffs swaying from his raised hand.
“Okay, Teach,” he said, smiling smugly. “Detention time!”
I knew he had been dying to use that the whole time I’d left him out in the cold, fierce rain.
Fourteen
So far, most of my week had been taken up in some way, shape or form by the legal problems of Carl Turbot. It seemed only appropriate that my Friday evening should be wrecked as well. I sensed Furlo was deriving perverse satisfaction from eating into my weekend. I don’t know if he slapped the cuffs on extra loud, or it was just my imagination, but his smug grin told me, at least, that he felt I was some kind of lowlife for defending Carl. He was going to take as much time as possible while I escorted my client through the booking process. Even if my Friday night plans just involved going to bed early to catch up on sleep, Furlo was determined to sabotage that. Ha, I thought. Little does Furlo know that insomniacs don’t sleep any better just because it’s the weekend. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway. One grabs self-righteousness wherever one can find it.
Of course, Providence would have it that all those neighbours who had been seemingly oblivious to Furlo, Smythe and myself out talking on the sidewalk suddenly appeared in their doorways just in time to see Furlo’s dramatic display of patting down and cuffing Carl. Smythe looked apologetic, knowing full well I wouldn’t have brought Carl out armed and that Furlo’s dramatic displays were intended to embarrass his suspect in front of his neighbours. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about it; searching the suspect before placing him under arrest was proper procedure.
Once one neighbour stuck his head out, porch lights came on up and down the street, and despite the bitter, near winter rain, a number of busybody neighbours braved the downpour with umbrellas and cups of hot chocolate in hand to watch the proceedings. Certainly, this would not have been completely unexpected for them, given the enormous coverage that had been given to Tricia’s murder and Carl’s subsequent questioning. Some were likely planning their comments to the media, who would surely arrive once word of his arrest was leaked out. I was fairly confident that by now a local resident was probably telephoning the newsroom of one of Vancouver’s TV stations, hoping to catch their fifteen minutes of fame.
“We can’t believe it,” they’d say. “He was always such a pleasant neighbour. Quiet. Kept to himself. Never bothered anyone, but always gave you a pleasant wave and good morning. We’re completely shocked.” In the entire history of television and homicide, has there never been a murderer whom neighbours thought was kooky all along? Don’t loud and obnoxious neighbours ever kill people?
Once Carl was securely tucked away in the back seat of the Crown Victoria, I hopped into my car to follow the two detectives to the pre-trial holding centre, where Carl would be processed and placed into formal custody. Once behind the wheel and in the late Friday evening traffic, my adrenaline began to subside, and I had time to process the events.
Much was beginning to bother me about Carl’s case. Apart from its inherent unpleasantness, little legal alarm bells were sounding in my head’s attaché case. The first element of concern was the speed at which the investigation had progressed. It was only yesterday morning that Carl and I had been interviewed at the school; a few hours later, he had been picked up for questioning, and within twenty-four hours he was under arrest. Certainly, Furlo and Smythe looked completely haggard, and I had no doubt they had been working around the clock since Tricia’s body had been found early on Wednesday evening. Vancouver doesn’t have a great number of homicides, so every one of them is taken very seriously, but the death of a young person would definitely see all of the stops pulled out to catch her killer. While Furlo and Smythe were the lead detectives—and likely their energy had been focused almost exclusively on Carl over the last thirty-six hours—there must also have been dozens of officers working different angles and gathering evidence for an arrest to happen so quickly.
Even the evidence itself was troublesome, essentially because there didn’t seem to be a lot of it. On the surface, Carl’s DNA found on Tricia’s undergarments looked extremely bad, but only insofar as it potentially gave Carl a motive for wanting to see Tricia dead—if she was dead, she couldn’t report on their inappropriate and illegal relationship. But motive usually isn’t enough for Crown counsel to advise an arrest be made. The DNA finding only proved Carl had had sex with Tricia, not that he had killed her. Indeed, since the underwear wasn’t even found at the crime scene, as far as I could tell, they had very little to directly suggest his involvement in her death.
The high profile nature of this particular case would have had any good police chief wanting to see an arrest made quickly, but by the same token, the very fact this case had garnered so much media attention should have made the Crown extra careful to ensure they had a rock-solid case before making an arrest. The justice department would look much worse if they focused their investigative efforts on one suspect, only to have the case against that suspect collapse due to a premature arrest or a lack of solid evidence.
The DNA sample itself was also troublesome, and not just because it positively identified Carl. How had the police come to make that positive identification in less than twenty-four hours? I had had very little legal experience with homicide, but what I did know was that forensic analysis, apart from being expensive to conduct, was also notoriously slow. Advances in DNA testing and myriad other crime scene technology meant forensic evidence was used not just in murder cases, but in almost any crime where human DNA evidence could be gathered. Consequently, there was always a huge backlog of DNA sampling that prosecutors and defence counsel were anxiously awaiting.
Carl’s DNA had been collected, tested and reported to the police in what must have been a matter of hours. True, a case like Tricia’s would be considered important, but not that important. Somehow, Furlo and Smythe had pushed the DNA analysis to the very front of the line and had clearly kept technicians working overtime to make the identification of Carl Turbot. For that kind of pressure to be applied to the forensic team, someone much higher up than Furlo and Smythe must have had a hand in speeding up the process.
That, of course, smelled of politics and pressure that had nothing to do with the fact that the prime suspect was Tricia’s teacher. Even the apparently heinous nature of Carl’s romantic—a term I was forcing myself to use—relationship with Tricia wasn’t enough to justify the kind of pressure that must surely have been exerted to get that kind of speed and commitment from everyone involved. Tricia, or more likely, someone in Tricia’s family, was connected to the powers that be in a way that warranted faster than normal action on everyone’s part. Of course, the police came out winners too: they got to show the world they’d caught the killer, and fast.
The last key problem that kept tugging at me was that despite Carl’s sleeping with Tricia, despite his trying to use me as his legal protector
