her sharp glare to me, softening it ever so little. “Why?” was all she asked, with a deep sigh.
“I don’t know. I can’t help myself?” I tried.
She gave me a caring look. “He’s right, though, Winston. This is going to be a big, ugly case. From the point of view of your teaching career, which I respect greatly, by the way, think carefully about whether you want to continue representing your client. This might be a good juncture at which to pass this off to other counsel.”
“I can’t do that,” I replied. “That would not be right.”
Detective Smythe took my right hand in both of hers. “I know,” she said. “I thought I would try. Let’s try to be good, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Scout’s honour.”
“Good,” she said, releasing my hand and picking up her purse. “Goodnight, Winston.”
“Goodnight, Jasmine.” Then, because Jasmine had such a disarming way about her, I called across the room to her partner. “Goodnight, Detective Furlo. I apologize for upsetting you.” It was the best I could offer.
“Whatever,” he grumbled, not bothering to counter with an apology of his own for tossing me against the wall. He turned to leave, then paused and walked back over to me. I prepared for a firm handshake. Instead, he stopped to stare me down again. “One more thing. Stop flirting with my partner. You do it again, I’m going to give her husband your home address. That’s former B.C. Lions defensive tackle Warren Smythe, in case you’ve forgotten.” With that he turned and left, accurately tossing his coffee cup into the waste basket from a distance of nearly twenty feet. Impressive.
Catching my breath for a moment, I turned and walked over to where Carl was removing his belt and emptying his pockets. He watched me carefully as I sauntered over, trying to gauge my impression of the state of his situation.
“Jeez, Win,” Carl began shakily. “He seemed really pissed off at you.”
“Yeah,” I admitted a little sheepishly. “I have that ability to alienate people. My ex-wife would confirm that for you,” I added, trying to inject some much needed levity into the room. As is often the case, I recognized immediately my timing was ill-placed. Looking at Carl, I could see that the gravity of his situation had sunk in, and he looked more terrified than I had seen him to date.
“Look,” I continued gamely, “don’t worry about my relationship with the police. He’s pretty much not our concern any more. It is not at all uncommon for the police not to get along with defence lawyers. Cops like Furlo, if they had their way, would shoot first and ask questions later.” Of course that was an unfair characterization of Furlo. He was going to extraordinary lengths to ensure he had a rocksolid case against Carl. There was no way he wanted to see this case fail due to some minor procedural flaw. He was going to be doing this one by the book, but Carl didn’t need to hear that right now.
“Okay,” he said, a little dejectedly. He raised his lowered head to meet my eyes, like a beaten puppy, looking to his master for some kind of explanation for the torment he was going through. I wished I could tell him that everything would be fine, but I didn’t feel right making that assurance until I had more information to work with.
“Did you want to go into one of the conference rooms?” the helpful young sheriff’s officer asked. He looked about nineteen, much too young to have actually completed the Justice Institute training course now required for virtually all courthouse positions.
“Thank you,” I told him. “We’ll just take a few minutes.”
“That’s all right,” he replied. “Believe it or not, it’s actually a slow night.” He was right. For a Friday night, I would have expected to see all manner of minor arrests coming through central processing around this time. Thus far, we had been entirely alone.
The sheriff took us down yet another narrow hallway and ushered us through a plain door into a small room, holding only a cheap, standard, government-issue table with three stacking chairs around it. I pointed to a chair. As he lowered himself wearily into a chair, the sheriff closed the door and left us alone, though I knew he would be standing immediately outside the door. His guardianship in the hallway was pretty much a formality. The door could not be opened from the inside without a special key device inserted into a latch key slot where the doorknob would normally be.
After a silent time, during which I tried to think of comforting words for my client, Carl finally asked, “Is this it? Am I going to jail, Win?”
“Yes. You are. In a manner of speaking.”
“What manner of speaking? What does that mean?”
I sighed. Briefly my Law Twelve class flashed before me. I wondered if any of them would be able to explain Carl’s present circumstances and what was about to happen to him. I suspected that less than half the class could.
“For starters, though it’s going to feel like it, this isn’t technically ‘jail’,” I began. “This is pretty much just a holding place until we can get you before a judge. When that happens, we argue for getting you released pending trial, and we go from there.”
“Is that like bail?” he asked plaintively.
“Yes. If we’re lucky, the court will release you without bail, but because it’s a murder case, and it is getting a fair bit of media attention, we will likely have to try to post bond. It’s called a ‘surety’, and it’s the court’s way of having you guarantee that you’ll show up for trial.”
“I don’t have much money,” he began to protest. I recognized that any legal fees I could expect to collect, just like in the olden days, were likely to be picked up by Legal Aid. So much for hiring an investigator and assistant. At Legal Aid rates, I would be lucky if I could recoup my photocopy costs. My ex-wife would be so proud.
“You don’t generally have to put up too much money. We won’t have to worry about that for a while,” I told him, easing into the bad news.
“When will I be bailed out? How long do I have to stay here?”
“Under the Criminal Code, you’re generally entitled to a first court appearance within twenty-four hours or as soon as possible. But it’s Friday night. That means the likelihood of us finding a sitting judge on the weekend is pretty slim. I think it’s one of the reasons they arrested you so quickly. They buy a couple more days of investigative time while you have to wait for your first court appearance.”
“But that’s not fair,” he protested. He was beginning to sound like one of his own students, complaining about an upcoming exam or major assignment that infringed on their teenage social life.
“Legally, it is fair. There’s really nothing I can do about that. The good news is that it will also buy me a couple of days to start preparing to get you out of here. Look, the police know you’re not some hardened, career criminal. But they believe you killed Tricia.”
“But I didn’t.” He slammed his open palm down on the table. “I didn’t kill her. Winston, I loved Trish.” Clearly, he had sobered up from his alcoholic haze of earlier in the evening. He had resumed speaking of his lover in the past tense.
“Right now, believe it or not, that doesn’t really matter. The detectives, and probably the Crown Counsel who has been assigned to this case, believe they’ve
