Carl looked like hell. Incarceration, even for the very short term, does not agree with most people. This is especially true for first timers and the wrongfully accused who have no real business being in a jail cell. An old television documentary called Scared Straight placed young people into the prison system for a period of time in order to show them what they could expect from a life of crime. Though the pre-trial jail certainly was much more humane and safer all around than the maximum security prison in which Carl could expect to do time if convicted, spending the night behind bars had made a lasting impression on him.
He was brought to a small room much like the one we had spoken in last night, although a bit bigger, including a longish conference-style table designed to permit lawyers to spread out the reams of paperwork in front of their clients, to show them the product for which they were being ridiculously overcharged. While I knew he would have been safe and free from harassment from some of the rougher criminal elements—at least in the short term—Carl looked as though he’d sat all night with his back to the wall, terrified of what might befall him, while he awaited my return.
“How are you holding up?” I asked him as he sat down.
“I’m okay,” he tried to assure me unconvincingly. “I’m fine.”
I sat down next to him at the table and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure this has been the absolutely shittiest night of your life. It’s okay to have been scared by it. It’s totally normal.”
He looked around the room, as though checking to make sure we were alone. “Yeah. It wasn’t so bad. What happens now?”
I sat back and explained to him our current situation, what would happen when he appeared in court on Monday, and that I had the services of Derek Cuffling, one of the best defence lawyers in the city on our side. At that he perked up a little, until he found out I wouldn’t be next to him in the courtroom for his first appearance.
“What are you talking about?” he pleaded. “You’re not going to be there?”
“I can’t.”
“Winston, you’re my lawyer. I want you to be there.”
“You’ll be in good hands with Derek. I’m telling you, you’ll be in even better hands.”
Carl had a panicked, pleading look in his eyes. “Winston,” he continued. “I know this guy is good. He may be the best even, but I don’t know him. I know you.”
Gently laying one hand against his shoulder again, I took his hand in my other. “Listen to me. I told you this was going to be difficult. It is particularly difficult for me, not just because of the fact that it involves you having an affair with a student. It is difficult because I do not practice law full time any more. I’m a teacher. There are times when I need to call in some help. This is one of those times. If we’re lucky, we may not need to worry about court time after this, but if we do, I’m not sure how we’re going to work around it. That’s why I need Derek to work with me. If anyone can find a way to clear this before it even gets to trial, it’s him.”
He sighed and settled back down in his chair. “Okay. Whatever you think is best.”
“Trust me. This is the only way it can work.”
A moment passed during which neither of us quite knew where to go next. Finally, he turned to me and asked “How much is going to be, you know, out there, about me and Trish?”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated a moment. “I mean, will people have to know about our relationship? Do we have to reveal that?”
“Carl, the police pretty much are locking up the physical evidence that the sexual relationship took place.” Again he flinched at my description of their relationship as “sexual”. Clearly, in his head it was something beyond just the physical. I was defending a hopelessly romantic biology teacher. “At this point, I have no plans to contest that point in our defence. I think it would be best simply to admit to that part of the relationship and move on. If we try to hide it or get that information quashed and it comes out, we’ll just look worse. I’m sorry. There’s just no way we can get around that.”
The defeated look returned to his face. “I guess I can pretty much forget about teaching again when this is over.” He looked so forlorn it was painful to look at. Carl may have loved Tricia Bellamy, but it was clear he loved teaching. He would soon be grieving the loss of both loves. I wondered where love of his wife and grief at what was surely the demise of that relationship fit into his emotions.
“I won’t sugar coat this in any way. You had a sexual relationship with a student. Yeah. You won’t be teaching again when the trial is over. Right now, I need to concentrate on keeping you out of prison for Tricia’s murder.”
“I didn’t kill her,” he protested.
“I know, but the reality of the presumption of innocence isn’t as cut and dried as it sounds. Yes, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re guilty, but the single best defence we can give is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re not.”
“How are we gonna do that?” he asked. Hmm. Legitimate question. I reached into the battered leather attaché case I had carried since I was an undergraduate student and pulled out a yellow legal pad.
“Let’s start with Wednesday. Three nights ago, when Tricia was murdered. Where were you?”
“Where was I?”
“My first line of defence for you would be to place you definitively in a location where you could not have killed Trish. What did you do on Wednesday night?”
He thought for a moment. I couldn’t expect and didn’t want his response to come too easily. If it did, it would appear he had given it a lot of thought, as though planning his alibi. Having him stop to try to remember helped to cover over those still lingering doubts I might have about his involvement.
“Well,” he began, “I worked fairly late at school.”
“Until what time?” I pushed him, jotting down his ambiguous response, starting what would surely amount to many pages of notes. It occurred to me that with an arrest coming so quickly, I had not even been informed if an accurate time of death had been determined by the coroner. Note to self: better start finding out the facts of this case—quickly.
Carl stared momentarily into space, searching the recesses of his memory for what he felt was the appropriate response. “I guess it was around eight or eight thirty,” he finally offered tentatively.
“Are you sure about the time?”
“Well, no. But I know it was quite late. With all that had been happening with Tricia, the breakup and our fighting, our . . .” he paused momentarily. Finally he began again. “Our making up. I had just let work fall behind. I had labs to mark from the previous week that I hadn’t even gotten to yet, and there was a lab scheduled for Thursday morning that I had to set up. Frog dissection. It takes a lot of work to have everything ready.”
“I can imagine.” I reflected queasily on the image of Carl wandering his biology lab preparing a whole host of dead frogs for his kids to carve into. No wonder I had ailed nearly every science course I ever took.
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