much been going around the clock since the discovery of the body.”
“So I gathered. Furlo made a point of telling me how hard he’s been working to lock up my client,” I told her.
“Furlo is the kind of cop that would like you to know how hard he is working. He would be telling you that even if the case fell into his lap, which in some ways, this one did.” She paused, ostensibly for dramatic effect. She wanted me to prompt her along. I obliged.
“What do you mean it ‘fell into his lap’? You think the case is bogus?”
“No,” she was quick to clarify, not wanting to cast any inaccurate aspersions on the professionalism of her colleagues, even one she wasn’t particularly fond of like Michael Furlo. “Furlo is the kind of cop who is looking for advancement, but he’s not going to risk his chance of promotion by busting someone he doesn’t believe is guilty. If Carl is behind bars, it’s at least in part because Furlo believes him to be guilty. Also, there’s no way in hell Jasmine Smythe would be part of any plot to arrest someone for political reasons. She is too straight-up for that. But the politics are huge.”
“There’s interdepartmental squabbling on this one?” I asked, assuming personalities within the police command structure were coming into play in the investigation. While this could make individual officers a bit pissy to work with, it didn’t really concern me that much, at least in its impact on my defence.
“The politics extend way beyond the detective division,” Andy continued solemnly. “The case file is still pretty preliminary at this point, since Furlo and Smythe are still working hard to gather evidence and haven’t had much time to complete a lot of the paperwork. But there are a few really interesting notations in the file.”
My heart rate kicked it up a notch. “You actually went through the case file?” I nearly shrieked at her. “Jesus, Andy! I wanted your help, but you’re going to get yourself fired! I can’t take on a wrongful dismissal suit while I’m in the middle of a murder defence.”
“Relax,” she told me and took a sip of hot liquid. “There was no one around, and I just took a few quick peeks. If anyone knew I had been in there, I would have known about it by now. There’s nothing I’m going to tell you that wouldn’t be disclosed to you during discovery anyway.”
“All right, give it to me. I mean no disrespect to the victim here—I met her once, and she seemed like a hell of a kid—but what is so all hell-fired that her death is getting everything into an uproar? And who’s in an uproar?”
“For starters, there are notations of a couple of very interesting phone messages coming into the inspector of the homicide division. The first message came from his excellency’s office.”
“The mayor?”
“None other. It appears that by sometime mid-morning on Thursday, the mayor had put in calls to the chief, who had forwarded inquiries to the inspector,” she confirmed.
“The mayor is required by provincial statute not to be involved in police investigations,” I informed her as though talking to a Grade Twelve law student.
“Correct,” she confirmed, “but he is chair of the police board, which oversees operations. It doesn’t give him the right to direct investigations, and to his credit, he doesn’t normally try. But evidently he’s not the only one. Smythe made notes that calls have come into the department from the A.G. in Victoria.”
The Attorney General is essentially the top lawyer in the province. Appointed by the Premier as a member of cabinet, he or she is usually also an elected member of the Legislature, though that is not officially required. The Vancouver Police Department, like the R.C.M.P., operates at arm’s length from the legislative branch of the government, guided by the Policing Act and the Criminal Code of Canada. Though the Attorney General has a significant amount of clout in determining what types of actions may be pursued in the courts, he almost always remains completely neutral and uninvolved in criminal cases. The very fact he had made a phone call to the police department had taken the “simple” case of homicide into the political arena. It could also prove to be useful in my preparation of Carl’s defence, though I didn’t share that thought with Andrea. She had put her ass on the line for me, after all.
“Did she note what the A.G. said or wanted?” I pressed.
“Not really. Like I said, they haven’t done a great deal of paperwork yet, and I’m sure she didn’t talk to him herself. It’s probably more of a mental note that there is pretty significant pressure to clear the case.”
“Have you ever heard of the Attorney General taking a personal interest in an ongoing investigation?”
“Not since I’ve been there,” she confirmed. “And he’s not the only one so keen on seeing it cleared.”
“Other than the mayor?”
“Other than the mayor, rumour has it around the station that a call came from Ottawa.” She let that one sink in for a moment.
“The Prime Minister’s office wants a progress report on the status of a teenager killed in a park in Vancouver?” I was beginning to break out into a small sweat. I knew it wasn’t from the coffee. It was dropping below the lukewarm level.
“Not quite. But definitely from the federal cabinet. Specifically Foreign Affairs.” She referred again briefly to her notes.
“This was in their file?”
“No. The Foreign Affairs angle is just rumour at this point, because I haven’t talked to Smythe and Furlo about it and don’t really intend to unless it becomes necessary.”
“Probably a good plan.” I had made myself sufficiently unpopular with at least half of the detective duo in charge of gathering evidence against my client. Even if Andy’s career were immune to the repercussions stemming from such a conversation, Furlo in particular was not likely to be forthcoming with any information prior to official discovery procedures. “So why Foreign Affairs?”
“Turns out Tricia Bellamy was the niece of the consul general of Serbia in Vancouver. Evidently, he is making all kinds of noises in diplomatic circles about getting Carl convicted sooner rather than later.”
“Federal government has no jurisdiction over how the courts plan trials,” I informed Andrea of the obvious.
“In a perfect world,” she countered. “What crown prosecutor do you know would be immune to pressure from a federal cabinet minister about getting a high profile case before the courts as soon as possible? The police, the Justice Department, everybody is gonna want to try to avoid looking bad in diplomatic circles when the relative of a diplomat is killed.”
I thought about that for a moment. We have all kinds of checks and balances in our legal system to ensure political influence has no part in the administration of the courts. But it was hopelessly naïve to think a few well-placed phone calls wouldn’t have some impact on how things got done. I had seen that already by the speed at which the forensic evidence in the case had been processed thus far.
“Bellamy doesn’t sound particularly Serbian,” I mused aloud.
“It isn’t. That’s the step-dad’s name, and he’s long since gone. Mom’s a widow, twice, I’m led to believe. Her maiden name is Dantolovec; she’s the sister of the consul general, whose name, by the way, is also Dantolovec.”
