Gail Bowen - The Brutal Heart

As he described the last moments of Cristal’s life, Sean’s baritone was seductive. “She was going to leave,” he said. “And I couldn’t allow that to happen. She was my soulmate, and I couldn’t be separated from my soul.” At that point, he bowed his head – an actor, waiting for an ovation. The applause never came.

Finally Sean straightened, squared his shoulders, strode back to his desk, and set about explaining the death of Jason Brodnitz.

“The Ginny Monaghan case was make or break for me,” he said. “Winning that case was my last chance to be taken seriously at Falconer Shreve.” He smiled across at the Crown prosecutor. “My friend understands that sometimes we have to tighten a case to make sure we win. I had to do whatever it took to get Ginny custody of her girls. I’d learned from inside sources that Brodnitz’s professional rebirth had been financed by sex workers. I used that knowledge to win the Monaghan case.”

He walked across to the jury. “By winning the Monaghan case, I had redeemed myself, but once again there was a fork in the road. This time I wasn’t the one who chose the direction that changed everything. If Jason Brodnitz had accepted his loss, he’d be alive today, but like Cristal, he pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.” Sean paused dramatically. “Once again, I had no alternative but to push back.”

As he took the measure of the jury, Sean’s head moved slowly, as if he was memorizing each of their faces. “So that’s it,” he said. “I stand before you today because fate led me down the wrong road. One day my life was full of promise; the next I met Cristal Avilia. We went to a party. We watched a video. A man made an offer. Cristal accepted, and my life was ruined.” He glanced at me. “There was collateral damage. Members of the jury. Judges of the facts. Ask yourselves whether, given the circumstances, you would have acted any differently than I did.”

As Sean took his seat, the silence in the courtroom was absolute. Linda Fritz was slow to rise from her desk. Like any good actor, she knew the value of letting an audience absorb the implications of a powerful soliloquy before she moved along. When Linda asked that the boxes containing Cristal’s journals be brought in and admitted into evidence, the jurors were riveted. The sheer weight of the evidence was overwhelming. There were 168 journals. On the day she met Sean, Cristal began to record their life together: one journal a month, twelve months a year for fourteen years. The journals provided a dark counterbalance to Sean’s sunny account of two young people embarking on successful careers. As Linda read excerpts from the journals, Cristal’s obsessive longing for Sean Barton’s approval and love, and her pain at his continued manipulation and rejection, sucked the oxygen from the room. When Linda finished reading, there was a sob. Then there was silence. Linda had done her job. She had made certain that Cristal Avilia’s voice was heard in the courtroom.

A week later, when Sean finished his closing argument and the case went to the jury, Zack turned to me. “Well, the ship has sailed,” he said. “Let me go over to the office and pick up a couple of things, then we can spend the day doing whatever you want to do.”

The weather had turned in the week since the trial began. The day was leaden, darkening, and the cold air smelled of dead foliage, long journeys, and winter. The trees in Victoria Park were leafless, stripped to the bare essentials. And although it was late morning, the lights in the office buildings were blazing.

I hadn’t been to Falconer Shreve since the day I’d met Sean there and he’d shown me his new office. There were changes. Margot was settled in and there was another new partner. There were also a half-dozen new associates. When I passed the office that Sean had lusted after so fervently and planned for so long, there was a young man behind the glass desk. He leapt to his feet and came over to be introduced when he spotted me with Zack. The new associate’s name was Rick Warren. He was short and wiry, with a high forehead and slicked-back dark hair, and he was charmingly deferential to the wife of the senior partner. When he noticed that I was staring past him into his office, Rick stepped aside. “Come in and have a look around,” he said. The room was exactly as it had been on the day Sean showed it to me. Rick was watching me carefully, gauging my reaction. “What do you think?” he said finally.

I took in the asparagus ceiling, the soft brown walls, and the café au lait reading chair. “It’s very handsome,” I said.

Rick’s eyes met mine. “I haven’t changed a thing,” he said. “It’s perfect. The minute I walked in here I felt as if I’d come home.”

Unexpectedly, I felt a chill. “Well, congratulations,” I said. “And good luck. I hope you’re happy in your work.”

“I’m already happy,” he said. “I’m part of the Falconer Shreve family.”

Zack and I were out in the garden admiring some persistent chrysanthemums when the phone rang. The jurors had reached a verdict. We were at the courthouse in ten minutes. Linda Fritz was entering the courtroom when we came in. “Quick verdict,” Zack said. “What do you think?”

Linda smoothed her barrister’s robe. “I think this is always a Xanax moment.”

Television would have us believe that when jurors find a defendant guilty, they don’t look him in the eye. When the judges of the facts in Sean Barton’s case filed into the jury box, each of them stared unsmiling at his face. The foreperson announced the jury’s findings without emotion: Sean Terrence Barton had been found guilty of two counts of first degree murder and one of assault causing bodily harm. After the formalities had been observed, Sean was led away.

Francesca Pope had been at the trial every day, and she was waiting for us outside the courtroom.

“Is it over?” she asked Zack.

“It’s over,” he said. “Nothing to be afraid of now.”

Francesca shifted her backpack. “There’s always something to be afraid of,” she said in her low, thrilling voice. Then she walked away.

Zack came close to me. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“So what’s next?” he said.

I glanced at my watch. “The UpSlideDown Halloween party started fifteen minutes ago. Dacia’s juggling. This is her first time working with five balls. Want to see if she can keep them all in the air at once?”

“Sure,” Zack said. “I’m a big fan of anybody who can defy gravity.”

I called Mieka to tell her we were on our way, and she met us at the door. She was dressed as a genie in swirls of bright silk – a festive costume, but her face was sombre. “One of the parents told me the verdict,” she said. I put my arms around my daughter and pulled her close. “May God forgive him,” she said.

The room was packed, but Mieka led us to a spot near the space she’d cleared for Dacia’s act. Then, hand in hand, Zack and I watched a young woman with shining hair keep five sky-blue balls arcing through the air, while all around us children dressed as kangaroos and tigers and princesses stared open-mouthed at the wonder of it all.

Thanks to five outstanding women: Dinah Forbes, Bella Pomer, Hildy Wren Bowen, Jan Seibel, and Lara Schmidt. Thanks also to Ted, who, for forty years, has been the man in my life.

GAIL BOWEN’s first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award. It was followed by Murder at the Mendel (1991), The Wandering Soul Murders (1992), A Colder Kind of Death (1994) (which won an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel), A Killing Spring (1996), Verdict in Blood (1998), Burying Ariel (2000), The Glass Coffin (2002), The Last Good Day (2004), The Endless Knot (2006), The Brutal Heart (2008), and The Nesting Dolls (2010). In 2008 Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009 she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Bowen has also written plays that have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. Now retired from teaching at First Nations University of Canada, Gail Bowen lives in Regina. Please visit the author at www.gailbowen.com.