William Deverell - April Fool

“You have your shirt hanging out, my dear.”

“I hate this medieval costumery.” She tucks it in. “I tracked down Daisy’s counsel. Grounds for the divorce are numerous bashings. Her address is embargoed on court documents-Jasper stalked her after she left him. She gave up the kids so he wouldn’t contest. The lawyer wouldn’t tell me any more until he talks to her.”

This intense tete-a-tete is causing distraction, Flynn and Ears looking their way, the Chief Justice staring at Lotis, who seems to confound him each time she makes a guest appearance. He clearly has no idea what to make of her, has never seen a dryad in action.

Hoover continues to defend her poor reputation as Buddy dances about the ring, poking and jabbing. She’s weathering it, returning an occasional barb. Buddy is shocked by her calumnies, her suggestion of sexual impropriety with the maligned officer. She shrugs. “I guess that’s why they call them Mounties.” A quick-witted woman, she should have chosen law. She crosses her legs again, putting Buddy in a stall.

Wilbur Kroop to the rescue: “I don’t see why you’re having all this difficulty, Mr. Svabo, it seems a simple matter to put the officer on the stand to refute her statement. Let the jury decide who is more reliable. I don’t imagine the effort will tax them.”

“Okay, I’m excusing the witness and calling Staff Sergeant Jasper Flynn.”

Hoover wants to stay, to see this play out, but the room’s at capacity. A gentleman gives up his chair for her. She pats him on the cheek in thanks. Arthur sends Lotis out to try to connect with Brian, it’s urgent.

Flynn takes a moment, then drives himself up with a sigh. A pouting, put-upon look, he’s being defamed by a cheap hustler, a pathological liar. Standing tall in the stand, with the professional, detached style of an experienced police witness, he refutes all. “No, sir, that did not happen.” “No such conversation occurred.” “I don’t think it’s for me to speculate what her motives might be.”

Kroop greets that with, “Quite right. It’s time we put this shameful digression aside.”

“No more questions,” says Buddy.

Kroop thanks Flynn, who briskly heads back to his station. “Is your case finally in, Mr. Svabo? What about these Whalley Wanderers, shouldn’t they be called?” He winces, touches his lower jaw, but he’s toughing it out. He can abide weakness in himself no less than in others.

Arthur tires of being ignored. “A slight housekeeping matter, milord-the usual practice is to invite opposing counsel to cross-examine.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. An oversight. If you have some questions of Sergeant Flynn, just say so.”

“I do.”

Flynn lumbers back to the stand. Arthur must go at this with utmost care.

“Sergeant, we have on record that Eve Winters reserved Cotters’ Cottage in November. It wasn’t any great secret. Surely somebody mentioned it to you?”

“Not at all.”

“According to Ms. Hoover, when she first spoke Dr. Winters’s name to you, you said, ‘Who’s she?’”

“That conversation never occurred.”

“You had in fact heard of Doctor Eve?”

“Yes…I’d never met her.”

“She was well known to you from her syndicated column. You might have seen her as a guest on television.”

“Okay, yes. I might have read a couple of her pieces.” His eyes finally leave Arthur, focus elsewhere, a hint of deceptions to come.

“You won’t dispute that Holly was excited about this chance to bump into the famous Doctor Eve.”

“Maybe so.”

“Yet you say this loquacious young woman didn’t mention it to you?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“Well, what in the world did you talk about during your many friendly chats?”

“What people were up to, the local troublemakers. General things.”

“Ah, yes, and the weather, I suppose, and the latest hockey scores.”

“Sometimes. Or we’d just joke about this and that.”

“And she’d ask how your boys were, your two young hockey stars.”

“That sort of thing.” Definitely uneasy. Now release the pressure.

“You’ve told us that you were posted to Port Alberni-when was that, eight months ago?”

“Late October. I went there to fill in, the senior man in Major Crimes had fallen ill. And I guess I stayed.” Talking fast, relieved to be off the topic of Doctor Eve.

“Before that, you worked out of RCMP division headquarters here in Vancouver.” Arthur slips on his glasses, quotes from the transcript. “You testified, ‘I liaised with some of the outlying detachments, co-ordinating evidence.’”

“A pretty tedious job, Mr. Beauchamp. Important, though. Major Crimes.”

Pushing paper, he’d called it. Brian Pomeroy is trying to gather proof it was more than that. If necessary, he’ll serve a subpoena duces tecum , with documents, proving the chain of possession, what officer handled what exhibit.

“You co-ordinated physical exhibits?”

“Materials for testing, cartridges, serums, paint scrapings, that sort of thing.”

“How does the system work?”

“You have to make sure the item goes to the right forensics person. Then make sure it gets back to the exhibits custodian in the outlying detachment.”

Lotis settles beside him, her phone calls done. She posed a solution months ago. Someone from forensics could have planted Nick’s ejaculate in Winters. Or a cop. Arthur hadn’t listened. It galls.

“Is it fair to presume you had high clearance, and with it access to the exhibit locker?”

“Here in Vancouver? No, sir, that’s off-limits except for our exhibits custodian.”

“However, exhibits would be signed in and out by you. They’d go through your hands.”

“Packaged for delivery, sir. I never touched them. I was like a switching station.”

Arthur feels a nudge, looks down to see Lotis’s capitalized note: ASK ABOUT TRASHING OLD EXHIBITS. Presumably relayed from Brian.

“In closing out a file that’s been through the courts, all appeals exhausted, you would destroy the exhibits, yes?”

“Records section would notify the exhibit custodian that a file has been concluded, as we call it. Some exhibits might be returned to the owner, otherwise they’re destroyed locally. Blood samples, that sort of thing.”

“Do you hop to it right away, or do these notices pile up?”

Hesitation. “They collect. Every once in a while, when there’s some down time, my staff would aid the custodian in a housecleaning.”

A sound from the bench like low, distant thunder, bad weather coming. Cross-examination shouldn’t be an excuse to romp all over the playground.

Arthur will ignore him unless he says it out loud. Another note. HE WAS BACK HERE IN JANUARY.

“After your posting to Port Alberni, did you return to Vancouver headquarters from time to time? Business to clean up, that sort of thing?”

“No, not really.”

“What does ‘not really’ mean?”

“I came back for a couple of weeks to help with a backlog, but that’s all.”

“When was that?”

“Mid-January…around there.”

Kroop has been watching the clock. “I suppose you have some relevant point buried in all this, Mr. Beauchamp, but how long is it going to go on?”

“That will depend on the witness.”

“We’ll take ten minutes.”

Arthur and Lotis walk up to the seventh level, for privacy while they call Brian. On the tier below, they can see Buddy also on his cell. Getting clued in.

Brian talks fast. “I’m so coffee’d up I’m ready to scream at the next droid who asks me to be patient. This can’t possibly be a secure line, our every word is being digitally analyzed, so I’ll be short. No one is confirming or denying. A flying squad of Crown attorneys has arrived. Also I hear ACU has been alerted. But that’s between you and me.”