Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

“You have a kit full of blush and bronzer,” I said. “Work a miracle.” Rapti dabbed away dutifully, then stepped back to examine her handiwork. “Not great,” she said. “But definitely better.” I snapped on my microphone. Just as I was about to start, Zack came out of the courtroom.

He came over to me. “Mind if I watch?”

“No.”

Rapti raised her hand. “I’m counting down, Jo.” I watched her fingers. “Five, four, three, two …”

The last finger fell and I began, “It was a good day for the defence in the Sam Parker case …”

When I was through, Zack said, “Let’s get out of here. Sean’s bringing the car around.”

“My overnight bag’s still in my car. Do you think Sean would mind driving the Volvo back to my place?”

“Sean’s an associate,” Zack said. “He’d eat ground glass if he thought it would improve his chances of getting a promotion.” He glanced down the street. “Here’s our car. Do you want to drive?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’ll be good to feel I’m in control of something.”

The glance Zack shot me was questioning, but he stayed silent. When we were away from the courthouse, he reached over and massaged the back of my neck.

“You’re pretty tight there,” he said. “Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad, just shaken. I could hardly recognize you today. You were –”

“A ruthless son of a bitch?”

“Pretty much.”

“I had a job to do.”

“And Charlie helped you do it.”

“Charlie was more than willing to co-operate.”

“At what point does rapport with a Crown witness become collusion.”

Zack’s gaze was probing. “When someone can prove it,” he said.

“So you’re okay with all these private arrangements you and Charlie made.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because they’re illegal.”

“Not illegal – just close to the line. I have to win this case, Jo.”

“Even if winning means bending the rules.”

“Rules are made to be bent. I never go too far.”

“You went too far with Howard today.”

“That’s a different issue,” Zack said.

“No, it isn’t. You used Charlie to get to him, and then you gutted him. What happened to the quality of mercy?”

“With luck, the jury will extend it to my client.”

“And you don’t care about what you did to Howard?”

“Jo, I didn’t force the booze down Howard’s throat this morning. He made a choice, and he has to live with it. If Howard had chosen to stay sober this morning, he could have cleaned our clock, but he didn’t, so I went after him.”

“But you had him, Zack. You showed that his memory of what happened that afternoon couldn’t be trusted. That was all you needed to do. You didn’t have to keep pummelling him.”

“Are you sure of that? Are you absolutely certain that at that point in Howard’s testimony, I’d won my case? Because I didn’t know that. I still don’t. What if I’d got squeamish and pulled back and a juror who was wavering went against me. Nice lawyers lose cases they shouldn’t lose. I don’t, because I don’t leave anything to chance.”

He continued rubbing my neck. “Better?”

“I wish this day was over. I hate flying.”

“I know you do. Jo, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“But you have to be there,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean you do.”

I saw the exhaustion in his face. “I think it does,” I said. I touched his hand. “Besides I’m not about to miss my chance to sleep in the lieutenant-governor’s bed.”

The logistics of getting a wheelchair onto a small plane were humiliating for a man who didn’t take kindly to being dependent on the kindness of strangers. As Zack was being shunted aboard, I tried Howard’s home number. No one picked up. I dropped my cell in my bag and mounted the steps into the plane.

When the propellers revved, my body grew tense. Zack, who knew I was a nervous flyer, squeezed my hand and leaned towards me. “You okay?”

My teeth were gritted, but I was reassuring. His mind at rest, Zack closed his eyes, and before we’d left the runway, he was sleeping the sleep of the just. He would, I knew, sleep deeply during the thirty-five minutes we were in the air, and he would awaken refreshed. I envied him. Alone with my thoughts, I examined the face of the man who had become so central to my existence.

There is a vulnerability in the faces of most sleepers – a relaxation of the facial muscles, a slackening of the jaw, but asleep or awake, Zack never seemed to lose control. In the grey afternoon light, his face was as familiar to me as my own, and that was the problem. I was deeply in love with him, and yet that day in court he had been a stranger. The man I knew was warm, compassionate, loving, humane; none of that had been in evidence as he destroyed Howard Dowhanuik. I wasn’t naive. I understood that Zack had a job to do, but like the pain in a troubling tooth, the question Mieka had whispered in my ear before she left at Thanksgiving stabbed me: How much did I really know about this man?

As the plane started its descent, I leaned close. “Time to wake up,” I said. He turned towards me and grinned lazily. “And I wake up to you, Ms. Kilbourn. I am blessed.”

Built in the dirty thirties on land that slopes towards the South Saskatchewan River, the Bessborough Hotel has the rococo extravagance of a chateau in a children’s fairy tale. When times are tough people dream of champagne, and the Bessborough has always been a champagne hotel: liveried doormen, polished brass, deep and welcoming chairs in the lobby, rooms of understated luxury that promise discretion. The clerk who checked us in wore a suitably conservative hotel uniform, but she had dyed the tips of her braids aqua marine. According to her discrete identification badge, her name was “Heaven Olsen.” We live in a time of flux.

Our suite on the sixth floor was spacious and quietly grand with champagne on ice and a sinfully inviting bed. It was a place for romance, and as I straightened Zack’s tie and felt the warmth of his breath of my forehead I wanted him, and I knew he wanted me. But as Mick Jagger memorably sang, what we want is not necessarily what we need. That night I needed time to think and so, for the only time since I’d met him, I was relieved there was no time for Zack and me to make love.

We arrived at the reception in time for a glass of Veuve Cliquot before we went into the dinner. Zack was delighted when he realized that we’d been seated with Linda Fritz. Ignoring her warning that she was a walking corpse, he reached over and embraced her warmly. “God, you’re a welcome sight. How are you doing?”

Linda’s pleasure in seeing Zack matched his. “I’m a little dented, but definitely better. I seem to sleep all the time, and I’m taking these massive doses of antibiotics so I can’t drink. Anyway, I’ll live. But what’s really killing me is watching my case blow up.”

“You heard about what happened today?”

“Are you kidding? Howard Dowhanuik’s meltdown was topic A during the champagne reception. I still can’t believe Garth let it happen. Are you slipping stupid pills into his water jug?”

“No need,” Zack replied. “Garth self-medicates.”

Linda laughed. “You’re telling me. The day I finally packed it in, Garth came over to my apartment. I told him to get an adjournment. He could have had three weeks to get up to speed on this case. It’s hard on a jury to wait, but it’s better than going in there unprepared. Garth refused to listen. I tried to brief him on what was coming up, but he just gave me his big fat stupid smile and told me that it was his case now and I shouldn’t worry.”