Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

Zack waited as the water was brought and Katherine sipped and composed herself. “Set your mind at ease, Ms. Morrissey,” he said. “There’ll be no pyrotechnics here. The Crown and the defence are in agreement on the basics of what happened on the late afternoon of May 16. We differ only in our interpretation. You say Mr. Parker’s actions were intentional; Mr. Parker says what happened was an accident. Disregarding Mr. Dowhanuik’s testimony, which I believe we can safely do …” Garth leapt to his feet and fired off a machine-gun round of objections. Zack heard him out, withdrew his statement, and turned back to Kathryn. “At any rate, Ms. Morrissey, it seems this case boils down to a matter of she said/he said, so what we’re working towards is getting a clear picture of exactly what happened in your encounter with Mr. Parker.”

Garth was on his feet again. “Is there a question in all this?”

Zack nodded. “Actually, I have a number of questions.” He moved his chair closer to Kathryn. “Ms. Morrissey, you said that after you refused to postpone publication of your book, Sam Parker became ‘a madman.’ Exactly how did this madness manifest itself?”

Kathryn’s lip curled in disdain. “He became red in the face. He gesticulated wildly. He was out of control.”

“Did Mr. Parker mention where he had been in the hour before he arrived in your backyard?”

“He said he’d been with his daughter.”

“Did he elaborate?”

“He said something about his daughter being in a state of anguish.”

“Did he explain why?”

Kathryn raised her chin defiantly. “He said Glenda was upset about my book. He said she had a gun and she had threatened to kill herself.”

Zack smiled. “Thank you. A very complete answer. So the gun Mr. Parker used was not his own. It was his daughter’s.”

Kathryn shifted position. “Yes.”

“Then we can conclude that Mr. Parker didn’t come from Calgary to Regina with the intention of killing you.”

“He obviously decided that later,” Kathryn said. “Otherwise, why would he arrive in my backyard, gun in hand?”

Zack frowned. “I’m confused,” he said. “I thought the weapon was concealed. Mr. Parker came to plead with you, Ms. Morrissey. He wanted to save his daughter’s life. Why would he be waving a gun around?”

“The phrase gun in hand is just a figure of speech,” Kathryn said dismissively.

Zack nodded. “Of course. Still, this is a court of law. Sam Parker’s future will be determined by the accuracy with which you recall his words. With all due respect, Ms. Morrissey, you should attempt to be precise. Now, at what point did Mr. Parker tell you that his daughter was contemplating suicide?”

“When he asked me to postpone the publication of my book.”

“So when you heard that Glenda was suicidal, your response was that she had to accept responsibility for her own actions. That’s a little heartless, isn’t it?”

Kathryn furrowed her brow. “It might have been later.”

Zack cocked his head. “I’m sorry. What might have been later?”

“Mr. Parker might have told me about his daughter’s state of mind later, when he took out the gun.”

Zack made no attempt to hide his pleasure. “Then you and Mr. Parker are in agreement on that point,” he said. “Good. And you’ve already testified that after he came through your gate, Sam pleaded with you to postpone publication of your book, and you refused and made your speech about people being responsible for their own actions. So you’ve corroborated that part of Sam’s version of events. And now you agree that when he took out the gun, he didn’t threaten you, he told you that the gun he was holding had been in his daughter’s hands that same day. Sam didn’t want to kill you. He wanted you to know that he was desperate.”

Kathryn flushed with anger. “That’s not the way it happened. Sam Parker tried to kill me. That’s the truth.”

Zack sighed. “So, we’re back to she said/he said.”

Indeed, it did seem the combatants had reached an impasse, but then, in true soap-opera fashion, there was a shocking development. Krissy Treadgold, the wispy blonde whose eating disorders had been explored with such clinical zeal in Too Much Hope , stood up and braced herself against the railing that separated the gallery from the business end of the courtroom. She was directly in front of Kathryn, and for a beat, I thought she was about to shout out an accusation. But the drama took another turn. Krissy crumpled against the railing and then fell to the floor. In the confusion that followed, one image was indelible. Glenda Parker had been sitting next to Krissy, and when Krissy fell, Glenda dropped to her knees and raised Krissy’s head so that it rested in her lap. Then, very quietly, she asked someone to call for a doctor. Obeying some kind of herd wisdom, the rest of us gave the two young people their space, watching but not intruding on the small circle of intimacy that enclosed them. When the EMS team arrived, Krissy had regained consciousness, but she was deadly pale and clearly in medical trouble. As the gurney that she’d been placed upon was wheeled out of the courtroom, there was silence. Her illness had made her unnaturally small. With her thin blonde hair loose about her shoulders and her vintage velvet coat, she looked oddly like Alice in Wonderland. To add to the Through the Looking Glass quality of the moment, when I turned towards the back of the courtroom, I spotted a couple of unlikely spectators: Howard Dowhanuik was sitting in the back row and Ethan Thorpe was standing out in the hall, watching.

Zack, who had turned his chair to watch the dramatic events in the gallery, wheeled towards the jury box. One look at their stricken faces told him all he needed to know. “I only have one more question for the witness,” he said. “Would you do it again, Ms. Morrissey?”

Kathryn was clearly irritated. “What?”

Zack moved back to face her. “Given what you know about the impact your book has had on the lives of its subjects, would you write it again?”

Kathryn didn’t hesitate. “My obligation was to the text. People’s feelings are secondary.”

“No matter how much they suffer,” Zack said.

“Their suffering is not my concern,” Kathryn said, and her voice was flinty. “And to answer your question, yes I would write the book again.”

“Thank you,” Zack said. “No more questions.”

And, as it turned out, no more witnesses for the day. Sam had been scheduled to testify, but Zack had asked for an adjournment, citing the fact that his client was obviously under the weather. During Kathryn’s testimony, Sam had suffered a chill, and he was now feeling dizzy and unwell. Mr. Justice Harney took one look at him and adjourned court until the next morning.

The decision was humane. Glenda had tried to keep up Sam’s strength and spirits through a regimen of morning laps in the hotel pool and nightly games of cribbage, but the vigour I had noticed when I met Sam was gone. The energy seemed to have been sapped from him. It seemed he had been easy prey for the bug that was making its rounds in the courthouse.

When Zack went back to change out of his barrister’s robes, I walked outside to do my five-minute standup on the day’s events. I had just unclipped my microphone when Zack came out of the courthouse. He was in high spirits. “What are your plans for the next hour?” he asked.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”

“How would you like to check out the new house?”

“I’d love to,” I said.

“Good,” Zack said. “The agent for the seller is going to meet us there in ten minutes. I told him we wanted to see the place on our own, so he’s going to unlock the door and meet us afterwards to answer our questions.”