Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

The court clerk read his lines: “How say you? Do you find the accused guilty or not guilty on the charge of attempted murder?”

Zack and Glenda were stoic, but Sam, surprisingly, had lost his composure. As he stood to hear his fate, he looked grey and unwell. The jury foreperson looked neither to the left nor the right. “We find the accused not guilty,” she said.

I found myself almost insanely relieved. Sam and Glenda Parker held each other for a moment, then both leaned over to embrace Zack in his chair. Zack grinned, turned to catch my eye, then moved towards Garth Severight’s table. The men exchanged a few words, then Zack headed for the exit with the Parkers. Charlie Dowhanuik and the Too Much Hope kids stood to follow them out of the courtroom. Krissy Treadgold was back. Looking more Alice-like than ever, she was dressed in a filmy blouse and her blonde hair was tied back in a large velvet bow. She was still wearing her hospital bracelet. Charlie turned towards me and raised his arms in a sign of victory.

Suddenly exhausted, I threaded my way through the melee. By the time I got to the foyer, Zack had taken off his robe, and Sean, the ever-obliging associate, was at his side. He handed Zack and his clients their coats, then provided a wedge to get them through the crush towards the area on the courthouse steps for the inevitable media scrum.

I put on my jacket, raised my eyes one last time to the mural of justice in the foyer, and left through the double doors. The whole sequence took less than five minutes. By the time I walked onto the portico, Sam and Glenda Parker were accepting congratulations and Zack was fielding questions from the press that had closed in on them. I crossed the courthouse steps and overheard Garth Severight trotting out a maxim that was both ancient and true: “The Crown never wins or loses. The Crown’s job is to see that justice is done.”

The temperature was a chilly ten degrees, but the atmosphere was warmed by the giddy heat of victory. Against all odds, the defence had triumphed. When Sam Parker appeared to slip and fall into Zack’s chair, the moment seemed one more instance of the dizziness that affected us all. Grinning, Zack stretched to catch him, and there was laughter and an impromptu scattering of applause. Glenda reached over to help her father up. She was smiling, but as she saw his face, her smile froze.

“Call 911,” she said. “And somebody help me get him inside.” A police officer who’d been detailed to prevent any incidents when the verdict was delivered stepped forward, took one look, made a call, and then moved Sam from the snowy steps. Zack pushed his way back into the building. There was a crush to get inside, but whether from respect or some sort of atavistic fear, we all kept our distance from the stricken man lying on a blanket spread on the marble floor of the foyer. Glenda knelt beside her father, holding his hand and murmuring reassurances. Finally, the EMS people arrived, strapped Sam Parker onto a stretcher, and carried him to the waiting ambulance. Above us, in his majestic red robes, the God of Laws held aloft the arms of the balance of right and wrong. I glanced at my watch. It was 11:15.

CHAPTER

11

Sam Parker’s collapse set in motion a series of aftershocks that exposed fault lines in many lives, mine included. But in those first moments, all any of us could do was react to this sudden and devastating fracture in the order of things.

Zack was hyper-alert. “Let’s get down to the hospital. Glenda shouldn’t be alone.”

“Give me the keys,” I said. “I’ll bring the car around.” But as I started down the stairs in front of the courthouse, Randy, the cameraman from NationTV, grabbed my arm. “Give us five minutes, Joanne,” he said. “You were standing right next to Sam Parker. Rapti will want something.”

Zack was close enough to overhear the exchange.

“Do what you have to do,” he said.

“I’ll be at the hospital as soon as I can,” I said.

I walked over to my usual place on the courthouse steps, clipped on my lapel mike, and watched Randy set up. When he signalled me to go ahead, my hands were shaking. I jammed them in my jacket pockets and began to speak. My voice was reassuringly steady and by the time I’d finished my standup, I felt stronger, restored by the experience of doing an accustomed job. Randy offered me a lift in the NationTV van and I took it. He dropped me off at the main entrance to the hospital, and I made my way through the cluster of smokers shivering outside in their blue hospital robes, crossed the lobby, and headed for Emergency.

Zack and Glenda were in the waiting room.

“How’s Sam doing?” I asked.

“They’re moving him to Intensive Care,” Glenda said, her voice small and strained.

“Has anyone called your mother?” I asked.

Zack moved his chair closer to Glenda. “You have enough to deal with,” he said. “I’ll make the call.”

Glenda shook her head. “I should be the one to tell her.” She reached for her cell.

“Probably best to use a land line here,” I said. “There’s a pay phone over there by the door.”

Zack and I watched Glenda walk to the pay phone, then steel herself to call her mother. I didn’t need to hear Beverly’s side of the conversation to know that Glenda was getting a tongue-lashing. When she came back, Glenda was pale. “My mother says it’s all my fault.”

Zack and I both started to offer reassurance. Glenda waved us off. “Don’t worry about it,” she said wearily. “My mother has been blaming me for everything since I told her I was a girl.”

The physician who approached us was a tall, no-nonsense woman whose hospital badge identified her as Roses Stewart. Certain that the name must be Rose, I checked again, but that whimsical final s was no mistake. There was a romantic in Dr. Stewart’s past.

“Are you Sam Parker’s family?” she asked.

“I’m his daughter,” Glenda said.

“It might be best if we sat down,” the doctor said.

Television has taught us all to read the signals of tragedy. Glenda closed her eyes, shutting out the messenger. “He’s dead,” she said quietly.

The sorrow on the doctor’s face was real. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We did everything that could have been done. It was simply too late.”

Glenda nodded numbly. “Can I see him?”

“Of course,” the doctor said. “But why not wait till we get some of the tubes and wires out of the way.”

“No,” Glenda said, tilting her chin. “I want to see him now.”

“All right,” Dr. Stewart said. “Come with me.”

After they disappeared down the corridor, Zack uttered an expletive.

I rubbed the back of his neck. “You should call Beverly,” I said. “It would be cruel to let her show up here thinking there’s still hope.”

“You’re right,” Zack said. “Although I wish you weren’t.” He wheeled towards the nursing station. As he talked to Beverly, I could see him fighting anger. When he came back, he was coldly furious. “Grief has not softened Beverly’s heart,” he said. “She’ll be here in an hour, and she wants me to make certain that Glenda is nowhere around. To quote the lady, ‘I don’t want Sam’s death to turn into a freak show.’ ”

“What did you say?”

“My first impulse was to tell the widow to go fuck herself, but then I thought about Sam. His family life was complicated, but he loved his wife and he loved his daughter. Anyway, I told Beverly I’d get Glenda out of the way.”

“Glenda won’t object,” I said. “When she comes back, she and I can get a cab and go back to my place.”

Having deferred the meeting of the Parker women, Zack and I sat back to wait … and wait. When Zack checked his watch and realized Glenda had been gone half an hour, he narrowed his eyes. “Maybe somebody should get her out of there,” he said. “This is getting a little weird.”