The Long-Shot Trial, page 5
Again, I thanked Harris for his hospitality.
“Don’t think about it. I already gave a cheque to your partner, the Greek, what’s his name . . .”
“Pappas.”
“Yeah. Real hard-boiled, that guy. I kicked in three grand for your fees.”
The $15,000 crowd funder. Money thrown away on a lost cause, I feared, though I couldn’t bring myself to say that.
The town’s main street — aptly called Main Street — was wide enough to permit angle parking on both sides. Centrally located was the four-storey, colonnaded Fort Hotel, which at first glance looked grand and stately, but at close range ill kept and worn. Many of the local businesses looked even more decrepit. Some were boarded up. Rustlers, a steak house, seemed the only busy eatery. “Owned by Marsha Bigelow, along with a rooming house next door. You’ll want to meet her, she’s Angelina’s landlady.”
Harris explained that most of the other businesses in town were owned by Trudd Enterprises Inc. “That’s Ming’s Chinese restaurant. Or was. Trudd raised rents all around by twenty percent last year, now most of his tenants are closing up. Owns the mill, too. Or his sisters do now. Couple of witches, them dames, cut of the same cloth. The fricking bloodsucker didn’t have wife or kids, so they got everything. I heard it’s in the courts, they’re fighting over how to split it up. Hope you can get Angelina off. The whole town’s counting on it.”
Again came an anxiety reaction, the kind I’d felt when Pappas slyly passed the buck.
* * *
On Sunday, I awoke at a quarter to nine, after a long sleep broken occasionally by wolf howls and owl hoots. I felt somewhat restored, my nose no longer running, but clogged. Through a window of my snug log cabin, I gazed at a dazzling display of hoarfrost on trees, fences, and lawn, sunlight sifting through the mist. It seemed magical, and somehow boosted my spirits.
On arrival at Harris Hunting Lodge and Cabins, I had allowed myself to be pampered by Lorraine Harris, as bright and merry as her husband was gruff and cynical. A thick venison stew. A favourite cold remedy that “works like a damn.” Immediately after dinner she sent me off to my quiet rustic cabin: clean sheets and a feather quilt and a blazing woodstove.
Showered, combed, and shaved, and in my best Sunday suit, I headed to the main lodge, arriving at the door as a small car pulled up. Out stepped a beaming, rotund fellow in priests’ garb, who greeted me with a hearty handshake, announced himself as Father Etienne Larouche, and said he’d just come from morning mass. He was co-chair of the Angelina Santos support group. He was delighted to meet me, thrilled to know that Miss Santos, a devoted member of his flock, would be defended by such a famous young barrister.
I was flattered but also confused — until I learned that the local evening paper, the Northern Daily News, had published a wire service item about my recent courtroom exploits.
Etienne joined me and the Harrises for coffee and bacon and eggs, and carried on about Miss Santos’s good works in the community — since her arrival in Fort Thompson a year ago, she’d served at church socials, at the food bank, and she was an elder-care volunteer. Yet she managed to work for Trudd six days a week, scraping enough aside to help her mother in Manila.
Angelina also helped out at the rooming house where she lived rent-free. Her landlady, Marsha Bigelow, would be dropping off my client’s clothing at the RCMP lockup. I was grateful for that; Angelina would be embarrassed, ill at ease, meeting me in a prison jumpsuit.
Over breakfast I learned that Trudd, who was fifty-four, not a big man, but physically fit, had a history of abusive behaviour when in his cups. He had already been divorced twice — both marriages childless — and recently had been living with a vivacious young woman from Alaska whom he’d picked up hitchhiking. Less than half his age, she lasted eight months before running off with a prospector and several thousand dollars in cash and bearer bonds purloined from Trudd’s safe. That was two months before his death, in March, and that’s when he began drinking heavily.
Etienne surmised that Trudd targeted Angelina not because of unrequited lust, but with anger in his heart against his thieving ex-girlfriend — Angelina was a handy substitute victim for his fury.
Eventually, Larouche asked the blunt question about her chances of acquittal.
“I shall have to be honest, Father. They are not good. She will need all the prayers we can offer up.”
“I understand. It’s small consolation, but at least that son of a bitch is burning in the eternal fires.”
1966 — The Loudness of Ravens
The frost was thick on the subalpine forest that blanketed the high east bank of the town’s river, the Wolf. Etienne slowed his car so I could view several substantial homes that overlooked it, the largest being the former residence of F.C. Trudd: colonial style, lapped wood siding, three storeys, a well-maintained front yard with mown lawn and caragana bushes. The house appeared to have been newly repainted: an attractive ochre. A For Sale sign at the driveway entrance.
Etienne explained that Trudd’s self-indulgent sisters had gussied up the property and were trying to unload not just this house but his many business properties. They preferred the salubrious climate of the Okanagan Valley, and visited only to check on sales. An example of their uncaring: Trudd’s only companions were six cats, and instead of keeping them, or giving them away, the sisters had them put down.
I had hoped to look around inside the house, but Etienne hadn’t been able to reach the listing realtor. He assured me he’d keep trying.
The driveway curled around the house to the back, rising about five feet to a plateau on which stood a two-vehicle garage. It too had been freshly painted. Peeking through a window, I made out Trudd’s Mercedes, a Ford 150, and a snowmobile.
Back of the garage was a rough logging road that wound steeply into scrabbly denuded hills thick with stumps. The loud calls of ravens echoed from those hills.
The rear entrance to the house led to the kitchen and was accessed by three steps leading to a narrow cedar deck. Recessed beneath the deck were a pair of basement windows. There was a servant’s suite down there in which, according to Pappas’s notes, Angelina had been raped.
The police report had Angelina standing at the kitchen doorway, about sixty feet away from Trudd, aiming his Remington 700 at him — presumably at an upward angle, given his slightly higher elevation. He apparently turned his back to Angelina before she pressed the trigger — the entry wound was between the shoulder blades and the exit wound was in the chest, heart-high.
The bullet was found embedded in a spruce stump up the hill, less than sixty yards from the house. I ambled up that way, spotted it easily: the forensic people had cut out a wide chunk of the wood enveloping the bullet.
Back at the house, I took the steps to the back door, looked through its window: nothing to see but a hallway and a coat rack. An outer screen door was fastened by an eye-hook. I had seen photos of an officer holding it open — it was spring-activated and would swing shut.
I mused: what if I could persuade Miss Santos to remember that the screen door closed suddenly, striking her elbow, causing the rifle to fire accidentally. I couldn’t counsel her to lie, of course, but might she be open to have her memory jogged?
* * *
Fort Tom’s attractive old courthouse, three storeys of rough granite stone with a faux turret, had only three courtrooms, two on the ground floor for run-of-the-mill Magistrate’s Court matters and a spacious room upstairs for high court jury trials. Offices, a law library, and barristers’ quarters were on the third floor.
The courthouse served a vast swath of northern BC but was no hive of activity. A lag of only three and a half months between arrest and preliminary hearing, as was the case here, would have been impossible in the cities of the south, where trials were often backed up for a year or more.
A circuit judge occasionally visited but no one had been appointed yet to preside over Regina v. Santos. His Lordship (there were no Ladyships in those patriarchal times) would likely have to come from the populated south, probably some junior justice from Greater Vancouver.
Next to the courthouse was the brick-walled RCMP detachment: rectangular, featureless. Etienne let me out there. “Please tell Angelina we’ve sent some funds to her dear mother. I’ll visit her later today. I haven’t been able to for the last month.” As if in apology, he added, “It’s a day’s drive to Prince George and a day back.”
The duty sergeant, a portly, amiable middle-ager named Mike Trasov, didn’t care to see my Law Society card. “I know who you are, sir. And that you’re helping Angelina out. We have a little coffee lounge, you’ll be more comfortable than back in the cells.”
The lounge offered an armchair, a small table for making notes, and a sofa for my client. A pot of hot coffee was on the maker. “Milk in the fridge,” Trasov said, “and soft drinks. Crackers and cheese, if you like.”
“I sense this isn’t an easy case for you, Sergeant.”
“No one’s jumping for joy around here. Town’s pretty torn up about it.”
I expected to hear more than a few racist, anti-immigrant views from members of this reputedly illiberal community, but was beginning to wonder if that was a typical urban misconception.
While the officer fetched Angelina, I poured myself a cup, needing a caffeine lift — I felt enervated, weighted down by pessimism about my client’s prospects. I had no clear strategy for dealing with this young woman. I would want her to relax as much as possible. Her English was supposed to be good: her second language.
But I would find it awkward relating to a client who, apparently, was incapable of telling lies. Most of my defendants hadn’t suffered that handicap.
A comely, plump, tawny-skinned brunette appeared at the door wearing the same blue dress as in the police photos. Angelina’s bright, wide eyes somehow suggested a state of awe or wonder. She was slightly more filled out than in the 1965 Kodachrome — the Prince George prison diet had done her no harm.
Despite those big, intense eyes she seemed to be battling a weariness. My impulse was to hug her, but I couldn’t even allow myself to shake her hand. I apologized for having a cold.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope you’ll get better quick.”
She settled on the sofa with her knees together and hands clasped. Her eyes stayed fixed on a spot six inches below my chin as I carried on about her wonderful support group, about Father Etienne Larouche and my luck in meeting Buck and Lorraine Harris.
“Oh, I’m glad,” she said. “They’re very nice.” The first smile.
I told her the community has sent some funds to her ill mother.
“I know. I feel so blessed by everyone.” She added, “I hope they didn’t tell her about the terrible thing I did.”
“I’m sure they were discreet.” I preferred not to hear guilt-acknowledging expressions like “the terrible thing I did.” I warned her I was going to make a little speech. She was to listen carefully and silently.
Angelina’s eyes didn’t waver from that spot below my chin as I urged upon her the importance of giving a sympathetic jury something to hang on to.
I offered for her consideration a list of options. Had she been in fear for her life? Did she act in self-defence in any way? Could she have blacked out, a kind of temporary insanity? Was she in any way provoked? By his actions, by anything he said? That, I explained, could lead to a reduced charge. Or was it a pure accident? Such as the screen door swinging shut on her and the rifle accidentally discharging.
She rose. I watched, confused, as she wet a washcloth at the sink, then returned, bending to me, and wiped my suit collar. “I think it’s a bit of egg. There. That’s better.”
“Thank you. You shouldn’t have got so close, but thank you.” When she sat again, her eyes, no longer hypnotized by the egg dropping, finally met mine. I felt off my game. “Miss Santos, that door is on a spring, as you know, and —”
“But —”
“Please think deeply before you say anything. This was an extremely tense time. You may not have remembered —”
“The screen door had already closed behind me. I had to open it to go in and call the police.”
“I see.” So truthful, so innocent, yet so guilty. “I see.”
“And to wash up, wash my face, because I got sick.” That was in Pappas’s notes — she’d thrown up onto a flowerbed.
I blurted out some awkward, sympathetic phrase or two, and couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was perplexed, and getting a headache. Something was amiss here, something about Angelina. Something I saw, or felt. As she stood close to me, I’d sensed a kind of aura, profound and warming. I studied her, the tightness of that blue dress.
“Are you pregnant, Angelina?”
A long, sad sigh. “Yes, I think I am.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“I didn’t want to believe it, sir.”
“And the father . . . ?”
“Mr. Trudd.”
1966 — How She Rattled Me
Long after my return to Vancouver, my brain still whirled with the impact of Angelina’s revelation — I was at a loss over how to deal with the implications, unsure from whom to seek advice in the male bastion that was Tragger, Inglis.
I said nothing to Alex Pappas, of course, knowing his response would be typically tasteless. Occasionally, he caught me staring blankly out my window, trying to work through the puzzle that was Angelina Santos. He would accuse me of sitting on my butt when I should be digging up dirt about key Crown witnesses.
I was almost relieved to refocus my mind on the Herb Macintosh case. Pappas finally sent me off to meet him at his corporate offices in the Marine Building. “When you’re serving the richest fucker in town, he doesn’t come to you, you go to him.”
I spent three hours grooming him for the courtroom. It was a struggle to mask my distaste for the self-admiring oaf — he would be called Trumpian in modern parlance. He, however, took a liking to me.
That was because he palled around with the Filliponi brothers, who’d regaled him about my revel at the Penthouse and its alleged aftermath. He seemed awed by my ability to recite from Keats with a naked hooker on my lap.
* * *
Thanksgiving arrived, as usual, on the second weekend of October. Fortunately, I was unable to answer my parents’ subpoena for their traditional oppressive turkey dinner. My excuse was Angelina Santos. The trial date would be upon us in just over a month, and I had much preparation yet to do.
Gertrude Isbister, resourceful as ever, found me a return flight to Prince George on that busy weekend — it would get me there late Saturday and out late Sunday. She also phoned ahead to the women’s prison to book Angelina for Sunday morning.
I had some questions to ask that I hadn’t got around to the last time. Mostly about Trudd’s assaults and her pregnancy — delicate questions that I wasn’t sure how to frame. I also needed to delve into her mental and emotional state on that fatal day late in May.
I still had no credible strategy for a trial during which a young woman pregnant with a rapist’s child would be sitting in the prisoners’ dock. A devout Catholic, Angelina saw it as God’s will to bring the baby to term.
All of Fort Thompson knew about her pregnancy. She had confessed it to Father Larouche — as if it were a sin. He’d counselled her to be open about it, to be unafraid — she was blessed to be with child.
Bereft of ideas about how to defend her, I could only hope to bluff my way through the trial, hoping for a miracle. I would need one, because even a sympathetic hometown jury would be strapped to come up with a doubt remotely reasonable.
* * *
The regional jail in Prince George was a short taxi hop from my airport hotel, and I was in the visiting room by half past nine on Sunday, already a busy time. The scene was depressingly typical of such facilities, with their dense population of First Nation and Métis inmates, victims of Canada’s tortured history of oppressing its original inhabitants.
A male guard led me to a table reserved for lawyers and probation officers. “Don’t get too many murderers in here,” he said, “especially when they’re preggers.” He took up a position nearby but out of earshot, and watched warily as I spread out my writing pad, notes, transcripts, and police photos.
Angelina was brought in wearing grey prison garb that was loose but didn’t hide her pregnancy: she was in her fifth month.
“I am very happy to see you again,” she said, taking my hand. With her radiant smile and her wide, intense eyes, she emitted a glow comme il faut for an expectant mom, but which seemed somehow incongruent under her grim circumstances. I hadn’t yet found the courage to tell her that her baby would be taken away if she was convicted of homicide.
I said she was looking well. She hoped I was cured of my cold. I hoped she hadn’t got it from me. She assured me she hadn’t. She was healthy, as was the “beautiful miracle” she carried. A jarring phrase, given that the miracle arose from rape — yet consonant with her deeply held faith.
That pas-de-deux completed, I showed her a police photo of Trudd’s R 700, and asked, “Had you ever used this rifle before?”
“No.”
“Or any gun? Did you have any training in guns?”
“Only from watching. I saw Mr. Trudd shoot at deers and wolfs and once at a big dog who chased Ginger.”
“Ginger?”
