The Long-Shot Trial, page 7
It was her routine, after a hard day’s work, to shower and change into fresh clothes in a basement suite that was reserved for her use. In the late afternoon of Saturday, May 21, she stepped from behind the shower curtain to find Trudd in the bathroom doorway, inebriated again, pants down, masturbating. She didn’t scream this time, or even protest, just covered herself with a towel and scooped up her clothes. He tried to grab her, but stumbled, his feet tangled in his pants. She pushed past him, ran upstairs, got dressed, and left the house, vowing never to return.
Angelina immediately related this second episode to her landlady, Marsha Bigelow, the tough, spirited widow who owned the popular restaurant called Rustlers — she was one of the few in town not beholden financially to Trudd.
This was Marsha’s rundown of her efforts to intervene: the next morning, Sunday, she found Trudd in his office at his sawmill, alone, severely hungover. As Marsha stepped in, he slammed down his phone, yelling, “Fucking bitches!”
“I had a sense the bitches referred to were Hortense and Donalda.”
His unlovable sisters. I remembered Buck Harris’s broadside: Couple of witches, them dames. The fricking bloodsucker didn’t have wife or kids, so they got everything.
“Anyway, when I finally got him calmed down, he had the gall to tell me Angelina must have been dreaming. He said that’s common with religious young women who repress their sexuality, or some such drivel like that. And then he wrote out a cheque to her for $300 and handed it to me.”
He wrote “bonus” on the stub. The payment was conditional on her returning to work. That was a big sum in those days — about $2,500 in current dollars; Angelina earned less than that per month.
“I saw it as hush money so she wouldn’t talk to no one else, especially the cops. It was generous, but of course it was up to Angelina what to do. If it was me, I’d say sure, I’ll take some easy dough to keep quiet about seeing his dirty cock. He was too hammered to do any real damage and I figured he was shit scared and he’d back right off of her from now on.”
Angelina hadn’t mentioned to her the previous groping assault. Had she known of it, Marsha told me, she might have left the bribe on the desk. Instead she stuck the cheque in her purse and stomped out. This information was missing from the file Pappas gave me: he’d not even interviewed Marsha Bigelow.
Angelina’s mother in Manila had a heart condition, and were it not for the remittances would be living on charity. So Angelina accepted the money — she saw it as a form of apology — and on Monday, May 23, did a bank transfer to her mother’s account in Manila. A bonus, according to Trudd; an apology, in Angelina’s view, but Marsha Bigelow was probably dead right in calling it hush money.
Angelina didn’t return to work immediately, then at mid-week Trudd’s office manager contacted her, saying the boss was about to leave for three nights in Pouce Coupe, a five-hour drive south, and needed her to stay over to look after the six cats. Angelina had bonded with those pets, and Trudd trusted no one else with their care.
When she turned up for work on Thursday morning, Trudd was waiting for her by the front door. He neither looked at nor spoke to her as he brushed past to his Mercedes. He wore a business suit, and carried a briefcase and an overnight bag.
She watched him drive off toward the highway, then took her gear down to the basement suite — she had frequently stayed there when Trudd was away. She was looking forward to three nights with not much to do but tend to the six cats.
Upstairs in the kitchen, the cats thronged and purred about her ankles as she made tea and washed Trudd’s breakfast dishes. The vacuuming and dusting and the ring in the bathtub would wait: she took her tea to the parlour and clicked on the big twenty-four-inch TV. As the World Turns would be on in a few minutes, and then Search for Tomorrow.
* * *
I had to glean from sources other than Angelina the events leading to the rape. She was unaware, as she watched Trudd drive off on the morning of Thursday, May 26, that he planned to spend half the day at his office before going to Pouce Coupe. According to his secretary, he spent a few hours poring over documents and making business calls. Before leaving town, he stopped at Rustlers for lunch. As it happened, its proprietor, Marsha Bigelow, was in a nearby booth with a few women friends. Trudd heard them laughing.
Marsha ruefully admitted to me that she’d regaled them about the masturbation episode and the hush money. When they noticed Trudd at the counter, their sudden silence was telling. Trudd knocked back a pair of rum and colas with his steak sandwich, then joined a few cronies over a bottle at the local bootlegger’s. Throughout the afternoon his anger grew more heated over Angelina’s tattling to Marsha, who was defaming him around town as a pervert.
At around eleven p.m. he staggered from the Fort Hotel’s beer parlour, where he’d been intermittently sulking and raging. It was dark by then — the sun sets at 10 p.m. in late May up there — but somehow he managed to drive to his house without going off the road or being pulled over. Unluckily for Angelina Santos.
* * *
Angelina had gone to bed at half past nine, and, though weary, had to struggle for sleep. The week had taken an emotional toll. She wasn’t sure how long she could abide working for this lecherous drunkard with his pawing hands. The apology money, the $300, could bind her to him, however, like a debt.
She was asleep at shortly past eleven when she became aware of a light that shouldn’t be on — she’d turned everything off. Then she sensed the light was from outside, shredded through her window by the caragana bushes. When it went off, she thought she had dreamed it. Then, as she shook away the fuzz of sleep, she heard what seemed the thump of a car door swinging shut — she hadn’t heard an engine, but sounds from outside were muffled in the basement.
She was sharply awake then — her first thought was of thieves, alerted that Trudd was out of town. She rose, whipping off sheet and blankets, then stalled, unsure whether to hide or head for the rifle locker. Then she heard the thudding of heavy footfalls on the basement stairs.
A light came on, glowing beneath her unlocked door. Frantic, she fumbled with the lock bolt, but it wouldn’t slide shut. She tried to push a chest of drawers against the door, but couldn’t find the strength.
The door swung open. Trudd stepped in, reeking of whisky, his suit rumpled, his tie loose. As she tried to flee into the bathroom, he tackled her, threw her on the bed, screaming words that Angelina unflinchingly recalled — they’d echoed in her ears throughout a sleepless night: “Marsha Bigelow! That gossipy snake! The whole fucking town is laughing!”
He tossed his jacket on a chair, unbuttoned his pants. “Doesn’t matter. You’re now officially the town whore, Angelina. ’Cause they’re all gonna know I paid for it.”
1966 — God’s Will Be Done
When I returned to Angelina on Thursday after lunch — an unhealthy burger, fries, and root beer shake at the A&W drive-in — I again pressed her to give me at least a starter kit to help construct a reasonable doubt. “Let’s revisit May twenty-ninth,” I said, with an air of desperation: “You didn’t intend to kill Mr. Trudd, did you?”
She looked puzzled. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.”
“Was he shouting or cursing as you stood there with the rifle?”
Again, her simple mantra: “I don’t know.” Then she added, “I can only tell my truth, as God tells me to.”
I suppressed a sigh. “Do you remember what you said on the phone to the police?”
“I said, ‘I shot Mr. Trudd, and I think he’s dead.’”
“You actually said, “I think I shot Mr. Trudd and he’s dead.’ So you actually weren’t sure you shot him.”
She shook her head. Then, softly, “I know I did.”
As a youngster in the 1940s, I had attended Sunday school (religiously) and was a firm believer in even the most fantastical tales from the Old Testament. I endured the requisite nightmares of roasting in hell, somewhat in the manner of a sizzling chicken in an oven. I pictured Satan not with horns but with the little brush moustache of Adolf Hitler. I knelt at bedtime, hands clasped, cajoling the Lord to save, in ascending order, our cat Jasper, Daddy, Mommy, and me.
Though I grew out of that, achieving by my teens a healthy level of agnostic doubt, the effects of early indoctrination and long-time habit had me sporadically attending Anglican services in Vancouver and, latterly, Garibaldi Island, where I chum with the local minister. In the course of all this, I have met some saintly people. Not many, but a few.
However, never in the course of my inconstant religious pursuits had I encountered anyone as saintly as Miss Angelina Santos. On Thursday, throughout our lengthy conversation in that long session in the RCMP coffee lounge, I didn’t pick up a single angry, bitter, or even woeful note. She was grateful for the love received from her many friends in Fort Tom. She felt blessed to have a lawyer so smart and courteous and caring and who endured such a horribly long bus ride just for her.
Angelina appeared not to have felt much, if any, emotional trauma from the ugly episodes of late May, which I found extraordinary. I didn’t see her as repressing her ordeal or putting on an act. Nothing about her seemed artificial.
As to the late F.C. Trudd, she spoke no ill — he was in God’s hands now. As he forced himself on her, she had silently prayed. She didn’t resist. It was God’s will. A testing.
That is not to suggest she wasn’t in fear. He raped her in anger, and her delicate skin showed bruising for days afterwards. Trudd had also threatened her against speaking out, according to Alex Pappas’s interview notes. That was the chief issue Angelina and I discussed on Thursday afternoon.
Angelina confirmed that Trudd, before driving off into the night, had promised to have her deported were she to mention he’d forced himself on her. He had friends “in high places” who would see that she was sent back to Manila in disgrace as a convicted prostitute. Even her mother would reject her.
I found it hard to believe that this intelligent young woman would be intimidated by such threats. Yet, unfortunately, she hadn’t followed the accepted practices for assault victims. She didn’t stir from that house all weekend — she felt a duty to care for and feed the six cats, but that seemed a skimpy reason. What made even less sense is that she didn’t call police, priest, doctor, neighbour, or friend, even Marsha Bigelow. What had happened was God’s will, she calmly instructed me. God had a purpose unknowable by mere mortals.
Our only proof that the rape was violent — or that it had occurred at all — was that her nightie and panties were ripped, spotted with blood, and gluey with semen. Police had found these garments along with various washables in a laundry bag in the basement bedroom. She told me she’d planned to garbage the torn garments on returning to her lodgings. The remaining clothes would be washed there.
I asked why she didn’t just toss them into Trudd’s washer and dryer.
“Because I wash his dirty things only at his house. I am not paid to take advantage.”
By that righteous rule, her sheets and bedding were “his dirty things,” and they got washed. She practically wiped the house clean of evidence of crime. She took pride in her work as a housemaid. Cleaning was her duty, her responsibility.
I felt so frustrated by her innocence and decency that I went briefly into cross-examination mode: “Did you actually believe he had the power to deport you?”
A thoughtful frown. Then a shrug. “I believed when he said he had friends in government.”
“Surely you didn’t think Immigration would kick you out of the country because he claimed you had sex with him for money.”
She considered that, then smiled. “You make it sound silly, but I do not know the laws of Canada. It would not sound silly in my country.”
“He also said you would face disgrace on being sent back to your home country.”
“I did not believe that, sir.”
“And that your mother would reject you.”
“Never.” Finally, sorrow showed, her eyes dampening. “If I talk to police, he said he will phone my mother to say I am a dirty, lying whore.”
This was missing from Pappas’s notes. It came to me then why Angelina had made no hue and cry.
“She has two heart attacks already. If she knew what happened to me, it will kill her. I didn’t want her to know. She still does not know.”
Tears streamed. I passed my handkerchief to her. At the touch of her hand, she suddenly smiled through those tears and I again felt a tingling, like a current passing into me. Maybe it was illusory. Maybe a digestive issue, linked to the burger and fries.
* * *
Though Fort Tom’s small RCMP detachment served a vast stretch of northern BC, its constables lacked wide experience. For major crimes, investigators usually flew up from Prince George, a mid-sized city and a hub of commerce for the underpopulated north. But it’s no nearer to Fort Tom than to Vancouver, and a flight tarmac-to-tarmac took three hours by RCMP Twin Otter.
After the arresting officers heard Angelina confess — I shot him — they sought instructions from Prince George, and were told to make notes but not interrogate further. They were to wait for members of the Major Crimes Unit to arrive. Presumably, it was feared the lowly local constables might botch an interview and render it inadmissible.
The Prince George team — three from ID and two detectives — landed at five-thirty and were taken directly to the crime scene. The detectives tarried there awhile, wandering through the house, seeking signs of the alleged rape, but finding everything clean, neat, and tidy. Angelina’s bag of dirty laundry was examined by the ID officers and ultimately passed on to the RCMP serologist for stain analysis.
It was not till after six that the two investigators sat down to talk with Angelina — only to discover that they had to do all the talking. Angelina asserted her right to silence by politely shaking her head.
She’d been in an RCMP cell during the four hours that had elapsed since her arrest, but had one visitor: Hogey Johnson, one of half a dozen local lawyers. The most senior, I was told, and the most respected. “A cracker-barrel kind of guy,” said Marsha Bigelow, who had beseeched him to counsel Angelina.
I had hoped to call on him late Thursday but my head was spinning after my long session with Angelina. I felt drained: emotionally and maybe spiritually, from something that had radiated from her. Finally, I fell exhausted into a ragged sleep, struggling with an awareness that something was missing. Something critical. Essential.
Arthur — May 2022
Midway through this merry month, I find myself lined up at the Canada Post outlet in Garibaldi’s century-old General Store at Hopeless Bay. Progress has stalled because Abraham Makepeace, the store owner and postmaster, is being overly meticulous in filling out forms to be signed by island matriarch Idabel Ames.
“I’m number one,” she is purported to have boasted at the funeral of her sister, Winnie Gillicuddy, who lived to 114. Idabel is only ninety-eight but carries on her sibling’s tradition of blunt talk and impatience with bureaucracy.
“Take forever, why don’t you?” she says. “It’s going to Nanaimo, not to the end of the world.”
“You want insurance or not?”
“I ain’t mailing the crown jewels, it’s a box of ginger cookies. Move it, man, you have people waiting.” She turns to me, seeking an ally. “Can’t mail a birthday card ’less it’s wrapped in red tape. In the old days, you’d lick a stamp and stick it on, and you’re done.”
Makepeace, ever protective of the great institution that is the postal service, sullenly riffles through her incoming mail, studies the return address on a letter. “This here’s from your grandson’s home address, so he must’ve finally made parole.”
She grabs her mail, turns to me. “Someday I’m gonna punch that peeping postmaster in the face.” She stalks off.
Makepeace stoically reaches into the Blunder Bay slot, hauls out a thick envelope, a book-sized parcel, a cardboard box, the latest Island Bleat, and a couple of bills and promotions. “I was gonna toss this here card as junk mail until I saw it was an invite to you for an art show in Toronto.”
I stiffen as I examine the card’s display of colourful objets d’art from a potter’s studio. Distinctively the works of Taba Jones, who is inviting me to her June opening at a downtown gallery. I stuff the card into a jacket pocket, hoping Makepeace hasn’t noticed the artist’s name or the quickie signature: “Hugs, T.J.”
Fat chance. Makepeace winks conspiratorially. “Looks like she’s still panting after you, Arthur.” A quick glance at the lineup behind me catches omnivorous gossip Pattie Weekes straining to hear. I chuckle loudly, pretending I’m sharing in the postmaster’s joke. Taba’s card will be burned or garbaged — mentioning it to Margaret will only reopen old wounds.
“This here smaller parcel will be the typewriter ribbons you complained that we don’t stock, and here’s the book you ordered about the detective with hearing delusions.”
I’ve often suspected Makepeace has paranormal powers. Otherwise, how could he possibly know about You Talkin’ to Me? I sent for it online.
“Can’t say I read a lot of mystery novels, but I reckon I’ll read the one you’re writing. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Everybody? Whence came the notion I was writing a mystery? I’d much rather no one knows I’m writing any kind of book. Failure would be an embarrassment. What if I succumb to a crippling writer’s block? What if I can’t find a publisher?
Abraham hefts the cardboard box. “This came Priority Plus from your old law office. Old trial transcripts would be my guess, smells like mice got into them. Sign here, here, and here.”
