The Guilty (11 page)

“What you mean?” Clayton asked timidly, obviously concerned about where this
question might lead.

“Well, are you sure you guys were playing basketball at the
park the night of the murders?”

“Yeah, of course. We spent every night at that park. It was right next to where Brando’s baby-mother lived, and he was always by there. We shot hoops e
very night during the summer.”

“Great. So, if you guys spent all your evenings last summer hanging around that park, playing basketball, how do you know that the night Marlon drove you home “around midnight” wasn’t the night before the murders, or the night after? In other words, how can you be sure you’re talking a
bout the same night that I am?”

The blank expression on Clayton’s face gave Brat
t a sinking feeling of deja vu.

They spent the next thirty minutes determining that Clayton knew nothing more than the most superficial details of his story and wasn’t even able to explain why he knew those. Finally, Bratt threw his hands up in disgust
and asked him to wait outside.

It was just possible that Clayton had been playing basketball with Small on that fateful night. It was also just possible that the Easter Bunny was Santa Claus’s bastard son. Now Bratt dreaded talking to Parker. Was it too much to hope that one out of the two alleged witnesses might not be a total, and
totally obvious, liar?

From where he sat Bratt could hear Clayton whispering angrily to Parker before the second witness entered his office.

Parker came to the office door and hesitated, looking at Bratt with an expression that was a mix of defiance and trepidation.
Funny
, thought Bratt.
They hardly had any expressions when they first showed up, but they didn’t take long to acquire a broad range of looks.

Kouri came into the office and mentioned that Clayton had left, so Bratt motioned to him to sit down with them. He said nothing to Parker, however, waiting to see what the young man’s first move would be. Finally, Parker headed for the sofa, trying hard to look disinterested in the proceedings. Bratt began the questions without any prelimi
naries.

“Ashley, what’s your
relationship to Marlon Small?”

Parker hesitated, obviously trying to think ahead to where
the traps lay in this question.

“M
y cousin,” he finally answered.

“Do you think your cousin shot those guys in Burgun
dy?”

“No way, man.”

“Tell me why not?”

P
arker was obviously ready for this kind of tricky lawyer’s questions, because he answered right away.

“’Cause he was with me an’ Shoot, at the park. No way
he could have shot those guys.”

“Good,” said Bratt. There was no point in wasting time with this witness. Either he knew more than Clayton or he didn’t. “Now tell me about the park. Tell me what time you got there, what time yo
u left. Tell me who was there.”

To Bratt’s total surprise, Parker told him. Detail by detail, all the relevant names and times were listed. He knew they had left the park just after midnight because a public security car had driven by and told them the park was off-limits at that hour. He knew it was the same night as the murders because he had heard about the shootings the next morning and called Marlon to ask him if he knew any of the guys. He knew who was there with them, what time they had arrived at the park and how everybody had spent their time. In short, and in comparison to Clayton, he was a revelation. Bratt listened and smiled to himself. One excellent alibi witness wasn’t so bad after all. It was certainly bette
r than two below-average ones.

When Parker finished recounting their comings and goings on the fateful night, Bratt looked back over his notes and read a logical, credible story. As much as possible at this early stage, Parker had been able to answer every question that Bratt foresaw might be asked of him on cross-examination. The difference between Clayton and Parker was staggering. There were only a few personal d
etails left to cover with him.

“Ashley, I want you to be straight with me, because the police are going to pull out your criminal record as soon as we give them your name this week. You’ve been in trouble with the law?”

“Yes, I have. But nothing heavy like murder, or anything violent at all.”

“Good, good. Tell me whatever you’ve been found
guilty of. Adult or juvenile.”

“Ok. Well, I passed a few bad checks a coup
le of years ago.”

“What’s ‘a few’ mean?”

“About forty, I guess. It went on over a year. They were checks from where I worked.”

“Oh, I see. About h
ow much were those checks for?”

“About? Oh,
about thirty thousand dollars.”

Bratt felt his earlier feeling of elatio
n start to die down just a bit.

“So, you defrauded your employer for thirty g
rand. Was any of it recovered?”

“Na
w, man. I blew it all on coke.”

Just like that, Bratt’s feeling of elation was a thing of the past. Queasiness had quickly taken its p
lace in the pit of his stomach.

“Coke? You got a coke problem?”

“Not any more,” Parker smiled proudly. “I did a cure while I was in the pen.”

“You were in the pen? Of course, you were sentenced. What did y
ou get?”

“For the thirty g
rand, or for the credit cards?”

Queasiness now had total command of his internal organs. It thought about inviting frustration
and depression in for a visit.

“What’s the story with the credit cards? No, wait.” Bratt resisted the urge to throw his legal pad across the room in frustration, needing to get all the details of Parker’s criminal past straight. “Tell me everythi
ng, about all your convictions, from the beginning.”

Parker took a deep breath in preparation of telling the epic story that was his life as a criminal. First, there were a string of petty thefts as a juvenile. Then, he began stealing credit cards from his
neighbors’ mailboxes and passing their spending limits as fast as he could. At the same time he was running various scams among area merchants, smooth-talking several of them out of thousands of dollars in merchandise. Most of the money he stole or conned people out of went to pay his growing drug habit. He had been in and out of jails for two years when his mother had found him a regular job with a construction company in the illusory hope of keeping him out of trouble.

“I was still on probation when I got caught signing my boss’s signature on those checks. They added three years to my sentence for those checks. I got out on day parole, and was in a halfway house for two w
eeks when those guys got shot.”

“Tell me, did you have
a curfew to keep at the halfway house?”

“Sure, eleven o’clock. But, he
y, I never worried about that.”

Bratt sat quietly, musing on the little ironies of life. Ashley Parker spoke well, had his facts straight and was able to think quickly on his feet. But that should not have come as a surprise, con
sidering he was an experienced fraudster. A full-time, professional liar. On top of that, he had been violating his parole at the time he was supposedly being Small’s alibi.

Nothing came easier for a
n experienced lawyer than discrediting a witness whose whole life had been predicated on successfully lying to people. No matter how credible the witness sounded, the jury would always ask itself if that wasn’t just because he was such a good liar. As a matter of fact, witnesses like Parker often ended up bragging on the stand about what great liars they had been all their lives and how many people they had been able to defraud. First that idiot, Clayton. Now, Parker, who was clearly too clever for his own good. Bratt gently put his legal pad down on his desk, his hands shaking slightly from his frustration.

“Thank you for coming to talk to us, Ashley. Peter,
could you please see him out?”

Once the witness had entered the elevator and headed for the ground floor Ko
uri returned to Bratt’s office.

Excitedly, he asked, “So, what do you think? He seemed to have h
is facts straight.”

Bratt didn’t answer right away. He stood now, looking out of his window at Notre Dame Basilica across the street. He watched the tourists and the churchgoers intermingle on the massive church’s front steps. A light snowfall came down, rendering a postcard quality to the whole scene. All those people spending their Sunday with such peace of mind. None of them would suspect that from a window above them they were being watched by a man struggling to formulate a plan that would let a murderer go free.
Alleged murderer,
thought Bratt.
Yeah, fucking alleged!

“We’re screwed.”

“Oh,” Kouri’s voice was small, hesitant. “I had gathered from Clayton that you weren’t very impressed with his answers”

“No, not very impressed,” said Bratt, his anger building. “The kid’s an idiot and a liar, and both those facts will be very evident ten minutes into his cross-examination. As for Parker, he’s no idiot, he’s just a plain liar. Who the hell does Small think he’s kidding, telling me these two are his best alibi witnesses? And Jesus Christ, why do these kids all have t
o dress and behave like, like…”

“Like they’re auditioning for a Spi
ke Lee movie,” Kouri suggested.

“What? Yeah, whatever. Can you imagine how they’d look in
front of a jury?”

“No, I-
”

“You know the make-up of an English-speaking jury in Montreal? It’s a bunch of West Island retirees and Toronto expatriates. You think these people have a clue about the latest urban dress code? They’d take one look at Mr. Shoot to Kill and go hi
de in their suburban cellars.”

Kouri opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, waiting for any further rants from Bratt. When none
were forthcoming he jumped in.

“Maybe they wouldn’t look so bad if we could get them dressed a bit more conservatively. You know, and tell them to watch how they speak. Then they wouldn’t come across as bein
g too…different, to the jury.”

Bratt felt totally exasperated. As if Small’s alibi witnesses weren’t bad enough, now Kouri thought he’d come
up with a plan.

“We’ve got less than three weeks. You think we can turn these two guys into brilliant, cultured gentlemen in that time? Maybe that works in the movies, but in my version of reality, which you’re welcome to join at any time, you try that and you look like a fool. Do you h
ave any other brilliant ideas?”

Kouri shook his head, looking embarrassed. His face was flushed red, as if he took personal blame for the witnesses’ lack of credibility.

Bratt had no time to worry about that now. His defense had a huge hole in it, and he should have been prepared for that eventuality. It probably hadn’t been realistic for him to expect Small’s friends to come across as perfect witnesses, although he couldn’t have known how unrealistic his expectation was.

He sat down again, trying to envision how the trial would unfold. Even if he were able to rattle the Crown witnesses, would it be enough to win? Two young men were dead. The jury would surely expect the accused to say something in his own
defense. But Small probably wouldn’t make any better impression on the jury than his two buddies. If the jury found him as unlikable as his own lawyer did they might not listen to anything he had to say.

Bratt’s frustration grew as he wracked his brains to find a way to defend a man he seemed to dislike more with every breath. While he knew he was competitive and his desire to win would always keep him going, it didn’t hurt to occasionally have a client that he felt a trace of sympathy for. Once in a while he liked thinking his motivations weren’t entirely self-serving or mercenary. The truth was, it had been quite a while since he had cared much for any of the people that he defended,
and that thought saddened him.

“Listen, Pete. I’m going to go home and forget all about this case for today. I recommend you do the same. Tomorrow I’ll call whoever the hell’s the detective in charge and arrange to get a copy of that tape. Then, in a couple of days we’ll go have another visit with Small, and discuss what we can do to salvage this case. In the meantime get the message to him through his mother that these w
itnesses were a waste of time.”

Bratt picked up his briefcase and headed out of his office. Kouri had hardly moved, and the look on his face made Bratt wonder if his assistant saw the case, and their client, in
quite the same light as he did.

It didn’t matter,
Bratt thought.
Sooner or later he’d learn what every criminal lawyer eventually found out: this was a great job, if it weren’t for the clients. 
 

Monday morning at the office all the other lawyers came by to congratulate Bratt on his successful defense of Cooper Hall. While he tried to maintain his usual outward appearance, bragging and laughing about the trial, on the inside he felt there was little to celebrate. It wasn’t long before John Kalouderis poked his head through the door, catching Bratt staring off into space.