Lost Girls

chapter 25

Both the quiet of Murdoch's streets and the more or less steady rain that's fallen upon them over the preceding weeks are interrupted on the morning of the first day of trial. As soon as I turn outside the doors of the Empire to walk up to the courthouse I can see the clog of vans with satellite dishes rigged up on their roofs parked out front as well as an orange tarpaulin shelter that's been erected on the lawn to protect the TV reporters' hair from the wind. Two of them out there already, one man and one woman standing next to the war memorial that lists the bronze names of the local dead. Both applying hair spray, daubing at black-heads with makeup-smeared cotton pads, and snapping orders at clipboard-holding assistants. Still, now that I'm up here I can see that only a couple stations have decided to make the trip. Maybe the Lost Girls story has been losing momentum in the editorial boardrooms where such things are decided. Or maybe it's been replaced with some other garish tale, one better able to deliver compelling visuals, violent details, and isn't so inconveniently far from downtown.

Even though I'm wearing my barrister's robes and swinging a heavy leather document bag at the end of my arm, neither of the primping reporters seems to notice my arrival. And that's fine with me. I've been instructed by Bert that the best approach in this case is to lie as low as possible. ''Don't give the fuckers anything'' were his exact words. ''They'll only turn whatever you say around and make it worse for us.'' His ''us'' left me with the distinct impression that he meant ''me and Graham.'' Nevertheless, it was probably good advice no matter whom it was meant to serve, and as I bound up the front courthouse steps and push open the main oak doors I'm fully prepared to ''No comment'' my way through the throng of hacks and photographers waiting in the marble mezzanine for their first glimpse of Bartholomew Christian Crane, the Young Turk they've come all the way up here to see if he's got what it takes.

But there's nobody there. Just a couple of robed lawyers laughing to themselves, their clients following uncertainly behind them, and a janitor buffing the floor with one of those machines with spinning cotton mop heads that hover silently back and forth. In fact the only ones who look my way as I walk down the hall to Courtroom 109 are the whiskey-faced regulars sitting on the benches, eyes bleary with hangover, wondering if I was to be the one to try and put them away for longer than the last time.

Inside, the courtroom gallery is half full: Mr. and Mrs. McConnell straight backed in the front row immediately behind Goodwin's table; Brian Flynn on his own in the back at the farthest point from the McConnells he could find; Doug Pittle with a notepad teetering on his crossed legs; Laird Johanssen grinning over at me proudly as though he'd just released a prodigious fart; a half-dozen members of the press, three crime reporters I recognize from the Toronto dailies who, as is their habit, sit one behind the other, making too much noise.

With a ''Good morning'' to Goodwin I take my place at the defense table and arrange the contents of my document bag around me like a fortress. Then we all wait. And when the clerk's voice finally booms ''All rise!'', enough time has passed in silent tension that I can feel the entire courtroom jolt back to full consciousness and stand on legs weakened by being crossed too long. All watch the judge come in and take her position in her high-backed chair, and by the time she grumbles a ''You may be seated,'' maybe ten seconds after being told to stand, it's as though we couldn't have held ourselves up a moment longer, as all our asses crunch simultaneously back down on padded chair and wooden bench.

Then from a side door Tripp is brought in, shuffling over to his seat next to mine, his ankles polyester sticks in iron shackles. Once Tripp is seated, the bailiff removes them and hooks them to a metal clasp on his belt.

''How are you doing, Thomas?'' I whisper over to him, and he manages to turn, part lips coated white with unrinsed toothpaste, and whisper, ''Yes.'' Yes to what? I'm not about to ask.

The jury is then ushered in from a door on the opposite side and the twelve of them, more bewildered by the feel of their clean-shaven faces and laundered clothes than the unfamiliar surroundings, take their places in the box. Some look Tripp's way, squinting him into focus, but most keep their eyes on the bench. From her elevated seat Goldfarb scans the room, peering over our heads as though trying to find her husband at a cocktail party.

''Members of the jury, today is the first day of the trial for which you will serve as jurors for as long as this proceeding requires. Before you hear any of the Crown's witnesses and, if they elect to call any, the defense's witnesses, you will first hear opening submissions from both counsel. I must instruct you that the things they will say today are not statements of proven fact. What you will hear today is just argument, theories of what did or did not happen in relation to the accused. So just sit back, keep an open mind, and try to pay attention. Okay? Now, without further ado, Mr. Goodwin, are you prepared to deliver opening submissions for the Crown?''

''I am, Your Honor.''

''Then we're all ears.''

Goodwin lifts himself out of his chair, places his fingertips on the table's edge to feel where it is in case he needs it. Nods once to the bench, then turns to face the jury, taking a few seconds to look directly into each of the twelve sets of eyes that goggle back at him.

''We live in a society of advanced technology. Of TVs with two hundred channels, computers that can speak to each other, even genetic cloning. And I can tell you, every scientific and technological resource available to human-kind was employed in the search for Ashley Flynn and Krystal McConnell. But it still wasn't enough.

''You may well ask yourselves, 'How can two people just go missing in today's day and age?' And it would be a perfectly reasonable question. But I can tell you, Krystal and Ashley are not exceptional cases. Despite the breakthroughs of the scientific age people still disappear. All the time. In Canada, for example, sixty thousand children are reported missing each year. In the United States, it's twenty-three hundred every day. Of course the majority of these people eventually come home, but not all of them. In fact, chances are greater than one in thirty that a year later that child will still be missing. Think about it. One minute they're here, and the next they're gone.

''And when they go, too often it's at the hands of a murderer. But even this isn't uncommon. Would you imagine that in our sparsely populated country there are, on average, over seven hundred homicides a year? And that's nothing compared to the States, where they manage to get that number up to well over forty times that. And here's a couple other things you might not have imagined: ninety percent of murderers are male, and the number-one motive given for why these people decided to take the life of another is 'love.' Love. Members of the jury, I needn't tell you that there's something wrong about that. What happened to Krystal McConnell and Ashley Flynn was terribly wrong. And while it's too late to save them now, it's not too late to do something for them. We can't change the world through what we do here in this courtroom. But we can do one right thing, make one right decision. And that is to find Thomas Tripp guilty of firstdegree murder.

''But don't just take my word for it. There's going to be plenty of evidence to support the Crown's claim that these girls were brought to their ends by the man who sits at the table next to me. To show that what happened was this: On Thursday, May the twelfth, Ashley and Krystal went to Tripp's classroom after school as usual to attend a meeting of the Literary Club, of which they were the only members and Tripp their sole supervisor. At the closing of their meeting he offered to drive them both home in his car, and they accepted. But this wasn't unusual; he drove them home after school quite a lot, actually--him up front and the girls in the back. In fact, they sat in the backseat so much, they both left strands of their hair on the upholstery.

''So it is on this Thursday in early spring that Tripp decided not to drive the girls home, but take them out to Lake St. Christopher. The end of the road. Gets out the driver's side, opens the back door where the girls sit wondering what they're doing out there when their parents would be worrying about them and their dinners getting cold. Then Tripp grabs them. There's a struggle. One of the results of this struggle is that Krystal is cut, dripping blood on the backseat. How do we know this? Because she was blond and Ashley was dark haired. Because both blond and dark hair were found in the backseat, and both were sent for DNA testing along with the bloodstains. Because the blond hair and bloodstains matched .

''And now Tripp is dragging the girls off into the woods down toward the lake. But with their attempts to fight him off and all the spring meltwater flowing down the hill--well, you can imagine that it would be quite a muddy business. So muddy, in fact, that the pants and shoes Tripp wore that day were later found caked with it. But despite the girls' struggles and the slippery path he finally manages to get them down to the water's edge where he--well--what did he do? Only the accused who sits there before you knows for sure. But Lake St. Christopher is wide and one of the deepest bodies of water in the region. Deep enough to have something put down in it never come back up again, even with all the technology in the world.

''We've come to the end of the story and we're still left with the question that any right-thinking person must ask. Why? Members of the jury, nobody can know for sure what goes on in the mind of a killer, but the answer may just lie in those numbers I mentioned earlier. Maybe he did it out of love. Not the love you feel for your husband or wife or kids or friends. But a perversion of love that's been twisted by a very sick mind. Think about this: Tripp kept pictures of girls cut out from catalogs pasted to the wall in his bedroom. Girls the same age as his victims. Girls modeling underwear.

''Members of the jury, that's our story of what happened and why. Over the course of this trial you will see and hear evidence to substantiate this story. But even more important than the evidence is making a difference. It's giving some peace to the dead and to the missing.''

Goodwin collapses back into his chair and takes half a dozen noisy gasps for air. I have to hand it to him: he made it through the whole of his opening submissions without physical disaster. But it's still early yet. And now it's my turn.

''Mr. Crane?'' The bench nods, and with a humble thank-you, I rise.

''Those are undoubtedly some very disturbing statistics Mr. Goodwin cited for you all just now,'' I start, trying to keep things slow, half drawled. ''I make my living in this business, and I can tell you that I'm still shocked whenever I hear them. Shocked, yes, but I have no doubt that they're true. Because we live in a terrible world. That's quite a thing to say, isn't it? But we know it's true. You can hardly turn on the local news these days without hearing about children gone missing--most often girls, isn't it?--and even though the police and the volunteer search parties are doing everything they can, you know if it's made it on TV it can't be good.

''No, you won't find me agreeing with Mr. Goodwin very much over the days and weeks to come, but I certainly agree with him that it's a terrible world with enough terrible things in it to give anyone a million lifetimes worth of nightmares. I have those nightmares myself. In fact, I've been having more than my fair share since I started working on this case. And not because I have any misgivings about defending my client, Mr. Thomas Tripp. No. It's because two young girls have been lost and so far they haven't been found. But all we can do, friends--all anyone can do--is be good citizens, be vigilant, and do our jobs well.

''And as for our jobs, let's summarize what we've heard so far from the Crown. Mr. Goodwin wants us all to think that this trial is really about assigning blame to someone for something bad that we suspect has happened. Sounds okay, right? But there are some serious problems here. First, a criminal trial is not about assigning blame but testing the sufficiency of the Crown's evidence. I know that doesn't sound as good, but that's our job here nevertheless. Second, while we all suspect something horrible has happened to Krystal McConnell and Ashley Flynn, we don't have any idea what actually happened. We know they're not here, but couldn't they just as easily have run away? Hitched a ride somewhere and months from now there'll be a voice on the phone asking for money or a ticket home. I'm not saying this is necessarily so in this case, and the defense is not relying on this hypothesis in any event. All I'm asking is that you keep this possibility in mind, ladies and gentlemen.

''But let's do the Crown a favor for the moment and take a closer look at their take on things. Mr. Goodwin told you about muddy pants and bloodstains, but--hoo boy! --there sure were a lot of holes in his tale, weren't there? Members of the jury, convictions of those accused of firstdegree murder cannot be based on suspicions alone. And in this case this is all the Crown has. Well, maybe not all. They've got some circumstantial curiosities and crossed fingers--but not a single piece of direct evidence relating Thom Tripp to the disappearance of Krystal and Ashley.

''Now, I want to make it clear to the court that I use the girls' first names because, after the extensive research I've put into the preparation of this case, it feels like I know them. I've even met their fathers and conducted friendly interviews with them both, and as you can appreciate, such interviews are unusual indications of shared interests between parties in our respective positions. And I think it's because there are shared interests here. An interest in mourning the disappearance of two children from the community. An interest in having the Crown present its evidence before an impartial jury. And, most essentially, an interest in seeing justice done.

''Seeing justice done. Now, that's a phrase we hear a lot, isn't it? But what does it really mean? It's tempting to let our search for justice slip into a hunger for vengeance. But you must resist this temptation. Because seeing justice done isn't about having somebody who doesn't have the right look about them put away because we've got a hunch that they've been up to no good. No. It's about determining the guilt or innocence of this one man in this one case on the one set of evidence tabled at the end of the day. It's a hard job. Nobody's denying it. But for the next while, it's your job. And so it is with respect I ask you, members of the jury, not to merely see that something's done to somebody. See that justice is done.''

I sit. Not bad. Ripped a few pages from the Graham Lyle Opening Submissions Handbook, but enough of my own thrown in to be proud of. Visible nods of agreement from the jury, and even the press keep their mouths and laptops shut in the gallery behind me. Justice Goldfarb herself offers an audible sniff of congratulations before starting in with her instructions to the jury about not talking to a soul with regard to what you heard today or will come to hear over the course of the trial, et cetera, et cetera.

I should be pleased, but instead I feel the bubble and pitch of rising nausea. Everything inside made tight. I try to shake it by looking over at my client for whom I've just done a more than adequate job, but the sight of Tripp's drooping face just makes it worse.

An unwelcome feeling. But one so strong and unrelenting that for the time I have to wait before it passes I can't help but think there must be something in it.