The Delicate Storm

9

THE CROWN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE was on MacIntosh Street in an aggressively ugly building of poured concrete that also housed local offices for the Ministry of Community and Social Services. It was right across the street from the Algonquin Lode, a location that came in handy when Reginald Rose, QC, wanted to make his opinions known to the public, which he often did.

Everything about Reginald Rose was long. He was tall and thin, with a slight stoop that gave him the look of a scholar. He had long fingers that handled documents and evidence and even the knot of his tie with grace. He was given to red neckties and starched white shirts and red suspenders that—when he wasn’t wearing his habitual blue blazer—gave him the look of a crisp new Canadian flag.

He was just now addressing himself to a group gathered around a long oak table—an odd-looking group, Cardinal thought. Aside from the elongated Rose himself, there was Robert Henry Hewitt, a.k.a. Wudky, who kept drooping over the table like a dormouse. There was Bob Brackett, his pro bono attorney—deceptively plump and harmless-looking, but a lethal criminal lawyer. And there was Cardinal himself, who was sure he must look as uncomfortable as he felt, because although he was usually perfectly clear about what side he was on, just now he had his doubts.

“I must tell you right from the start,” Rose said, “that I am not of a mind to make a deal in this case. Why should I? According to all the evidence—and there’s a mountain of evidence—Robert Henry Hewitt is guilty of armed robbery. And not just a little guilty, but absolutely, positively, deadbang guilty. We have his admission of guilt—”

“Of course you do. Obtained without benefit of counsel.”

“Mr. Brackett, let me finish. We have your client’s admission of guilt. We have the cash from his knapsack. We have the plaid scarf he wore over his face. We have the holdup note written in his appalling but distinctive penmanship—written on the back of his previous arrest warrant, which coincidentally provides his name and address. Why should we make any deal?”

Bob Brackett leaned forward against the conference table. He was dressed in impeccable pinstripes; he always was—perhaps because it lent an edge to his portly figure that otherwise had no edges at all. Pinstripes were nothing unusual in the legal trade, of course, but the gold hoop gleaming in Bob Brackett’s left earlobe most definitely was—especially on a half bald, tubby man in his mid-fifties. He had never married, and in a place the size of Algonquin Bay that alone was enough to feed rumours. Toss in one gold earring and the whispers rose a good deal higher in volume. Not that it mattered; as far as his clients were concerned, Bob Brackett could show up in a tutu as long as he was in their corner.

“Come now, Mr. Rose,” he said. His voice was soft, reasonable, friendly. “Don’t you take any pride in your work? Are you really so desperate for victories that you have to corner a mentally impaired young man and put him away for fifteen years?”

“Have him plead guilty—I’ll ask for ten.”

Brackett turned to Cardinal. Cardinal was ready to give his views on the Matlock case and how Wudky had tried to help them out. Unfortunately, Brackett had something else in mind. “Detective Cardinal, I believe you have a nickname for my client down at police headquarters.”

Cardinal coughed, partly from surprise, partly as a stall. “I don’t think we need to go into that, do we? I thought we were just going to—”

“Do you or do you not have a nickname for my client down at headquarters?” Brackett’s voice never wavered from its note of pleasant inquiry.

“Detective Cardinal is not in the witness box,” Rose said. “You don’t get to cross-examine him.”

“I’m not cross-examining him. He’ll know when I’m cross-examining him. I’m asking a simple question.”

“We have nicknames for a lot of our customers,” Cardinal said. “They’re not intended for public consumption.”

“I’m not interested in your other customers, as you call them. What is my client’s nickname, please?”

“Wudky.”

“Wudky. An unusual cognomen. Could you spell that for us, please?”

“W, D, C.”

“W, D, C. An unusual spelling, too. What do the letters stand for?”

“I’d really rather not say with Robert in the room.”

Brackett smiled. It was a smile of great benevolence and gave not one inch of ground. “Nevertheless, Detective, we await your answer.”

“It stands for World’s Dumbest Criminal. Sorry, Robert.”

“That’s okay.” Hewitt was slumped over the conference table, his chin resting on both folded hands. Speech made his head bob up and down.

“World’s Dumbest Criminal. And you call him that why, exactly?” Brackett’s round face was devoid of guile, just asking for information, please.

“I thought we were going to discuss this just the three of us.”

“Oh, no, that was never on the table,” Brackett said. “Please tell us why you call my client the World’s Dumbest Criminal.”

“Because he’s just not competent. He makes dumb mistakes.”

“Well, yes. Mr. Rose has the holdup note as Exhibit A.”

Rose tapped his legal pad with the eraser end of his pencil. “Your client has been found in previous trials to be mentally competent to contribute to his legal defence and to understand the nature of his crimes. Do you expect that to suddenly change?”

Brackett’s smile was cherubic. “You’re so ferocious in the pursuit of the retarded, Mr. Rose. Perhaps you’d prefer to ship my client to the United States. They execute them down there.”

“Not for robbery, last I heard.”

“May I continue?”

“I wish you would.”

“Detective Cardinal, despite my client’s intellectual limitations, I believe he has recently been extremely helpful to the police. Is that correct?”

At last, Cardinal thought. “He was a little off on the details. He told us of a conversation he’d had with a known felon named Thierry Ferand. And Ferand told him that a man from down south somewhere had killed Paul Bressard and got rid of the body in the woods.”

The Crown tossed his pencil onto his pad so hard it bounced onto the floor. “Paul Bressard is alive and kicking. I saw him this morning. You can’t miss him in that raccoon coat, for God’s sake.”

“Like I say, Robert was wrong on the details.”

“The details? It’s a completely false statement.”

Mr. Brackett twiddled pudgy fingers in the air. “Stop. Could we stop, please, and just move on to how much of Mr. Hewitt’s information turned out to be correct?”

“Well, once we figured out that he had some names mixed up, it turned out he was right. That is to say, Paul Bressard wasn’t murdered and buried in the woods, but Bressard does admit to disposing of a body in the woods. And the body is indeed from down south—an American named Howard Matlock. So you see, Robert just kind of had things reversed.”

“Thank you, Detective. That’s extraordinarily helpful.” Brackett removed his glasses and polished them with the back of his tie, another gesture that emphasized his pure harmlessness. “Would it also be fair to say you wouldn’t have known about this murder without my client’s help?”

“Not exactly. It’s true he told us about it before we knew about it for ourselves, but we did hear of it from the person who found the body—part of it, anyway. But Robert also gave us the name of Paul Bressard, which made him a suspect sooner than he might have been otherwise. So all in all, yes, I would say he was very helpful and co-operative.”

“Thank you, Detective.” Brackett turned to the crown. “So, Mr. Rose, it would appear the Crown attorney’s office has a choice: it can throw the book at a mentally challenged young man, or it can offer a deal to an extraordinarily helpful citizen.”

Rose turned to Cardinal. “Do you have a suspect in the Matlock case?”

“Several individuals have our attention, but I couldn’t say any arrests are imminent.”

Rose raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness to Brackett. “You see? How helpful is that?”

“Let’s not play games, Mr. Rose. I didn’t come here to waste your time or the detective’s. Does this Crown attorney’s office want to encourage co-operation from defendants or not?”

“He pleads guilty to bank robbery, he does ten years.”

“Ten years for a toy gun and an IQ of seventy-eight? I’d rather take my chances at trial.” Brackett tossed his papers into his briefcase and snapped it shut. “He pleads to carrying a concealed weapon—even that’s a gift, since we’re talking about a toy. Two years less a day.”

Rose shook his head. “Let’s stay in the real world, shall we? Bank robbery, he does six years.”

Brackett turned to his client and shook his shoulder gently. “Robert?”

Hewitt sat up, blinking. “Oh, hi. I was just resting.”

“The Crown is offering six years. With good behaviour you’d be out in four.”

“Okay. That sounds good. Wow, I was having the most incredible dream, eh?”

As he was leaving, Cardinal had to endure a mini-lecture from Rose about the responsibility the police shared with the Crown to make sure criminals are adequately punished. “The police department,” he said, “is not a place for bleeding hearts. If you want to empathize, I suggest you become a social worker.”

Bob Brackett twiddled his fat fingers at Cardinal in the parking lot. Raindrops glistened on his scalp. Two uniformed cops were putting Robert Henry Hewitt into the back seat of a squad car. “Did Rose give you a lecture?”

“Sort of.”

“It hurts the poor fellow to give up such an easy case. Some people’s self-esteem depends on how many years they put people away for. It’s sad, in a way.”

The squad car pulled to a stop beside them and the rookie at the wheel said, “Customer wants to talk to you.”

“What’s up, Robert?”

“I just wanted to like thank you, eh? Thank you, thank you, thank you, Officer Cardinal. Mr. Brackett says you saved me like ten years off my life, and I won’t never forget it. Like never, never, never, eh? I don’t forget my buddies. No way.”

“Robert, the best way you can thank me is to stay out of trouble.”

“Oh, I will, eh? I’m gonna be so good they’ll have to send me back before I get there. Really, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The last Cardinal saw of Robert Henry Hewitt, he was turned around in the back seat of the squad car, still mouthing multiple thank yous as the car turned right on MacIntosh and headed north for the trip back to the Algonquin Bay jail.