BACK IN VANCOUVER, JEFF AND I survey Carmelina across the table of our boardroom. She is wan and thin. The vital sexuality of our initial encounter is gone, sucked out by the pills and the detox, or maybe something else.
We’ve walked through her statement and learned that Cy called her at Vincent’s penthouse where she was unpacking boxes, invited her down to the Second Cup for a coffee, and the truth came out—yes, she had slept with Vincent Trussardi.
“Never before Madam’s death, never,” she protested to Jeff and me, as she had to Cy. “But later, yes—once, the night of her death. He was so sad; he needed comfort.” The frailty of human nature, I think sadly.
Once Cy had what he wanted, he left—Thank you, Ms. Cappelli, very helpful, that will be all. Later, as the fact of her betrayal sank in, Carmelina went to the box she had packed with the contents of Laura’s medicine cabinet, took the bottle she used to bring to Laura when she could not sleep, and swallowed the lot. Vincent, returning late from a meeting with Hildegard, found her amid the packing crates, prone and near death.
“Carmelina.” I take her hand. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. You only told the truth, and it’s not so terrible. What happened between you and Mr. Trussardi after Laura’s death has nothing to do with how she died or who killed her.”
What I refrain from saying is that a grieving husband who takes solace in the arms of the housekeeper while his wife’s body is still cooling is hardly a sympathetic figure.
“Where are you living, Carmelina?” Jeff asks.
“With my friend Emilia and her family in Burnaby.” She senses what we’re getting at. “I can’t go back to work for Mr. Trussardi. He rented a small apartment for me near Emilia’s house. I’ll move there next week.”
I show her out the door and down the stairs, put her in a cab, and hand the driver two twenties.
Jeff is prowling in the reception area when I return. “This case just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter. Trussardi leaves a hell of a lot of female suffering in his wake.”
“You got that right.”
Damon, manning the front desk while Debbie’s on holiday, looks up from the phone. “Cy Kenge,” he says, covering the mouthpiece, “for you.”
“I’ll take it.” I shut the door to my office and pick up the receiver.
“Yes, Cy?”
“Male receptionist, Jilly?”
If he only knew which male. “Cy, in case you hadn’t noticed, the age of equality has arrived.”
He chuckles. “If you say so, Jilly.”
He’s in a good mood—no doubt still high on his coup with Carmelina. I let him hang a while.
“Jilly, I’ll get right to the point. Alicia conveyed your message. If it’s an apology you want, you won’t get it. I have the right to question any witness who agrees.”
“And I suppose you have the right to break another human being, get what you want from her, and walk away?” I sigh. “If you had let me know what you were planning, I’d have delivered her to you and then been there to pick up the pieces. As it was, we almost lost her. I just saw her a few minutes ago. She’s a shell of the woman she once was. And all that for an irrelevant revelation.”
“Hardly irrelevant.”
“You know as well as I do that whether she slept with him after the murder has no bearing on who killed Laura Trussardi or why.”
“We’ll let the jury decide that.”
“Maybe. But before you get to the jury, you’ve got to convince the judge. The judge will look at the relevance—zilch—and balance it against the potential prejudice, just like the law says, and it won’t go in.”
“It will go in, Jilly, and you know it. Subsequent conduct. Always relevant.”
He’s got a point, not that I’m about to let him know. “Whether it goes in or not, I can make sure the judge understands how you seduced a naïve woman from the accused’s apartment, got what you wanted, then left her alone. Maybe I’ll find myself moved to add a little more about what happened next. You won’t look so sweet in the jury’s eyes. Hate to do that to you, Cy.”
He snorts. “Spare me your pity, Jilly. You don’t seem to understand something. I’ve cut you slack from time to time in the past. This time I’m playing hardball.”
“Is that a threat, Cy?”
“No. It’s a fact.”
He shifts gears abruptly. “Lois and I are having our usual beginning-of-term party, Jilly. Saturday, September twenty-seventh. Lois instructed me to make sure you came.”
What’s he up to? “I’ll check my calendar,” I say noncommittally. “How is Lois, by the way?”
“She’s in hospital being prepped for a transplant as we speak. By the time of the party, she should be home and back to her old self.”
“Give her my best, Cy.” I hang up.
Piles of paper mound my desk. Police reports on a manslaughter I just took on. Transcripts on my never-ending drug conspiracy. Richard’s formal report on the missing woman: We regret to confirm that that DNA matching the sample was found at the site of Robert Pickton’s farm. I put the file down as Damon walks in.
He scans the papers on my desk. “You all right, Ms. Truitt?”
“Just busy.” I thumb the report. “You might as well call me Jilly, Damon. Everyone else does.”
I take a moment to study him. He would be in prison now but for a sympathetic barista and me. Fighting off rape, scrambling for drugs—the desperate survival of the condemned. But here he is, by some miracle, sitting in the chair opposite me, shining with force and intelligence. Still, his smile is tight. He’s worried about something. Kellen?
“You’re doing well, Damon. Been here a month now.”
“Not just at the telephone and the coffee,” I say. “Jeff tells me you bailed him out yesterday. He was heading for the Court of Appeal, no precedent, and you sat down at the computer and found him a case. A case he could win with. Impressive.”
Damon leans forward. “I like it here, Jilly. I mean, for the first time in my life, I’ve found something I like. The people—you’re real. The work—it’s real, too. I know it’s stupid, with my past, but this is what I want to do with my life.”
“Do what, Damon?”
“The law.”
You’ve killed a man, I think. You’re here by a fluke of luck and mercy, and you want to be a lawyer. My head tells me it’s crazy, but my heart tells me I’d move the earth to help him succeed.
He shifts in his chair. “Jilly, I need to tell you something.”
“Sure.”
“You can throw me out if you want. But I have to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I knew Laura Trussardi.”
“What?”
“I delivered drugs to her. Cocaine. More than once.”
I skip a breath. So Richard’s rumor was right. Laura, working at Eastside charities. Laura, rescuing sick and addled boys. Laura on cocaine. Something doesn’t add up.
“Damon, did Laura tell you why she needed the drugs?”
“No, I couldn’t figure it out. And whenever I went to the house, I had to call ahead to make sure her husband wasn’t there.” He searches for something that makes sense. “Maybe the coke was for the maid?”
“Carmelina? I doubt it.”
I remember what Trussardi said about the boy. “You went into the house, didn’t you, Damon?”
He bows his head. “She invited me in one night. She said he wasn’t there. I said no, but she transfixed me, she was so lovely, so pure. She gave me tea, poured me a bath, laid out clean clothes. I know it sounds crazy, but it wasn’t crazy then. Not in my mind. My brain was all over the place—part of me was scared, part of me didn’t know how to say no, part of me was writing poetry. That’s how it was. In my head. At the time.” He looks up bleakly, palms on his knees. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Every meeting we asked the questions: Who’s the boy? How can we find him? And the whole time he was here, sitting at my reception, moving my boxes, making my coffee. This case keeps looping back to me in ways it shouldn’t.
“What happened next, Damon?”
“Her husband came in. Mr. Trussardi. He just looked at us. She said, ‘This is my friend.’ He walked out on the terrace. When I came down after my bath, the table was set for dinner. I suppose I ate, suppose I talked. I don’t remember much. After dinner, she said I should stay, sleep well for one night. Then she led me to the couch by the fire and disappeared. I sat there on that white couch, but my mind wouldn’t be still—I was having scared, paranoid thoughts. Amphetamines do that to you, even when you think you’re sober.”
“And then?”
“I don’t remember, exactly, except that at some point, the man—Mr. Trussardi—wasn’t there. There seemed to be a hallway leading off behind the fireplace wall.” Damon swallows. “I must have got up because I saw him, in his office. He was at a paneled wall. He pushed a door and a safe appeared, then he pushed a section below and a compartment slid out. He took out a piece of paper and looked at it as he punched numbers into the safe. When it opened, he took a revolver out—a black, shiny revolver like I’d never seen before—and began polishing it with a cloth, polishing like it was a rite. Once he was satisfied, he put the bullets in—click, click, click, one for each chamber. He took the gun in his hand and moved farther into the house, until I couldn’t see him anymore.”
I sit back in my chair, stunned. Damon has described the house, the room, the gun. He was there, he remembers.
“Suddenly, I understood—it was a plot. Their plot. Her job to lure me in, his job to kill me. So I turned and ran. Up the steps and out the door. I found my van, gunned it out the driveway.” He halts. “I know now the amphetamines were messing up my thinking. There wasn’t a plot, and he wasn’t going to kill me. But that’s what I thought then.” He pauses. “But what if Mr. Trussardi really did kill his wife?”
“That’s not for us to decide.” I take a breath. “Damon, who have you told about this?”
“No one. I wasn’t even going to tell you. But it’s been eating at me ever since I saw Mr. Trussardi that day with the coffee. I thought he might recognize me and put two and two together.”
“If he did, he never said anything.”
“I wanted you to hear it from me. I’m sorry, Ms. Truitt, I know I’ve messed up your case.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll go now. Pack my things.”
“No, Damon, you’ll stay.” Better here than on the outside. “I need to ask: Did you ever see Laura Trussardi again?”
I want to believe him, but I can’t help thinking that he’s not telling me everything, not telling me the worst. He saw the safe, saw where the code was hidden. Damon knew. My case has gone from no suspects to too many. It’s one thing to tell the jury it was Trevor Shore, safely hidden in Brazil; it’s easy to suggest it could have been a nameless street kid. But Damon? I feel sick. Damon, Laura, drugs, what the hell was going on? The more I find out, the less I understand. Weariness sweeps over me. This case is getting deep into me, too deep.