THE TWO COPS LEFT MAUREEN TO SIT ALONE IN THE interrogation room for over an hour, left her just sitting there. And the longer she was there and the more she thought about what she’d done, the more Maureen became convinced that she had to confess. She had to do the right thing.
Sitting there, she kept coming back to the inescapable fact that no matter who did what, she, Maureen, had poisoned him. Right there in the interrogation room, it hit her like a punch in the stomach, the knowledge that she was a bad girl. For a minute, she couldn’t catch her breath. Suddenly, she knew that despite all her rebellion and all her acting out, all she ever really wanted to be was a good girl. But good girls didn’t get knocked up at Expo, good girls didn’t fuck everybody in sight, and good girls definitely didn’t poison and murder their violent, abusive boyfriends. All her life, Maureen had clung to the belief that, despite the world conspiring relentlessly against her and her total powerlessness over all the bad stuff that happened, inside, she was fundamentally a good girl, and that had kept her going, even through the worst of it. And so now, she didn’t know how she could go on. There was no question anymore: she was a poisoner, a murderer. A bad girl.
The interrogation room was empty and desolate. And so am I, thought Maureen. For the past two and a half days, Maureen had kept the chlordane out of her mind. What she’d done was almost surreal, so unlikely, so outside the realm of what was possible, that she’d stopped believing she’d done it. And now she was faced with the awful consequences. Bo was dead. She hadn’t really thought of Bo dying, of him actually being dead by her hand. What would Mrs. Browne think? What would she do? But really, who knew she’d tried to poison Bo except her and George and . . . and maybe Bo, I guess?
Finally, the two cops came back into the interrogation room. They sat down across from Maureen. The small, stupid one asked Maureen for her full name, address and where she was employed.
“Maureen Brennan. I’m nineteen years old. I did live at 231 Livingstone Street, but now I live, well . . .”
“Where we picked you up this morning?”
“That was just a friend’s place,” Maureen said.
She was ready to spill her guts, but before she could confess, the little cop said, “Friend?” He leered at Maureen, and then he actually did that thing where you make a hole with your thumb and your forefinger with one hand and poke your other forefinger back and forth through the hole—the universal sign for screwing. But the little cop jammed all the fingers of his left hand through the hole in his right and then slowly and with great difficulty forced them in and out, in and out.
Maureen went hot with shame.
“Friend?” the little cop said. “Like Trevor ‘Bo’ Browne was your friend? You don’t take much care of your friends, do you, Maureen? We found Mr. Browne up on The Brow, dead, trussed up in the trunk of his car, and you never even bothered to report him missing. Not that friendly, if you ask me.”
“That’s enough, McCarthy. That’s enough,” the older cop said, stepping forward. “Now, Miss Brennan. Do you know why you’re here?”
Oh yes, Maureen definitely knew why she was there, but suddenly she didn’t want them to know—not yet, anyway. For one thing, the older cop seemed so decent, in a way that made Maureen want him to like her and not know what a low-life, murdering piece of scum she really was. And so, she said simply, “I s’pose you want to talk about what happened to Bo.”
The older cop let Maureen’s answer just sit there in the air, and he gave her a piercing look, like he might be able to see right through her. Maureen, who always tried to fill every silence, who was terrified without noise and chaos, immediately wanted to blab out the entire sad scenario, but the younger cop answered the question.
“We want to talk to you because you are a person of interest, my maid. We talked to a lot of people about what happened to Mr. Browne, and all the pieces are starting to fall together quickly. So, if you had anything—anything at all—to do with this . . .”
The older cop shot McCarthy a look and he shut up. The older cop then looked back at Maureen and waited. Maureen tried not to say anything, but she could feel her stomach come right up almost to her throat. She was the kind who couldn’t go on a roller coaster, because when she got to the top, she was so choked with fear she just wanted to jump and get it over with. The mounting terror of waiting for her inevitable death was too unbearable, and she felt she would do anything to make the terror stop. It was the same way even on a simple Ferris wheel or at the edge of a cliff. It was better to get it over with. That’s how she felt now. She opened her mouth to tell them everything.
A really cute young guy—cute for a pig—stuck his head in the door.
“Sergeant Kent, sorry to interrupt. We just got word from Dr. Hutton in Pathology. They’re all backed up. It’s going to be a few days before they get to Mr. Browne.”
The older cop walked with menace toward the young fella.
“Thank you, Constable. That’ll be all.” He quickly shut the door.
So far, they didn’t know about the poison. They had nothing on her yet . . . God, she was even thinking like one of those murderesses on TV, on The Defenders, or like one of those awful black-widow killers who murdered their loved ones in one of the books George was studying. Oh fuck, that’s right, I am! she thought with a sinking heart.
Maureen knew that she was guilty. She was guilty as sin, but if Bo died from being poisoned, how did they find him in the trunk of his car up on The Brow? It didn’t make sense. Did he, in his poisoned state, drive the car, stumble out to get something out of the trunk and collapse into it, and somehow or other the trunk closed on him and . . . yes! A perfectly reasonable series of events if this was Get Smart or Herbie: The Love Bug or some shit, but this wasn’t Walt Disney—this was real.
She had put the poison in Bo’s orange juice, but if he drank the poison, how did he get in the trunk of his car? Maureen’s mind scurried around, trying to find a logical explanation. Had someone come to the apartment, found Bo dead and then, for some unfathomable reason, stuffed his dead body in the trunk of his car, drove it up to The Brow and abandoned it there? Why would anyone do that? Was it someone who was trying to protect her? Was it George? Or was someone trying to frame her?
“All right, Miss Brennan, why do you think somebody would do this?”
“Do what?”
“Murder Mr. Browne.”
“Murder? Why do I think someone would murder Bo?” Maureen said, stalling for time.
She was thinking, Why wouldn’t someone? He was like a magnet for a racket. He just caused trouble and destruction wherever he went. Once, she and Bo were just walking down the street and a crowd of little boys swarmed Bo, kicking and punching him. In restaurants, he often took umbrage and tossed insults and sometimes a nickel or dime at the unlucky waiter, and because of that, they’d once found themselves outside a restaurant, circled by the kitchen staff, all wielding their chefs’ knives. With a few drinks in on the right day, someone could just bump into Bo and that’d be it: the place’d go up. There’d be punching, cursing, bleeding, and Bo would be always in the middle of it.
Now Maureen thought, No, I am not gonna tell him. I don’t want to anymore, because I am gonna get out of this room and take off and join the French Foreign Legion, or I’ll be like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story and devote my life—my stinking, meaningless, murderess life—to serving the poor, the leprous, the babies with the flies in their eyes. Without knowing she was going to do it, she heard herself blurt out, “Well, he was working for DAFT, you know.”
“No, my maid, we don’t know,” McCarthy said. “Why don’t you tell us.”
Jesus, if he didn’t stop calling her his maid . . . Christ, stupid and a bayman on top of that.
“I don’t know. I never really thought about it, but . . .”
The old detective sergeant had Maureen back in his sights. She desperately tried to break eye contact with him but couldn’t.
“DAFT, you know. They’re a company. Bo built boxes for them—crates and stuff. They were all in the same frat at university. The boys got an import-export kind of company, and Bo . . . he worked for them. I mean, but he would’ve rather be workin’ with them . . . You know what I mean?”
“And?” said the detective sergeant, his eyes still locked with hers.
“And, you know, he was mad at them—a lot. He said they were making a shitload of money and they weren’t cutting him in on it, and he was working his bag off for them and wasn’t getting nowhere doin’ it. He was real mad at Jack and Deuce Dunne. They are a twin—”
“Yea,” said McCarthy. “Jacky and Deucey were with the Caps—St. John’s Capitals. They were the best defencemen we ever had. When the two of them came at ya, ya pretty well knew you were fucked.” His eyes darted over to Kent. “Sorry for the language, sir. They almost got drafted to the NHL, but they were not quite violent enough, I s’pose, to make the grade.”
“But one of them did get drafted, didn’t he?”
“Yea—that’s right. I forgot that, sir. They did try to draft one of ’em into a Junior A team up in Toronto. It’d be his ticket to the NHL, but he wouldn’t go without the brother.”
Maureen just stared at McCarthy.
“Forgive McCarthy’s language, Miss Brennan. He grew up in Harbour Main. Hard crowd. Sell their mother for a bottle of beer.”
“Shure little Miss Brennan grew up on Princess Street with a bootlegger either side of her. Bad language, shure that’d be the least of this young maid’s worries. So, you’re tryin’ to point the finger at Jack and Deucey Dunne, Maureen?”
“No, no,” she sputtered. “You just asked me why someone would have . . . done this. And, well, Bo, when he was mad at you, you know, he might put the boots to ya. And maybe he was so mad at Jacky and Deucey that he mighta laid a beating on ’em, and maybe that’d be a reason for why someone might, you know . . .” She nodded her head up and down, not wanting to say the word.
“Murder?” said McCarthy. “Murder him.”
“So you’re saying that someone who received a beating at the hands of Mr. Browne might have sufficient reason to murder Mr. Browne?” The old detective sergeant had his eyes locked on Maureen again.
Oh, fuck . . . She immediately thought of the five or six times that the people downstairs had called the cops when Bo was going cracked upstairs, the times she’d been down at the station with black eyes, a broken nose, broken ribs, a fat lip, the whole sorry mess of her. She could tell that the old cop definitely thought she did it. She wasn’t smart enough for this game. She might as well get it over with and—there was a knock at the door.
The detective sergeant tore his eyes away from Maureen, jumped up and strode toward the door in a fury. “Sorry, sir,” the cute young cop said, “but Miss Brennan’s lawyer is here, and he said that if you’re questioning Miss Brennan, he should be present.”
Maureen burst out, “Shure I don’t have a lawyer. What would I have a lawyer for? I never even finished Grade 11. I’m working down to Pepperrell at the film-strip library . . .”
George walked into the room.
“Oh,” McCarthy said, doing that awful thing with his hands. “You’re not just her ‘friend’? Now you’re her lawyer too?”
George turned politely and stuck out his hand. “George Taylor, graduate of the Dalhousie School of Law, called to the bar four years ago, and you are?”
McCarthy pulled back his hand and wiped it against his shirt as if he were afraid of infection.
“But sure, you’re getting a degree in English,” Maureen half whispered to him as he sat down.
“I copped to the fact early on I didn’t really like the law per se. I just like stories about the law. But I am a bona fide lawyer. Now, where are we? Do you gentlemen mind if I have a few minutes alone with my client, who, by the way, has a right to have counsel present during her interrogation?”
“You’ve been reading too many story books, buddy boy. She got no right to have a lawyer present during her interrogation. We’re not down in da States, Perry Mason.”
“So you are conducting an interrogation with my client?”
“That’s right,” replied McCarthy. “So hop the fuck up out of that seat and out of that door.”
“Maureen, did you consent to this ‘interrogation’?”
“No! Shure they never even asked me. They just left me in here for hours and then they just started in on asking me questions, like why would I think someone would . . . kill . . .”
“Okay, Maureen, okay. That’s enough. You do have a right to silence. As a Canadian citizen, you have a right to not speak.” George shot Maureen a quick, knowing look. “Okay, we’re leaving. Detective Sergeant, you have no right to compel my client to participate in an interrogation. Miss Brennan has clearly indicated that she does not want to participate in said interrogation.”
“No, she never,” piped up McCarthy.
“All right. Maureen, do you wish to continue with this interrogation?” asked George.
“No, I’m not that stunned. Why would I want to—”
“That’s good,” George interrupted. “Thank you . . . Remember your rights, Maureen,” George said, tapping his finger against his lips. “There you are, gentlemen. Miss Brennan does not wish to take part, and at this point, she is exercising her right to silence.”
Maureen was shocked at this new, direct, to-the-point George—this George who didn’t ramble on like an escapee from a Philip Marlowe story. Maureen found this new George much more attractive.
“I didn’t know you were a lawyer,” she said as they walked out of the police station.
“That’s ’cause I’m not.”
“You lied?”
George nodded his head.
“To the police?” Maureen was taken aback.
“Yea, I lied to the police. I didn’t poison anyone, though.”
With a shock, Maureen realized that even George thought she’d murdered Bo.
“I can’t believe you think I did it,” she said to him as they walked through the door of his apartment.
“Well, you did scream this morning, right here in this very apartment, that you may well have just murdered your violent, abusive boyfriend. I believe you were standing right there when you said it.”
“What are you doing, George? Why are you talking so different?”
“I’m speaking in plain English, Maureen, just as you asked me to do this morning, right after you confessed that you might well have murdered your violent boyfriend.”
“But how? How could I have done it?”
“Poison?”
“But if he was poisoned—”
“If you poisoned him—”
“Yes, but if I poisoned him, then how in the name of God did he get in the car while poisoned, get the car up over the Southside Road, up onto The Brow, get out of the car, open the trunk, crawl in the trunk, close down the hatch and then die?”
“We’ve got to find out what the pathologist’s report says,” George said.
“They’re not gonna have that for at least a week.”
George looked askance.
“A little buddy came in and said that everything is all backed up over in Pathology,” she explained.
“Yea, because the dead bodies are piling up like seal pelts around here.”
“Really?” Maureen said.
“No,” said George. “I’m joking. We got a lower murder rate in St. John’s than they have in Norway.”
“So?”
“Norway has the lowest number of murders of any country in the world. Their . . .”
Maureen stopped listening to George.
“I think I should tell them,” Maureen interrupted, just as he was getting to the relative murder rates in the rest of Scandinavia compared to Norway.
“Tell who? What?”
“The cops. Tell them about the chlordane.”
“That is a very, very stupid idea.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll have to charge you with attempted murder if you confess that you attempted to murder someone.”
“Well, they probably will charge me anyway when they find out, but I’d just as soon get it over with now.”
“What about if he never drank any of it, and so you didn’t kill him? So then who did?”
“I know . . .,” said Maureen.
“You know what?” George asked.
“I mean I know, who did kill him?”
“You know who killed him?”
“No! No, I mean I know, comma, who did kill him, question mark?”