Faloon should be in the Richmond lockup by now, near the international airport. Arthur has arranged with the Crown to meet him there within the hour, via Syd-Air from Blunder Bay. The timetable is tight-he must shuttle back to Garibaldi for another reunion, Margaret’s return to earth. Three p.m., no later.
There’s a do at the hall later, a potluck, a relaxed occasion to honour Margaret. Then will come the delicate first moments of being alone with her. Then the night, and whatever God intends.
Driving home, he frets-she hasn’t been emitting deafening signals that she misses him. The word love speckles her paper glider notes, but only in ways casual or dutiful. Such festering doubts have combined with eleven weeks of sleeping alone to create a suffocating shyness.
“Be attentive but do not smother.” Down-under Deborah. “She’ll need to talk, don’t fall asleep on her. Make love to her like the sensitive New Age male you long to be.”
He couldn’t bring himself to mention the Viagra, it’s not something one talks about with a daughter. The two tablets from Hubbell’s stash will do for now, but he supposes an uncomfortable, throat-clearing session with Doc Dooley is a prerequisite to obtaining more.
Back to Vancouver in the morning, the trial must go on. He must finish his cross of Holly Hoover, then the Crown’s case is almost in. A few minor witnesses and Adeline Angella.
Here comes Kim Lee, pedalling hard, waving urgently, pulling him over.
“Lo-tis prease hoary home.” She throws her bike in the back.
“My God, what happened to her?” She fell off Barney. She stepped on a hive of yellow jackets.
“Happy, happy happen.”
“Happy…happy, good?”
“She solve case.”
Lotis rises from her computer, stubs her cigarette. “Ultra low tar. One weakness isn’t bad.”
Arthur has learned to abide such intimations of near-perfection. He waits impatiently. She smiles, enjoying the moment, drawing out the suspense.
“Munni Sidhoo built a profile of Adeline Angella from Nick’s semen. These are the autorad charts.” The printer clicks and buzzes. “Angella dosed the corpse with Nick’s ten-yearold seed. She’s our perp.”
Arthur stares dumbly at the DNA ladders. “No chance of a mistake?”
“Whoa, get with it. Dr. Sidhoo wrote the book on DNA.”
He sags weakly to the couch, elated with a sense of impending triumph-yet there’s a sense of loss. All those other suspects, wasted. He finds irony. Almost convicted by science, Nick Faloon finds salvation from it. In the end, not law but science determines who is innocent, who guilty.
It was Ms. Know-it-all’s idea, this sifting through the semen sample for Angella’s DNA. He will forgive her smugness, her truancy, her capriciousness, even her revolutionary jargon.
He has one more task for her-to check out Angella’s alibi. I think I may have had a teeny, teeny bit too much at the Wanderlust. Lotis is to use utter discretion when talking to the staff. No stranger must know the defence armament holds such a powerful weapon as the DNA of troubled, obsessive Adeline Angella, who hadn’t been candid with the Crown-Buddy would toss her away like a worm-eaten apple if he knew she’d been Doctor Eve’s venomously unhappy patient.
Here comes Syd-Air. In half an hour, Arthur will be shaking his client’s hand, telling him he has chosen a propitious time to come back. As of tomorrow, when Angella takes the stand, the defence becomes a prosecution, the greatest, most honourable of defences, turning the tables on the true murderer.
It’s around noon, Faloon figures, as the wagon pulls up behind a typically square suburban RCMP detachment, in a town called Clearbrook. He feels fagged, slow, stupid. He wasn’t able to collar a nod the whole time from Tahiti, he never could sleep well on a plane, especially between two honking big cops.
“First thing, I want to call my lawyer.”
“Staff Flynn’s in charge of that,” says Corporal Johnson.
They go through the security door, and there he is, Jasper Flynn, in the booking room, a big salesman’s smile under his bulky ’stache, as if he’s meeting a wealthy customer. “Have a good flight, Nick?”
“Yes, thank you, and I want to talk to Mr. Beauchamp.”
“He been warned?”
“Couple of times,” Johnson says.
Jasper breezes through it anyway, after which Faloon says, “I want to commend you on your reading, Sergeant Flynn, especially the last part, where I have a right to a lawyer.”
“Let’s get the bureaucratic shit out of the way. We got to book you, do the prints and art.” To Johnson: “You tell him how it’s going?”
“No.”
Jasper Flynn shakes his head, demonstrating sadness maybe. Tell him what? Faloon isn’t going to ask. He’s got one thing to say to this copper. “When I am I gonna call Mr. Beauchamp?”
“Hey, Nick, it’s Sunday, let the man relax.”
He’s whisked through the system, Sergeant Flynn granting his right to a leak but not a phone call. Otherwise everything’s a blur, and what Faloon wants right now, more than even a lawyer, is a few minutes kip. But Jasper won’t even lock him up. “Let’s go for a ride.” Friendly, not like some gangster movie.
Out they go into the sweltering day, no bracelets, nothing, Faloon with his suitcase on rollers, trundling to Flynn’s Explorer, which has windows you can’t see into. Then Flynn opens the door, shows him this German shepherd in the back with cold eyes and a low growl. “Old Shep’s harmless,” Flynn says.
Faloon says, “Nice doggie,” and sits up front. “Where you taking me, Officer Flynn?”
“Moving you away from the city. There’s a lot of public feeling over this case, Nick, we want to avoid a media circus.” He pulls away. “Buckle up.”
So here’s Nick, no constraints except a seat belt, perched in the cockpit of this bus, with its kids’ sports equipment in the back and a dog that could possibly go for the throat, a very unofficial vehicle, which means the inside door handles should work. Maybe Flynn wants him to run when they get to a stop sign. Then he’s going to shoot him. Roadkill.
The paranoia keeps him awake as they swing onto the freeway, the 99, heading east up the Fraser Valley. A media circus…Do they even know he’s here? Does Mr. Beauchamp?
“I don’t get it, Nick, you make a clean getaway, a big score on the Riviera, and you blow it all by wild living at a thousand-buck-a-day resort.”
That’s why he’s a copper. Guys like Johnson and him don’t understand. Thieves have a different nature. Different aspirations.
“How’s that going to sound to the jury tomorrow?”
Faloon starts. “Would you repeat the question, sergeant?”
“It’s going bad for you, Nick.”
“What is?”
“Your trial. Jury’s waiting for the lawyers to finish blowing wind so they can convict you and get back to their families.”
“My trial…”
“I forgot, you been out of touch. You’re an absconding accused, Nick, that means a jury can convict you in your absence. Last few witnesses are going in tomorrow. Your ex-girlfriend, Adeline Angella, will talk about how you put a knife to her throat. You’re in the toilet, Nick.”
Faloon sits back, relieved that the horseman turns out to have a sense of humour. “I’m calling you on that one, Sergeant Flynn.”
At a cloverleaf, they pull over at a gas station. “Stay,” says Flynn, getting out at a self-serve pump. The Owl’s not clear if that’s meant for him or the dog or both, but he stays. It’s hot in here with the air conditioning off, even though Flynn left the driver’s door open. That gives a view of newspaper boxes. A tabloid headline: “Golly, Holly!” A shot of Hoover walking from the courts, a sexy smirk, like it’s all a big joke.
Though he barely touches the door handle, he hears a throaty rumble from harmless old Shep. Flynn has trained this dog to kill absconding suspects. Meanwhile he’s out there pumping gas with his door wide open, like an invitation. The Owl wonders if the trial’s really going that bad. Maybe it’s the Crown’s case that’s in the toilet.