The Case Against Owen Williams (39 page)

There were two ashtrays on the table in front of him, one with a small chip out of one corner, and he stared at them, half seeing them, half not, realizing that in spite of all the warning signs, there had been a part of him that had continued right to the end not to believe that this could happen. Around the periphery of conscious-ness there hovered an inchoate rabble of reflections on his failure. But at the centre, infinitely more than the cumulative effect of these, there had gathered a sense of undefined, unbounded terror, as if he were lying beyond rescue at the bottom of a deep pit.

After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door, and before he could get up, it was opened, and Meade looked in. He was carrying his raincoat over his arm, and he had the air of a man who was still turning over in his mind some pleasantry he had just heard. When he saw Dorkin's face, his expression grew serious.

“You look, my son,” he said, “as if you were dismayed.”

“Yes,” Dorkin said. “I guess so.”

Meade hesitated. He had stood just inside the door in a way that made it apparent that he was expected somewhere. Now he came all the way into the room and sat down across the table from Dorkin. There was something over-deliberate in his movements, and Dorkin realized that he was a little drunk.

“I can understand your being upset,” he said. “But you have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did very well. Everyone has remarked upon it.”

“Williams is innocent,” Dorkin said. “I have no doubt about it.”

“Look,” Meade said. “I know you're very upset, but in court you said everything on your side of the case that could be said. Whidden did the same, and on the basis of that, the jury made a decision. What else can be done? I know it's not a perfect system, and I know that sometimes it can fail, but it's the best there is in an imperfect world. And in a way, you know, the important question is not so much whether someone is justly convicted or not as whether or not he had a fair trial. That's all the system can hope to guarantee. Nobody is God. And if the system does fail sometimes, that's the price of being human. It's something one just has to accept.”

He stopped, as if aware that he was beginning to ramble.

“I must say, however,” he went on, “that in this case, I don't believe the system has failed.”

“You think that Williams is guilty?”

“Yes,” Meade said, “I do. I always have. Ever since I saw the evidence from the preliminary hearing. And everything I've heard since has only served to confirm it. I never expected you to win. No one did.You've let yourself get too close to Williams. When it comes right down to it, you know, all you had to defend him with was his word on everything that mattered.”

“I don't think he's that good a liar,” Dorkin said.

“You'd be surprised how good a liar someone can be when his life depends on it and he has nothing to do all day but sit and think about it.”

“With respect,” Dorkin said, “I would like to request the additional time to prepare an appeal on Williams's behalf.”

“I'm sorry,” Meade said, “but I can't do that. On Monday Williams is to be given a dishonourable discharge. After that, he's no longer any business of the army's, and your connection with the case comes to an end. As I explained in the summer, there were people who wanted Williams discharged after the preliminary hearing, and I had to explain to them that that would imply that he was guilty before he was tried. Now that he has been found guilty, the discharge will go through. The papers are all prepared.”

“In anticipation,” Dorkin said.

Meade shrugged.

“You don't think that his sentence might be commuted?” Dorkin said.

“I think it's very unlikely,” Meade said.

“So do I.”

Meade glanced at his watch.

“Look,” he said. “Don't take it too hard. You did everything you could have been expected to do. And a good deal more. Now it's over. It isn't your affair any more. I suggested to you once before that a lawyer is like a doctor. Some of his patients are going to die, and as a professional that is something he just has to learn to accept. You can't take things too much to heart.”

“No,” Dorkin said, “I suppose not.”

“Terrible things are going on in Europe, you know. The Germans apparently have murdered millions of people, more than anyone ever imagined. This is small stuff by comparison. Anyway, I'm afraid I have to go. Before you go back to Utopia, I think you should take a week's leave. I'll get onto Utopia and fix it up. Go to Montreal. Get right out of it. Or somewhere along the shore. It's still nice this time of year.”

“Thank you,” Dorkin said. “I may do that.”

“Consider it an order,” Meade said. “As well as a reward. I'll fix it up, and you can pick up the papers at the office in Fredericton on Monday morning.”

He went out, leaving the door open behind him, and Dorkin continued to sit. He wondered if the powers that be in the army had agreed to his request to defend Williams because they felt certain he would lose. And he reflected that what determined whether or not someone was going to hang didn't really depend on whether or not he was guilty. It depended on what kind of prosecutor he faced and what kind of defence he had managed to obtain. Even without someone as charismatic and unscrupulous as Whidden, it seemed to him that the odds were all on the side of the prosecution. And thinking of Whidden, he found himself remembering Swift's definition of lawyers. “A race of men bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that black is white and white is black, according as they are paid.”

Anyway, he told himself, he now didn't need to give a shit, and he was aware of a gathering, guilty sense of relief. It was out of his hands. He couldn't be responsible any longer even if he wanted to.

After a while, the janitor came to the door.

“Are you planning to be much longer, sir?” he asked. “I'm wondering what I should be doing about locking up.”

“It's all right,” Dorkin said. “I'm going now. Sorry if I held you up.”

He put on his raincoat, picked up his case, and went down the hall to the back door. It was still raining, and the path out to the sidewalk was covered with sodden leaves. Everyone had gone home except for one little cluster of four men. There was an old church across the street from the jail. Its front door was seven or eight feet above the ground with a little porch and two flights of steps set against the wall, and the men were sheltering under them in the shadows, drinking probably, and having one last look.

Dorkin had decided that for tonight anyway he would say nothing to Williams about his impending discharge from the army, nor about his own removal from the case. Tomorrow would be time enough. Meanwhile, he could soothe him with talk of an appeal— which there still could be even if he were not in charge of it.

He had to ring at the door of the jail and was let in by Cronk, who made him wait while he went for Carvell. Dorkin sensed at once that something was wrong.

“He's had some kind of breakdown,” Carvell said when he ar-rived from the cells. “He walked back here all right, but when he got to his cell he collapsed.”

The guardian Mountie in his red coat was standing by the open door of the cell. Inside, Williams was lying curled up on his bunk, his knees against his chin, facing the wall. They had covered him with a heavy blanket, but he was shivering and making small whimpering noises like an animal.

“I've sent for the doctor,” Carvell said. “Maybe he can give him something that will make him sleep. That minister he's been seeing—Reverend Limus or whatever his name is—has been here, but I didn't see that he was likely to do any good, so I told him to come back tomorrow. He might help then.”

“There's nothing I can do?” Dorkin asked.

“No,” Carvell said. “I don't think so.”

On the bed, the whimpering gave way to a strange low hooting sound, and the shivering became more violent. Dorkin turned away and walked back down the line of cells to Carvell's office and sat down. He felt the terrifying depression that had assailed him earlier beginning again to gather, and he set himself to keep it at bay. He had never been someone who went to pieces. It was the first time that he had ever even thought of such a possibility.

Half an hour later, when the doctor had come and gone, having given Williams a small advance on oblivion, Dorkin was let out the front door into the rain by Henry Cronk. It was now well after midnight. The Mounties' car was back in their yard, and there was only one small light burning in the office. Except for those in the jail, it was the only light visible anywhere, and there was no sound except the rain, nothing but a dank silence that made the town seem less something that humans had made than an extension of some primal forest. The little cluster of men who had been loitering under the steps of the church were gone, but as Dorkin descended to the side-walk what he had taken to be merely a darker corner of the darkness there moved, and the figure of a man emerged and came towards him, his shoes squelching through the wet leaves on the street. He was wearing an old black raincoat and a cloth cap. A moment before his face came into the lights from the jail, Dorkin recognized the high-footing drunkard's walk as that of John Maclean.

“Wet night,” Maclean said.

“Hello, John,” Dorkin said. “Yes, it is.”

“Sorry I never got hold of you again,” Maclean said.

“It doesn't matter.”

“I didn't want you to think I just ran off with your money.”

“It's all right. I understand.”

“Look,” Maclean said, “is there somewhere dry we can get to? I'd like to talk to you for a minute.”

Dorkin hesitated. He didn't want to talk to anyone.

“Okay,” he said. “That's my car. We can talk there.”

“You look down,” Maclean said.

“I am.”

“Little snort would do you good.”

“Maybe.”

He unlocked the car, and they got in. Maclean had a dank smell like that of a wet dog. He fished out of an inside pocket a packet of Turret cigarette tobacco and set about carefully rolling himself a smoke.

“You don't happen to be carrying any tailor-mades?” he asked.

“No,” Dorkin said. “I don't smoke.”

“I remember. I just thought maybe. Anyhow, I wanted to tell you what happened. This guy came to see me a few days after we talked.”

“Oh? What guy?”

“I don't know. He gave me a name, but I didn't catch it. I saw him in court. Behind Whidden and those other guys. Anyhow, he said he worked for the attorney-general or somebody like that, and he told me that I was a witness for the prosecution and that you had no right to be talking to me. He said I could find myself in serious trouble if I let you interfere with what I was going to say in court. I didn't like the sound of that much. I didn't want to let you down, but guys like me, you know, they can do anything they want to with. I can't afford any lawyers.”

“It's okay,” Dorkin said.

“I found out what you wanted to know about Coile. Later on, when I heard the Mounties had been asking about it too, I figured them or Carvell would have told you, but I guess they didn't.”

“No. They didn't tell Carvell either.”

“Well,” Maclean said. “That's too bad.”

“Yes. But it probably wouldn't have made any difference. Do you think one of Coile's pals could have done it for him?”

“Killed the girl? Don't think so. Doesn't seem to me to make sense.”

“You didn't hear anything about Coile messing around with her?”

“A lot of talk. Especially about the older sister. Just talk, but I wouldn't be surprised.”

“You didn't hear anything about who may have shot at Louie Rosen?”

“No. Not a word. I'd tell you if I had. Nobody seems to know anything. Lots of rumours though.”

“Such as?”

“Louie knew too much about somebody and was telling you what he knew. But also that he'd been sharp with too many people too often, and that day he just happened to drive by one of them when he had a gun with him.”

“Could be,” Dorkin said.

He looked at his watch.

“While I was asking around about things,” Maclean said, “I found out something else. Something sort of funny, made me wonder.”

“Oh?” Dorkin said.

“It was back in the spring. Late May, maybe June, this guy I was talking to didn't remember exactly. In the woods back of The Silver Dollar. Nights they have dances, there's a lot of drinking goes on there. People from the dance. And guys who are just around out there to drink and fight, you know. And sometimes some of the boys go out on the chance of picking up a drink. Or maybe just sit around and listen to the music.”

“Or roll somebody who's had too much?” Dorkin said.