Authors: Gail Bowen

The Brutal Heart (31 page)

Linda Fritz was acting for the Crown. She was a tall, slim redhead. I’d seen her in action, and she was formidable: cool, prepared, and unflappable. Her opening address to the jury was a model of restraint and economy. She summarized the facts of the case and stated that the Crown would prove that Sean Barton had, with forethought and intent to kill, pushed Cristal Avilia from her balcony and stabbed Jason Brodnitz. Linda Fritz then gave a quick précis of the evidence the Crown would bring forth and identified her witnesses. Then, moving close to the jury box, she finished her opening statement with the assertion that the job of the Crown is simply to see that justice is done.

Without witnesses and without evidence that would exonerate him, Sean Barton had nothing but his own story, and in his opening, he cited the metaphor that would inform his defence. He had taken it from Robert Frost’s much-anthologized poem, “The Road Not Taken.” Sean presented himself as a man who, like Frost’s narrator, was confronted with a fork in the road and made a choice that defined his life.

He told his narrative compellingly, casting himself as the protagonist in a tragedy of passion doomed by forces beyond his control. When he met Cristal Avilia, Sean was in law school. She was a first-year student from a small town. They fell in love. They were both broke. After an evening of drinking and watching videos in the apartment of a well-heeled fellow student in the College of Law, Sean took his first wrong turn. One of the movies the group watched was
Indecent Proposal
, a film in which Robert Redford’s character offers a desperate young real estate speculator a million dollars to sleep with the realtor’s wife. The offer is accepted and a contract is signed.

The student hosting the party had urged Sean and Cristal to stay behind until the others left, then he made them an offer: $
1,000
for an hour in bed with Cristal. According to Sean, Cristal’s objections that she didn’t want to have sex with a stranger were just an act. Sean and Cristal went outside, discussed the proposition, and after a brief fight, she agreed.

The rich young man liked what he paid for and there was a second tryst. The word got out, and Cristal’s career was launched. She was twenty years old.

At this point in the opening, Mr. Justice Nathaniel Peters, an affable, heavy-set man, interjected. He was concerned, he said, that Sean was incriminating himself.

Sean gave the judge his disarming smile. “Just do your job,” he said “And I’ll do mine.” At that point, Sean turned to the jury. “Cristal never looked back,” he said. I searched the faces of the jury members. They were clearly horrified, but Sean was oblivious.

He went on to describe what he persisted in referring to as their “parallel careers”: his in law, Cristal’s in prostitution. He was factual and upbeat as he talked about their decision to move from Saskatoon to Regina. His experience at the law firm where he articled had not been a good one, and in his words, “Cristal and I both wanted a fresh start in our careers.” He was hired by Falconer Shreve. Cristal, whom Sean praised as “a good money manager,” bought a warehouse downtown, had it renovated, and set up shop. Two young people starting out on promising careers.

According to Sean, Cristal liked her work. “She was a real people person,” he said. The gasp in the courtroom was audible, but Sean didn’t hear it. He was too busy spinning a tale of a life that was, in his telling, just a bowl of cherries until things started going wrong for him professionally. When he sensed that the people who mattered at Falconer Shreve no longer saw him as partnership material, his quarrels with Cristal became more serious. He felt that everything was slipping from his grasp. One of Cristal’s clients, an old lawyer who should have known better, started filling Cristal’s head with ideas that made her rebellious. She wanted to quit the business. At this point in his narrative, Sean approached the jury box, hands extended in a gesture that begged for empathy. “All of a sudden, it wasn’t the two of us against the world. After fourteen years with me, she wanted a different life. I had to get our relationship back on solid ground. I had to show her who was in charge.” As everyone in the courtroom waited for the sentence that would loop the noose around Sean’s neck, Mr. Justice Nathaniel Peters uttered his sternest warning against self-incrimination. Sean ignored him.

As he described the last moments of Cristal’s life, Sean’s baritone was seductive. “She was going to leave,” he said. “And I couldn’t allow that to happen. She was my soulmate, and I couldn’t be separated from my soul.” At that point, he bowed his head – an actor, waiting for an ovation. The applause never came.

Finally Sean straightened, squared his shoulders, strode back to his desk, and set about explaining the death of Jason Brodnitz.

“The Ginny Monaghan case was make or break for me,” he said. “Winning that case was my last chance to be taken seriously at Falconer Shreve.” He smiled across at the Crown prosecutor. “My friend understands that sometimes we have to tighten a case to make sure we win. I had to do whatever it took to get Ginny custody of her girls. I’d learned from inside sources that Brodnitz’s professional rebirth had been financed by sex workers. I used that knowledge to win the Monaghan case.”

He walked across to the jury. “By winning the Monaghan case, I had redeemed myself, but once again there was a fork in the road. This time I wasn’t the one who chose the direction that changed everything. If Jason Brodnitz had accepted his loss, he’d be alive today, but like Cristal, he pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.” Sean paused dramatically. “Once again, I had no alternative but to push back.”

As he took the measure of the jury, Sean’s head moved slowly, as if he was memorizing each of their faces. “So that’s it,” he said. “I stand before you today because fate led me down the wrong road. One day my life was full of promise; the next I met Cristal Avilia. We went to a party. We watched a video. A man made an offer. Cristal accepted, and my life was ruined.” He glanced at me. “There was collateral damage. Members of the jury. Judges of the facts. Ask yourselves whether, given the circumstances, you would have acted any differently than I did.”

As Sean took his seat, the silence in the courtroom was absolute. Linda Fritz was slow to rise from her desk. Like any good actor, she knew the value of letting an audience absorb the implications of a powerful soliloquy before she moved along. When Linda asked that the boxes containing Cristal’s journals be brought in and admitted into evidence, the jurors were riveted. The sheer weight of the evidence was overwhelming. There were
168
journals. On the day she met Sean, Cristal began to record their life together: one journal a month, twelve months a year for fourteen years. The journals provided a dark counterbalance to Sean’s sunny account of two young people embarking on successful careers. As Linda read excerpts from the journals, Cristal’s obsessive longing for Sean Barton’s approval and love, and her pain at his continued manipulation and rejection, sucked the oxygen from the room. When Linda finished reading, there was a sob. Then there was silence. Linda had done her job. She had made certain that Cristal Avilia’s voice was heard in the courtroom.

A week later, when Sean finished his closing argument and the case went to the jury, Zack turned to me. “Well, the ship has sailed,” he said. “Let me go over to the office and pick up a couple of things, then we can spend the day doing whatever you want to do.”

The weather had turned in the week since the trial began. The day was leaden, darkening, and the cold air smelled of dead foliage, long journeys, and winter. The trees in Victoria Park were leafless, stripped to the bare essentials. And although it was late morning, the lights in the office buildings were blazing.

I hadn’t been to Falconer Shreve since the day I’d met Sean there and he’d shown me his new office. There were changes. Margot was settled in and there was another new partner. There were also a half-dozen new associates. When I passed the office that Sean had lusted after so fervently and planned for so long, there was a young man behind the glass desk. He leapt to his feet and came over to be introduced when he spotted me with Zack. The new associate’s name was Rick Warren. He was short and wiry, with a high forehead and slicked-back dark hair, and he was charmingly deferential to the wife of the senior partner. When he noticed that I was staring past him into his office, Rick stepped aside. “Come in and have a look around,” he said. The room was exactly as it had been on the day Sean showed it to me. Rick was watching me carefully, gauging my reaction. “What do you think?” he said finally.

I took in the asparagus ceiling, the soft brown walls, and the café au lait reading chair. “It’s very handsome,” I said.

Rick’s eyes met mine. “I haven’t changed a thing,” he said. “It’s perfect. The minute I walked in here I felt as if I’d come home.”

Unexpectedly, I felt a chill. “Well, congratulations,” I said. “And good luck. I hope you’re happy in your work.”

“I’m already happy,” he said. “I’m part of the Falconer Shreve family.”

Zack and I were out in the garden admiring some persistent chrysanthemums when the phone rang. The jurors had reached a verdict. We were at the courthouse in ten minutes. Linda Fritz was entering the courtroom when we came in. “Quick verdict,” Zack said. “What do you think?”

Linda smoothed her barrister’s robe. “I think this is always a Xanax moment.”

Television would have us believe that when jurors find a defendant guilty, they don’t look him in the eye. When the judges of the facts in Sean Barton’s case filed into the jury box, each of them stared unsmiling at his face. The foreperson announced the jury’s findings without emotion: Sean Terrence Barton had been found guilty of two counts of first degree murder and one of assault causing bodily harm. After the formalities had been observed, Sean was led away.

Francesca Pope had been at the trial every day, and she was waiting for us outside the courtroom.

“Is it over?” she asked Zack.

“It’s over,” he said. “Nothing to be afraid of now.”

Francesca shifted her backpack. “There’s always something to be afraid of,” she said in her low, thrilling voice. Then she walked away.

Zack came close to me. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“So what’s next?” he said.

I glanced at my watch. “The UpSlideDown Halloween party started fifteen minutes ago. Dacia’s juggling. This is her first time working with five balls. Want to see if she can keep them all in the air at once?”

“Sure,” Zack said. “I’m a big fan of anybody who can defy gravity.”

I called Mieka to tell her we were on our way, and she met us at the door. She was dressed as a genie in swirls of bright silk – a festive costume, but her face was sombre. “One of the parents told me the verdict,” she said. I put my arms around my daughter and pulled her close. “May God forgive him,” she said.

The room was packed, but Mieka led us to a spot near the space she’d cleared for Dacia’s act. Then, hand in hand, Zack and I watched a young woman with shining hair keep five sky-blue balls arcing through the air, while all around us children dressed as kangaroos and tigers and princesses stared open-mouthed at the wonder of it all.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to five outstanding women: Dinah Forbes, Bella Pomer, Hildy Wren Bowen, Jan Seibel, and Lara Schmidt. Thanks also to Ted, who, for forty years, has been the man in my life.