rather rely on a believable alibi or overwhelming physical evidence to support a defense, a strong legal argument is still very nice, thank you. All the Crown’s main facts are easily rebuttable, and each at the very least gives rise to a creamy dollop of reasonable doubt. Pictures of girls in undies ripped from the Sears catalog and pinned up on the accused’s wall show a depraved loneliness and suspect libidi-nal preoccupations, but hardly murderous intent. And the bloodstains in Tripp’s car—they could be anybody’s. As for the muddy shoes and pants, you can’t cross the street up here without treading through something soft and brown. Add it up and all you’ve got is circumstantial will-o’-the-wisps and nothing more. So what if Tripp is an uncoachable loony who’ll bring about utter disaster if he ever gets within twenty feet of the stand? All I require is for Mr. Weird to sit there nice and quiet and keep the waterworks in check. We’ve got the law on our side.“How’re you doing today?” the concierge greets me as I step into the front hall. I squint over in the direction of the voice and find his slouching silhouette behind the desk, his teeth chipped piano keys in the dark.
“Is there something you want to tell me, or is that just your way of saying hello in the unnecessary form of a question?”
Cups his jaw in a toothache pose.
“Well, now you ask, I guess I’d say a little of both.”
“Then tell me.”
“Got a couple messages here I took for you over the phone.”
“Let’s see them.”
“I’m not sure you’re gonna—”
“Give me the fucking messages, if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind at all. Just that they weren’t those kind of messages.”
I slide forward over the carpet until my shoes thud against the front of the desk.
“What kind were they?”
“Prankster stuff. Kids. Girls mostly, funny enough.”
“Hilarious.” I lay the back of my hand down on the desk. “So what’d they say? You write them down?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t ask for you in particular.”
“Why are you telling me then?”
“People know who you are. Who you’d be working for.”
He says this without an edge of criticism. He says it without anything at all.
“Get names next time,” I say. “I’ll lay charges.”
“For what?”
“Uttering threats.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ about threats.” The skin of the concierge’s head glows in the blue from the computer screen.
I step back to go up the stairs, but pause at the bottom.
“How many?”
“A good few.”
“Oh yeah? Well, after this, don’t bother letting—”
“Not a word.”
The concierge looks up at me and shakes his head blue black, blue black, across the line of shadow and light.
By the time I shut the door and glance out the window at the day’s intestinal clouds I’m having doubts. Not about the thinness of the evidence against Thommy Boy, but about the soundness of the whole no-bodies–no-murder thing. I think I remember some law school prof in a cheap suit (no help—they all wore cheap suits) stating that no murder conviction had ever been obtained in Canada without the evidentiary assistance of the victim’s discovered remains. But the voice of Graham Lyle nevertheless singsongs through my head as it always does when the necessity of legal research raises its pernickety head: My dear Barth, didn’t your mother ever warn you about hanging your hat on loose pegs?
So I pull out the laptop, hook up the modem tothe phone beside the bed and connect with the Canadian Criminal Database through which, thanks to the monkish work of some law school drop-outs stuck in a suburban basement office, every single reported case in the nation can be reviewed at a cost of $320 per on-line hour. A little dear, I suppose, but far handier than having to schlepp the firm’s library up to this wasteland or call down to Toronto to have a paralegal pull together a memo which, in the end, is
“Is there something you want to tell me, or is that just your way of saying hello in the unnecessary form of a question?”
Cups his jaw in a toothache pose.
“Well, now you ask, I guess I’d say a little of both.”
“Then tell me.”
“Got a couple messages here I took for you over the phone.”
“Let’s see them.”
“I’m not sure you’re gonna—”
“Give me the fucking messages, if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind at all. Just that they weren’t those kind of messages.”
I slide forward over the carpet until my shoes thud against the front of the desk.
“What kind were they?”
“Prankster stuff. Kids. Girls mostly, funny enough.”
“Hilarious.” I lay the back of my hand down on the desk. “So what’d they say? You write them down?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t ask for you in particular.”
“Why are you telling me then?”
“People know who you are. Who you’d be working for.”
He says this without an edge of criticism. He says it without anything at all.
“Get names next time,” I say. “I’ll lay charges.”
“For what?”
“Uttering threats.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ about threats.” The skin of the concierge’s head glows in the blue from the computer screen.
I step back to go up the stairs, but pause at the bottom.
“How many?”
“A good few.”
“Oh yeah? Well, after this, don’t bother letting—”
“Not a word.”
The concierge looks up at me and shakes his head blue black, blue black, across the line of shadow and light.
By the time I shut the door and glance out the window at the day’s intestinal clouds I’m having doubts. Not about the thinness of the evidence against Thommy Boy, but about the soundness of the whole no-bodies–no-murder thing. I think I remember some law school prof in a cheap suit (no help—they all wore cheap suits) stating that no murder conviction had ever been obtained in Canada without the evidentiary assistance of the victim’s discovered remains. But the voice of Graham Lyle nevertheless singsongs through my head as it always does when the necessity of legal research raises its pernickety head: My dear Barth, didn’t your mother ever warn you about hanging your hat on loose pegs?
So I pull out the laptop, hook up the modem tothe phone beside the bed and connect with the Canadian Criminal Database through which, thanks to the monkish work of some law school drop-outs stuck in a suburban basement office, every single reported case in the nation can be reviewed at a cost of $320 per on-line hour. A little dear, I suppose, but far handier than having to schlepp the firm’s library up to this wasteland or call down to Toronto to have a paralegal pull together a memo which, in the end, is
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