The Monster of Twenty Mile Pond Page 10

  I told them the snaps were certainly intriguing, and congratulated them on their initiative, but I kept my major misgivings to myself. I asked Craig to send copies of the shots to my email address because I was going to have them examined by an expert in marine biology at the university.

  “Professor Atwood?” asked Craig. “He’s retired but he still comes to the biology department all the time. He’s world-famous. He’ll know what it is.”

  The next day, when I found the girls by themselves watching a women’s curling game on television, I said that, seriously, if they were ever thinking about doing anything so potentially dangerous again, to please at least discuss it with me first, and get my input. “Believe me,” I said, “no one is more eager to find something in or around that lake to explain things than I am.”

  “YesbutDad,” said Molly, “Esme is the one with a gun held to her head. She’s got to act whenever she needs to. And she intends to, and she’s right to.” Molly spoke more forcefully than Esme would have. Esme remained silent, but her determined face indicated she agreed completely.

  A realization came over me as I looked at them. All fall, and so far this winter, our lawyers had been treading water, focussed on legal procedures, and I’d been beavering away to come up with a few flimsy myths. But now, honestly and frankly, I was fully prepared to do anything at all—I mightn’t yet know exactly what, but anything, whatever it took—to drag Esme and Molly out of this quagmire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  First thing Monday morning I sent an email to Professor Atwood, with the photo attachments, asking him to let me know what he thought the close-up might be an image of. He didn’t email me back that day; I called him the next day and reached him. He talked to me as if I was a student pest badgering him to upgrade my marks to a pass.

  “I was going to get back to you in due course,” he said, “but, frankly, I had other, less frivolous, items on my agenda to attend to first. You ask what the object in the picture might be. Let me hazard a shrewd guess, which jumps out at me as a result of our earlier conversation. It looks vaguely like, or has been made to look like, the eye of a giant squid. But the representation is exceedingly unconvincing. It could be a snapshot of something else entirely and Photoshopped to look like a gargantuan eye. It’s just sitting there as a distorted image with no setting or context to explicate it, or elucidate it, or size it, or locate it.

  “The shots of the people kneeling on the ice don’t necessarily even relate to it at all. And if, in fact, it is the eye of a large cephalopod, the likeness could easily have been stolen directly off the Internet. Give me an hour and I could probably find the very same picture on some website. There’s a lot of research on giant squid these days, and a surfeit of pictures of giant squid and colossal squid, and their parts, including, naturally, their fascinating big eyes.”

  “I understand you perfectly, Professor Atwood,” I said, “and I had similar doubts myself. However, four intelligent young witnesses are willing to testify to what they observed, and where and when they observed it, and that the photograph was taken of it at the time.”

  “And bright adolescent students have never been known to conspire to concoct an elaborate spoof for the fun of it? Or for the attention? That first-year student, Abbott, who allegedly took the picture—” It took me a moment to comprehend that he was talking about Craig, who had obviously approached him about this already. “—is under investigation for suspected plagiarism from Wikipedia for a term paper. And, B-T-W, as he might say, are any of our young photographic geniuses caught up in that dreadful drug and murder case, which originated by that very same lake? If so, it might well have been advantageous for them to fabricate a self-serving scenario designed to help extricate themselves.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking: everyone, even a lawyer-hater, is a damned attorney in a TV courtroom drama these days—they should ban all those productions from the screen before they metastasized even more into real life. I thanked the professor for his candid reaction and hung up the phone. In fact, he was more helpful than he might have believed.

  His forceful denial that the pictures were scientific proof of anything set my mind on a different, murkier route. If I were to present them, together with the other dramatic “information” in my arsenal, on television and radio and the Internet and in newspapers, there could be just enough in the whole lot to cause questions and speculation in minds of many people watching, listening, and reading. It was a desperate, wicked stratagem: my sensational revelations at a news conference might, with luck, sow sufficient doubt in the minds of a potential jury chosen from such an audience.

  Our lawyers had the snapshot of the big eye examined by a photographic expert. He pronounced the picture genuine and not Photoshopped. He would be prepared to state that much, but in no way could he assert confidently what the image in the snapshot might be. I would have to proclaim that myself with the rest, and perhaps be obliged to take on a discrediting attack by an authority like Dr. Atwood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The prosecutor continued to try to set down Esme’s preliminary inquiry for the spring. Morley Sheppard was surprised that the Crown seemed to be in an unholy rush. Murder charges in Canada usually proceeded to inquiry and trial slowly, and the prosecution seldom objected to requests for numerous delays by the defence to prepare their case. But in Esme’s case, Derek Smythe was insisting on moving ahead with what looked like undue haste. He was babbling on, Morley said, about how a murder trial had to be treated as an urgent, top priority in the court system, and that justice delayed was justice denied for the Crown as well as the accused. Moreover, he was declaring this case so open-and-shut that no further delay was necessary. What could the defence possibly hope to come up with?

  Morley confided to me that he was somewhat conflicted about whether to consent to the spring inquiry and move “this torment” along to trial, where we would get rid of the sword of Damocles over Esme’s head one way or the other by a verdict, or continue to push for a delay to next fall in the desolate hope that something might turn up. There was no doubt in his mind that she would be bound over for trial at the inquiry. Oh yes, he could muddy the waters throughout on cross-examination and argument, but so far their only defence was, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution has not proved the murder charge against Ms. Esme Browning by credible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.” He could hear the jurors, well aware of the drug-dealing circumstances, reacting to that in the jury room: “Yeah, right.”

  Our lawyers hid their anxiety from Esme and Molly during meetings with them. But to me, they suggested that Esme might want to consider a plea bargain, perhaps a guilty plea to manslaughter. In return, the Crown would have to agree to drop the motion to have them tried as adults, which would keep the girls’ names from becoming public in the media, and allow for a greatly reduced sentence.

  But Morley was not confident about any of it. He was painfully familiar with the bluster of prosecutors and he could generally tell when they were bluffing; unfortunately, they were giving every impression of believing their case to be rock solid. Really, all the Crown had to do, they were constantly saying, was plant these two rhetorical questions firmly in the jurors’ minds about who and what had killed Jason Power: If not Esme Browning, the only person who was down there all alone with the victim, then who? And if not Esme’s hiking pole, with the victim’s blood on its sharp point, then what?

  Just yesterday, Derek Smythe had said to Morley that the defence was in effect trying to argue that the Crown had to prove the victim was not speared in the eye by a branch more than two feet above his head, instead of the defence having to demonstrate clearly that such an inexplicable event was what in fact had happened. Did Morley actually believe the judge was going to let him get away with that? And if Morley somehow slipped that argument in by the back door, did he think it would cut any ice with a jury deliberating
on a violent murder in a blatant drug trafficking case? What did the defence think the judge and jurors were, complete imbeciles?

  “Bill, let me put it this way,” said Morley Sheppard. “If I’m ever retained by the Crown to prosecute a murder case, I hope it’s as strong for the prosecution as this one.”

  I hid my disgust from Morley over his rational judgments and solid good sense. I told him and Brian that I’d had a bright idea. Perhaps it might have the effect of provoking a fit of guffaws in the Department of Justice. Or maybe, just maybe, it might have the effect of getting the Crown to reconsider the charges altogether. I wanted Morley to arrange a meeting for me with Smythe, the Crown prosecutor, so that I could inform him, as a professional courtesy, of this unorthodox, even outrageous action, I proposed to take.

  I intended to hold a news conference, as a parent of one of the accused girls and guardian of the other, to report publicly everything I knew, or had heard in my investigation, about the lake and its sinister inhabitant. That would include a description of my own sighting over twenty years ago; the oral and written reports of the experience on the lake of the governor and his granddaughter; the mysterious banning of fishing by governors thereafter; the stories from people in the vicinity of the lake, including that of the total disappearance of the Multi-Million Dollar Man and the strange sound his companions had heard at the lake at the time he vanished; the undoubted connection between the death of Jason Power, the drug trafficker, and something powerful and menacing in this body of water, including what Esme heard and saw at the time—the squawk and the trafficker’s body flying by behind her; the unexplained blood and brain of the victim on a broken branch eight feet above the ground; and now the photograph of a monstrous eye beneath the ice.

  I told Morley and Brian that they should disassociate themselves from what I was proposing to do, and state to the prosecutor that I was acting against their advice and without their consent.

  “I certainly would have no problem,” said Morley, “in advising you not to take that step and in stating that I do not consent to it. It would be an exceedingly irresponsible action for you to take as a parent and a guardian, and doubly so as a lawyer. You’d be inviting a citation for contempt of court, and worse, perhaps obstruction of justice charges. But more important than all that would be the possible unintended and unforeseen consequences to my clients. I have no idea how it might muddy the waters and undermine our defence. Think of the public’s reaction, of incredulity, their serious doubts about our mental stability, which could play right into the hands of the prosecution. Remember that a jury has to be chosen from that same public.”

  “I think it is more likely that my disclosures would sow doubts about the charges against the girls in the minds of the general public, from which the jury will be picked.”

  “If that turns out to be so, then it could only be because it will bring about consternation, anxiety, even a wide-ranging alarm, about the danger to the public from the drinking water and from the lake in general. A lawyer might wish to ask himself if he wants to be accused, by doing this, of significant public mischief, possibly criminal in nature.”

  “Morley, listen, those possible consequences to me are trivial compared to any possible benefit to the girls.”

  “Harm to everyone would be the more likely outcome. Well, you are on your own on that. I’ll be writing you a letter stating that I advised strenuously against it. And I’ll have to inform Esme and Molly, as my clients.”

  In Morley’s office, Esme and Molly listened to Morley and Brian and me as we discussed my “plan.” After my two colleagues expressed their grave doubts about it, Esme said, “I don’t know about all your other stuff—what you saw yourself that time and all the stories you’ve heard, Uncle Bill—but what I heard and saw down by the lake, and what I saw through the ice and what Craig took a picture of, that’s all true. What’s wrong with telling the Crown prosecutors the truth?”

  After some more unavailing argument, Morley threw up his hands and sighed. “Okay, Bill, if you insist, I’ll call Derek Smythe.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Derek Smythe refused to meet with me before he heard from Morley what I planned to say. Morley gave him an outline, and he responded, first with exclamations of utter disbelief at what I was “threatening” to do, and then with an invitation to me to join him and the director of public prosecutions at their offices, with Morley present, for a “clarification” meeting.

  In the office of Winston Myers, the director of public prosecutions, I told him and Derek Smythe, off the record and without prejudice, that I was there acting as a parent and a guardian in what I thought was the best interests of the girls, but against the advice of their lawyers. Since I was going to go ahead and do it anyway, however, no matter what anyone advised, everyone with a vested interest in the case should be aware beforehand. They listened to how I proposed to proceed without interruption but with looks on their faces throughout that shouted, “This guy is a raving madman.”

  Before my last words were out, the director spoke up. “You are an officer of the Supreme Court, Bill, not to mention a highly esteemed civil lawyer, and I gather you are asserting that you are prepared to taint and prejudice a serious murder trial by the public dissemination of rumours, crazed speculations, and preposterous reports of sightings and visions more in the nature of hallucinations and fabrications than reality? I can’t imagine better confirmation of the serious drug problem inherent in this case. Now it’s not for me to teach you your professional ethics, but I must ask, as one member of the Law Society to another, are you not fearful, not only of being in breach of the law, but also of being censured, perhaps even disbarred and expelled from the Law Society, as result of such reckless, irrational public statements regarding a case before the courts?”

  “Thanks for your candour, Winston. Yes, it would appear that I do have a conflict of interest between my duty to the Supreme Court and my duty, as I see it, to children under my protection. Well, I choose to resolve the conflict by attempting to prevent my children from being railroaded into unjust punishment by an overzealous Department of Justice and a government acting politically. And be assured, I shall be saying so publicly, loud and clear. Fear of disbarment—are you nuts? What is disbarment compared to standing by and watching the lives of two teenaged girls being ruined over a stupid adolescent blunder?”

  “Okay . . .” Winston Myers paused for effect. “Then what about your disbarment and probable criminal conviction on top of the girls’ convictions—three ruined lives for the price of two? Do you like that better?”

  “So be it. But no trial, let alone conviction, will happen before full public disclosure of everything I know about the hidden, dangerous monster lurking in Twenty Mile Pond.” It even sounded silly to me as I said it.

  “The lurking . . . ? Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Winston Myers snorted out his derision and shook his head slowly, lips compressed, as he got up.

  “And you’d better tell your minister and your deputy minister that, too.” Now I was sounding desperate.

  “For amusement,” said Myers, “I may tell them all about it over a beer at the departmental barbeque next summer, but I can assure you that I will not be interrupting their busy schedules during the workday this winter to relay such irrelevant, peripheral absurdities.”

  “So they will be hearing my startling disclosures from the media for the first time—about which, I will be saying publicly, I reported to you beforehand.”

  “Of course, just like every other citizen. Where else would they hear it? You are aware, I assume, that the minister and his deputy are never involved in decisions on police investigations or prosecutions of criminal offences.”

  Here I was surprised to hear our Morley Sheppard jump in. Though very much against what I proposed to do, he’d had the decency to remain silent until now. “Yes,” he barked at the two prosecutors
, “uninvolved just like in the Mount Cashel orphanage case, where the deputy minister at the time and the chief of police conspired to thwart the police investigations and prosecutions of Christian Brothers who had criminally abused scores of little boys under their care for years.”

  “I am shocked to hear you say that, Morley,” said Myers. “You of all people are aware of the changes and safeguards that have been effected since those unfortunate times. If you are, however, characterizing the department of today as being at all similar to the way it was in those dark days, please say so directly and unequivocally in order that I may meet the allegation head-on.”

  Morley smiled, waved his hand dismissively, and said nothing else. Then I said, “As a professional courtesy, I’ll wait till I hear back from you before I call my news conference.”

  The director said, “That’s a small professional courtesy, indeed. Bring your press conference on whenever the irrational compulsion comes over you. It’s your funeral.” He walked over to the door and opened it to signal that our immediate departure from the office was desired.

  “Well,” I said to Morley, walking down the corridor, “that worked admirably.”

  “Maybe better than you think, Bill. Their reaction was too extreme for people feeling entirely comfortable.”

  A couple of days later, Morley called me and said, “I’ve heard through the grapevine that Winston Myers did report your presentation to the deputy minister and it went on to the minister. Apparently they thought that your intentions were more political than judicial, and that the brass in the department should therefore be made aware. The speculation is that the premier herself has been brought into the loop on some need-to-know basis.”