The Monster of Twenty Mile Pond Read online

  Whatever other factors, besides excessive speed, might have caused the driver to lose control of the car, the fact was that it flew off the road and landed in Windsor Lake. But Thorburn Road approached the lake closely enough for that to happen over only a few metres. The window of opportunity was so small that the car ending up in the water had to be an absolute fluke.

  After the car was retrieved from the lake and the victims inside removed, fingerprint tests were performed on the interior for any prints that might have remained. Esme’s were found overlapping the driver’s on the steering wheel. In fact, prints from all four fingers on her right hand were lifted from the top right-hand side of the wheel.

  The presence of her prints suggested one theory: although she’d been in the back, she’d managed to grab the wheel and twist it to the right, causing the car to leave the road. Why she would have done that when the car was travelling at such a high speed had not been fully explained at the time of the preliminary report. Another huge question was why two occupants had died and two had survived. It was postulated that it was simply a function of each person’s positions in the vehicle, although investigators were not satisfied that that rationale was free of difficulties.

  Perhaps the men had been rendered unconscious from the car’s sudden impact with the water. Maybe the inflated air bags played a role. In any event, they did not escape from the car, even though their doors were unlocked. They drowned.

  The two young women were in the back seat with childproof locked doors. The locking mechanism on both doors was found to be intact after the car was taken from the water, but one back door was swinging on its hinges. Perhaps it had been jolted open by the impact, though the condition of the locking parts was more consistent, according to a locksmith, with the door having been forcibly wrenched open by some powerful force.

  The window of that same door was found to be smashed in; hence another police theory was that perhaps one of the girls had been able to open the door from the outside through the broken window. That theory was weakened by statements that the impact with the water had left the girls semi-conscious.

  Molly’s seat belt was still buckled when the car was retrieved, but one side of it had been torn free of its attachment. How that occurred remained problematic, but it seemed to be what allowed her to float free.

  Esme’s escape presented less difficulty. She had unbuckled her belt to reach for the steering wheel, and then after she’d turned it, immediately flopped down on the floor of the back. Whatever the details might be, it seemed clear that the smashed window, the open back door, the unbuckled seat belt, and the torn seat belt provided the girls with their seemingly miraculous egress from the vehicle.

  Car passengers who had stopped to investigate the phenomenon of headlights shining underwater found Esme and Molly lying side by side on the rocky shore next to the water. The police were not able to locate anyone who had witnessed the car actually leaving the road.

  One man driving behind the car in question told police that he was not at all surprised by the accident since the car in the lake had passed him, moving so rapidly that his own car actually shuddered. The female member of a passing couple insisted that she saw the car’s headlights moving and jerking underwater. It must have been sliding on a sloping bottom, the woman said, but she could have sworn it was being lifted or pulled. No one else witnessed that.

  There were remarks from many observers that the girls must be exceptionally strong swimmers to have been able to make it to shore in that frigid water, which the ice had only recently gone off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The police report, compiled from information obtained from their own investigation, a lot of it third-degreed out of Danny Power and remaining gang members eager to save their own skins, and much of it provided by the two girls themselves, was, I knew, somewhat incomplete. There were elements of the story that Esme and Molly had not told the police, but which they did tell me to see if they should do so.

  Esme confirmed to me that she could in fact remember unbuckling her seat belt, getting up from her seat, reaching forward between the two front seats, grabbing the top of the wheel, and yanking it to the right, causing the car to leave the road. What she did not, and could not, do right after the incident was explain to the police why she had done it at that precise time and place.

  She told me, though, that she could now remember recalling in the car that they would be passing by the lake, and waiting for it to arrive. When she glimpsed the water ahead of the car on the right, she spontaneously acted. She could only say that it felt like exactly the right thing to do at that very moment and that she felt safe and certain in doing it, even though she realized she would be out of her seat belt when the car left the road. She’d been convinced that it was the way, the only way, out of their predicament. It was almost as if, she said, something had come over her, inspired her, to make her act.

  Neither Molly nor Esme had any memory of the window being broken or the door opening, but both of them could recall from their dazed and semi-conscious states the sensation of floating to the shore, propelled along almost like a child whirled through the water at a beach or in a pool by the hands of a parent.

  They hadn’t told the police about how they got to shore, even though they had both experienced the same thing; they agreed that it seemed too surreal to recount. Esme said to me that she had no desire to be treated as a madwoman again, as she had after her description of what had happened beside the lake to Jason Power. Hence, they were not going to inform anyone but me of that phenomenon, at least not until I said so.

  A week after their ordeal, when they had recovered from the shock, they related, at my behest, most of their “newly remembered” details to the police, including being carried to shore by some strange force. Then I told Molly and Esme I wanted to announce, right away, my news conference, which would disclose all I knew about whatever mysterious force was in the lake. I thought it might give them a better chance of success at the upcoming preliminary inquiry and their trials. Were they still onside with that?

  Yes, they chimed together, they certainly were. I asked them if they were comfortable with my adding all the “surreal” details of their surviving the crash into the lake. “Go for it,” they chorused.

  I telephoned Winston Myers, the director of public prosecutions, and told him that this was a courtesy call to let him know I was about to reactivate my news conference idea and announce it for this very afternoon. The details of the girls’ mind-blowing escape from the car, I said, should be of some interest to all the media, whose newscasts for days had led with stories of the car careening off the road into the lake, the miraculous survival of the two girls, and the deaths of the two punks involved in a vicious narcotics and white slavery ring, and possibly murder, involving teenagers.

  The pause at the other end was long enough to prompt me to say, “All right, then, Wince, thanks for listening. Goodbye.”

  “Wait. Wait a second, Bill. I understand Morley Sheppard doesn’t want a postponement of the preliminary inquiry. Which is perplexing, frankly. May I ask why?”

  “We want it to go ahead soon after my news conference for maximum benefit to our defence,” I said, “and then, if there is to be a trial, we’ll be pressing for it to take place at as early a date as possible.”

  “Bill, please give me an hour to get back to you before you announce your press conference.” I told him I would.

  Thirty minutes later Padraic Sullivan himself, the minister of justice, telephoned. He was calling me personally, instead of having the director do it, he said, because this matter had public ramifications beyond mere criminal prosecutions. Could I attend an urgent meeting right away with the premier and a small group of top officials who formed a highly confidential loop?

  I said I would attend, as long as it was absolutely clear that, by doing so, I would not be surrendering in
any way my freedom to act thereafter as I saw fit.

  “Understood,” he replied. “And as this meeting will not be strictly about legal considerations, may I ask you not to bring the lawyers with you?”

  “Well, I certainly won’t be able to make any decisions that might affect Esme and Molly in their absence or the absence of the lawyers.”

  “No, no, of course not,” said the minister of justice. “But you’ll understand the reason for the privacy and secrecy once the meeting starts.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  At the security desk outside the premier’s suite, one of her assistants was waiting for me, and ushered me right into her office. Premier Nancy Russell came around her desk to greet me and shake my hand while her assistant went out to the anteroom to collect the minister of justice, his deputy minister, and the deputy minister of natural resources. They were followed by the Crown prosecutor and the director of public prosecutions.

  After some hellos all around, Premier Russell said to me, “Mr. McGill, I trust that your daughter, Molly, and your niece, Esme, are recovering from their nightmarish experience. Please give them my very best wishes.”

  “Thank you, Premier Russell, they are recovering well. And I note that you have made yourself aware of their names and their relationship to me. The police told me that, as minors when the alleged offences took place, their identities are still being kept confidential and off the public record.”

  “Yes, I have purposely made myself aware of all aspects of their recent ordeal and, of course, the charges against them. I have received everything, I assure you, on an officially confidential basis. And I have to say that I have never before read a report of a police investigation in which the very same contents both disturbed me to the core—their vicious abduction and probable fate—and relieved me to the core—their extraordinary salvation. Shall we sit, gentlemen? I’ll ask the minister of justice to begin.”

  “Will everyone agree,” Minister Sullivan asked, “that everything said here today is completely off the record and totally without prejudice, and that only what is explicitly agreed to by the person stating it can be used for future actions or statements by anyone else?”

  We all agreed.

  “Now, normally,” said the minister, “I, as the political head of this department, do not get involved at all in criminal prosecutions, but take an absolutely hands-off position; all decisions are left to the officials in the division of public prosecutions. We would never allow political considerations to decide whether we prosecute or not. That is why we asked the Crown prosecutor and the director to come here today to give us their frank, off-the-record appraisal, which is theirs alone to make, of their likelihood of a successful prosecution of the charge of second-degree murder against Esme Browning. Gentlemen?”

  “Are you suggesting, sir,” asked the director, “that we divulge, not only all information, evidence, and names of witnesses, as we have already done under rules of full disclosure to the defence, but that we tip our hand to the uncle of the accused, here, on our strategy and arguments and our assessment of our chances in court?”

  “Not unless you’re comfortable with it,” said Sullivan. “It’s your call entirely. I’m sure there’s not much that a superior defence lawyer like Morley Sheppard is not already on top of. The only reason we are asking for your frank assessment of a likelihood of conviction is that there is a policy consideration which may be in conflict with a trial. If the likelihood is better than even, or whatever cut-off you use for your decisions on pressing ahead or not, then, of course, go to trial, no matter what the political consequences may be. On the other hand, if the likelihood is low, but you are still proceeding aggressively because of, say, our no-tolerance of illegal drugs policy, then there may be merit in considering whether or not to proceed with the charges. But ultimately, that’s entirely up to your public prosecutions division.”

  Winston Myers gave the impression of musing for a moment. “Well, you’re right—we wouldn’t be telling you anything here that the defence does not already know or suspect. Let’s quickly go through the pros and cons of the case in the interests of transparency. Esme had a strong motive for attacking the victim: an indecent suggestion, touching, a forced embrace, which could be regarded as sexual assault, if jurors were to believe her account. Moreover—”

  I jumped in. “Of course, even if she killed the victim, as you allege and which we most strenuously deny, she would still have available to her the defence of self-defence as a result of those same actions by the victim.”

  “Madam Premier, will I be given the chance to complete my few remarks uninterrupted, or is this to be a free-for-all?”

  The premier said, “I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a give and take, a back and forth, on each point as it emerges, Mr. Myers. It might give us a better insight into this whole situation as it unfolds in the telling.”

  “As you wish,” said Myers. “Well, a claim of self-defence would be weakened by Esme’s assertion that, before the time of death, the victim had removed himself from her and was urinating in the lake—also borne out by the evidence on the state of his trousers: i.e., his fly was open and there were fresh urine stains on the front of them. Sorry, Madam Premier, to have to be so graphic.”

  “It’s quite okay, Mr. Myers, really,” said Premier Russell. “Despite my many years of dedicated public service I did manage along the way to pick up on open flies and various human effluents found to have a staining effect on garments. Please proceed.”

  “Thank you, Premier. The victim’s action weakens the urgent necessity of immediate self-defence on Esme’s part. And so we are left with the dramatic evidence of the blood on the point of the pole, together with her known skill in its use as a weapon, which well supports the finding that Esme used her hiking pole to pierce his brain through his eye.”

  “She told you how the blood got on the pole,” I said. “She used it to touch and prod the body after he fell and before she knew he was dead. And there’s no evidence whatsoever of actual brain material or even eye matter on the pole. As to her dexterity with the pole, it’s far from clear at this point that evidence on her use of it in the past to graze a rabid fox will even be admitted by the judge, and I can assure you the defence will be aggressive on that point.”

  “Well, it must be said here, Madam Premier,” said the director of public prosecutions, “that any defence or explanation raised by Esme’s lawyers would be seriously tainted by the fact that, by her own admission, she and the victim had been involved immediately before his death in a serious criminal offence, the purchase and sale of a large quantity of marijuana. And we are all aware of the public’s attitude, and no doubt a jury’s attitude, on drug trafficking and serious crimes connected with it, which is basically this: we should throw the book at the perps and then throw away the key. I believe your government’s own unyielding policy accurately reflects that attitude.”

  “But, Winston,” I said, “the prosecution would have to contend with Esme’s mother giving evidence, sitting there in her wheelchair, paralyzed—I hate to be cynical about this, Premier, but it is a reality the prosecution must face—to the effect that her loving daughter, however misguidedly, was purchasing pot for her for medical reasons, and the defence is prepared to call expert witnesses on its use for that purpose.”

  “Laying aside all those peripheral matters for a moment,” said Myers, “the fact is that the accused does not have a credible defence owing to the obvious fact that the victim had his brain pierced when she was with him, with absolutely no one else there or alleged to be there with them at the time who could have done it. And there was no evidence, forensic or otherwise, that he fell of his own accord, for example, and occasioned the wound from a sharp object on the ground. Nothing along those lines was found.”

  “No, the forensic evidence shows eye and brain matter containing the victim’s DNA to be
on and around the broken branch on the tree, which accords with Esme’s explanation that he came flying through the air—”

  The director interrupted. “The accused’s story that the victim came flying through the air and that a broken branch eight feet above the ground caused the fatal injury would appear to be so preposterous in a solemn court of law, however well it might play all dramatized up on television, that I’d be surprised, ultimately, if the defence was to even bring it up before a judge and jury.” I saw the premier, and the minister of justice and the deputy ministers, stir in their chairs during Myers’s last pronouncement, and exchange furtive glances.

  I said, “You can rest assured that it will be brought up, as well as other strong direct and circumstantial evidence supporting the existence of something powerful enough in the lake to do it. And please do not overlook the fact that Esme would be an exceedingly well-spoken and credible witness, plus the fact that the two young ladies do not give any impression of being criminals, let alone murderers or accessories to murder.”

  “Well, we shall see about that,” the director of public prosecutions muttered. “But let me say that, all told and in conclusion, I’d judge that the case for the Crown has a greater than fifty-fifty chance of success. It may not be an overwhelming probability, for some of the more rational reasons given by Mr. McGill, but the circumstances and seriousness of the case demand that it be proceeded with zealously. Is your zero-tolerance war on drugs warranted, one may ask, Madam Premier? Well, the victim had in his possession some dangerous, addictive, life-threatening narcotics, and his brother in the car waiting for him could have passed for a sales agent for a pharmaceutical corporation.”