Deadly Lessons. David Russell W.
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on the television news. And television news was everywhere. Unlike many lawyers, I had never developed any special love for cameras and press conferences. My cases had generally been low profile, attracting little interest from the broadcast media. So many of my clients were among the downtrodden that they didn’t present a lovely image on camera. If it ain’t pretty, let’s not put it on air. On the flip side, I had never particularly disliked the media either, as many of my prosecutorial colleagues and many cops did. Reporters just had a job to do, though they often did it in as superficial a manner as they could. But generally if they wanted a quote, I gave them a quote. If they didn’t, I didn’t go looking for them. Today I didn’t have to look far. People often comment about how crass and insensitive it is for television news cameras to show up during a time of grief, particularly when there are kids involved.
It wasn’t a productive day. Many more kids came to school than I thought would. Even those who were most upset could get the comfort they needed by being around the people closest to them in their lives. Often, those people were their friends at school or even their teachers, rather than their families.
Don McFadden had gone on the P.A. system to make the gruesome announcement just after we had finished speaking with him. By then, most of the kids had already heard; dozens had been interviewed by reporters outside the building. If there was any plan of breaking it to them gently, the throngs of police and media personnel greeting them upon arrival pretty much spoiled it.
Classes were limited to “seat work”, having kids do limited brain activity by “read this and answer the question” type assignments. Even at that, big chunks of class time were consumed with me asking how everyone was feeling, which was usually followed by a fresh round of flowing tears. I like to think I’m a terrifically sensitive guy. Apparently either I’m not, or I haven’t figured out how to allow my sensitivity to manifest itself appropriately. New teachers have it drilled into their heads that they need to keep an enormous professional and especially physical chasm between teacher and student. Accusations like Tricia’s are pretty much evidence of the reason why those practices are so drilled into us, but it’s almost impossible when a student collapses into your arms grieving the loss of a friend to step back and say “Whoa! You’re not supposed to make physical contact with me.”
But I tried. I thought it would be best if I could keep my distance and direct my students into working on actual curricular objectives. It just made me come across as cold. As many times as I tried to go over the homework, or assign a new task, I was met with “Mr. Patrick, how can you expect us to think about school?” I couldn’t really. But hanging out all day with grieving kids was making me so uncomfortable and awkward that I felt a need to attempt to redirect their emotions into something productive. It didn’t work.
The staff room was a quiet, numb space at lunch. It wasn’t a place I really wanted to be, but I had an ulterior motive: I wanted to find out if word of Carl’s alleged transgressions had travelled through the school. As his lawyer, I might have to attempt some damage control if rumours had begun to fly. Though conversation was relatively subdued, no one appeared, at least, to be discussing Carl or any other staff member as potential suspects in Tricia’s death.
It took all the energy I could muster to make it through the afternoon. The tears began to dry up somewhat as the day progressed, but the entire school was cloaked in a blanket of emotional exhaustion by the end of the day. The principal commanded a brief meeting at the end of the day to discuss means by which we could attempt to bring the place back to relatively normal operations the next day.
“As much as possible, we need to get kids back into the school routine so they are not focused on these issues,” Don stated to the assembled faculty. “We need to let kids know that we’re still here if they need support, but that school needs to carry on.” Even he didn’t sound very convinced.
At the end of the meeting, I caught up with Carl in the hallway as he headed for the door. “How are you holding up?” I asked him.
“I’m all right, I think,” he replied quietly.
He didn’t seem so. I stopped him and looked him directly in the eye. “Carl? Are you sure you’re okay?”
He looked slowly at me. “I don’t know if I can tell you this.”
“Yes, you can, Carl. You can tell me whatever you want. It’s privileged.”
“No,” he countered. “It’s nothing legally damaging, I don’t think. It’s just that . . .” his voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“I guess this morning I was so caught up in defending myself against Don’s accusations, that it didn’t really strike me until later.”
“What didn’t strike you?” I asked, worried.
“I’m just . . . as the day went on, I realized how upset I am at Tricia’s murder. I just, I can’t believe it. I didn’t want to say anything in case it aroused more suspicion of me.” Carl’s eyes were actually welling up with tears.
I took him by the arm. “No, Carl. It doesn’t. It tells me you’re a hell of a teacher. Go home. Don’t do any marking. Don’t do any work. Just take an evening to look after yourself.”
“All right,” he replied glumly.
“Are you going to be all right? Do you want some company?”
“No,” he smiled lightly. “I’ll be all right. My wife’s at home. Thanks, Win, for everything.”
“It’s okay. Everything will be okay. We’ll look after this. Just call me if you need anything, even just to talk, okay?”
“Okay. Goodnight.” Carl turned and walked out the door.
A weird thing about my chronic insomnia is that I sometimes have the ability to sleep in the afternoon. Not always, but just enough to screw up my ability to sleep again at night. Since it had been a particularly bad week for sleep, I could not wait to get home to my comfortable Kitsilano condo and crash on the couch for a couple of hours. I knew I would pay for it in the middle of the night, but my body was giving me the signal that the sleep deficit was getting bigger than I could expect to cope with.
I was so tired that I approached my apartment building as though I were approaching the gates of Heaven. Unfortunately, St. Peter was at the gates: my ex-wife stood guard outside the front entrance to the building. After having my car broken into on numerous occasions, I had abandoned parking in the building’s underground “secure” parking garage and now parked on the street. Since that necessitated my entering through the building’s front door—currently blocked by my ex-wife—I sensed a need to rethink that decision.
Sandi Cuffling, formerly Patrick, is a very attractive woman. Not the cover of Glamour magazine kind of attractive, but a woman who has the ability to turn heads when she walks into a room. Over our years together, she had come to cherish that ability and wore it like a merit badge. Some days I still missed her. Today wasn’t one of those days.
“Look who’s here. Did we change the shape of future generations today?” Sandi was fluent in a different dialect of the English language. Sarcasm. In the past four years, I’m not sure I’d heard her speak without it.
“Hello, Sands,” I said, doing my best to seem relatively interested to see her. In Sandi’s world, the fact we were divorced was no reason we ought not to be part of each other’s lives. Hostility between ex’s was so nineties. It’s much more sophisticated to still be friends. I was about as interested in continuing a friendship with my ex-wife as I was in re-marrying her, but I was raised as a polite gentleman and couldn’t bring myself to tell her to go piss up a rope.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. Her tone held just a hint of accusation.
“And here I am.”
She looked at her expensive watch. “It’s almost four thirty.”
“You