Under the Bridge (33 page)

T
HE
C
ROWN
knew the case was high profile and important to the community. (“We're called the Crown in Canada because we represent the Queen. We don't say the People vs. So and So. We say Her Majesty the Queen vs. Glowatski.”) The investigators accepted that they probably wouldn't find any forensic evidence to build a case against either Kelly or Warren. Stan Lowe knew “you're in trouble when there's no direct witness to a crime.”

Don Morrison had assigned Stan Lowe the case against Glowatski. Kelly's skilled lawyer, Adrian Brooks, was fighting her elevation to adult court and had plans, if he lost, to take her case all the way to the Supreme Court. It seemed highly likely that Warren would be tried first, and so Stan Lowe began to assemble his list of witnesses.

When he'd watched the tape of Syreeta's first interview, he clapped. A first-class interview, he thought. Constable Brian Cameron just slowly got her to give more and more details, by having her tell the story again and again. He didn't lead her or suggest. A textbook brilliant interrogation. Brilliant!

That girl's going to be the most important witness,
he thought to himself.

He decided, on the last day of November, that John Bond should interview Syreeta. “I just wanted to make sure, absolutely sure, we'd gotten everything right,” Stan Lowe recalls.

Several hours later, Bond returned his call, informing him that Syreeta was no longer in Victoria. “She's gone to stay with her father's family, in Grande Prairie.”

“Well, I need the answers now,” Stan Lowe said. He authorized Bond and Cameron to take a Lear jet to the prairie town across the Rockies.

In this way, Bond, an aficionado of airplanes, found himself on the rather lavish aircraft. The jet had been purchased at auction and once belonged to Hank Snow, a country and western singer known for his appearances on the Grande Ole Opry, and for discovering Elvis Presley. “There were leather seats,” Bond recalls, with wonderment. “And this plush red carpet.”

In the posh jet, the men flew over the rugged mountain range, on a strange chase after a girl who had committed no crime and been in her bedroom on the night of the murder.

“The trip was just incredibly fast,” Bond would later recall. “I think we got there in a few hours. Going over the Rockies, that was just really beautiful.”

F
AR AWAY FROM
View Royal, on the banks of the Peace River, Syreeta now sat with her grandparents, Gloria and Jim. She returned to the place where her mother had been born and where she had been born as well. The town was a place of oil and fertile soil, a town without mountains or beaches but with flatlands, full of bales of hay. She was not running from the law. She didn't know the law was after her. She only wanted to get away. For just a while. The house was warm, with a fireplace in the kitchen, and Syreeta was thinking maybe she would sleep again here, for in View Royal she was afraid to close her eyes.

Her grandfather had just brought in some firewood on the afternoon when the police arrived. Her grandfather was an ex-RCMP officer, and he decided he'd sit with her during the interview. “He didn't look so well,” John Bond would later recall. “I think he was having some heart problems. Cameron thought he was about to have a heart attack.”

•   •   •

The conversation started out quite well at first, because she liked John Bond. (“Bond was an all right guy. I didn't have a problem with him. He had a little compassion.”)

He asked her about her job at Brady's. He asked her what her favorite subject was at school. It was slightly awkward, the way it always was when adults tried to make small talk, but still, she thought it was decent of him to not treat her as if she was the criminal. “What type of fun things do you and Warren do together? Do you go to the movies?” he asked.

“We usually go to the beach and go for walks,” she told him.

“Which beach?”

“The one by my house,” she said, and she did not tell Bond that on the beach, Warren asked her to please, I'm serious, marry me.

But then Bond asked her to explain exactly how she became involved in this case.

“I'm not involved,” she said. “I was involved because you guys got me involved in it.”

“You're not in any trouble here,” Bond reassured her. “You're one of fifty people we've spoken to.”

“Have you talked to other people three times?” Syreeta wondered.

“Yeah. That's where these white hairs come from,” Bond said. “Marissa, Tara, Dimitri, you know, everyone's been spoken to. You may not like doing this, but I've got to tell you, we've got a dead girl here. I've got a lot of explaining to do to everyone in Victoria.”

“I know.”

And she told them again about the blood on the pants. The 187 conversation in the bedroom. She told them all this again.

“I bet it probably made you sick hearing about it,” Bond said. “Did it bother you? I mean, you've got to be thinking that something is not quite right here. This isn't the guy I know.”

“I didn't think anything like that because I didn't think it was true.”

“So what did he say that you didn't think was true?”

“The whole thing. I didn't believe any of it. I didn't think he could do it. I didn't think it could happen.”

“What exactly did he tell you?”

She sighed. “He got on his knees and he whispered to me. He asked me if I'd known the girl was missing. I said no. He said something about him and Kelly went back. She's dead. The Gorge. She's dead. Kelly. Beat her up. And more. And then. She was thrown. In the Gorge. Or she was dragged.”

“Well,” Cameron said, “in your earlier statement, you recall
exactly
what his conversation was in regard to who dragged her into the water.”

“No, in my earlier statement, I recalled what I pictured in my head when he told me because I was asked what I
pictured
in my head when he told me.”

“We'll just give you a second and you try to remember more details. This is important. We're not dealing with somebody stealing some celery from a grocery store here. Somebody was killed!”

“I'm well aware of that,” Syreeta said.

“This is not a house that's been broken into. If you think these questions are difficult and uncomfortable, wait until you're in court, in front of a jury and a judge. It probably won't be as comfortable as being here in the kitchen with your grandparents.”

Syreeta looked near tears, and Bond suddenly felt very sorry for her. He softened his tone. “You haven't done anything wrong here,” he said. “I know you and Warren went out for seven months. I can appreciate that no one wants to be in a position where they have to come to court and testify against their boyfriend. But we have got to get this while it's fresh in your memory. In a year, when it goes to court, it may not be as fresh. And in court, Warren's going to try and put it on Kelly. Kelly's going to say, ‘Hey, it wasn't me. I'm not an aggressive person.' And everyone's going to be looking at you, Syreeta, because you heard it directly from Warren.”

He drank some of the coffee Syreeta's grandmother had brought him.

“Now if I asked you: ‘A month ago, who ordered fish and chips at Brady's at 6:30 at night?' you're not going to remember because it's not that big of a deal. But when your boyfriend is kneeling down in his bedroom indicating that he's responsible for a homicide, I would say you'd probably remember pretty closely what he's saying.”

She tried then to explain to the older men the way she'd felt but it was seeming to her more futile trying to explain. “It's not like I was like, ‘Oh tell me.' I was sitting there, trying to be stubborn, acting like I didn't care.”

“Well, what was his emotion like when he was on his knees, telling you this? Was he crying? Was he upset?”

“He wasn't proud of it.”

“Did he look like he had sorrow?”

“He looked like he regretted it.”

“You've been dating him a long time. You know him better than most people know him. So when he's on his knees, showing remorse and he seems quite upset, didn't this lead you to believe he was telling the truth?”

“I think it was that I didn't
want
to believe.” It was funny then because she'd spent so much time trying to understand Warren and what
he
might have done. Now, for the first time she understood herself, and it was very clear to her finally: I didn't want to believe.

“But I think inside you did believe him,” Bond said, gently. “Is that fair of me to say that?”

“I can't say for sure.”

“I think you had two sides to you. One side said, ‘What I'm hearing sounds true.' But in your heart, you didn't want to believe what he's telling you. It's like hearing something bad about a member of your family. One side of you says, ‘Hey, my brother or sister couldn't have done this.' Is that the kind of feeling you had?”

Syreeta nodded, struck again by Bond's understanding. He seemed to know her so very well.

“We investigate lots of these types of crimes,” he said. “It's hard for the family or the relative when they hear something like this.” He looked at her now. “When he was on his knees, was he praying to God? Was he saying, ‘God, I made a mistake'?”

“He had his hands on my knees like this,” she said, and she pressed her palms against her grandmother's knees to demonstrate.

“What was he whispering? Take your time. Go slow.”

“He told me that she was dead, and, I think, that she was dragged into the Gorge.”

“So in your first statement, you remembered more than you do now?”

“I've been trying to forget.”

“Do you wake up thinking about it at times?”

She nodded. “I've been having nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, I can see Reena's face. I've been scared to turn the light off. I can't go to sleep without the radio on.”

“It's posttraumatic stress,” Bond said. “It usually goes away in a few months, but it's common when you hear something this terrible. It overwhelms you. One side of you says, ‘He's my boyfriend. I've been going out with him for seven months. He's a good guy. This isn't like him.' And the other side says, ‘Well, the newspaper says it's true. The police are picking me up. There's something to it.' Is that how you feel?”

“Yes,” she said, and she nodded several times.

“Did you ever ask him, ‘Why the heck did you do this?' You must have wanted an explanation.”

“I think it's like you said before: I didn't want to believe it.”

“You realize that he's ruined his own life. You haven't ruined it. Reena didn't ruin it. He's ruined it himself.”

She began to cry then, and under the table, her grandmother squeezed her hand.

“Did he ever tell you why he screwed up? He was sort of mixed up in his family. Did you guys talk about that?”

“Well, I know his dad didn't want him. His dad left him and went to San Diego. I knew then that his dad was just an asshole and his dad didn't even care about him. And I know his mom's an alcoholic. He was supposed to go out there for Christmas, but then she started drinking again.”

“Did he ever discuss what put him over the edge here? Why he did it?”

“He won't tell me details. I know he's had his share of b.s. in his life.”

She felt guilty suddenly. She shouldn't be telling these strangers the things Warren had been so ashamed to admit.

“When I first talked to you,” Constable Cameron said, “I could tell that you were obviously very much in love with Warren. You were quite emotional that day. I don't think you stopped crying through the whole interview. I could tell that there was still just a little bit more that you wanted to say, but because you loved Warren so much, you didn't want to say it all. Well, that's what we're looking for today. That little bit more that you didn't tell us before.”

“Well, my love for him doesn't have anything to do with it. He murdered someone my own age. That could have easily been me. So I don't care that I love him. I'm telling you everything I know.”

T
HE HIGH SCHOOL GYM,
crowded now with a community, grieving. A table, set up like an altar, displayed an assembly of photographs, entitled “Reena's Life and Her Loving Family.” Photos of: a little girl, no more than five, with her hair in two ponytails, a bright blue pinafore, smiling, and behind her, the white chrysanthemums in fragrant bloom. This was a Reena most of the audience had never seen. In the past week, Reena, to strangers, was a girl in the newspapers, described in the shorthand of a simple story: “a misfit,” “a chubby girl,” most of all, “a girl who got in with the wrong crowd.” She was even more misunderstood in death, merely a warning sign, a victim, a symptom.