Under the Bridge (37 page)

Stan Lowe looked up at the judge and saw he too seemed to be struck by the look in Warren's eyes. The judge was looking down at the boy, and though his own face remained stiff and unreadable, he was noticeably observing Warren very, very carefully.

“No further questions, my Lord,” Stan Lowe said, and he returned to his seat, and sat very straight. He smiled then, very slightly.

•   •   •

Though they had classes, Syreeta and Marissa returned to the courtroom to hear the verdict. The girls believed Kelly was guilty of the murder and Warren was guilty of
something,
but not of drowning and not of causing a death. But this was not the smoke pit at Shoreline, nor were they members of the tribunal. This was the court of law, where words of Latin were on the walls and these were words they'd never learned.

Diana, Tara, and Felicity also sat in the courtroom for the first time, and Warren turned his head briefly before the verdict was read and saw The Five, there for him. Their attendance both comforted and subdued him for he knew, whatever the verdict was, he'd brought about their loss of innocence. (“My trial was really traumatic for all those girls; it messed them up. I was like their big brother, and then all of a sudden, I was involved in a murder.”)

So many people arrived in the courtroom to hear the verdict that speakers were set up in the lobby of the courthouse. “I've never seen so many people in the courthouse in all my life,” a sheriff said. “I thought we might have a riot on our hands if that Glowatski kid was found innocent.”

Stan Lowe glanced at Warren's lawyer, noting he was writing with his special good luck Mont Blanc pen. He himself wore good luck bulldog cufflinks, a gift from Don Morrison.

“It's 50/50,” he told himself.

“It was such a nail biter,” Stan Lowe would later say. “If we'd had a jury, we would have known immediately, but we had to sit through the whole judgment before we got his decision.”

The judge read: “Reena Virk died on November 14, 1997, after a vicious beating. Warren Glowatski is charged with second-degree murder. Another individual, Kelly Ellard, faces the same charge but will be tried separately at a later time. All three were teenage students at the time as were most of the Crown witnesses. The Crown must prove the charge of second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The girls shifted in their seats as the judge went on and on about “objective determination” and “fundamental guiding principles.”

“The Crown must prove that he or Ellard would cause bodily harm to Virk of a kind that he knew was likely to result in death and that he was reckless whether death ensued or not.

“Virk drowned in the Gorge on November 14th, 1997, following a savage beating that occurred during the two hours before her death. She suffered severe internal injuries from blows and stomps to her front and back torso area. The pathologist compared the force involved to a crush injury if run over by a car. These blows would have caused immobilizing pain and severe shock. I consider it highly unlikely that Virk would have been able to walk across the bridge if she had received the blows that caused the internal damage at the south end of the bridge. In my view, the inference is inescapable.”

Stan Lowe glanced at Warren's lawyer, for he was making an odd motion with his good luck pen. He was shaking the pen, and his wrist jolted back and forth.

“His good luck pen has run out of ink!” Stan thought to himself, and he smiled then, for he was a believer in such omens.

Though she was not on trial, the judge spoke first of Syreeta. Clearly, he did not agree with Jeremy Carr's description of her as “honest and forthright.”

“During her evidence in chief, Hartley was at best reluctant, and, at times, almost indifferent. She was a bold liar at trial, but not a sophisticated or clever one. I also take into account her demeanor as well as her relationship with Glowatski, including her current feelings for him, in reaching my conclusion that she lied to protect Glowatski whenever she thought she could get away with it.”

Syreeta could not understand the harsh condemnation. She believed she'd done no lying on the stand. “That judge didn't take five minutes to talk to me! How do you base an opinion without talking to me?”

The judge then turned to his verdict on her ex-boyfriend, Warren G.

“On the whole, Glowatski's evidence was incomplete and improbable. I did not believe him nor do I have a reasonable doubt about the truth of his evidence. I conclude that he actively participated in the further beating at the north end of the bridge and then helped drag Virk, while she was unconscious, to the water, where Ellard probably drowned her. I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Glowatski intended to cause Virk bodily harm of a kind that he knew was likely to result in her death and also that, by then dragging and abandoning her near the water, he was reckless as to whether death ensued. I find Warren Glowatski guilty of second-degree murder as charged.”

As soon as he heard the verdict, Warren turned his head to the public for the last time before he was taken back to the cells. He could not see The Five, for they had fled the courtroom. He could not see his father, for his father sat in the back row, alone, behind his dark shades, with an air of stoic misery. His father spoke to no reporters and seemed out of place in the grand courtroom, like a cowboy who'd wandered into the palace. Warren could not see his friends or his family. In the front row, when he turned, he saw the Virk family. His eyes met those of Reena's little brother. They exchanged a glance, and the young boy looked only sad and not angry. When he looked at the little boy, it was then that Warren knew, as if for the first time, what it was that he'd really done.

•   •   •

Through the chaos of the reporters screaming into their cell phones, The Five were heard to utter their own verdict, as they hugged one another and drifted, stunned, from the hated courtroom. “That's so unfair!”

The Virks moved to thank Stan Lowe, though there was nothing celebratory or vengeful in their hearts, for they felt almost pity for a boy so clearly lost and without reflection or knowledge or faith. As for Stan Lowe, he found the verdict, as they often were, “anticlimactic.”

“Reena's mother is just an amazing lady,” he would later say. “She was
gracious through the whole thing, and she must have such a strong faith to survive in the way she does.”

Another mother behaved with less dignity. Surrounded by reporters who had figured out her identity, the red-haired lady scowled while her companion pushed a photographer suddenly. “My son never killed anybody,” Warren's mother said. “I know him, and he doesn't have it in him. There's just no way that he killed that girl,” she said, and she left the courthouse to see if she could catch sight of her son through the dark glass of the sheriffs van.

S
YREETA CONSIDERED
what she should do with the box marked Warren G.

From a new and unmarked box, she retrieved her diary.

All her youthful years, she'd never kept a diary of any sort, and then, one day, in the midst of the sad days, Mrs. Smith gave her the gift.

After her time on the stand, she had written: “Being a witness is the hardest thing I've ever done, and I hope it stays that way.”

The newspapers on the day of the verdict were full of her face and her name. How could that be? she wondered. Those who had punched Reena and kicked her, those girls like Dusty and Josephine, were protected and sheltered, while everyone in the country was reading of her name.
GIRLFRIEND TIPPED OFF POLICE,
the headline said in the
Times-Colonist,
and a photo below showed Syreeta trying to shield her face from the photographer. On the day of Warren's verdict, she'd skipped the articles, knowing her name would appear, followed by the words: “a bold liar, but not a sophisticated or clever one.” Would that have been better, she wondered, if she'd been a sophisticated liar? Skip it, she told herself.
WARREN GLOWATSKI: GUILTY.
Leave it be. She turned to the horoscopes, finding them near the cartoons.
Once I was naive and once I was carefree. And everything just changed in an instant, for no reason at all.

Syreeta believed in her heart that she was the reason Warren was going to jail. Warren's father agreed. When asked his opinion of the girl his son so loved, he would scoff before taking a drag from a Marlboro Red. “She pretty much hung him,” he'd say, bluntly.

Her horoscope meant so much to her on the day after the verdict. She cut it out and memorized every single word. April 25, the horoscope for Aquarius. “Whatever else you do or don't do this week, you must not allow yourself to feel guilty for what happens to other people. You are not responsible for the world and its woes and those who say you have no
right to be happy while others are suffering should be shown the door—as quickly as possible. The best way to make the world a better place is to demonstrate how easy it is to enjoy it.”

At school, Syreeta still found herself spending most of her time in Mrs. Smith's office. The cancer in her mother's body had subsided for now, after months of chemotherapy, but still her diagnosis was: terminal. (“April 9: She is so important to so many people, especially me. I can't live without my mom. I hope I am as much help to her as she has been to me, always.”)

Mrs. Smith offered her the articles about Warren's trial. Syreeta wished instead to thank Mrs. Smith for the new job at the Royal Colwood Golf Course. After two years, thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Smith, she was finally moving on from Brady's.

“Thank you so much for getting me that job,” she said to her guidance counselor. “They said I could work at banquets.”

“Its a very fancy place,” Mrs. Smith remarked.

Syreeta wanted to ask Mrs. Smith if she thought Warren would be sent to a federal institution and put away for the rest of his life with cruel and crazy men. But Mrs. Smith would only tell her what the horoscope said: “You are not responsible for the world and its woes.”

Finally, she read the articles.

One entitled “A Moral Blind Spot” was written by a man named Chris Wood. Syreeta had never spoken a word to him.

He wrote: “Syreeta Hartley's hair is glossy and dark, like the victim's, but the 16 year old is also thin and model-pretty. According to prosecutors, her slender young boyfriend confessed to Hartley at least twice before his arrest a week after Reena Virk's Friday night death. She never bothered to inform police. Call it a disconnect from reality. Call it alienation, marginalization, a moral blind spot. Hartley has shown an apparent indifference to Virks murder that has troubled and perplexed courtroom observers.”

Christie Blatchford, Canada's most high-profile columnist, also wrote of Syreeta. Syreeta had not spoken with Christie Blatchford. She'd never even heard of the reporter from Toronto.

“Ms. Hartley, her exquisite, perfect oval of a face, perfectly blank, was in the courtroom at the same time that two young men were gunning down their former classmates at a Denver high school. The link between
these soulless youngsters is not imaginary. Ms. Hartley likely would have no difficulty talking to the young men any more than she had trouble talking to Mr. Glowatski, after he had, allegedly, confessed to killing Reena Virk.”

Soulless. Indifference.
Syreeta knew the meaning of these words no more than she knew the meaning of
animosity.
She tried to laugh it off. “Wow,” she said to Mrs. Smith. “I had no idea everyone thought so low of me.”

Under her pillow, she kept the diary. After the trial, she would write: “Today I got fired from the Royal Colwood Golf Club because they saw my name in the newspaper. They said that since they are a private club, they didn't want all the whispering.”

•   •   •

“Violence is not a recreational activity,” Judge Macauley told Warren on the day of his sentencing. “The death of a young woman and the many shattered lives are a testament to that.” The judge said he had taken into account Warren's “immaturity and physical demeanor and size” as well as the fact that he'd caused “no significant problem in the Youth Detention Centre” when considering whether Warren should stay in a youth detention center or serve his time in an adult prison.

“Warren Glowatski, please stand. You are sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole before November 21, 2004. I order that you serve the balance of your sentence within the federal penitentiary system.”

•   •   •

Soon after arriving at the (“dirty as hell”) medium-security prison, Warren was surrounded by his fellow prisoners. He knew what they were going to do. A few of them were “keeping six”—just watching out in case the guards strolled by.

Travis, this “overweight guy, around thirty-three, with a Caesar cut and long sideburns,” who was inside for “something petty,” offered to do it to Warren. He used a motor from a Walkman and needles stolen from the arts and crafts classroom. The black art wasn't really an initiation, just more of a ritual way of killing time.

Travis placed the onion paper onto Warren's back and began to tattoo. The words would be written in Olde English style; Warren was
never sure where he got the idea for that style of writing, but probably from some picture of Tupac or some gangster. He wasn't into that stuff anymore; he saw his former heroes as some scared kid's fantasy. Travis pressed the onion paper into Warren's skin; soon the letters came onto the skin of his back. Travis lifted the needles to pierce the skin, to engrave the two words Warren chose to have forever on his body: First Love.

Finishing the job, Travis rolled some Old Spice onto the tattoo, allowing the alcohol of the cologne to work as a de facto curative.

“Boy, did that hurt,” Warren would later recall.