Under the Bridge (39 page)

“When did you know that Kelly was actually involved?”

Josephine sighed. Her eyes seemed to become more blue.

“Well, she told me from the beginning, but I just didn't believe her. I didn't think it was humanly possible for her to kill somebody. Or Warren. I mean, Warren really didn't seem like he could do that. Did Warren see Kelly's statement?”

“I would think so.”

“I'm kind of like the village idiot, huh? Everybody knows she's blaming me, and no one says a thing? God, I feel like the village idiot.” She shivered upon realizing the implication of this indignity.

“Did Kelly ever phone you in the morning? Nadja told us she did.”

Josephine finally admitted for the first time, “Yeah, she phoned me and she said, ‘She's dead and I drowned her.'”

“Did she say why she did this?”

“She didn't say why. I don't know. I don't think it could have been just because of me.”

“Kelly did it for Kelly,” Sergeant Poulton said consolingly, for Josephine looked near tears. Her closed and perfect face gradually had grown rather mournful and tight. She rubbed her palm over her eyes wearily.

Josephine said, softly: “She told me what happened.”

Sergeant Poulton nodded. More revelations came then, suddenly.

“She said she went up to Reena, and said, ‘Don't fuck around with my friend.' Reena said she was sorry.”

“So how did it go from that to her being dead?”

“They beat her up and beat her up.”

“After Reena apologized?”

“Kelly didn't want to hear an apology. She didn't care what Reena said. Reena would have got it one way or another.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Did she say that?”

“Pretty much.”

“How so?”

Josephine sighed before revealing her final and significant secret: “Kelly said, ‘I did it for you. I did it for all of us. I did it as a favor to all of you.'”

“When did you have that conversation?” Sergeant Poulton said, leaning forward, alert.

“When we were in jail, I said, ‘Why did you do it?' I was mad at her. Everybody was pissed at her. We all thought, ‘Kelly got us in here.' And she just kept saying, ‘I did it for you guys. I did it for you guys.'”

“What did you say?”

“I remember Laila said, ‘You still shouldn't have done it.'”

“Well, you've told me a lot of information today, Josephine. I appreciate it.” Sergeant Poulton stood up suddenly. He couldn't wait to phone his superiors. If Josephine would testify to this conversation, there was a chance Kelly could be convicted of
first-degree
murder. At the very least, the revelation established a motive for the murder, and up to this point, no one had any idea why Kelly would have killed a girl
she'd never met before. Some strange kind of desire to please the group, the clique, the Furies:
I did it for you guys. I did it as a favor to all of you.

“You've been very honest with us today,” Sergeant Poulton said appreciatively, but Josephine was not listening to his words of gratitude. She looked up at him then, and she looked very forlorn.

She made one last request of the blue-eyed detective. She asked: “Can I hear Kelly talk again?”

T
HERE WERE THREE VERSIONS,
at least, of what happened to Reena Virk on the other side of the bridge. One was the version Warren Glowatski had told on the stand. (“I kept saying, ‘Kelly! Stop! Leave her alone.'”) There was the version told on the streets and school fields of View Royal. (“Kelly said she had a smoke and stood on her head for five minutes or something.”) And the third version was Kelly Ellard's version. She had never crossed the bridge. She had neither touched nor murdered Reena Virk. The youth of View Royal had framed her, conspired against her, and so, on March 18, when she stood before the judge, she softly pleaded, “Innocent.”

•   •   •

The Honorable Madame Justice Nancy Morrison is a well-known figure in the elite circles of Vancouver society. Perhaps this is due to her prominence as a “groundbreaking feminist legal advocate,” or because of her
famous soulmate. For years, she'd lived and dined and traveled with the actor Bruno Gerussi, a Canadian television icon, and the rugged and salty star of the popular show
The Beachcombers.
Judge Nancy Morrison would take center stage, literally, in the first trial of Kelly Ellard, perched high above the girls and boys of View Royal, in her black robes. With brown curls neatly and tightly arrayed and with her face slim and austere, she seemed like a most proper ladyship. A more sensual and pleasurable side is evident in the introductory words to
A Love of Bruno,
her memoir and cookbook: “There has always been time for friends and cooking in her life, but never enough hours for sitting under the tree reading, golfing or learning French.”

“The Law presumes Kelly Ellard to be innocent,” she cautioned the jury, on the first day of the first trial. “Keep an open mind.” And she added this warning. “Pay attention to the young people. I caution you to scrutinize these witnesses with care.”

Surely, as the days went on, the judge was an exemplar of caution and scrutiny of the young people.

“There was this weird thing in the sky,” Tara said, on the stand, when asked to recount the night of the satellite. “I don't know how to describe it….”

“There was something in the sky,” Maya said, “I don't know what it was….”

Thirty witnesses would be called to testify against Kelly. The young people, the youth of View Royal, composed the bulk of the Crown case. Fifteen teenagers would provide evidence against Kelly Ellard. With so many witnesses, the Crown might have confidence, might have thought they had a very solid and convincing case.

Yet teenagers, as Don Morrison once noted, “can be difficult witnesses. They're nervous. They've got loyalties. They're emotional.”

And after Kelly's lawyers were done with them, they also seemed to have drug problems, anger problems, problems with rules, with sex, with heroin, with honesty, and, most of all, problems with Kelly.

Almost before it began, the Crown's case began to fall apart with the eviscerating cross-examinations by Kelly's two lawyers. (“You'll find Adrian Brooks is highly intelligent, always well-prepared,” says Mayland
McKimm. Mark Jetté, at thirty-five, was already acclaimed for his legal prowess, and was already partner at one of Vancouver's top law firms, housed in a sprawling loft in Vancouver's trendy neighborhood, Yaletown.)

The Crown was represented by Derrill Prevett (“a DNA kind of guy,” says Sergeant Poulton) and Ruth Picha (“an academic”). Kelly's lawyers, possessed of an almost wild energy and dry wit, would rivet and enthrall, while the Crown lawyers often induced a certain lethargy.

Maya could say she saw Warren crossing the bridge with Kelly. Yes, she had seen them at 11:10, and yes, that was unusual, to see those two together, and yes, they were walking back over the bridge, and yes, she had waved. And she could tell the judge and jury that Kelly had told her that she was “happy” about “killing Reena” and Maya observed her to be quite “proud” of what she did.

But Adrian Brooks could simply ask Maya this, with so much condescension and insinuation, enough to imply, if not outright declare, that Maya was framing Kelly for one reason only: the love of Warren G.

“Do you accept collect calls from Warren Glowatski?”

“Yes.”

“No further questions,” Adrian Brooks said, walking away from the girl as if she had just spat on his face.

“Jodene,” Adrian said incredulously, “did you in fact tell the police that ‘the only reason' you came down to give a statement was because you thought ‘Warren was a really nice guy!'” Tara too must have been another girl desperate to save Warren G. On his birthday, while he was in juvie, Adrian Brooks revealed, Tara went so far as to put up a birthday card for him at Shoreline School and asked everyone to sign it. And that was forbidden! Forbidden because Warren Glowatski was in jail for murder!

“Did you have a crush on Warren?” he asked Tara, smirking, as if the question was rhetorical.

“A crush?” Tara said. “I just thought of him as a really good friend.”

Richie D., after the murder, many months after the murder, finally came forward and told the cops this: he'd seen Kelly and Warren on the night of the murder. They were coming up from the schoolhouse, and Kelly's pants were soaking wet, so wet he'd asked her “if she pissed herself.”
But Richie D., despite his damning evidence, was just another miscreant. He was liquored up that night; he was drunk most every day. Weren't you? Yeah, I guess so. Worse still, he was a Crip. He was part of a gang. And who else was in this gang of roving thugs?

Warren G.

Willow could not be reliable though she saw Warren and Kelly crossing the bridge together around 11:10, and Kelly had told her the next day that she “went back and finished off Reena so she wouldn't rat.” Well, Willow smoked weed every day, and she too wrote Warren letters in jail and still, still to this day, still thought of him as “a really good friend.”

Lily had no love for Warren, but Lily, who told the jury of Kelly's admission in the juvie bathroom (“She said, ‘I held her head under water for five minutes. I didn't mean for her to die'”), Lily shot heroin at fifteen and turned tricks in Nanaimo and refused to obey the terms of her probation. Next came Dusty. Well, Dusty had a “little problem with anger,” Adrian Brooks said sarcastically. Dusty before the murder was on a one-woman crime spree. It took Adrian Brooks five minutes to read out her list of prior crimes. You held a knife to the throat of your twelve-year old cousin! You threatened to kill her! You chased a girl named Melinda out of the recreation center! You were told not to return to the recreation center so you followed Melinda and you hid in the bushes and you told her to watch her back! You stole your sister's car! You trashed your mother's house!

And Dusty, you had reason to be angry with Reena Virk, didn't you? She'd been with your boyfriend. And let's face it, Dusty, you do seem like the kind of person who holds a grudge. Dusty, it was you who crossed the bridge, wasn't it? You were the girl Maya and Willow saw with Warren. Dusty, it was
you
who killed Reena Virk, wasn't it?

“No,” Dusty said, rather cheerfully.

Well, what's the special bond with Warren then?

“The special bond?” Dusty said, wrinkling her brow

“You wrote him this letter, did you not? ‘Hey hon, whad up. I don't like what's happening to you and I don't think it's fair. You and I share a special bond.' What's the special bond, Dusty?”

“I don't know,” Dusty said, looking ashamed. If she was ashamed by the discovery of her love letter, read before the courts, her blushing face only assisted Adrian Brooks's conjecture.

“Dusty, it was you who crossed the bridge! And you killed Reena with Warren! And that's your special bond, isn't it?”

“No,” Dusty said, and she seemed for the first time in her life, so very tiny.

Rarely did the Crown try to re-examine their witnesses. As the days went on, Adrian and Mark flayed the youth, shamed them, confused them, and the youth felt as if no one came to their rescue.

Only Billy, the fireman's son, could not be tied to the alleged conspiracy. He had no reason to make up a story about Kelly, certainly no loyalty to Warren. He hadn't been drunk or high, and he'd been walking his girlfriend home to make her curfew, so he seemed a perfectly respectable and dutiful type of guy. Nonetheless, Mark Jette kept asking him over and over again. How long was the conversation? Did you say five minutes? Well, when you just repeated it here, it only took you thirty seconds or so to tell us. Did you say she looked stressed out, or did you say she looked distressed? Which one is it? Did you say your girlfriend didn't hear this conversation? But I thought you said your girlfriend was standing beside you. Did Kelly say to you, “Later on her head was put underwater”?

“Yes,” Billy replied, and only later he realized his mistake. Kelly had told him, “I put her head under water,” which was quite different from “her head was put under water.”

“I got tricked,” Billy realized. He'd missed a day of work, gone over to Vancouver, had his name in the paper, and now they'd tricked him. His dad said: “You did the right thing.” But since he was seventeen, he'd lived with this case. He'd testified five times, at preliminary hearings and Warren's trial, lost some friends for doing so, received less than pleasant treatment from some men in the Ellard family. All he'd done on November 14 was try to make sure his girlfriend got home for curfew. And now everyone in View Royal was saying the Crown was fucking up the case, and Kelly's lawyers were just destroying all the kids, and everyone was saying, “It looks like Kelly Ellard is gonna walk.”