was an indication I’d made her work hard.
After nearly a two-hour run, showers, and a luxurious breakfast at Denny’s — I order the Moons over My Hammy sandwich every time because it always makes me chuckle — we parked outside the East Vancouver home of Paul Charters slightly before nine. In case his hobbies extended beyond vandalism to weekend organized sports, Andy thought it best we hit his home earlier rather than later. If we woke him up, even better: a groggy teenager was less likely to have his guard up. “You gonna take it easy on him?” I asked.
“Why would I do that?”
“You saw how well your Dirty Harriet routine worked yesterday.”
“It got us here, didn’t it?”
“I’m just saying he’s just a kid.”
Andy shot me a serious look. “Are you going into public defender mode with this kid? Are you gonna make him hire you first? Give you a retainer?”
“Look, I just … I’m a teacher now, not a lawyer. But that doesn’t mean I’m indifferent to the treatment of my students.”
“Your little cabal of criminals.”
“He spray-painted a door.”
“He almost put Tim in a coma.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I intend to find out. If you’re going to get in my way, just wait in the car.” Andrea rang the doorbell, and by the time the door locks were turning on the typical East Vancouver forties-era stucco house — the kind of stucco that doesn’t leak — I had joined her by the front door. As it opened, I flashed my friendliest smile at the woman I assumed to be Paul’s mother.
“Good morning,” I began, “I’m Winston Patrick, Paul’s law teacher from school.” I was about to continue when Paul himself rounded the corner, fully bedecked in his soccer gear.
“See ya, Mom. That’ll be Steve coming …” Paul stopped himself in mid-sentence when he saw me. Dropping his bag, he turned and ran back into the house.
“Paul, wait!” I called after him.
“What’s going on?” his mother asked, half to me and half to her son. Before I could answer, there was a clattering din from the back of the house and the distinctive voice of someone yelling “Police!” I turned in surprise, ready to declare my disbelief that Andy had brought backup, only to discover she wasn’t there. Recognition sank into my consciousness that the cop voice I’d heard yelling at the back of the house had been hers. The woman moves like a cat.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, because good manners are always important, even when about to embark on a foot chase. Darting around the side of the house, I was able to get to the backyard in time to see Andrea disappear through an open back gate. I struck out after her and heard a decided scraping and clacking sound. Looking up the alleyway I could see the departing figure of Paul, the scraping sound I’d heard coming from his cleated soccer boots striking the cracked and broken pavement. By the time they hit the street at the top of the alley, the gap between them was closing. He may have been a fit young teenager, but no one can run down a perp like Andy, adrenaline being one of her essential food groups.
I set out after them at a reasonable pace, knowing it was unlikely I could immediately catch up but figuring what I lacked in short bursts of speed I could make up for in endurance. When I turned the same corner around which I had seen Paul and Andy disappear, the two had begun to run up the grassy hill at the front of a corner house. For a brief moment Paul appeared to gain the upper hand as his soccer cleats found purchase in the wet grass. But as he reached the top of the rise, Andy reached up and forward, grabbing his leg just above her. With a near grace bordering on ballet-like, she pulled the teen’s leg up and over her head, sending Paul like a wet bag of cement onto his torso. I almost thought I could see the air expel from his body as the wind was knocked out of him.
Hitting the damp grass, he began to slide downward. Though she tried clumsily to jump over him as he slid down the hill towards her, Paul’s shoulder caught Andy’s left leg, tripping her and bringing her crashing down on top of my already collapsed student, violently pushing out what little air remained in his already strained lungs. The two of them slid and rolled a few feet before coming to a stop in a muddy mass, Andy’s semi-automatic in hand and pointed ridiculously close to Paul’s face. At the site of the gun barrel at the side of his nose, Paul’s eyes widened in terror, and he appeared to hyperventilate, though I’m sure his breathing had yet to recover from his fall. To his credit, he didn’t lose control of his bladder, for which, having stared down the business end of a firearm myself, I would not have blamed him if he had.
“Andrea!” I yelled.
“I’m fine!” she grumbled back at me as she scrambled atop Paul.
“I don’t care about that. Put your gun away. He’s just a kid, for god’s sake!” In one deft move, she spun Paul over onto his stomach, face down in the slippery, muddy grass. I thought I could just make out muttered, whimpering apologies as he struggled to regain his breath. “Paul, don’t say anything else right now,” I told my prostrate protégé as I trotted up beside them.
“Are you kidding me?” Andy protested. “Are you defending him now?”
“No. I just … I don’t know what I’m doing. Old habits die hard, I guess. Just make sure you inform him of his rights.”
She threw me a scornful look. “Yeah, Counsellor. I’ll Mirandize him.” I knew she was mad because she called me “Counsellor,” a title she generally put out with no small amount of contempt. She also threw in Mirandize, an American term that has no legal bearing in Canada, but, much to the police’s consternation, is often cited by arrestees who have grown up watching television and movies from south of the forty-ninth. It was never difficult to discern when my best friend was displeased with me, especially since it happened with such frequency.
The Vancouver Police Department headquarters is just beneath the Cambie Street Bridge in a facility that opened a few years back as the department grew bigger than its less glamorous Downtown Eastside facility could accommodate. Though it maintained both the new and former VPD locations, along with a small array of “community police stations” perpetually threatened by budget shortfalls, the detective and major crimes divisions were housed in the swankier new digs that many citizens had protested were the Taj Mahal of law enforcement. Coincidentally, my own teachers’ union owned the building immediately adjacent to VPD’s H.Q., just on the opposite side of the intersecting roadway. It too had its vocal opponents, who referred to the office building as the Crystal Palace of educational advocacy. Neither nickname was particularly apt; having had occasion to involuntarily find myself inside both, I could attest that the two facilities were pretty ordinary.
Andrea had dispatched two uniformed patrol officers to pick up Krista Ellory while she changed into some fresh clothes. By the time Krista was ushered into an interview room with her mother, Andrea was looking her professional best: business suit and running shoes, as formal as it gets with her. The two teens were placed in interview rooms separated by the anteroom in which we stood watching through panels of one-way glass. Was there anyone on the planet who didn’t know that big “mirror” in an interview room wasn’t for fixing up your hair? Looking through the window at Krista and her mother, I could not place the face: I had already known by the name she was not one of my students, but her face wasn’t even remotely familiar. I had to assume that she’d had no particular personal vendetta against me and was along for the spray-painting ride with Paul. “So, which one first?” I asked.
“Both the moms are here, and neither wants a lawyer,” Andrea replied, smiling smugly. Kids and parents could waive their immediate right to legal advice, but police couldn’t use any information obtained from a minor without some form of guardian present, the theory being that kids lacked the sound judgment to assess the merits of speaking to the police without legal counsel. As a lawyer I thought anyone — kid or adult — who allowed themselves to be interviewed by the police without counsel lacked sound judgment. “Think