This needed to happen now. It needed to happen yesterday. Finally, finally, Sunny was able to get Agnes and Mandeep Randhawa in his office so all three of them could have a discussion of what to do about Patrick Marinville, because by some stroke of luck Agnes had a free morning at the same time as Mandeep and he had a free hour on a business day.
It couldn't have come at a more crucial time. Patrick was just now looking at a property with Tej (she texted him her status every fifteen minutes for his peace of mind) and had already made contact with Agnes at her parents' home in Richmond, and that meant he knew where to find her. "Rachel is giving me the key to their place today," she said, still sheepish after admitting such to both of them. "I'm going downtown to work at the Central Branch of VPL this evening, and I promised her I'd stop by her office, Justiciar Security and Investigative Services, to pick it up before I start my shift."
"Good," Sunny said. "Be prepared to go there at a moment's notice, with or without your children." When Agnes flinched in response, he explained, "you've said he was never violent toward any of you, right?"
"That's right."
"If you testify against him, his attitude won't change toward the children, but it might change toward you," Mandeep said. "You need to be able to stay out of his reach once you give your deposition."
"Have you told your parents about this place?" Sunny asked.
Agnes shook her head. "I never even told them I was dating Al before I moved to the Okanagan. How could I tell them I've been visiting him and making friends with all of you? I'd have to do that before I could tell them about the place."
"I take it you're a very non-confrontational person," Sunny said.
She shrugged awkwardly. "I just hate disappointing them. They've been so good to me, especially now, looking after the kids while I'm at work. To tell them everything I got up to when I was younger, and everything Patrick's gotten up to, would only distress them unnecessarily. They already don't like Patrick, because they feel like he kept me in the Okanagan much longer than I would have stayed." She sighed and shook her head. "Even though I went there to get away from them."
"You have a love-hate relationship with your parents," Mandeep observed.
"Yeah. Ultimately I need to just get my own permanent place, for me and the kids. My parents are already talking to them about God and Jesus, stuff we never raised them with at home, and so of course Patrick Junior and Melissa have no idea what they're talking about. It's just... awkward."
The two Sikh men looked at each other and smirked. "You and your husband didn't practice Christianity?" Sunny asked.
"I didn't want them turning out like me, so afraid to do anything daring for fear of going to Hell. Did I tell you Al was my first boyfriend, and I was almost thirty? Patrick was raised Catholic but didn't like how his mother wouldn't divorce his father because she wouldn't be able to receive Communion anymore, even though his father abused her."
Sunny nodded along even though he wasn't quite sure what Communion was or of the doctrine around it. He'd have to look it up sometime. "All right, Agnes. You said Patrick visited you on Tuesday?"
"That's right."
"When he visited, did he mention anything about being in a car accident?"
Agnes blinked in surprise. "No. Why do you ask?"
"When you talked to him, did you notice if his truck had any damage on it?"
She shook her head. "Not that I could see. Was he in an accident?"
"You remember our friend Joanie?" he asked.
She nodded, mouth twisting.
Sunny wondered what that was about. "She told Al--" he began.
"She told Al?" she interrupted, brow furrowing. "She visited him in the hospital?"
"Apparently. It must have been when you weren't there."
"I guess it's nice he has lots of visitors," she said drily. "So, what did she tell him?"
"That on Tuesday she was at the scene of an accident, and that one of the cars involved crashed into a traffic light pole, sending its occupants to the hospital. They gave a description and plate number of the truck that ran them off the road as belonging to Patrick."
She shook her head in disbelief. "He didn't mention anything. That's why I'm a little worried. He's not like himself. It's like he's in denial."
"Here's something else Joanie found out: the plates on the car that hit the light pole were reported stolen in Kelowna."
Her eyes widened. "Shit. They've followed him here."
"They?" Mandeep asked.
"Or they hired someone to follow him here," she went on as if she hadn't heard him. Maybe she hadn't.
"All right, now we come to the part where I interview you and record what you witnessed and when," Mandeep said, opening his folder and beginning to write on a legal pad.
She took a deep breath and said, "All right."
"Who are these people you suspect are here?"
She cleared her throat and said, "The family's name is Mercer. They own the largest winery in the Okanagan. Mercer Estates?" She looked at them expectantly.
"Manny and I don't drink alcohol, so we're not well versed in wine," Sunny said.
"Oh, sorry," she said, flustered. "They're huge in Kelowna. They sponsor every single event that takes place in the city. Wine is a big draw for the region, both in sales of product and the tourism it generates, so it's only natural that Mercer and other wineries have a lot of influence over municipal planning and policy.
"The patriarch, John Mercer, has a rather large family. He's also known to have a fiery temper, which makes him a force to be reckoned with in business, but it also must make life hell for his family and for his employees. One of his sons, John Junior, J.J. for short, apparently took after dear old Dad. He was married to an RCMP officer by the name of Heather Redfern, and her position as a police officer seemed to make it more satisfying when he abused her, assuming she'd never admit she was a battered wife because it would diminish her credibility among her mostly male colleagues. He didn't count on Patrick, though.
"Patrick was her partner. Patrick told me he often saw Heather with bruises, but the bruises weren't visible where the public could see them; J.J. was clever enough never to touch her face. Looking back now, I have to wonder how Patrick knew this, unless Heather told him; my suspicion, though, is he was already having an affair with her, and he got to see her bruises under her clothes up close and personal. I can understand why Heather took up with him; he's big and strong, someone who will step up to protect you if you need him. Plus, he can't tolerate spousal abuse because of his experiences with his mother."
"Did Patrick admit to you he was seeing this woman?" Mandeep asked.
"No, not officially. John Mercer and one of his other sons, Luke, told me this after J.J. wound up dead."
"And how did they know?"
"J.J. told them he confronted Heather once and she admitted it; Heather had finally worked up the courage to ask for a divorce. Whether J.J. told them he was hitting her or not, I don't know. My guess is that spousal abuse is never talked about outside the family, and that J.J. learned it from the old man. For him, the adultery was infuriating enough, and Heather had to flee the home before things escalated. He might have even tried to kill her the night she left, but maybe this time she held him off with her service weapon, who knows. The point was, she'd left, and he was furious.
"The thing about J.J. and other wife batterers, though, is they're cowards." When Sunny nodded in acknowledgement at this fact he knew to be true from experience, she went on. "J.J. never went to confront Patrick about it because the man was half his size. He kept on harassing Heather, though, confronting her at the detachment, at her new apartment, wherever he could. Heather complained to Patrick, though. He told me about her plight as if I might sympathize with her, and I did, at least as one woman to another, but I also couldn't ignore the smell of another woman's perfume on his clothes, and other things that led me to believe he was sleeping with her.
"Something must have happened. Patrick must have finally had enough of J.J. tormenting Heather. This is where I can only tell you what I saw, because the rest is hearsay, it's only what John and Luke Mercer suspect but can't prove."
"All right," Mandeep said, pausing to finish jotting down the notes he'd already started. "This is the night you saw him in the mud room?"
"That's right."
"Do you remember the actual date?" Mandeep asked. "I'll understand if you don't."
"Actually, I do," she said. "The night of September first. We were supposed to be celebrating our anniversary but he claimed to have been called into work to cover a sick colleague. I tried to call him during the day, just to check in on him like I usually do, because I worried about him out there even though he was a big guy, but my calls always went to voice mail. I got concerned and phoned the detachment, but the Desk Sergeant there told me Patrick wasn't on shift that day. Now I'm thinking he's gone off with Heather somewhere, on our anniversary! So, of course I stay up waiting for him to come home, ready to give him a piece of my mind, and when he finally does, I find him in the mud room, washing blood off his hands, his clothes piled in a heap which he burned later. I asked him what the hell happened to him, and he told me he ran into a deer on the highway and had to pull it off to the side of the road. I don't know why he told me that, because it was such an obvious lie; there was no damage to his truck. Hitting a deer would have smashed the windshield, put a major dent in the fender. I wondered why he would come up with such a stupid lie, but I realized he must have been surprised by my confronting him and desperate for a story, which made me suspect he'd done something much worse and couldn't tell me."
"Did he ever admit what he actually did?" Mandeep asked.
"No, and I immediately backed off. He was scared and on edge, and I worried a little for my own safety. You know what I originally thought? That he'd actually done something to Heather."
"Really?" Sunny asked, surprised.
She chuckled sheepishly and shook her head. "It was stupid, because he was working with her the next day. I called the detachment again and found that out. But when I first suspected he was with her, and then he comes home bloody, how could I be blamed for thinking he'd killed her?"
"Of course you couldn't," Mandeep said. "Let me hear now of your conversation with the Mercer men, even though it's hearsay and inadmissible."
She took a deep breath and let it out. "This was about two weeks later. By then it was all over the news up there: the scion of the powerful Mercer wine family was dead, killed while hunting deer in a wilderness area near Naramata. The media never reported how he was killed, but I think that was because the police were still investigating the circumstances. Imagine my surprise when I heard a knock on my door one evening and found Mercer himself and another one of his sons, giving me the news that J.J. was murdered and they believed Patrick had done it."
"How could they be sure?"
"They said J.J. had told them about Heather's affair with Patrick. They told me the murder was made to look like an animal mauling but the police weren't buying it."
"Animal mauling?" Sunny asked. "Jesus, you mean he got up close and personal, maybe with a knife?"
She nodded. "The coroner was pretty sure a knife was used; the wounds just weren't ragged enough to be caused by teeth or claws. They told me all this like they thought I'd want to know. Actually, I need to correct myself. The coroner determined more than one type of blade was used."
"So it wasn't just Patrick who stabbed him," Mandeep said.
"That's what they surmised. He had to have help."
"So, there are other parties involved in the killing."
"The Mercers suspected other colleagues in the detachment, but they didn't know who."
Mandeep nodded as he continued jotting. "We won't be able to include that in our deposition. We can only give your statement on what you saw in the mud room, but that should be enough to allow the police to get a warrant to dismantle the pipes in that mud room sink and test for blood. If the DNA matches that of John Mercer Junior, Patrick may be arrested, and if there were other parties involved he might testify against them for a lighter sentence."
Agnes' face crumpled, and she quickly wiped tears from her eyes as she said, "My kids are going to lose their dad."
Mandeep could only give her a look of bleak compassion.
"Why do you think the two Mercer men went to visit you?" Sunny asked.
Agnes sniffled and blew her nose, on the same pocket square Sunny had given her a few days ago. "Honestly? I think they were coming at Patrick in the only way they knew how, by destroying his marriage. They'd probably sue for wrongful death if they could, but I think they have to let the criminal investigation take its course. I don't know how that's going, because after the Mercer men visited me, I made my plans to get out of the Okanagan. Because I was angry at Patrick, yes, and a little afraid of him, but mostly because I was afraid the Mercers were going to go a step further and not wait for the police to give them justice."
"Do you think the men in the car with the stolen Kelowna plates were there to kill him?"
Agnes shrugged. "Maybe they were just there to find him? Maybe someone else was going to do the job."
"We need to get this deposition in, then," Mandeep said. "By arresting Patrick, we could end up protecting him from a possible assassination attempt."
"He probably won't see it that way," Sunny said. "Let's get the divorce papers drawn up to serve him while we're here." He looked to Mandeep and asked, "Do you have everything you need?"
Mandeep nodded and rose from his chair. "I'm going to make a call to the Kelowna Regional Office of the B.C. Prosecution Service. If they take this ball and run with it, Agnes, they may ask you to travel there to testify at trial."
Agnes' eyes widened. "Go back to Kelowna?"
"I'm sure nothing will happen until after Patrick is arrested."
She took a shaky breath and let it out. "Okay. I guess I'll do what I have to do."
"Stay safe, Agnes," Mandeep said, then to Sunny, "We'll talk soon."
After he left, Sunny called Tori to his office. His paralegal, a self-described "hot-blooded Latina," had jet black hair in a neck length bob, and was dressed in a surprisingly sedate grey pant suit, her wine-red blouse the only pop of colour in the outfit. It matched his turban colour completely by accident; the two didn't communicate their clothing choices before every working day.
When she saw Agnes, she brightened and offered her hand. "You're Agnes Chu?"
"That's right," Agnes didn't rise from her chair but took her hand.
"We're starting divorce proceedings, and I'll need you to draw up the papers," Sunny said.
"Fantastic!" Tori said, then her face fell as she realized that might have been callous. "I mean, not fantastic, but--"
"No, it is fantastic," Agnes said, smiling. "It's time for me to lay my burden down."
Thanks for reading this far! If you liked what you read so far, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about the workings of criminal or family law, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.
To see what Agnes gets up to after she leaves Sunny's office, click on "Continue reading."