by Anne Emery
It was a subdued pack of card players who turned up in the boardroom of Stratton Sommers to share their memories with my forensic artist, Stacey Mallory. To a man, they rallied around Burke and claimed they were happy to do this and anything else he might ask of them. I held the door for our receptionist, Darlene, when she brought in a tray of coffee. Father O’Flaherty thanked her profusely and blessed her for her kindness; the others smiled their thanks; Burke looked right through her. On her way out Darlene whispered to me in theatrical tones: “He doesn’t even know I’m alive!”
“You’re an occasion of sin for him, Darlene,” I whispered back, “and for all of us.”
“Mean that?”
“Sure.”
We got down to work. Michael O’Flaherty rose to the occasion, and had much to offer Stacey on the vandal’s appearance and demeanour. Dr. Shaw, familiar as he was with human anatomy, was the most precise and helpful in describing the young man’s facial structure. After an hour or so, Stacey had produced a sketch that looked remarkably like the man we had met in the church that night: a thin face with thin lips and small eyes, patches of light facial hair, and the inevitable ball cap.
In truth, though, I wanted to go only so far with the Jason factor, and no further. Jason was more useful to us as a shadowy, unidentified figure who may, or may not, have committed violent acts and tailored his crimes to look like the work of a priest. The real flesh-and-blood young man had probably done no such thing. And could likely come up with an alibi that would reveal our speculation for what it was. We would not want that confirmed in front of the jury. There was another very compelling reason I wanted to keep Jason in the shadows. He was obviously a troubled individual; I did not want to add to his problems. I would use the sketch, but I would keep it to a very limited distribution. It would not be provided to the police or to the media. All I wanted was someone to say this face had been seen in Halifax on or before February 14, 1990.
The first place I took the sketch was St. Bernadette’s Youth Centre. I poked my head into the command centre of Sister Marguerite Dunne and Eileen Darragh. Eileen was not there but the boss was. Sister Dunne quickly confirmed that she had seen the young man. “I only remember one day when he was here at the centre, but he may have been around at other times.”
“What day was this, that you saw him? And why does it stand out in your mind?”
“It was career day. Early December. Every year we take the young people out to the workplace, to observe people in various jobs. If somebody is interested in nursing, we set that person up for a day at one of the hospitals. Everybody wants to get in with an airline pilot, but we haven’t had any luck there yet.”
“So, what careers were on offer this time?”
“Let’s see. I have the agenda here somewhere.” I had no doubt that Sister Dunne knew exactly where every piece of paper was in her office. She found it in seconds. “Yes. Tyler took two of the boys to the Metro Centre to see how they run a complex operation like that. Father O’Flaherty — he does this every year — took a small group on a tour of the police station. I think the good father would like to come back as Sergeant O’Flaherty in his next life. Eileen took two girls to the law library. My niece is one of the librarians at the law school, so I set that one up myself.”
“Were all the young people that day regulars?”
“Yes, except for this Jason. He was considerably older than the others, but he could obviously benefit from some workplace exposure. So he went out, too.”
“What group did he go with?”
“He wanted to go on the police tour, but he missed it. Michael O’Flaherty had already left by the time Jason arrived. They never saw each other. I think Mike wanted to start the day at Tim Hortons, with an early dose of coffee and doughnuts. Getting into character. Jason went to the law library with Eileen and the two girls.”
I was about to say goodbye when Marguerite spoke again. “Montague, how do you think our friend Father Burke is holding up?”
All I could do was shake my head.
I see.
“Thank you, Sister. I may be in touch again.”
“Any time.”
I now had another potential witness in the law librarian if she remembered Jason being there, so I took a detour before returning to my office. The Sir James Dunn Law Library is contained in the Dalhousie Law School building. The library had caught fire several years before. Like other lawyers, judges, and students, I had been out on University Avenue, helping to salvage books from the wreckage. The library had then moved into a new, airier addition to the building. I recognized Rebecca Dunne behind the circulation desk.
“Ms. Dunne. I’m Monty Collins. I’m sure you’ve seen me in here, researching obscure points of law that never seem to do my clients any good. I was wondering if I could have a word.”
“Hello, Monty. I knew your face was familiar. Come on back here.” We went behind the desk and sat down.
“I’m working on a case and I think you may be able to help me.” I pulled out a copy of the composite drawing. “Have you ever seen this guy?”
She looked intently at the sketch. “It seems to me I have, but I may just be remembering a similar sketch in the news somewhere. I wish I could be more helpful.”
“Would it refresh your memory if I asked you to think back to December? The St. Bernadette’s Youth Centre had a career day, and —”
“Right. Marguerite sent a group over here. Yes. This could very well have been the lone male in that group. I can see the resemblance.” Rebecca looked relieved, perhaps the natural reaction of a librarian who spends her days trying to help people find what they are looking for. I had all I needed, another witness who could say the church vandal was in town before the first murder. I already had him in place shortly before the second. But I might as well get more if I could.
“What was this fellow like, when he was here?”
“Quiet. Kind of moped around at the edge of the group. It was Ms. Darragh from the youth centre, and two girls ostensibly interested in library work. I gave them a rudimentary exercise in legal research. We looked at the cases in the most recent volume of the Nova Scotia Reports. Ms. Darragh was the only one who showed any interest in reading; well, I’ve always had the impression she’s a bookish sort of person. And I mean that as a compliment. The young people were more interested in the Criminal Code: what would you get for this crime or that one? They had a giggle about ‘assisting an alien to leave Canada.’ But Eileen ignored them and stuck to the more dignified case law till it was time to go. It may have been my imagination, and I don’t want to make false accusations. But I thought the young fellow tried to stuff the Criminal Code under his jacket! He saw me looking at him and he casually replaced it on the shelf. I may be wrong. I forgot all about it until now.”
III
The next day I went to the offices of the Archdiocese of Halifax, where I was directed to see Father Eugene Cormier. I introduced myself and told him why I was there. The priest was in clerical black except for comfortable-looking brown suede shoes. He was a short, stocky, youngish man with prematurely white hair. He looked wary but greeted me politely.
“Father, I’ll only take up a few minutes of your time. I’m looking for some information about the vandalism that has been going on in the archdiocese. And the break-in here at the office.”
“Ask away.”
“The break-in, when did it occur?”
“New Year’s Day.”
“The office was closed that day, I assume.”
“Oh yes. We were all over at the bishop’s New Year’s levee.”
“When did you discover the break-in?”
“Later that day, actually. I came in to pick something up from the office. I went
to the room where we keep our personnel records, and I saw that some priests’ files had been disturbed.” Father Cormier looked as if the incident still troubled him.
“Are you able to tell me whose files had been opened?”
“Well, they are all men whose names are known around the archdiocese, though a couple of them are retired. Fathers O’Malley, White, Burke, MacDougall...” He rattled off a few more names.
“And Father O’Flaherty?” I asked.
“Father O’Flaherty’s file isn’t here.”
“What do you mean? It’s kept somewhere else?”
“It would normally be here. But it isn’t. I mentioned it to him after the break-in, but he didn’t seem interested in pursuing the matter. Doesn’t surprise me. If you know Mike —” He shrugged. “I just let it go.”
“Was anything taken?”
“Nothing that I could see. If there was anything missing from the files I might not have realized it, not knowing what they contained beforehand. But my impression at the time was that they had been hastily read, then thrown down when the person fled. It looked as if he left in a hurry.”
“Was there anything taken or disturbed anywhere else in the building?”
“No. I checked around. Our secretary had left her wallet on her desk, and it wasn’t touched. We confirmed this with her the next day. And warned her to be a bit more careful.”
“Were you able to determine how the burglar got in?”
“No. We had the police here but they could find no sign of forced entry.” I must have registered surprise because Father Cormier went on: “It would not have been an inside job, Mr. Collins. Everyone who works here has access to those files. They could have read them any time during the workday and nobody would have been the wiser.”
“Do you have a lot of people in and out of the office, parishioners or people who need help?”
“Oh, yes. All the time. There is no way we could keep track of everyone who passes through here in the run of a week, not in retrospect anyway.”
I asked about the vandalism and he named half a dozen parishes where anti-church, and anti-clerical, slogans had been painted. Nothing about the graffiti was especially notable; some of it had a Satanic theme but there was nothing to suggest the involvement of a cult. A few things had been broken, but there was no destruction on the altars. It sounded as if the perpetrator could not bring himself to desecrate the Church that was the source of his anguish. I showed Father Cormier the composite sketch of the vandal. He had never seen the man before. He invited me to take the picture around, and we went to the various offices and desks. One woman thought the face looked familiar but she could not say where or when she had seen it. When I turned away I heard someone say “One of our protests,” but, when I turned back, the speaker busied herself with her papers. I thought about taking her up on it but decided it would get me nowhere.
I thanked Father Cormier and his staff and went on to the other parishes where vandalism had occurred. It was a splendid day to be out. Halifax is a city of trees and the streets were arched with green. In the end I found one caretaker and one housekeeper who thought they had seen the man around Church property in the winter months. I thanked them and took note of their names. I had what I needed, for what it was worth: a number of people who would testify that a man with a grudge against the Church had been in the area around the times of the murders. If he was the burglar at the archdiocesan office, what might he have found in the priests’ personnel folders? What would be in Burke’s file? Not much, I guessed, given that the bulk of his priestly life had been spent elsewhere. Could there possibly have been anything in the file about the cross that had been burned into his skin? This might warrant further investigation. But for now I had achieved my goal. I cruised to the office in the late afternoon sun, my arm out the open window, singing along with Louis Armstrong and “A Wonderful World.” Once in a while in my work, things clicked into place and I could bask in the satisfaction of a job well done.
But I hadn’t reckoned on my next encounter with Sergeant Moody Walker, and yet another damaging revelation about Brennan Burke.
IV
I worked cheerfully and late the day after making my rounds of the churches. I had made arrangements to meet my old friend Barbara, a Crown prosecutor, who was working at the other end of the province and who was in town for a conference. We met for dinner and a couple of drinks at a downtown bar that was a particular favourite of Crowns and police officers. I can barely remember what we talked about because, just as I put my fork down, uttered a little cuisine-related bon mot, and made to order another beer, Moody Walker lumbered in. He spotted me right away and smirked in triumph; his cherished suspect had finally been charged with murder. If his former colleagues had listened to Moody, they would have had Burke off the street before a second woman died. But they had him now.
When Barbara got up to leave, I distractedly said goodbye to her and waited for the inevitable. Moody Walker slid into her seat before she had cleared the building. “Looks like your man’s not gonna make Pope after all, Collins. Nope. He’ll be with his own kind soon. He knows some of the inmates already. Goes out and helps them with their problems. He better hope there’s somebody gonna help him with his own problems. Hard to survive otherwise.” Walker brought out his wallet and signalled the waiter for a drink.
“Moody, it wasn’t Burke. He’s being framed.”
Walker let out a roar of good-natured laughter. “What else are you gonna tell me, Collins? I’ll say this for you lawyers, you’re loyal to a fault. Well, you have a job to do. But whoever is framing your client better ‘fess up soon. A jilted lover, maybe? AC or DC ? Nah, with him it’s women. Or girls anyway.” I had the impression this was not the first licensed establishment Walker had patronized recently — he was unusually voluble.
“What do you mean, Moody, girls? Surely, surely you’re not talking about the little choirgirl, Janeece.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Collins. Nobody that young. Girls with a bit more shape to them, is what I have in mind. Like that Leeza Rae. These guys are all the same, whether they’re RC or Baptist. They get these young girls —”
“There was nothing going on with Leeza Rae,” I insisted.
“Right. She ran bawling from the building with her blouse flapping open, and then gave the finger to Burke for no reason, as he stood glaring at her from the window for no reason. Picture yourself wearing a trench coat, Collins, with a detective’s badge in your pocket. You been listening to lies for thirty years. You just heard that story. Now tell me with a straight face you believe there was nothing sexual going on between them.”
I tried to hold my ground. “There is a perfectly good explanation for any encounter Father Burke may have had with Leeza Rae when she worked at St. Bernadette’s.”
Walker leaned over the table and spoke urgently. “Rae wasn’t the only one. Maybe you already know this, maybe you don’t.” I could feel my undigested meal turning sour in my stomach. I braced myself for whatever was to come. “This was back in the early eighties, 1982 or so. There was a girl at the college up there in New Brunswick, Mount Allison University. Burke was stalking this girl, a music student. Real talented little girl. That’s how I figure he got onto her in the first place. Her band or chamber group — whatever it was, I don’t know a violin bow from a drumstick — performed here in Halifax. He probably got a hard-on for her here.”
The waiter brought Walker’s drink. I didn’t touch my beer.
“But there’s more, Collins, a real jealous boyfriend scene. He’d been watching this young lady. A pretty little thing, who wouldn’t want to follow her around? But most of us, grown-ups at least, go home to our wives. Only your guy doesn’t have one. Anyway, on this occasion,
she was out with her boyfriend, a real loser. But a good-looking loser, you know? The kind a girl would fall for and it would be the biggest mistake of her life. We know the boyfriend had beaten the girl on one occasion already. Your client’s rental car was spotted outside the girl’s dorm. Yeah, the local police checked the rental. You don’t look so hot, Collins. Somehow I get the feeling this is news to you. It gets better. The boyfriend drops her off and gropes her for a while outside the dorm; she doesn’t invite him in, so he starts to walk away. He’s just picking up his pace when Burke squeals to a stop, explodes out of the car, grabs the little shithead by the throat, and slams him up against a tree. Nearly chokes him. The boy didn’t want to spill this to the police, by the way. Fucking terrified. But they’d been looking at this kid for some other stuff, so he finally rolled over on Burke. Didn’t have any idea who he was, of course, just this ‘real scary Irish guy’ who threatened to cripple him if, one, he went near the girl again or, two, he breathed a word of this encounter to anyone. Burke knew the kid’s name and where he lived. What His Holiness said was: ‘I’ll fuckin’ cripple ya.’
“The punk got lippy and tried to fight him off, and Burke pounded him so hard he broke a tooth and fractured three ribs. Burke gave him another warning, and took off. The kid didn’t report it. And here’s how dumb this little turd was: he told the police he took a souvenir from Burke, yanked a chain or something off his neck. The cop told him: ‘You take a souvenir from a victory, asshole, not from someone who just beat the crap out of you!’”
I felt as if someone — it may as well have been Burke — had knocked the last breath out of me.
Walker paused for a quick gulp of his rum, then went on relentlessly: “Once the rental car was checked out, and found to be in the name of the Reverend Brennan X. Burke, the authorities in Sackville had a photo sent up from New York. Didn’t tell New York why they wanted it, preferred to handle it without international complications. Anyway, this dirtball kid positively iD’d Burke from the photo. But the kid refused to press charges, and Burke had left the country by the time the police got the whole story. So nothing came of it. Unfortunately. A lot of bad luck and missed opportunities with this guy. As for the young lady who inspired this crime of passion, the police never brought it up with her. Saw no point in upsetting her once Burke was safely out of the country. But the local force had a couple of discreet interviews with her and her friends; they cooked up some story about a robbery on the campus. Showed the kids the photo of Burke. Cropped photo, no collar in view. The girl stared at the photo a good long time, but denied knowing him. So maybe he never got his hands on her. Just got his kicks by looking at her. Or maybe she was covering for him. If so, she did a good job of it.”