Sign of the Cross

by Anne Emery

  I don’t even remember how I extricated myself from Walker. I didn’t know how to explain the fact that he laid it all out for me in detail. Was he drunk, or was he just determined to make me see Burke as he saw him, a twisto? Whatever the case, I had just heard something that rocked me to the core.

  I had a sleepless night. As soon as I dragged myself into the office the next morning I knocked on Rowan’s door. I did not divulge what I had learned from Walker; I merely asked for a bit of history. And it was simple: Rowan said Burke had been in Halifax from 1968 through 1970, and had arrived again last fall. If he had come to the province any time in between, Rowan didn’t know about it.

  What in the hell was going on? Father Burke wasn’t stationed here in 1982. Could he have been in town for a musical event or a meeting? Had he seen the young Mount A student at a concert here, as Walker suggested?

  It was time for another confrontation with my client.

  V

  I found him in the auditorium at the youth centre, alone on the stage, sitting on the piano bench. He was wearing his old grey Fordham T-shirt with jeans, and he had his half glasses perched on his nose. He was making notations on a musical score, stopping periodically to play a few notes on the keyboard. Even though the door had clicked shut behind me, he was unaware of my presence. I stood for a few minutes and listened. It was obviously the four-part Mass he had told me he was writing. If he had found a few moments of peace in which to compose music, I was loath to break in on him with such unwelcome news. But our choices, and our moments of peace, were running out.

  Finally, he looked up and saw me. He knew that a visit from me at this point was not likely a social call, but he made an attempt at light conversation: “Monty. You’re not here to correct my score, are you? Marguerite tried that a few minutes ago, and I put the run to her.”

  “Were her suggestions helpful?”

  “Well-informed, I’ll give her that. But misplaced in the context of the whole piece. You’ll be wanting to add a blues riff to the Benedictus, am I right?” I looked at him without responding. “Time to get down to brass tacks, then, is it? What can I do for you, Monty?”

  I pulled myself up onto the stage and straddled a chair. Burke turned on the bench to face me.

  “Brennan, what were you doing at Mount Allison University in 1982?”

  The colour drained from his face. He gripped the sides of the piano bench and stared at me with apprehension that bordered on fear. It was the last thing I expected to see in his face.

  “Where did you hear about that?” His tone was belligerent but it didn’t mask his trepidation.

  “The police.”

  “Is this going to come out in court? It can’t. That cannot happen.” He put his hands up as if he could physically prevent the words from being uttered again.

  “Explain it to me, Brennan. I have to know. Everything. I thought I’d made that clear. I can’t defend you if I keep getting sandbagged like this. Now, what was going on?”

  “It had nothing to do with this.” He held up his hands again to ward off my objections. “It was not like these cases in any way. An isolated incident.”

  “There are no isolated incidents when the police are putting together a case for the murder of two women. You can be sure they know, or will know, everything you have ever done. That goes double for anything violent. So I’m asking you. Who was this girl you were stalking?”

  “Stalking! What do you take me for?” I raised an eyebrow at him, folded my arms across my chest, and waited. He finally went on: “It was him, not the young girl. It was that shitheels I was after.”

  “If you were after some guy because of what he was doing to a young woman, if he was mistreating her, then you’ve played right into the Crown’s motive for Tanya Cudmore’s murder, avenging the death of a young girl who died because of the recklessness of a person close to her.”

  Brennan glowered at me. “I issued a warning to that worthless article of a human being. Then he made a remark that was unacceptable. I put a pounding on him. And if I ever see him again, I’ll pound him twice as hard.”

  Jesus Christ. What had I got myself into with this man? I tried not to lose the last of my patience, or I would never get it back. I asked him calmly: “How did you meet the girl from Mount A?”

  “Never mind how I met her.”

  Walker had told me the young woman denied knowing Burke. What was the story here? And how many more of these wretched stories would surface before this case ground to its conclusion?

  “Brennan. You are not helping me and you are not helping yourself. You are facing life in prison. What else could possibly matter? If you had a girlfriend, or a crush on a young woman, even though you’re a priest, doesn’t that pale beside the murder charges? Let’s get a sense of perspective here.”

  “I asked you,” he demanded, as if he were the one trying to maintain his patience in the face of aggravation, “whether this is going to come out in court.”

  “It’s highly unlikely that the Crown will apply to get this in as part of its case. It is so prejudicial to you that it would probably not be put before the jury.”

  His relief was palpable, but short-lived.

  “However,” I went on, “if we put your character in issue — if, say, you insist on testifying in your own defence — God forbid — and we claim there’s no violence in your past, the Crown might raise this in rebuttal to our case. We just don’t know. But they’re not likely to raise it by themselves.”

  “Then don’t mention it to me again. Ever.”

  I made no attempt to conceal my hostility. “It’s going to be hell on earth trying to defend you, Burke. And if I can’t, remember this: it will be on your head. You’re a real piece of work, Brennan.”

  He got up from the piano bench and came towards me. I tensed. He put his hands on my shoulders, looked straight into my eyes and said: “I’m not a killer. I have never raised my hand to a woman. There are no other violent incidents in my life —”

  “What about that vandal you slammed down on the church floor? You were a quick draw that night.”

  “He jumped me and was trying to choke me. I didn’t know what I was facing. There has been no violence apart from a few scraps I got into in my teens. And none of those were remotely like that business at Mount Allison, or the murders. Just barroom dust-ups and the kind of stupid things that happen when young arseholes have too much to drink. I told you before, Monty.” He released me and gave me a little pat on the arm. “I’m just a choirboy.”

  “If I can come to believe that, and I hope I can, then I’ll have no trouble accepting the truth of the Resurrection.”

  “Hell, I hope not. There’s a whole book full of witnesses to that event, more than there will ever be testifying to my good character. A couple of books written by lawyers and judges too, you may be interested to hear, weighing the evidence of the Resurrection. I’ll lend them to you. After my case is over. I don’t want you distracted right now.”

  “Fine. Make sure I don’t get distracted by any more sordid tales from your past.”

  As I turned to go I saw someone ease the door shut, but I could not tell who it was. It was impossible to say how long he or she had been standing there.

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Oh, baby, don’t you know I’m human,

  have thoughts like any other one.

  Sometimes I find myself alone regretting some foolish thing,

  some little simple thing I’ve done.

  I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.

  Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

  — Benjamin/Marcus/Caldwell, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
/>   I

  Brennan Burke was facing two counts of first-degree murder. The summer went by in a blur of preparation for trial. The Crown chose to proceed with the Tanya Cudmore murder first, most likely because it was so much easier in that case to come up with a motive: Burke’s grief over Janeece’s death and the inference of rage against the stepmother who had taken her from the safety of her bed to a vehicle driven by a man with a blood alcohol reading of. 195. Normally, with more than one murder charge, especially if the defendant looked like a serial killer — I recalled how Burke had reacted to those words as if to a high-voltage shock — the motive for each killing would be similar. But the Crown believed the first murder, of Leeza Rae, was a sex killing. No rape, but the absence of rape is not that unusual in a killing related in some way to sex. In both cases the Crown was operating on the notion that Burke had a violent streak that got out of hand when he was severely provoked. I thought the two-motive theory a weakness in the prosecution’s case but, with separate trials, the prosecutor would not have to address that problem. And the Crown had damning forensic evidence that seemed to link Burke to the murders. There had never been any direct physical contact between Burke and Tanya Cudmore, so the hair evidence was something we could not explain away, another reason the Crown had chosen to proceed with this charge first.

  Our theory — and I wanted to believe in it — was that someone with a grudge against the Church, or against Burke, had committed the murders and planted evidence to put him in the frame. We had employed a private investigator in New York to find out whether anyone had been asking questions or burrowing into files that might contain a photograph or description of the crucifix scar, which had altered the course of his life when he was twenty, and might now alter it forever. The investigator had found nothing.

  My client and I had a difference of opinion, to put it mildly, on a number of issues that fell within my area of expertise, not his. But he was the client, and he was paying the bills. So when he insisted on waiving his right to a preliminary hearing and going straight to trial, all I could do was put a memo in the file indicating that he had taken this decision against my advice. The purpose of a prelim is to put the evidence before a judge to see whether the Crown has a strong enough case to take to trial. Burke wanted nothing to do with the process. “Drag my name through the muck twice instead of once? You must be daft.”

  “You’d be daft to pass up the opportunity to check out their case and see where we can best attack it. None of the evidence will be reported. If we ask for a publication ban, the judge has to grant it.”

  “No. Let’s go to trial, and have done with it.”

  “We don’t just want it over with, we want the right result. Don’t we?”

  “No prelim. Waive it. Now, what’s your next point?”

  So he had his way. Not for the last time either, as we shall see.

  The trial got under way on September 4, 1990, a golden late-summer day. We made our way with foreboding to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, located in a modern concrete building on the Halifax waterfront. Hearing the case was Justice Helen Fineberg, a courteous, fair judge with a razor-sharp mind. Judge Fineberg was a striking woman of forty-five who had chin-length dark hair with a dramatic streak of white along the front. The Crown attorney and I had been called to her chambers to deal with the question of my client’s honorific. Father Burke would not, of course, be dressed in clerical garb. Even if there had been some reason to do this, he refused to “defile” his Roman collar by wearing it to such a “charade.” I knew the prosecutor would not accord him the respect of the title “Father.” Anything to demean and depersonalize him in front of the jury was a legitimate tactic. I of course would be calling him Father every chance I had. Helen listened to the arguments and decided she also would call him Father Burke. No matter which approach she took, she would be helping one side and hurting the other, but if there was the benefit of a doubt, it was going to the accused. The Crown understood this.

  Karl Schenk was in his late fifties and, like a terrier, he never let go. He had short, bristly, greying hair and a moustache. The lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses were flat. I had always suspected he had perfect vision and the glasses were a prop used to glint at defence witnesses on the stand.

  Brennan knew enough about Canada to know we don’t execute prisoners. Or, as Maura had put it when the subject came up, “This isn’t Iran. Or Florida.” The stiffest penalty in the Code was an automatic life sentence for first-degree murder, with no chance of parole for twenty-five years. I had given my client a few lessons in courtroom etiquette. The judges in the province’s Supreme Court were called “My Lord” or “My Lady,” unlike the judges in Provincial Court, who were addressed as “Your Honour.” Counsel would be wearing black gowns with white tabs at the throat. If the Crown prosecutor and I referred to each other as “my friend” we were not cozying up; it was a standard courtesy. The accused was to refrain from reacting to the testimony and remarks made by the prosecutor, no matter how aggravating. Don’t show anger. Don’t be aggressive.

  The accused man walked into the courtroom with his head held high and showed no sign of the tremendous strain he was under. He was impeccably dressed in a charcoal grey suit, snowy white shirt, and dark tie. I was afraid the suit was too expensive and might, when combined with his usual unyielding facial expression, give the jury the impression that he was arrogant and overconfident. He confidently shrugged off my concerns: “I buy half-decent clothes so they’ll last me for years. When they see how often I wear the same things, they’ll catch on. I’m not going out to buy a new outfit for these shenanigans.”

  The wood-panelled rooms in the Law Courts are not overly large, and ours was packed. Reporters, friends and relatives of the victim, spectators, and courthouse regulars sat crammed together in the oak pews. The judge’s bench was raised and situated between the flags of Canada and Nova Scotia. The clerk sat at a table directly below the judge, the two Crown prosecutors at the next table facing the clerk. Working with me was Susan Drummond, small and delicate, one of the sharpest defence lawyers in the city. Sue and I were at the defence table directly behind the Crowns, with our client in the chair between us. Two sheriffs planted themselves behind us, at a discreet distance from the accused, poised to subdue him if necessary. After two days of jury selection, we ended up with seven men and five women of various religious and non-religious backgrounds. They took their places in the jury box to our left. Karl Schenk stood up, and the trial began.

  The Crown took six days to present its case, and it was devastating. The prosecutors had disclosed their evidence to us, as they are required to do. As far as I knew, we had it all. But nothing prepares you for the effect on the jury of the deadpan police witnesses, the forensic experts, the medical examiner. They had the hairs linking Burke to Tanya. They had the cross carved over the victim’s heart. Burke did a creditable job of looking unconcerned but I could read the signs of anger, impatience, and extreme stress as he sat listening to hour upon hour of evidence linking him to the murder of Tanya Cudmore. Much of the Crown’s evidence seemed unassailable, and a failed effort on my part to discredit it would have done us more harm than avoiding it. I did what I could. The investigators had never been able to locate the scene of the murder; they had found the body where it had been dumped. They had not found the murder weapon. They could not trace the raincoat in which the body had been found. Having done my homework on this first, I got the Crown witnesses to testify that a small spot of blood had been found in the back seat of Brennan’s car, and that it did not match Burke or Tanya Cudmore. I already knew it did not match Leeza Rae. I would deal with the blood when our case opened. In the meantime I did my best on cross-examination to point out weaknesses in the Crown’s case. I suggested other ways the hairs could have found their way to Tanya Cudmore. Janeece had been with Father Burke on a number of occasions a
nd Tanya had been at St. Bernadette’s. I made much of the fact that no evidence of foul play, and no traces of the victim, had been found during the meticulous searches the police conducted of Burke’s room and his possessions. It was impossible to tell how I was doing with the jury.

  Brennan was anxious for our case to open. I did not know quite what he expected. I had character witnesses lined up, of course, and alibi witnesses to state that Father Burke was giving a lecture at St. Mary’s University the evening of the murder, then got into his car and drove to the rectory, where he arrived at nine-forty-five and did not, as far as anyone knew, go out again. Father O’Flaherty would give evidence that he, O’Flaherty, had been out late that night. He was a little vague about where, and I would have to resist the temptation to sneak in a question or a remark about that. When he got home to the rectory, at twelve-thirty or so, Brennan’s car was there. A member of Janeece’s family would testify that Father Burke had been thoughtful enough to drive Janeece home once in a while after choir practice. The witness believed Tanya was home on a couple of these occasions, but could not be sure. We could offer nothing stronger than that, and we had come up with no way to explain away the cross etched into the victim’s skin.