by Anne Emery
“My Lady,” Schenk replied, “the accused has testified that this crucifix incident changed his life, made him mend his ways. The Crown has the right to cross-examine him on that issue.”
I had to sit and watch while the most personal and confidential aspects of my client’s life — so confidential that, once again, Burke had not confided them to me — were exposed to the merciless light of the courtroom.
“Mr. Burke. I’ll repeat the question. Do you have any children?”
“I do not have any children, Mr. Schenk.” His voice was caustic.
“I’m not asking whether you are raising a child as a single dad in the rectory, Mr. Burke. Let me be more precise. Have you ever fathered a child?”
Burke began massaging his temples with his left hand. He looked at Schenk with cold fury in his eyes. “Yes. Long ago.” Again, the scribbling and murmuring behind me.
“What year was your child born, Mr. Burke?” Schenk looked blandly at the witness.
Burke waited a long moment. “It was 1963.”
“So, you entered the seminary in i962 and you had a child born in i963?”
“Question asked and answered, My Lady,” I snapped, barely rising from my seat. Surely this torment would end.
“Where was the child born?”
“New York.”
“What happened to the child?”
“The baby was put up for adoption.”
I heard a clamour behind me, followed by rapid footsteps and the soft thud of the courtroom door closing.
“The pregnancy, the birth, the adoption process. Very stressful, traumatic events. For the mother. Were you a pillar of strength for her during this difficult time in her life?”
No response.
“Let the record show there was no response from the witness. I’ll try again, Mr. Burke. Did you send her flowers? A card?”
Burke did not reply. Just stared venomously at his tormentor as the flaying went on. I thought seriously of checking my client into a hospital for observation. We both might require medication if this didn’t end soon.
“Do you ever wonder about your child, Mr. Burke?”
I saw a look of intense pain flash across the face of my client, then it was quickly masked. “Wherever my child is now, Mr. Schenk, he or she is in my prayers every day of my life.” Schenk had made his point and knew it was time to move on lest Burke gain in sympathy what he had lost in credibility. We could infer, from the feelings he could not hide, that Burke was the kind of man who cared about children. And mourned their loss. Would he strike out in revenge at the loss of a child he treasured? Would his feelings be all the stronger because he had already lost a child of his own?
It ended with a whimper, not a bang. The big guns had been fired; all that was left was to carry the wounded from the field.
“I told you so” should be engraved on the last page of every trial transcript. I told you, I implored you, I pleaded with you to stay off the witness stand. But you knew better.
I left the court with Burke as I always did, but the media onslaught was especially hard to bear that day. The questions were pointed and painful, and the hunted man was pale and shaky after his ordeal. I refused all comment. Burke, following the script at last, exercised his right to remain silent. When I had him alone, anger blotted out all pity, and I launched into a lacerating attack on him as a client. He did not speak to me, but waved me off, got into his car, and peeled away.
That night I tried to reach Burke on the phone but he wasn’t in. So I called Sandra Worthington in New York.
“Monty! I don’t like the sound of your voice. And I don’t like what I’m hearing about Brennan. How can there be so much evidence against him, if he didn’t do it? I can’t see him as a killer, I really can’t. Anything else maybe, but not that.”
“It’s been sheer unmitigated hell from day one, Sandra, what can I tell you? And between you and me, he hasn’t made it any easier on himself, or his defence team. One thing he seems to share with the least sophisticated of my clients: they all seem to think they’re protecting themselves by keeping information from their own lawyer. How wrong they are.”
“So, what’s happened now to account for this phone call?”
“The Crown brought out on cross the fact that Brennan had fathered a child born in 1963. First I heard of it. I thought he was going to have a stroke right there on the stand.”
There was a long silence, then: “I wouldn’t have thought that would faze him in the least. He didn’t care then, he wouldn’t care now. But of course, it would make him look bad in front of the jury. So that would account for his alarm.”
“I feel the same way you do about him right now, Sandra. But I have to tell you, I think it was more than that. It was obvious he found the whole subject very painful.”
“If you say so.”
“I’m sorry, Sandra. But I have to know what’s going on. He didn’t even speak to me after he limped from the stand.”
“He didn’t speak to you?”
“Nope.”
She sighed. “Monty, this is what I was planning to tell you when I called you over here for that second visit. Then, by the time you arrived, I had second thoughts. I’ve always kept it private. I didn’t tell the police either, in case you’re wondering. They came to see me but I told them very, very little. I don’t know where they got the information. The first time I saw you and we spoke about his ordination, I almost let it slip by saying how gratifying it would have been to bring his three-year-old child to the ordination. But of course the child was long gone by then. I gave the baby up for adoption, after all I went through to give birth. I was very ill. I didn’t tell Brennan about the pregnancy until nearly the end of my term. And then he spent half the conversation asking why I hadn’t told him as soon as I found out. I hung up on him. He didn’t come near me after that phone call. I had the baby in Connecticut. When there’s a scandal in the family — and in those days it was a scandal — it’s handy to have relatives who live out of state. My grandparents, bless their hearts. Anyway I had an extended stay in hospital, with a condition called eclampsia. I was out of it. That really was the only good thing — that I hardly have any memory of it all. It took me weeks to get my health back.” Her voice was laced with remembered pain and bitterness. “Not a word from Mr. Burke. He had gone on to a higher plane of existence.”
II
I was torn between animosity and compassion when I saw my embattled client the next morning. He looked gaunt and desolate after being savaged by the prosecutor. None of it would have happened of course, if Burke had kept me informed. If he had, I would have taken a flame-thrower to the courtroom before I’d have let him take the stand. Now he was slumped in a seat in our regular room. He didn’t meet my eyes.
I sat down without speaking and started going over my final argument. I would speak first, which is the procedure when the defence calls evidence; then the Crown would sum up. I had the right of rebuttal. The summations would likely take half the day, followed by the judge’s charge to the jury. If the jury began deliberations that afternoon and failed to reach a verdict, they would be sequestered in a hotel overnight.
Silence from Burke should have been a blessing, but it had come too late. I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Didn’t it occur to you that I might want to speak to you last night, after the catastrophe you brought down on yourself in this building yesterday? I tried to reach you. Where the fuck did you go?”
I expected a belligerent reply but what I got was worse. He looked at me in silence and in his eyes I saw a depth of sadness and despair I could not have imagined in him. I asked him if he wanted an adjournment so I could take him to a doctor. He shook his head and looked at the wall. I che
cked my watch. “It’s time to go, Brennan.” He stood, adjusted his clothes and made for the door. We met Susan on our way to the courtroom. She and Brennan walked ahead of me. I had never realized how tiny Susan was until that moment. Her head only came up to his shoulder.
Susan noticed the state our man was in and looked up at him with concern. “Brennan! Dear. Don’t give up on us now.”
“As long as you two don’t give up on me,” he said, in a voice I hardly recognized.
It was my turn to be shaken. “Brennan. We’re not going to give you up.”
“Never,” Sue assured him.
We had to get to court. I took a deep breath as we reached the entrance. “All right. Let’s get our game faces on. Time to go.” Burke managed to assume his usual self-assured persona and he strode into the courtroom as he always did.
There was a heightened sense of expectancy in the jurors’ demeanour as they filed in. The courtroom was packed, and the press were in place with sharpened pencils. I leaned over to Burke and told him — again — not to react to anything Karl Schenk said.
I spoke for just over an hour. I emphasized the barber’s testimony and portrayed the hair evidence as a fatal flaw in the Crown’s case. I made the point that the Crown had failed to show any connection between Burke and the initials IBR carved above the victim’s right breast. The crucifix scar, I argued, was a sign of Father Burke’s innocence, not guilt. For him to carve his own cross into the body would have been tantamount to a confession. I referred to Father Eugene Cormier’s testimony that during the break-in at the archdiocesan office, the only thing the culprit had done was look through personnel files. Somebody was obviously after intimate knowledge relating to priests. I mentioned the vandal who had been desecrating Catholic churches. I reminded the jury that Father Burke, like all of us, was a human being with weaknesses and flaws. But his history was one of devotion to the Church, to God and His people. He had no criminal record or history of violence. The jurors had seen Father Burke here day after day. They knew in their hearts he was not a killer. I did what I could in a bad situation. When I was done I reached over and gave Burke’s shoulder a little squeeze. He nodded and gave me a slight smile.
Karl Schenk got to his feet and the defence team collectively braced itself.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is nobody else in the frame for this killing. Brennan Burke’s hair was found on the body, and there is no evidence that Mr. Burke had had any physical contact, at all, with Tanya Cudmore before the murder. The defence has made much of a discrepancy in the length of the hairs found on the body and the length they claim Mr. Burke’s hair was at the time. Well, I’m sure all of us could pull hairs from different parts of our heads and find them different lengths and shapes, no matter when we had our last trim. Who knows what he was wearing when he killed Ms. Cudmore? Old clothes perhaps, something he had last pulled over his head when his hair was a different length. The fact remains: Mr. Burke’s hair was found on the body. Enough said on that subject.
“We do not know what the letters IBR stand for. Only the killer knows that. But we do know something about the crucifix scar. We have photographic evidence of it on Mr. Burke’s chest. We have no evidence of anyone local who may have seen Mr. Burke undressed from the waist up in the years after the fire. The theory of the defence, apparently, is that somebody who knew about the scar may have held a grudge against Mr. Burke, and then killed, not him, but an innocent third party. And tried to frame Mr. Burke. We are left to wonder who this person might be. The mark is there on Tanya Cudmore’s body; the only evidence we have tells us it must have come from the accused.
“In addition to the physical evidence, we have motive. It was well known that Mr. Burke was in mourning for little Janeece Tuck. And the next thing we know, the woman whose carelessness led to the child’s death is murdered. We heard Mr. Burke testify on cross-examination about the fire that occurred during a party when he was a young man, and the death of Mr. Burke’s friend in that fire. The accused admitted that Janeece’s death struck a painfully familiar chord with him. Was the crucifix on Tanya Cudmore’s body a mark of Mr. Burke’s own feelings of guilt? We’ll never know.
“The defence has conjured up a phantom suspect, a vandal with a beef against the Roman Catholic Church, a shadowy figure with no name who just may have gone out and murdered, not a Church official or a priest, but a complete stranger, the stepmother of a little girl who died in a tragic accident. Where did this no-name suspect get the hair and the perfect replica of the priest’s cruciform scar? I won’t waste any more of the court’s time on this except to say that the unfortunate young man, whoever he is, had already chosen his method of acting out against the Church. His weapon was a spray can.
“The evidence has shown what kind of a man Mr. Burke is: a man with serious flaws in his character; a man with a past he tries to hide; a man who makes vows and breaks them whenever he feels like it; an impulsive and irresponsible man who lies about his behaviour.”
Schenk went on for another two hours. Several times I had to put a cautionary hand on my client to keep him from showing anger in front of the jurors. Schenk ended by reminding the jury that all the elements of the crime pointed to Burke as the killer: motive, opportunity, means, forensics, signature, character. All of it fit Mr. Burke, and nobody else.
We broke for lunch. Burke sat, catatonic, in front of his untouched sandwich. “We all knew what he was going to say,” I tried. “We just didn’t know what you were going to say.” But my words fell on deaf ears. I heard a soft knock at the door. I got up and opened it a crack. I mouthed the word “Maura” across to Burke and he made a “come in” motion with his hand.
“Professor MacNeil. What’s the state of the law on fleeing to Paraguay without a passport the night before the verdict? Got a full tank of gas?” Burke asked. She sat down and took his hand in hers. For once, she was at a loss for words. He spoke again: “Do you think my reputation will be salvaged if I minister to prison inmates till I’m, say, seventy-five years old?” He closed his eyes and massaged the sides of his head. Nobody spoke. Then the break was over.
Justice Fineberg’s charge to the jury took just over an hour and a half. And it was a good one, even-handed and correct in the law. The jury retired to begin deliberations at four o’clock. Not surprisingly, they had not reached a verdict by six o’clock, so they were bundled off to a nearby hotel where they would be sequestered. They would return to the courthouse for regular working hours, then go back to their hotel at night. Brennan’s fate was in their hands, and all we could do was wait.
III
Brennan, Maura, and I piled into my car, and put behind us the garish lights of the cameras.
“Has either of you got your pilot’s licence?” Brennan asked. “No? What’s the good of you then?” He continued, with an obvious effort at normalcy: “I should stop by the choir school. Then let’s eat. And drink.”
“My place,” Maura said.
I pulled up to the school, and we all went inside. “I’d better straighten out some choir stuff. Get things together.” He strode ahead. Maura and I exchanged glances and followed. As we approached the director’s office, we heard voices. Brennan didn’t turn his head, but kept going towards the choir rooms. I halted and put a restraining hand on Maura’s arm just before we got to the director’s door. Someone was sobbing inconsolably within. I thought I heard words, something about a baby, but could not make out more than that. I peeked inside. Sister Marguerite Dunne was sitting on a chair beside a distraught Eileen Darragh. They turned their heads towards us. Eileen’s face was puffy and streaked with tears.
Sister Dunne, all business, was the first to speak: “Eileen is worried about Father Burke. Did I see him strut by here?”
“Uh, yes. We just came from court. The jury h
as retired.”
The weeping resumed. Eileen reached out blindly and Sister Dunne, dry-eyed and matter-of-fact, put a tissue in her hand.
“We’re going to do our best for him, Eileen,” I said. “I’m hoping the jury sees him the way you do. If they don’t, we’ll file an appeal immediately and we’ll start all over again. We’ll make sure nobody has any doubts next time.”
She broke down, and Marguerite looked at us as if to say: “These young girls, what can you do?” She patted Eileen on the arm and stepped outside, closing the door behind her.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
“I think the jurors like him. I just hope they have enough confidence in that feeling to hold the line against the forensics. There has to be an explanation, but we haven’t been able to come up with it. Eileen’s having a rough time with it, eh?”
Sister Dunne responded: “None of us understands the significance of the fact that he was not wearing a crucifix around his neck when that image was burned into him. Eileen was quite taken with that aspect of the story. There’s even more to him than she had thought. Which, I suspect, was quite a bit in the first place. Then we heard about Brennan fathering a child when he was younger. I can’t say I was all that surprised.” She should be his lawyer, I said to myself. “I’ve never thought of Brennan as a tender virgin. Far from it. But that revelation seems to have set Eileen off. A child in his life, however briefly, and an old girlfriend with whom he was intimate. She’s dying to find out more about it, but at the same time she can’t bear to know. I’m not sure whether any of his other escapades sank in. We are all wildly unrealistic about the people we’re infatuated with. I’m sure I’d be the same way.”
I doubted that, but kept it to myself.
“I know I was,” Maura volunteered, and gave me a look. “We haven’t been introduced,” she said to Sister Dunne. “And if we waited for Montague to do the introductions, we’d be here till the real killer came bounding in asking ‘What time’s confession?’ I’m Maura MacNeil, formerly married to —” she jerked her head in my direction.