by Anne Emery
“The ones who are truly evil, with a staggering sense of entitlement for themselves and not a shred of sympathy for other people — they are rare, but they’re out there. You’ve probably come across them yourself.”
“A few. Not many, thank God.”
“Exactly.”
Delaney was silent for a few seconds, then said: “Of course all this led me to wonder whether I myself was a sociopath. I feel no remorse over these killings. No, let me rephrase that. I do feel remorse — contrition — over my actions, the fact that I took a life, twice, with such brutality. But do I wish that Bullard and Gower were still walking the earth? No, I do not. Yet I don’t feel I am devoid of a conscience. I know I’m not. After all, I did it because of what they did to other people. And, unquestionably, I feel regret over the fact that I am capable of such violent, unlawful acts. Naturally, I live with the fear that I might do it again some day. I stopped myself with Corbett. I hope I’ll always be able to stop myself.
“After the second killing, of Bullard last year, I made a panicked call to Quinton Brayer in Toronto. You may have heard of him. He’s an expert in psychopathology. I rushed up to Toronto after I killed Bullard. I had several sessions with him.
“Monty, I think you know this. I love my family with all my heart. I feel truly guilty about putting my kids’ future in jeopardy; I am distressed about this to the point where I still get the shakes at the thought of ending up in prison, and the family breaking up. And I still worry about poverty and illness and illiteracy here and abroad. I continue to support the charities I always supported. I don’t believe I am a sociopath, but I obviously need intensive psychotherapy.”
It was difficult for me to find the words to respond. I would not walk away from this encounter with a clean conscience. I knew of two murders, I knew my client was a killer, and I knew I was going to keep it to myself. I was not seriously concerned that Beau was going to go out and do it again. Certainly, I had no fear that he would hurt any of his children. His execution of Travis Bullard — as cold-blooded as it was — had been done to avenge a vicious attack on a mother and her child. Still, it was first-degree murder, a premeditated killing. I took some small comfort in the fact that he had got sick in the middle of the episode with Bullard, and had not been able to prolong it. He had not enjoyed his role as executioner. But, no matter what I had learned, I would not be sharing my knowledge with the police. I had no intention of breaking the bonds of solicitor-client confidentiality, any more than Brennan would break the seal of the confessional. Brennan and I could not even discuss between ourselves what we both knew about Beau Delaney.
Finally, I said: “What do you think accounts for this in you, Beau, this . . . ability, we’ll call it, to go through with these killings?”
“We’re all capable of murder, Monty. In my own case, the first few years of my life were pretty rough. I won’t get into it. Things were so good from then on, though, it seemed I wouldn’t have any problems. And yet . . . this happened. If children are in danger, or are neglected or mistreated, or unloved, they have to be rescued early, in infancy. The more time that goes by, the greater the damage, and the greater the risk that the damage can’t be reversed.”
“How much did Peggy know of this?”
“She knew that I could get very, very upset — enraged, I guess I’d have to call it — when I heard of certain kinds of things happening to people, especially to kids, and most especially to our own ten kids. At those times, she knew I had to be by myself and work off the anger. I never gave her any cause to worry that I would take it out on her or the children. Peg didn’t know until the last minute of her life that I had killed someone.”
He stopped speaking, and then resumed in a voice I could barely hear: “And it killed her. In a way, although God knows I didn’t mean to, I did kill her, didn’t I?”
Chapter 21
(Normie)
I was right! I do have the sight, and everybody knows it now. So I thought it would only be fair to tell my psychiatrist that I wouldn’t be needing any more help. Until next time, maybe. Who knows what else I might see? But anyway, I called New York, and Dr. Burke came to the phone.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, Normie. How are you doing, my love?”
“Great! You were right. I’m not crazy and I’m not sick, and I don’t have headaches anymore. All those things I saw were true. Daddy and Father Burke sat me down and told me that what I was seeing was Mr. Delaney, when he was a baby and when he was a little boy. There really was a St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum. That’s the orphanage where Mr. Delaney was kept after he got rescued from the horrible people who were being mean and hurting him. That was his own father and his father’s friends who were making fun of Mr. Delaney and hitting him, way back in the years when those World War Two radio programs were on! He was just a little boy!” My voice had a crack in it, and I realized I was sad all over again, because I thought of Mr. Delaney being beaten up as a little kid, like that boy Cody in the church parking lot, when the man hit him and his mother didn’t care . . . But the reason for my call was to show Dr. Burke that my imagination wasn’t playing tricks on me when I had my visions, so I knew I’d better just tell him that. I didn’t want him to worry that there was something else wrong with me.
“Oh yeah, and my little brother Dominic isn’t going away anywhere. You figured out I was scared about that, right, Doctor?”
“Well, I did think that might be taking a toll on you. I’m glad, for everyone’s sake, that it’s been resolved.”
“And there was another baby, who died in the orphanage, and Mr. Delaney was there when it happened, but he didn’t do it. He was a little kid at the time. And the baby was just sick. So Daddy said I didn’t have to worry if I ever thought Mr. Delaney had done something to a child. And he, Mr. Delaney, phoned and apologized to me for getting upset about the Hells Angels.”
“Hells Angels?”
“Yeah, but that’s all over now.”
“Oh. Good. Well, then, do you feel better about Mr. Delaney?”
“The honest truth?”
“Yes, the honest truth.”
“I saw him the other day. And I saw a storm of darkness coming from him, or felt it. I don’t know how to say it. But . . . I think he did something. Not to Mrs. Delaney or to a little kid. But . . . something.”
(Monty)
Brennan was hearing confessions at St. Bernadette’s on Monday evening. I sat in the church and gazed at the stained-glass windows with the evening sun coming through them, creating beams of light in red and yellow and green and blue and amethyst. Beautiful. When Brennan emerged from the confessional in his clerical black and his purple stole, he sat beside me in the pew.
“What’s on your mind, Montague?”
“We each know something, or some things, about Beau Delaney.”
“If we do, we can’t discuss it, you being his lawyer, me being his confessor.”
“That’s right. By the way, I heard through the legal grapevine today that the Crown is not going to appeal Delaney’s acquittal in Peggy’s death.”
“Ah. Well, that’s that.”
We sat in the silence of the church for a while. Then Brennan said: “Now I’m wondering, Monty . . .”
“Yes?”
“Will you be telling herself what you know?”
“Maura?”
“Are you going to tell her? I can’t reveal anything from a confession. But lawyers don’t get excommunicated for whispering to their wives about something that happened at work.”
“I have no intention of telling her. The fewer people who know this, the better.”
“But . . .”
“It’s only the two of us who know. There’s an old saying, Brennan: Secret de deux, secret de Dieu. Secret de trois, secret de tous.”
“Meaning?”
“A secret between two is
a secret of God. A secret among three is everybody’s secret. Sounds much better in French.”
“Maura’s not exactly the six o’clock news. But, I suppose, why burden her with it? It will be tough enough for us to live with.”
“Exactly.”
“But, are we leaving people in danger, Monty?”
“I honestly don’t think so.”
“Are we in danger ourselves?”
I looked at him. “Do you think we are?”
“I’m thinking no. You?”
“I’m like you, Brennan. I think not. We’re betting our lives on it, though, aren’t we?”
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their kind assistance: Laurel Bauchman, Dr. John Doucet, Joe A. Cameron, Joan Butcher, Rhea McGarva and, as always, PJEC.
All characters and plots in the story are fictional, as are some of the locations. Other places are real. Any liberties taken in the interests of fiction, or any errors committed, are mine alone.
I am grateful for permission to reprint lyrics from the following:
SUZANNE, written by LEONARD COHEN. © 1967 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL by BOB DYLAN Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE by BOB DYLAN Copyright © 1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
Here’s a sneak peek at Anne Emery’s
next Collins-Burke mystery
Prologue
July 3, 1992
Kevin McDonough was early arriving at the pub. Eight-fifteen in the morning. The sooner he got the place scrubbed to a shine, the sooner he could get to rehearsal with his band. Tonight would be their third paid gig, and this time it was at the Tivoli. At this rate, they’d soon be opening for U2! These odd little jobs had been tiding him over till he could earn his living as a musician. He didn’t mind cleaning the floors, washing the windows, and polishing the bar at Christy Burke’s pub twice a week. It was no worse than his other jobs, and there were articles of interest to him inside the place.
Oh, would you look at that. Finn Burke was going to be wild. Finn had just repainted the front wall after the last incident of vandalism, and now some gobshite with a can of paint had hit the pub again. Kevin noticed a glass of whiskey on the ground, tipped against the wall. The fellow must have been lifting a jar while doing his handiwork. More than one maybe, by the looks of the paint job this time round. Or perhaps it was the heavy rain last night that threw him off. The message was “Come all ye to Christy’s, killers own loc . . .” Must have meant “local”; the words ended in a smear. If the message was meant to slag Finn Burke about his Republican activities, Kevin suspected Finn would be more vexed about the look of it than the meaning; no doubt he’d faced worse in his time. Well, Kevin wasn’t about to call Finn at this hour of the morning. Finn would be seeing it with his own eyes soon enough.
Kevin picked up the glass, singing to himself, “There’s whiskey in the jar-o.” It was the rock version by Thin Lizzy that Kevin liked, and he tried to draw the words out the way Phil Lynott did, “I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier.” There was a bit of a mess in the garden beside the front door. “Garden” was too grand a word for it really. A few years back, the city had torn up the pavement to repair some water lines. And before they replaced the pavement, one of the patrons of Christy’s had talked Finn into letting him plant some flowers. The man didn’t keep it up, so now it was just a little square of patchy grass in the midst of all the city concrete. But still, Finn was none too pleased when the rubbish collectors drove their lorry right onto the grass and tore it up with the spinning of their tires. They’d obviously been at it again; a big clump of grass had been gouged out and overturned. Early, though, for refuse collection; they usually didn’t get to Christy’s till at least half-nine. Ah. Sure enough. Kevin checked the bins and they hadn’t been emptied.
He went to work inside. Washed the glasses, polished the bar, filled a bucket with water and suds for the old stone floor. But his mind was on music, not mopping up the pub. He decided to take “Highway to Hell” off the set list and replace it with “Whiskey in the Jar.” Maybe the band should dust off some other old standards. Could they work up a heavy-metal arrangement of “The Rose of Tralee,” he wondered. Ha, wouldn’t his old gran be turning in her grave over that! Just as he was heading to the loo for his last and least favourite chore, he heard a lorry roar up outside. He glanced out the window and saw the rubbish collectors, out in the roadway where they were supposed to be. No worries there.
When his work was done, Kevin grabbed an electric torch and treated himself to a trip downstairs. He loved the once secret tunnel that had been dug beneath Christy Burke’s back in the day when the pub was a hideout for the old IRA. Somebody said Christy had dug the tunnel in 1919, and Michael Collins himself had hidden in it, when Ireland was fighting its War of Independence against the Brits. Nobody was supposed to go in there, but Kevin did. And he knew some of the regulars had made excursions down there as well, when Finn Burke was away. The fellows who drank at Christy’s day after day knew everything there was to know about the pub, including where Finn kept the tunnel key, under one of the floorboards behind the bar. More than once Kevin had tried to prime Finn for information about the old days, hoping he would let his hair down and regale Kevin with some war stories from his time fighting for the Republican cause. Kevin’s da was a bookkeeper and stayed away from politics and controversy; a great father, no question about that, but Kevin thought of him as a man without a history. Not like Finn. But Finn kept his gob shut about his service to the cause. So what could Kevin do but poke around on his own? He inserted the key in the padlock, opened the heavy trap door, and eased himself down into the tunnel. You could only get into the first part of it, which was around twenty feet in length; the rest of it was blocked off, and Kevin didn’t know of any key that would get you in there.
But that was all right. There was lots to see right here. The place was a museum. There were old photos, hand-drawn maps, packets of faded letters, uniforms, caps, and, best of all, guns. Kevin had no desire to point a gun at anybody, let alone fire one, but he was fascinated by the weaponry stashed beneath the pub. A Thompson submachine gun, some rifles, and two big pistols. But there was one weapon Kevin particularly liked, a handgun, wrapped in rags and squirrelled away from everything else behind a couple of loose bricks. He had noticed the bricks out of alignment one morning, and took a peek. He’d handled it a few times since then. The gun was all black and had a star engraved on the butt of it — deadly! He thought it might create a sensation at a party some night. He knew it was loaded, but he’d take the bullets out first, if he ever got up the nerve to “borrow” it. Where was it? Not in its usual spot. Not anywhere. Kevin looked all over, but the gun was gone.
Maybe Finn took it himself. But Kevin doubted that. If Finn needed a weapon, he’d likely have one closer to home, and it would be something a little more up-to-date. Well, Kevin certainly wasn’t going to mention it. He wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place. He was supposed to do his job, cleaning up the pub. And, whatever had become of the gun, he knew this much: there were no dead bodies on the premises to clear away. So his job was done. He locked up and left the building. When he got outside, he kicked the overturned sod back into place. Didn’t look too bad.
Chapter 1
July 11, 1992
Michael
Nobody loved Ireland like Michael O’Flaherty. Well, no, that wasn’t quite the truth. How could he presume to make such a claim over the bodies of those who had been hanged or shot by firing squad in the s
truggle for Irish independence? Or those who had lived in the country all their lives, in good times and in bad, staving off the temptation to emigrate from their native soil? Nobody loved Ireland more than Michael did. He was on fairly safe ground there. He was a student of history, and his story led him straight back to Ireland. A four-cornered Irishman, he had four grandparents who emigrated from the old country to that most Irish of Canadian cities, Saint John, New Brunswick. His mother was fourteen when her parents brought her over on the boat in 1915, and Michael had inherited her soft lilting speech.
He was in the old country yet again. How many times had he been here? He had lost count. Monsignor Michael O’Flaherty cut quite a figure in the tourist industry. The Catholic tourist industry, to be more precise. Every year he shepherded a flock of Canadian pilgrims around the holy sites of Ireland: Knock, Croagh Patrick, Glendalough. And he showed them something of secular Ireland as well — all too secular it was now, in his view, but never mind. He conducted tours of Dublin, Cork, Galway; it varied from year to year. All this in addition to his duties as pastor of St. Bernadette’s Church in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He had moved to Halifax as a young priest, after spending several years in the parishes of Saint John. Why not pack his few belongings in a suitcase and cross the ocean once and for all, making Ireland his home? Well, the truth was, he was attached to Nova Scotia, to his church, and to the people there. He had made friends, especially in the last couple of years. And two of those friends were in Dublin right now. He was on his way to meet them, having seen his latest group of tourists off at the airport for their journey home to Canada.