by Anne Emery
Brennan did not reply. His mind was racing.
“Yeah, you’re there. I didn’t hear you stumbling out of the box, trying to run away from your responsibilities. So let’s get on with it.”
“You’re not a Catholic, Perry Calvin Podgis.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. I was baptized a Catholic by my dear old dad before he left for parts unknown. My mother was a Presbyterian. Then she turned Holy Roller. Took me to a few different Protestant churches when I was small. Then my stepfather came along. He wasn’t much for church. So my mother went along with that, and I didn’t have all the benefits of a religious upbringing. Thank God. If He exists. I have no idea. I don’t pretend to know. Unlike some. But He might exist. So I’m here, to cover my ass just in case. Where were we?”
“What are you really here for, Podgis?”
“I want to get it off my conscience.”
“Is it troubling your conscience at all?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure it is. Why else would I be here?”
“I can’t begin to fathom your motives, so I won’t even try.”
“I want to confess to this mortal sin I’ve committed, before I go to trial and plead my innocence!”
“You feel remorse for it, do you, Podgis?”
“I do, Father.”
“I see. Why don’t you just plead guilty, if you’re so remorseful? Try a bit of plea bargaining. Try for a reduced sentence. Say you were driven mad by this girl’s rejection of your advances. Take your punishment like a man. Gather lots of material for a series of television shows about the prison and its inmates to use when you get out.”
“Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Plead guilty to murder?”
“I’m not the one who killed a person and then proceeded to enjoy all kinds of hateful, perverted conversations about it.”
“I know, I know. I feel bad about it. I just feel compelled to relive the whole thing. Fantasize about it. About her. You understand.”
“No. I don’t.”
“I figure I’ll be too distracted when I’m on trial. I won’t have time to think about her. Maybe that’s why I’m so obsessed now, so keen on bringing up the images. And feeding off them. Gives me something to do when I’m alone in my room. I figure I won’t get lucky too often as an accused murderer, so I mostly avoid the pickup joints.”
Brennan had to stifle the urge to question how often the stunted, ferocious-looking creature would ever get lucky at the best of times; that was hardly an appropriate question for a priest to ask while performing the holy sacraments.
“But maybe I’m wrong, Brennan. Ever hear of Ted Bundy?”
Of course he had heard of the sadistic psychopath who had killed more than thirty young women in the United States. He didn’t reply.
“You’ve heard of him, right? Some of the things he did to those girls! Did kinky things to them, beat their heads in, bit them, strangled them, you name it. And guess what? He had a fan club. Girls sitting in the front row of the courtroom, giggling when he turned and smiled at them. Broads from all over the world writing to him. Making phone calls, trying to reach him. To tell him they loved him. Go figure, eh? Maybe I should plead guilty after all. Build up a following. I did a show about that phenomenon. That and other cases like it. Did you happen to catch it?”
Brennan remained silent, wondering what to do about the appalling man, how to get him to either turn himself in or shut up once and for all. What was he getting out of this sacrilegious confession?
“Brennan, are you listening? I am a man in crisis, and I don’t feel I have your attention.”
“Is that what this is all about, Podgis? Attention? Haven’t you received enough of that already? With more on the way?”
“I don’t like your attitude, Burke. I never did. But you’re my man now, my priest.”
“No. I am not.”
“Yeah, you are. You’re my confessor.”
“So confess and move on.”
“I think you need some spiritual guidance, Father. You do not strike me as a holy and forgiving man of God.”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“Hey! I don’t know one way or the other, so I gotta hedge my bets. Who was the guy, that that was his philosophy about God? Thornhill mentioned him after you walked off the show. Ever hear of him?”
Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s wager. He didn’t bother to enlighten Podgis.
“No reply? That can only mean one thing. You want me to do the talking. Okay. I got lots to talk about, lots to confess. I bet you get tired of the predictable confessions of the little old church lady who promised her dying friend she’d pray for her every day and then forgot, and the friend croaked and it’s the church lady’s fault as if she holds people’s lives in her claw-like hands, or — ”
“Go away.”
“No, I’m not going anywhere until you hear this. It’s a tragedy about Jordyn Snider. Dying at the point of a bloody knife driven into her tender flesh. But I’ve already confessed to that, so I’ll move on. Old news and stale headlines don’t sell. So how about this? Ever hear about Jeanie Ballantine?”
Brennan had heard. A horrific murder. The girl’s body was found but they never caught the killer. The girl’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown and was confined to a psychiatric hospital.
“Father, I asked you a question. Did you ever hear about Jeanie Ballantine?”
“No.”
“Well, let me give you the short version. Eighteen years old, missing for over a month. Happened in Toronto but the family was from here. Oh, the pleas of that family. Please, please just bring our little girl back. We won’t ask any questions. They wouldn’t have wanted her back if they’d known what she looked like at the end of her short life. She had been abducted, subjected to repeated sexual attacks and beatings, and was finally stabbed to death. Police never solved it.”
Why was this vile man taking it upon himself to discuss the fate of the young girl in Toronto?
“If you’re talking to them, Brennan, the police I mean, you might help them out by telling them that the carpet knife they found under Jeanie’s body — which, by the way, was never made public — was left there on purpose. It wasn’t accidentally left behind at the scene by a careless, incompetent murderer. This guy isn’t stupid.
“Don’t go out of your way,” Podgis said, his tone now pleasant and conversational. “I’m just saying if you happen to be talking to the police, you could pass that helpful tip on to them. Oh, wait. Sorry. You can’t talk to them, can you? You can’t reveal anything you hear in this box. I guess it’s just our little secret, Bren.”
Brennan’s heart was pounding, his thoughts running wild. Was Podgis guilty of yet another murder? Had he stalked the country leaving the bodies of young women in his wake? It was unbearable. And the fact that this malevolent individual knew he could slip into the confessional and boast about it in the secure knowledge that everything he said, and every bit of information arising out of it, was protected from disclosure forever, was an outrage in itself. Monty had told Brennan about a similar situation in the law. Prosecutors could not use any information that came out of an illegal search. Fruit of the poison tree, or something like that. Priests were stuck with the same prohibitions.
“If you have one speck of humanity in you, Podgis, if there is any part of you that is the crusader for truth you claim to be, if you committed these crimes, turn yourself in and get help. Go now and talk to — ”
“I’m all talked out for today, Brennan. Oh, will you look at the time? Am I forgiven or what?”
“Podgis, you and I are going to meet outside the bounds of confession. It’s the only way to — ”
“Nope. See ya, Padre.”
With a swiftness Brennan would not have thought possible of the awkward man, he was up and out of the confession box. Brennan had
to fight an almost irresistible urge to get up and go after him, and throttle the life out of him unless he agreed to confess to the police every word he had confessed to Father Burke. But he could hear other people in the church, others waiting their turn for confession. He would put the Podgis situation in the back of his mind. For now. Later he would try to suss out how to bring this abominable man to justice.
Chapter 12
Monty
Monty was in the office Tuesday morning preparing his arguments for the Court of Appeal on a hopeless narcotics-importing case that had been part of his life for two years. He did his best to concentrate on it, but a portion of his mind was replaying the conversation with Sarah Fulton at the library. Ignatius Boyle had gone off in a van with Jordyn Snider and some other people her age. What happened on that outing? Whatever it was, Jordyn had shrunk away from him when he tried to speak to her on Spring Garden Road.
Monty had just returned his attention to the drug case when his secretary buzzed him to say Sergeant Walker was there to see him.
“Good. Send him in.”
The retired cop came in, took a seat, slapped a file down on the desk, and said, “I got one hit.”
“Great, Moody. What did you find?”
“One resident who heard something that night. Same apartment building as Betty Isenor, but on the Hollis Street side, not the front on Morris. I interviewed every man, woman, and child I could find in that area, and nobody else heard a thing.”
“Well, it was late at night, or early in the morning. No real surprise there. But you did find one.”
“Yeah, Richard Campbell. Sixty-two years old, resident of the building for eight years. That morning he was asleep till he heard voices outside. A guy and a girl.”
“Really! There was a female voice. Could the witness make out what the people were saying?”
“He said it sounded like a lovers’ tiff. Those were his words. All he could make out from the guy was ‘please’ and her saying ‘no’ over and over again. Then they were quiet. Our witness didn’t get out of bed, or look at a clock. Just went back to sleep. I don’t know what good this is going to do you, Collins.”
“Well, it tells us there were other people out there. And this guy was not Podgis. Because we know Podgis was coming from the churchyard, not Hollis Street, and he was alone.”
“We also know the victim was lying in the churchyard with a knife wound in her chest by the time Betty Isenor saw Podgis. And if you think you can fudge the timing . . .”
“I know, I know. It had already happened. When Podgis came through, he already had the blood on his shoes.”
“And this Campbell is on the Hollis Street side of the building. So that must have been where the voices were coming from that woke him up. Morris Street would be better. I don’t know how this helps you.”
“I’ll think of a way.”
“Gotta admire that about you, Collins. You don’t give up, even when anybody else would pack it in.”
“Thanks, Moody. Leave your account with my secretary, and we’ll take care of it right away.”
“Will do.”
Walker left, and Monty sat there, saying over and over to himself, as if to a jury: “There was somebody else out there.” He tried to come up with a scenario whereby a guy and a girl arguing on Hollis Street the same morning of the murder could be used in the defence of his client, who was seen running from the Byrne Street crime scene on bloody feet.
†
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal reserved its decision the next day in the narcotics-importing case. There were two men and one woman convicted in the scheme, which involved drug dealers in a chain from Medellín, Colombia, to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Monty represented the woman, who was the mother of a child now in foster care so, regardless of her guilt, he wanted to get her out of prison. There was not much hope of overturning the guilty verdict, but he had given it his best shot. The two co-accused had their own lawyers, as was always the case when criminal conspirators were arrested and began trying to pin the blame on one another. Monty was well acquainted with the other two lawyers and, after they had duly excoriated each other’s clients before the judges, they gathered outside the courtroom for a gab unrelated to the case. One of them, Jamie McVicar, had been at law school with Monty, and they had remained friends.
When it was clear the gathering was about to break up, McVicar looked at Monty and signalled with his eyes to the anteroom between the now-vacant courtroom and the lobby. Monty gave a nearly imperceptible nod and, when their other colleague had gone, Monty and Jamie stepped into the anteroom.
Jamie said, “Between the two of us, nobody else.”
“Sure.”
“There’s something you should know about a client of yours, something I should not be telling you.”
“It won’t go beyond here.” Monty pointed to himself. “No matter what it is.” He steeled himself for whatever it was.
“Podgis was in to see us.” In to Jamie’s firm. “About filing a malicious prosecution suit against the Crown and the police.”
“No! A little premature, isn’t? He can’t sue till it’s over and he’s found to be innocent. An innocent man who was prosecuted with malice.”
“Tell me about it. We told him that it’s not going to happen. I wouldn’t be involved with him personally, even if it did go ahead. Which it won’t. But the main thing I want to tip you off about is: he wants to sue you for negligence, incompetent representation, and not having his best interests in mind.”
“What horseshit! I may well get him off. Doesn’t he think he should wait before seeing whether I turn out to be a bum or I save his ass?”
“I know, Monty. You and I know that. Even if you don’t get him off, you’ll have given him the best defence he could get anywhere. There’s something seriously wrong with the guy. This is some kind of campaign he’s on, presumably for the publicity. He wants to portray himself as a martyr and a champion of truth who’s being hounded and persecuted. And everybody’s in on it, including his own lawyer.”
“Unbelievable. Makes me want to chuck it all and go work at Tim’s making doughnuts for a living.”
“I hear ya. The other thing is . . .”
“There’s more?”
“He intends to start an action against Father Burke too.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Moses, wasn’t it? Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
“Podgis is spouting the Bible now?”
“When it suits him.”
“Well, he’s not entitled to sue a witness for his testimony in court. We all know that.”
“Yeah, even Podgis knows it. He knows court testimony is privileged. So he’s pretending Burke slandered him by whatever he said in the presence of third parties outside the Midtown Tavern that night, and that Podgis’s reputation has been harmed as a result.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. His reputation is so bad already you’d almost say he’s defamation-proof.”
“I know, I know. He’s really got it in for Burke. Walking off the show like that. And, from what I hear about the prelim, Burke’s evidence made Podgis look ridiculous.”
“Burke didn’t make him look ridiculous. Podgis made himself look ridiculous. Burke just described it in court, the encounter between the two of them outside the bar. With a few onlookers present. If he sues, even more people will hear about it, which will sully his reputation even more. All it was, was a bit of badinage in response to Podgis being an arsehole.”
“Wish I’d heard Burke singing ‘Bad to the Bone’ in the guy’s face!”
“You and me both.”
“Seems Podgis doesn’t react well to being shown up. Doesn’t take humiliation in his stride the way the rest of us learn to do.”
“Tell him to grow up and get over it.”
“I suspect he doesn’t get over anything. It all goes back to the schoolyard, Monty. I’m sure we can imagine him as a younger version of himself and how others reacted to him back then.”
“Yeah, it’s all too easy to imagine.”
“Anyway, we obviously told him none of these turkeys will get off the ground. And, knowing that, we could not represent him. But some recent law grad, or someone with lower standards than yours or mine, Monty, will take the case. I just wanted to fill you in, to show you how his mind is working. Obviously, I shouldn’t be telling you, but we put the run to him, and frankly I don’t give a damn whether I shouldn’t be telling you.”
“And you didn’t. We didn’t have this conversation. That being said, thanks, Jamie. I owe you.”
“Nah. Least I could do.”
†
Knowing what might be facing Brennan Burke in the future in the form of a frivolous but annoying lawsuit, Monty felt a twinge of guilt calling upon him to assist with the defence of his client. But he already had plans to see Burke that evening. Dinner at Maura’s place, the family home on Dresden Row. Monty would be off the clock, but he planned to slip in a bit of work if the opportunity arose.
“Scots wha’ hae wi’ Wallace fled,” Burke said when he walked in and spotted Monty’s daughter, Normie. It was a joke he had started with her one evening when she was reciting the Burns poem as part of a project on the Scottish part of her heritage. Burke’s slander, and his over-the-top Scottish brogue, never failed to get a rise out of the little girl.
“Wallace didn’t flee, Father, and neither did the Scots who fought with him. That’s what the poem says: they stayed and fought with him. It was bad in the medieval days. The poem says, ‘with Wallace bled!’”
“Oh, I’m sorry, pet. I misunderstood.”
“That’s okay. You can’t understand Scottish talk because you’re Irish.”
“That must be it. Speaking of Scots, where is your big brother tonight? He’s named after another Scotchman of renown, if I’m not mistaken this time around.”
“You’re right this time. Except it’s not Scotchman. It’s Scotsman. Tom is named after Tommy Douglas, who gave us free doctors’ care, so we don’t become poor if we get sick or have a baby. He came to Canada from Scotland when he was little and went to live out west.”