by Anne Emery
Monty looked up at Jason. “Brandon Toth, I presume? The old boyfriend in prison?”
“Nope.”
“How do you know?” Jason looked down at his hands and focused all his attention on tracing the tarantula tattoo with the index finger of his right hand. “Jason?”
“Toth gave her the heave-ho. She supported him when he went on trial for . . . well, you seem to know about it. She was there for him, in court every day, and then when he got sent to Dorchester, she was writing him and trying to call all the time, and he told her to get lost. Pathetic, eh? It’s not like he could get anybody else in there, but he ditched her anyway.”
Pathetic indeed. Toth would rather have nobody, no letters, than have Jordyn Snider. But Jordyn had apparently rebounded from the loss; she had found love again, with another violent freak.
“Who is it then?”
Jason merely shrugged.
Monty flipped the pages and picked out another of the letters.
Fate brought us together! I wanted to punish that so-called “reporter” who did the TV stories about me. “Reporter = one who reports the facts.” Not one who lies and twists the truth to get her face on TV, or to sell papers to all those nobodies out there who don’t have a clue, little worms who crawl their whole lives in the dirt and don’t see anything better, and they’re right, there won’t be anything better because they are small men who will never stand out from the herd. So they read about the people who do things, the actors of the world. “Actor = one who acts, gets things done.” They read about me. You know what? They say I did these things, that I’m a criminal, that I deserve to be locked up. But that’s what they have to think. Because they don’t want me out there. I walk the earth my own way. And they can’t stand that. So they have to put me down. But they read about me, every word. They love it. Deep down. You know why? Because they want to be me!
It’s the same in here. But don’t worry your little head over the incident. No matter what you hear, I was not involved, except to the point where I did what I had to do to protect myself. The riot was caused by rioters. The mob mentality. That’s why they know it wasn’t me, even though they can’t admit it, and they have to punish everyone. I didn’t touch the guard, not until he came at me. Asshole had it in for me, and this was his big chance with all the craziness going on. It was him or me. Take your pick! But he’s out of the hospital and on the job again, this time with a little more respect for yours truly. So don’t worry. This won’t hold me back. We will be together!! You stay true to me, I know you will, and I’ll keep my nose clean in here even if it means putting up with idiots and not dishing out the punishment they deserve, because you have to play their game to get out. So I’ll play their little games, or that’s what they’ll think I’m doing. But not really because I’ll be playing to win. And I will win. I shall be released and you shall be mine!
“Do you know what institution this guy is in? Whether he’s still inside?”
“Somewhere in the Maritimes because in one of the letters he bugs her to come visit, and says it would only be a few hours on the road there and back. But we dunno any more than that.”
“We?”
“My mother found the letters squirreled away in her stuff.”
“In whose stuff? Your sister’s?”
“Yeah. In her room.”
“Were the tops and bottoms of the letters cut off when your mother found them?”
“Yeah. Mum didn’t cut them off. Jordyn must’a. So’s nobody would see who they were from.”
“Have the police seen them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you think?”
“Well, they could be a very serious lead in the case, so — ”
“My mother thinks the case is solved.”
“And you don’t?”
“I dunno, one way or the other. If this Podgis asshole did it, he deserves to swing for it. Yeah, yeah, I know. We don’t do that in this country. Somebody else could do it though. I’d put the rope around his neck myself. If it was him, and they lock him up for life, I hope they find him hanging from the bars in his cell.”
“But?”
“But if it wasn’t him, he’ll get off. Or even if they nail him anyway at the trial, the guy who really killed her will still be out there, laughing in all our faces. So when I got a hold of these love letters I started to think maybe it’s this guy. This psycho, whoever he is. ’Cause there’s no dates on these letters, so we don’t know when the guy was inside. He may be out by now. And he sure sounded hot to see her. I wanna make sure all the bases are covered.”
“All the more reason why your mother should have taken them to the police.”
“Would you?”
“What? Take them — ”
“I mean, if that was your kid. If Jordyn was your kid, would you want anybody seeing that shit? Looking like some psycho’s bitch? Starting to write to a guy she saw on TV for some really bad crimes? A guy who did all this damage to other people, and she’s all over him? If that was your kid and she was dead, and this would trash the memory of her in front of everybody, would you show the letters around?”
He had a point. But not if it meant obscuring the search for the real killer. Monty said to Jason, “Right. But then, why haven’t you brought the letters to the police yourself? Why give them to me?”
“Bit of history with me and the HPD.”
“You’ve had some involvement with the police.”
“Yeah. Anything coming from me, they’re not going to believe.”
“They’d think you made these up?”
“I dunno.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No way, man. What kind of a sicko do you think I am, writing this fucking shit about my own sister?”
“All right. I understand.” And he did. Monty believed Jason when he said he had not composed them himself.
“You know I’ll have to show them to the police. I will want to show them to the police.”
“I know. You’ll use them to try to get Podgis off. But I don’t give a shit about Podgis one way or the other. If he did it, I hope he gets nailed. Even if he is your client. But if it’s somebody else, I don’t want the guy slipping through the cracks.”
“Okay then, Jason. Thank you for bringing them in. These are the originals, I take it?”
“Yeah, they’re the real thing.”
“Good. Have they been handled much?”
Snider reddened. “Well, yeah, I read them. And I know my mother did.”
“All right. I had to check.”
“Okay, I’m going to take off. I hope you find this scumbag. And if he’s still inside, well, we’ll know it wasn’t him. But if he’s out . . .”
“Exactly. Thank you, Jason.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He got up and left the room.
If he’s out, the case is wide open.
Brennan
Ignatius Boyle was seated on a wooden bench that someone — not the church — had recently placed by the statue of St. Bernadette. It was the evening after the day Brennan wished he could forget, January 25, 1993, the day he had broken into Podgis’s apartment and found the photo of Boyle and the murdered girl. Brennan had no idea what to make of Ignatius Boyle now. He had tried to dismiss the man’s criminal record, the indecency charge, from his mind, and that had been easier to do when he heard the young girl in the confessional, urging him to stand by Boyle because he had rescued her from a life on the streets. But then Brennan had seen photographic evidence of Boyle lying naked with a teenage girl. And it didn’t require any stretch of the imagination to conclude that the girl was Jordyn Snider. Not when the photo was in the possession of the man charged with killing her. Not when the man charged with killing her had boasted, in Brennan’s confessional, about
photographs of the victim.
Beside Boyle on the seat was a scuffed, dog-eared Roman missal with a number of holy cards sticking out at various pages. Boyle was intent on a pack of cigarettes in his hands. A close look revealed that the cigarettes inside were half-smoked butts. He picked one out, looked it over, then replaced it in the pack. Picked up another, examined it, and reconsidered the first one. Brennan wondered whether the butts were his own, or whether he had scooped them up off the street. He tried to reconcile this with the other things he knew about Boyle, that he was a very articulate man, that he had wanted to become a priest, that he had sat in on courses at the university and had fallen in love with the idealist philosophy of Berkeley. Brennan sat down beside him, pulled out his own pack of smokes, and offered one to Boyle. It was as if he had offered him the chalice of the new and eternal covenant.
“Thank you, Father. Bless you!”
“You’re welcome, Ignatius. How are you doing these days?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain.”
“Ignatius, the way you live, without a home . . . I can’t help but ask you. How did things end up this way?”
“Do you know what I did, Father? I ruined every chance God gave me. I hit the bottle when I was a boy, and I just gave in to it.”
“Was drink a problem in your family?”
“It was, Father. Both my parents, God rest them. Gone now, of course. But I make no excuses for myself. I didn’t do my school work after grade nine, really, and then the kinds of jobs I’d get, I’d think I was too good for them. Me with a grade nine education, thinking I was above it all! But I thought I was smart because I always did a lot of reading. So I didn’t take well to the kinds of work I had to do, and that would start me boozing again, and it went on and on. And there’s also . . .”
“Also?”
“Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish knight, born to a noble family. He cut a fine figure in the sixteenth century. But he gave it all up, his dreams of military glory and romance. He gave away his fine clothing and dressed like a poor man. All to serve God and help others. I was not born to nobility, but my parents named me Ignatius. Was I perhaps meant to live a humble life, to be close to those who are suffering? Or am I just a lazy man who drank his life away?” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Brennan didn’t know either. But what he did know was that people who had risen far above Ignatius Boyle in terms of education and opportunity had taken to drink or drugs and had lost it all, ending up on the skids just as Ignatius had done.
This was getting them nowhere, however, so Brennan homed in on the problem at hand.
“That was an awful thump on the head you had.”
“Oh, it was, yes, it was.” Ignatius rubbed the back of his head. “But God was with me. He decided my time hasn’t come yet, so here I am.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re out and about again. What do you remember about that night, Ignatius? The night you hurt your head.”
He gave Brennan a wary look. “I don’t remember a thing.”
“You don’t remember how you fell?”
“Nope.”
“Any idea whether you were alone before you were injured?”
“Oh, yes, alone for sure.”
“So how long before your fall can you remember, if you know what I mean? You know you were alone. What part of that night are you remembering?”
Boyle made himself busy with his cigarette. Held it sideways in front of his face, examined the burning tip as if he had never seen one before.
“Ignatius?”
“I was just walking along Morris Street by myself.”
“And then?”
“And then I don’t remember.”
“What about before that? What were you doing earlier?”
He gave an elaborate shrug. “Nothing stands out for me about that night.”
“Were you with anyone?”
“Nobody.”
“Did you come here to the statue?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you often come here.”
“Yes.”
“It would be unusual for someone to fall backwards, wouldn’t you think? Unless a person had a stroke or a heart attack or something like that. But I believe they gave you a clean bill of health when they released you from the hospital, didn’t they? No heart problems or anything?”
“Liver.”
“What’s that?”
“The liver is one of our most vital organs. Its functions include detoxification and — ”
“Oh, I know, sorry. I just meant what did you mean about your liver?”
“They told me to stay off the booze. But I’m already off it. Haven’t had a drink since . . .” He swallowed and looked away, peering into the distance as if something had attracted his attention. But there was nothing.
“Since?”
“Eh?”
“You haven’t had a drink since when?”
“Oh, a few years ago. I’m not sure. But I’m off the stuff.”
“That’s good.”
“Do you drink, Father?”
“I do. More than I should.”
“It’s not good for you.”
“No, you’re right. I should cut down on it.”
Then he thought of the other unanswered question about Ignatius Boyle. Time to work in a little bit of Catholic detective work. “Ignatius, were you a French speaker at any time in your life before your injury?”
Boyle shook his head. “We weren’t French. We were Irish. My grandparents came over from there.”
“Where do you think your sudden ability to speak French came from? We’re told it was excellent French, and there was a very sophisticated theological aspect to your conversation.”
“I have no idea, Father. I couldn’t believe it when people talked about it afterwards. I can tell you this much, though. I’m no saint! Not even close! If God gave me the gift of a new language for a while, I give thanks to Him for that and every other gift He has bestowed on me throughout my life.”
Brennan felt a rush of love for the man, thanking God for blessings when in fact he had endured a life of deprivation and hardship. It struck Brennan that there was perhaps something holy about him after all.
“Ignatius, did you always live with your family?”
“Always did. I was always with my mother and my big sister, aside from a time when I was in the hospital when I was really little. I was sick but I don’t remember anything about it. They say if you drink too much, your memory goes. It kills off your brain cells.”
“You’re right. We would all do well to bear that in mind. And you say you’re off the stuff now.”
“I’ll never put a drop to my lips again.”
“Good for you. How did you come to that decision?”
Boyle’s eyes shifted away. “Nothing. It was just . . . I decided.”
He must have reached a crisis point, Brennan thought. Well, that’s what they say. You have to reach rock bottom before you can truly motivate yourself.
“But you were asking about my family,” Boyle said. “My mother kept us with her. It wasn’t easy for her; she had a hard life. I don’t know how she managed. She’s long gone now, but I keep her in my prayers every day.” He lifted the prayer book and showed it to Brennan.
“That’s good, Ignatius. I think you are a very kind and very devout man.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Now I want to get back to the night of September twenty-third.”
“There’s nothing I can tell you!”
“Did someone push you down that night, Ignatius?”
“I don’t know!”
“Is there someone you don’t get along with? You were in a fight maybe?”
“Father, I told you I don’t remember!”
>
“There was blood on you, but you weren’t cut. Where do you think it came from?”
“I didn’t do anything!” His voice rose in panic.
“You know there was a young girl murdered that night.” The man stared at Brennan, his eyes huge. “Do you know anything about her death, Ignatius?”
“No! How could I? What would I know about it?”
Brennan stayed quiet for a minute or so. Boyle tamped out his cigarette, and Brennan gave him another. He lit it for him, let him enjoy the first drag, and then asked, “Did you know Jordyn Snider?”
“No!” Again the large-eyed stare. He kept his eyes on Brennan’s without a blink. “Why would I know her, a young girl like that? Why are you saying these things, Father?”
“Ignatius, I saw a photograph.” Boyle reacted as if he had been kicked in the gut. “There was a young girl in it, and a man — ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Boyle screamed, and launched himself off the bench. Brennan was surprised at how fast the man could run. Ignatius stumbled over something on the ground and turned back. “You were so nice to me and now you’re talking like this! You must be crazy, a priest saying this stuff! You should get some professional help!”
Brennan sagged backwards with his head on the back of the bench and gazed at the stars. If he had been hoping he was wrong in identifying Ignatius Boyle as the man in the Polaroid photo, all hope had just died. The photo wasn’t news to Boyle. And another thing struck Brennan about the encounter: when he had asked Boyle what he knew about the young girl’s death, Boyle said he didn’t know anything about it. He did not say what any other man, woman, or child in the city of Halifax would have said, that the talk show host Pike Podgis had killed her.