by Anne Emery
“No, no, that . . .” He just didn’t know what to say to her.
“You have something like that yourself, don’t you, Brennan, I mean Father?” She tended to call him by his first name at home and his title at school. “You see things.”
“I do. Sometimes.” With him, it was the occasional ecstatic moment during Mass or during the performance of a particularly ethereal piece of music. He felt at those times that he was in unmediated communion — he knew he was — with the Divine. And there were a few instances when he had seen into the soul of a person, had seen or felt pure evil behind the eyes of a fellow human being. But the kind of visions Normie sometimes had, seeing beneath the surface of an event, or even foretelling the future, well, he had never considered himself gifted, or cursed, in that way.
“So, you know it’s real,” she said to him now. “And I didn’t have any vision at all, any idea, of what was going to happen to you over in Ireland. And I should have. So, I was too selfish to notice what was happening to you. I could have saved you! But I didn’t.”
“Normie, my love, I got into trouble because I did something stupid. Nothing violent. I didn’t hurt anybody. But something dumb that I shouldn’t have done. I did it to save a member of my family over there. And then I ended up in a kangaroo court, and —” Her tear-stained eyes grew wide at that. “That’s just an expression meaning a bad court, one that doesn’t do justice.”
“So, the judge was bad!”
“The judge wasn’t the greatest, for sure, but the whole criminal justice system over there was bad. Well, your dad could explain that.”
“I don’t dare ask him. Mummy and him fight about it. Argue about it, I mean.”
“Ah.” He had no idea what she was getting at there. Perhaps best not to know.
“Why do you think I didn’t see what was in the future for you then?”
“We don’t know how these things work. They are mysterious forces. Nobody can say why they ‘work’ sometimes and not at others. I had no foreknowledge of it myself! You were a hundred miles away from me, living in Dublin, remember. But no matter what, you have to understand that there was no failure by yourself! Do you believe me, Normie?”
“I have to! God speaks to you and listens to you!”
“Ah, I only wish that was true, darlin’. Most of what comes out of my mouth is not what God would say or ever want to hear.”
Chapter VI
Monty
A week and a day after Meika Keller’s body was found, the police and the Crown prosecutor decided that there was sufficient evidence to have Lieutenant-Colonel Alban MacNair arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Monty was with MacNair for the arraignment in Halifax Provincial Court on Spring Garden Road, and he managed to schedule a bail hearing in the province’s Supreme Court for the following day; if that went well, MacNair might have to spend only one night in a cell. He was apoplectic as he looked ahead to that night, which Monty could well understand. He did his best to calm his client’s fears, reassured him that there was a fairly good chance that he would be granted bail, and then he left to confer with the Crown attorney about whatever new information he had to justify the arrest.
The Crown is obligated to provide the defence with its evidence and the identity of its witnesses in a criminal case, and there was no delay in receiving the information that had been gathered so far. The Crown prosecutor was Bill MacEwen, a lawyer Monty had known for years, and they had been adversaries in court on many a case. But beyond the walls of the courtroom, they had an easygoing relationship. Now, in the Crown’s office in the Spring Garden Road courthouse, MacEwen provided Monty with a “can say” statement given by the young fellow and his girlfriend who had witnessed the shouting match between MacNair and the victim on the night of February 6. So much for MacNair’s insistence that he had quickly given up on Meika, returned to his car, and driven away. The witness, Carl Dickson, had left the spot where MacNair was parked, and when Dickson drove by again a few minutes later, MacNair’s car was still there, sitting empty.
“And there’s more,” Bill MacEwen told Monty. “Blood on MacNair’s right-hand glove.” A shouting match, and now blood. Things weren’t looking good for the lieutenant-colonel. “The outside of the glove, Monty, before you ask. It’s in the lab for analysis. And now we come to the phone calls.”
Ask not for whom the bell . . . All Monty said was “Yes?”
“Police looked at the victim’s phone records, at home and at the university. Found nine calls to her office at Saint Mary’s from MacNair’s number at work. The calls were made over the course of two days just prior to her death, that is the fifth and sixth of February.”
Why in the hell, Monty wondered, would the man make repeated calls to her from his own office number? Whatever had him agitated, it would strengthen the hand of the prosecutor in proceeding with a first-degree murder charge, on the assumption that MacNair was worked up about Meika Keller and his actions were premeditated. Monty would make the opposite argument: whatever MacNair wanted to reach her for, he obviously had no intention of harming her, or he would not have taken the risk of having the phone records discovered. Monty would make the argument, but would anyone believe it? Could Monty make a convincing show of believing it himself?
Brennan
Blond hair, blue staring eyes: this is what Brennan saw as he tried to shut his mind off and sink into a dreamless sleep. Meika Keller’s face looking up at him, expressionless, from her watery grave. That’s the way it had been for Brennan the two nights following her funeral, so he found the days exhausting.
But he had a welcome distraction Thursday evening. He was sitting in his room with a glass of whiskey in his right hand and the telephone receiver in his left, talking to his brother Terry, who was back home in New York City. After a bit of catching up on family news, though, Brennan got on to the subject of the woman who, as he saw it, died on his watch.
“I’m asking myself whether whatever happened to Meika Keller had its genesis in Europe.”
“Unlikely, wouldn’t you say? Didn’t you tell me she left Germany in the mid-1970s?”
“She did. But I remember something a little odd. It was when I first met her, when she started coming to Saint Bernadette’s. This would have been three years ago, maybe four. You remember All Souls’ Day, good Catholic lad that you are.”
“How could I forget? We used to be up all hours on Halloween night stuffing ourselves with candy till we made ourselves sick, then had to get up in the morning and go to Mass because it was a holy day of obligation.”
“Close but no licorice cigar and no pillowcase full of treats for you. That’s All Saints’ Day you’re thinking of. November first. That’s why the night before is All Hallows Eve. So. All Souls is the next day, November second. Some call it the Day of the Dead.”
“You have no one to blame but yourself, Father, for being so lax with your little brothers, not teaching them how to find God in this world of terror and turbulence.”
“I’ll try to make it up to you. And, in return, you’ll teach me how to find the landing gear in the workings of a seven-forty-seven.”
“Somehow I suspect that would result in the pair of us finding God at the very same instant in time.”
“You’re probably right. Anyway, back to my point here. Many of the churches, including mine, have a Book of the Names of the Dead. People can inscribe the names of family members or others who have died, and we pray for them on November second and throughout the month.”
“Yes, I’ve seen those.”
“Well, when Meika was new to the church, I saw her writing a name in after Mass. And I decided to write in the name of a young fella I knew from my prison ministry here.” It hit Brennan yet again that he had been ministering to inmates in the local prison for years, and yet, when he himself was incarcerated in Belfast, it had taken him an unconscionable length of time before h
e had risen to the occasion and started ministering to his fellow prisoners. They had been more helpful to him than he had been to them. Another failure on his conscience. He returned to his conversation with Terry. “The lad I’m talking about, in the correctional centre here, was not a bad fella at all, just the product of a very difficult life like so many of the others there. He was stabbed to death by another inmate. So I went over to the book to write in his name. And a few names above it was the name Meika had inscribed. I can’t recall the name now, but I remember it was German, and I made a comment to her at the time. There must have been something about it that struck me enough to mention it. Maybe something unusual, can’t remember now. I greeted her and said whatever I said about the name. And thinking back on it now, it seemed she was a bit unsettled.”
“But you’re looking back on it knowing what happened to her last week. So that may be colouring your impression of it.”
“Sure, I know, but then I asked her where in Germany she had lived, and she said Leipzig. Then she appeared sort of flustered and said, ‘But I moved around a lot. I left Germany long ago.’ Something like that. I knew she had escaped from East Berlin, but I didn’t mention it. At the time of this encounter with her, there was a delegation from our archdiocese making arrangements to go over to Germany and to Poland early the following year. Some German and Polish people living here and hoping to establish contact with people there, especially those who had been behind the Iron Curtain, as they say. Invitations would be given out for a return visit, Germans and Poles coming to stay in Halifax. So, I told her that. Thought she might be interested, but no.”
“That’s a stretch, I’d say, Bren. You can’t necessarily draw any conclusions from that.”
“I know, but stranger things have happened. Thinner threads than that have bound events together.”
“I suppose so.”
“Wish I could bring back that name.” He polished off his whiskey and then said, “I can.”
“You can what?”
“Find the name. We still have the old books. They’re all in the sacristy. I’ll dig it out when I get back.”
“Back from where? The Midtown?”
Brennan had been avoiding the old drinking spot that he had so frequently attended with Monty Collins. He wondered if the tavern’s accounts had taken a hit. To Terry, all he said was “O’Carroll’s. I’m meeting a couple of the lads there.”
“Well, don’t be skulling pints till the wee hours without me there as your guardian angel.”
“Your concern is noted.”
“You don’t know from concern!” his brother said then, in a strong outer-boroughs New York accent. “Your family is worried sick! Call your mother! Your brother Patrick is considering taking a month’s leave to go up there and tend to you. And that man is a doctor!”
“The blessings of God on you, Terrence.” There was nothing jocular in his tone of voice. He knew that his family, Terry included, were worried about him. Well, he’d make sure he didn’t get sozzled tonight.
Monty
Following a bail hearing in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court on Friday morning, Lieutenant-Colonel Alban MacNair was released on a $100,000 surety with conditions, including staying within the jurisdiction and having no firearms in his possession except if required as part of his military duties. This was not a feat of exceptional court work on Monty’s part; it was not out of the ordinary for a murder suspect to be released pending his trial. Now Monty wanted to test the waters, so to speak, with respect to the strength or weakness of his case. One thing he did not look forward to was hauling Father Brennan Burke into his office for a grilling about the incident Detective Sergeant Van den Brink had mentioned; the day before she died, the victim had asked Burke for a tête-à-tête and he had failed to show up. Things were already tense between Monty and Brennan following the fiasco in Ireland; he could imagine Brennan’s frame of mind if Monty started asking about the night Meika Keller died, with the obvious intent of making the case for suicide. But Monty would put that off for a bit. First, he wanted to talk to somebody else who knew Meika, and he knew just who to ask. Monty had played hockey in his university days with a guy who now taught chemistry at Saint Mary’s. They saw each other once in a while, though it had been a year or more since they’d been able to sit down and have a chat. He called the department at the university and left a message for Professor Don Phillips.
Monty heard from the prof an hour later and explained the purpose of his call. Don said he could make time for lunch, so the two of them agreed to enjoy a beer and a meal at the Lower Deck before heading back to work. A cold rain was falling, and a brisk wind was lashing water up over the wharves when Monty reached the waterfront, but the atmosphere inside the bar was warm and the beer was golden as he sat down to wait for his old linemate. When Don arrived, they placed their orders, then reminisced about their hockey and drinking days, talked about the Colorado Avalanche and the Florida Panthers, and expressed amazement at how far hockey had travelled from its great white northern home. And they caught up on their recent family events and work lives, before Monty got to the primary goal of the get-together.
“As I told you, Don, I’m representing the man accused of killing Meika Keller.”
“I’ll be grown up about it and say I know you have a job to do, but Jesus.”
“Some people are much less gracious about the job I do.”
“And I know he’s innocent until — unless — proven guilty.”
“That’s right. It’s my job to make the Crown do its job and prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or my guy gets acquitted. And I have to say there’s lots of reasonable doubt here.”
“If you say so.”
“What I’d like to find out, if you’ll bear with me, is what she was like.”
“She had a brilliant, clear, logical mind, and a facility for getting the most difficult concepts across to her students. Her specialty was particle physics, the study of the fundamental particles of matter. She was always willing to give the students extra time.”
“How did she get along with people? The students? Other faculty members?”
“We’re not playing ‘blame the victim’ here, are we, Monty?”
“No, just trying to get a handle on what factors might have been at play in her life.”
“That lack of precision wouldn’t get you very far in her physics department.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“Meika was a wonderful person. Always courteous, friendly, not prone to displays of ego even when she was brighter than ninety-seven percent of the people in the room, whether the classroom or the faculty lounge. Everyone was horrified when they heard about her death.”
“What about her personal life? Did you know her outside the office?”
“She and my wife, Ellie, played tennis together. So, I sometimes saw her outside the university. Ellie was devastated when she got the news.”
“So, Meika’s personality? Can you tell me anything more about her?”
“Always on an even keel. She had strong opinions on certain things. Social justice, academic bullshit, students getting wasted at night and wasting time the following day. But she was never a scold, just quietly and persuasively made her views known.”
“Ever show signs of a temper?”
“Did she provoke somebody into killing her, you mean?” Monty raised his hands in a noncommittal kind of shrug. “I never even heard her raise her voice, and never heard anybody else say she’d got worked up into a temper or a snit. That wasn’t Meika. If she disagreed with you, she let you know it, but she made her case in a quiet, cool, rational manner. Remember she got herself out of East Germany. Kept her cool crossing from East to West Berlin and into a new life over here. And if you were in an argument with her and you were right, she would concede with a simple ‘I see that you are correct.’ She was — well, we used
to tease her about it, in a good-natured way — we’d say, ‘Meika, you are so disciplined.’ You know, making a little joke about her being German. And she would thicken her accent and say ‘Jawohl!’ So, no, if she ever lost her temper, none of us saw it happen. None of us heard about it happening off stage either.”
Which left Monty to wonder about the scene described by Alban MacNair, Meika “hollering” and slamming the car door and stalking off into the night. Then, again, passion moves people in unpredictable ways.
The Crown’s office provided Monty with some more information late that afternoon. The police had gone door to door and questioned residents of Francklyn Street. Two of the people living near the theology school had heard some shouting between a man and a woman but had no information beyond that. People farther from that scene and therefore closer to the southern tip of the peninsula had heard nothing and had no information to impart.
Of more interest to Monty was the transcript of the police interview with the woman’s husband, Commodore Hubert Rendell. Monty sat at his desk and read the transcript. Meika Keller and her husband had attended a dinner and auction for Symphony Nova Scotia. She seemed to be preoccupied throughout the evening; she had turned down an invitation to see friends afterwards, and the couple returned home. Rendell went to sleep at around ten or before and thought nothing was amiss when she was not there at six thirty in the morning because she often went to work early. She had recently met up with the opera singer Fried Habler, having known him back in Germany, and shortly afterwards, she embarked on an impromptu excursion to Europe to take in a couple of operas. She took some photos and they did not turn out.
The police obtained a second statement from Rendell after the MacNair incident came to light. After the preliminaries, the police got to the night of, or before, her death.
“Did you think there was something going on between your wife and Lieutenant-Colonel MacNair?”
“No, I did not.”