Blood on a Saint (24 page)

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.”

“Right, right. And your Tommy Douglas is out for the evening, is he?”

“He’s out with Lexie. She may be buying a car! She’s going to try and get a red one, and I’ll be the first person to get a ride in it except for Tommy!”

“That will be grand.”

They all had dinner, and then Normie took the baby, Dominic, upstairs to entertain him before bedtime. Monty, Maura, and Burke shared a bottle of red, but there was no serious drinking.

“How are things at the carnival, Father?” Maura asked. “Have you been doing your regular shift at the Bernie Bears souvenir stand?”

“If you get up in the morning and read that the Bernie Bears stand and the stand selling lurid glow-in-the-dark pulsating sacred hearts and all the rest of the korny kiosks of katholic kitsch have been razed by a purifying flame, you will know who struck the match.”

“Oh, Father, where’s your entrepreneurial spirit? Why aren’t you out there at the Knights of Columbus barbecue, flipping Befanee burgers?”

“Flip
this
.”

“Is that what you said to the one in the Honeymoon Suite, Father?” Monty inquired.

Maura looked at Burke. “What’s this?”

Burke gave Monty a black look, and Monty took the opportunity to get off that subject and back to Befanee Tate.

“Speaking of Befanee, I’ve been meaning to ask you about her boyfriend. Gary, is it?”

“You’re asking me about him why? So I can assist in the defence of the killer of Jordyn Snider?”

“The man wrongly accused of the murder, I’m sure you meant to say, Brennan.”

“That clown!” Maura exclaimed. “I’d like to see him behind bars even if he didn’t commit the murder.”

“He is not just a clown, MacNeil,” Burke replied. “He is evil.”

Monty was surprised at the vehemence of the assertion, and said of his client, “He is a clown, Brennan. A buffoon, a nuisance. That doesn’t mean he’s a killer or that he’s evil. He’s pathetic.”

“He’s more than that. He’s not just a poor, sad bastard. There is evil there.”

Monty looked at Burke. There had been times when the priest seemed to be able to feel evil coming off someone, but perhaps many of us were like that. Monty had read accounts in the law reports of victims who had had encounters with true psychopaths, and sometimes the victims claimed they could sense evil in the perpetrators. Could see it in their eyes. But Monty did not get that feeling from Podgis. That did not mean it was not there; it could be obscured by the man’s customary bluster.

“Monty,” Maura said, “just among the three of us here, do you really think there is any doubt — any reasonable doubt — that Podgis killed Jordyn Snider?”

He decided to give a forthright answer. “I think he probably did it, but there is room for doubt. My job as we all know is to expand that doubt enough to get an acquittal.”

“How probable is ‘probably’?”

“Highly probable. But I have to tell you he flatly denies it.”

Burke looked at him as if to say, as he often did, “Are yeh
well
, Montague?”

“He says he has an alibi, and I’ve been trying to check it out.”

“Been trying, eh, Monty?” Maura asked. “I notice you didn’t say, ‘And it checks out.’”

“Hey, I could solve this tomorrow, nail down the alibi, and get the charges dropped, but I have to milk the case for all the billable hours I can get.”

His wife did not even bother to respond. She knew him better than that; if he had evidence exonerating a client, he would present it immediately. Money was not a big motivating factor for him.

Instead, she asked, “What was the motive? There’s no evidence that he had ever met her.”

Monty did not reveal the fact that Jordyn had been in the studio audience for the Podgis show. No doubt the police and the Crown knew that, but it had not come up at the prelim. They might be holding it to make an impact at trial.

All he said was, “Sex would be the most likely motive. You’ve seen her. A killing like this is most often a sex crime, and that’s the case even if there was no actual sexual assault. Failure to score sexually commonly leads to violence, as I’m sure we all know. I’m just speculating that this was likely the situation, if indeed he killed her.”

“Daddy! Come up and see my farm!” Normie called from her bedroom.

“Coming right up, dolly!”

Good. He could enjoy his daughter’s company for a few minutes and put off his unpopular request for more assistance with his defence of Podgis. He climbed the stairs to Normie’s room, where she and little brother Dominic were playing with the toy farm she got for Christmas. She had it set up on her windowsill where her dolls used to be. Now Monty saw a menagerie of animals ranging from horses to barn cats to species not native to the continent, like lions and a rhinoceros.

“Hey, gang,” he said on arrival. He bent down and hugged his daughter, ruffling her auburn curls.

“Hi, Daddy!”

“Dada! Kitty! Walk!” Dominic picked up a cat and pushed it along the floor, making it walk, then patted its head and said, “Good!”

“Daddy, he learned a new word. Watch this. Wait.”

Normie scrabbled around under her bed. Monty had never been under there, but he understood that it contained the store of all his daughter’s earthly goods. She drew out a piece of white paper and began making creases in it. Dominic watched the process in great anticipation. When she finished her work, she had produced a paper airplane, and Dominic reached out to grab it. “Plane! Plane!”

“See? He can say it now.” She lowered her voice. “He can’t fly it very well yet. But maybe it’s my fault because of how I made it.”

“I’m sure it’s pilot error and not a manufacturing defect, sweetheart.”

“But we won’t blame him. He’s too little.”

“Absolutely. Here, let’s give him a ride.”

Monty picked the little boy up around the waist. “You make his wings, Normie.”

“Okay!”

She took his arms and gently stretched them out and slightly back in delta formation, for all the aerodynamic advantage she could produce. Monty flew Dominic around the room, to the accompaniment of jet noise coming from his daughter. The little guy was ecstatic and kept saying, “Plane! Plane!”

When Monty put him down, he begged for more and was given a couple more flights before being grounded for the night.

Monty kissed his daughter and gave her another hug. He did the same with Dominic, and Dominic put his arms around Monty’s neck and clung to him. Monty didn’t rush away. When the baby finally let go, he gave Monty a beatific smile, then got back to work. He looked from the paper airplane to the farm animals, and Normie offered the only solution possible. The farm would acquire its own airstrip for bringing in more creatures from afar. Monty left them to it.

“How are things up there?” Maura asked when he returned.

“Couldn’t be better.”

Maura smiled and said no more.

“Now, Brennan,” Monty reminded him, “you were going to give me some information on this Gary.”

“Was I now.”

“What’s his last name, and what do you think he’s been up to at the church? I’ll want a word with him.”

“Well, no harm, I suppose, unless you manage to pin the murder on him. He’s a ne’er-do-well, and a petty grifter, but I don’t imagine he’ll stand up for long as your alternative suspect. You’ve already got poor Ignatius Boyle — street philosopher, linguistic miracle man, and missionary to disadvantaged kids — in that particular frame.”

“Speaking again of sex crimes,” Monty said.

“What?” Burke demanded. “What’s Ignatius got to do with sex crimes?”

“He’s got a record.”

“No doubt, for trespassing or public drunkenness.”

“Worse.”

“Oh, God help us. What is it?”

“Indecent exposure.”

Burke gave a weary sigh. “Tell me.”

Maura did not look any happier than Burke as they awaited the news.

“Exposed himself to two young girls on the street a few years ago. That’s all I know.”

“No!” Maura exclaimed.

“I don’t want to believe it.”

“He was convicted, Brennan.”

“Well, it’s a big step from there to murder.”

“For sure. But it’s not a big step from a minor sexual offence to a more serious one. Maybe it escalated to something worse, maybe not. If so, he never got caught. What were you saying about Boyle and kids? Brennan?”

“Nothing. He’s kind to them. That’s all.”

Nobody spoke until Burke said, “Any more joy to spread this evening, Collins?”