Authors: Anne Emery
What the fuck is this???? Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing??? You dressed up like a coke whore? You’ve got on shorts that are all the way into the crack of your ass, they’re so fucking tight, and your top is oh so conveniently falling off while you bend over and smirk at whoever is taking the picture. And oh yeah, by the way, who took the picture??? Who are you smirking at??? I have to believe you did this as a joke, because you obviously can’t
do sexy
. That’s something girls have to learn, and I’m the professor at the head of the class, baby. You’re going to do sexy in a way you cannot even imagine, when you’re united with me for life. Being with me has changed the life of many, many a woman before you! It will change yours too. You better believe it. So I’m going to let it pass. This time. As the stupid joke of a little brat. But a word of advice, babe: don’t wear red and black! Those colours look like shit on you. Your skin’s too white; it looks like fish. You look sick, like some old maid or something. How old are you? Were you lying about that? Get into a tanning bed and make yourself back into the pretty girl you showed me with your first picture. And next picture, you get it taken in front of a mirror so I can see who’s holding the camera. Got that? I’ve got your letters here telling me you love me and you’re mine for life, and then I see this. I better not find out you picked up some loser when you were out there dressed like a ho. And believe me, I’ll find out. Suddenly I don’t feel like writing anymore tonight. Thanks to you.
P.S. You said you would get your brother’s car, so get it. I’ll say it again in case you didn’t hear me the first time. In case you’re planning on breaking your promise to me. Get-the-CAR-and-get-here!! All I’m asking is a few hours out of your precious life. I can’t wait forever.
Yes, pal, you can wait forever. You’re the one doing time on the inside with nowhere else to go. “Can’t wait forever” is supposed to be her line, Monty thought. But was the guy still inside? How old were these letters? Had he come to claim his bride? Was this a case of, as the headlines often read, expressing the obvious,
Love Affair Turned Sour Before Murder
?
Monty picked up the phone and called a fellow lawyer who worked with prisoners and parolees, and she gave him the name of someone she knew in the Correctional Service of Canada. Harold Lowther. Monty called, got Lowther’s answering machine, and left a message asking him to return the call. Monty needed a break. He wanted a drink. He thought of calling Burke but, if he let his hair down with his regular drinking buddy, he might blurt out something about the letters. He might not be able to help it, being just one of the lowly herd of worms despised by the lofty writer of letters from the lockup.
Monty tried to process what he had read. The guy had demanded that Jordyn come to visit, by car, and he said it would only take a few hours. That suggested, as Jason had said, an institution in the Maritimes. The inmate could be in Springhill, medium security, in Nova Scotia. Or Dorchester, again medium security, just on the other side of the provincial border in New Brunswick. A lot of bad actors in those places. Or he might be in maximum security in Renous. Again, New Brunswick. Some very bad actors in there. Renous was farther away but all of them were within reasonable driving distance of Halifax. This guy’s troubles had made the television news, and the reporter was a woman, but that hardly set the case apart. His threat that he would know if Jordyn took up with another loser could mean he was from the Halifax area, but Monty could not put too much stock in that. This type would claim to be in the know, claim to have a network of informers, claim nobody could fool
him
, even if he did not know a soul within five hundred miles of the place. The most promising clue was the reference to a riot and an injured guard. Not a unique occurrence, but it would narrow things down.
In the meantime, Monty packed up his briefcase and made a decision not to go out to his place on the Northwest Arm, but to stop in and see the family downtown. He was greeted at the door by Normie, who waved a pair of concert tickets in his face.
“What are those for, Normie?”
“Daddy! How could you forget? The whole choir school is going to the Cohn Auditorium to see Kiri Te Kanawa. And the big guys’ choir is going too. Mum organized getting the tickets for us all. But everybody paid for their own, except the kids who couldn’t afford it, and the school paid for theirs. It’s an afternoon matinee on Saturday, the sixth of February.”
Monty was keen on the concert but, with all the other things occupying his mind, he had not realized it was coming up so soon. Good. “This will be a great concert, Normie. Maybe it will be you up on that stage someday, if you keep singing your scales and doing your homework for choir school.”
“Do you think so?”
“Why not?”
“That would be so great!”
“Where are your brothers today? Out in the bars?”
“Daddy! Dominic’s too little for doing that. He’s playing in his room. I was playing with him till I saw your car outside. And Tommy, well, maybe
he’s
in a bar somewhere, drinking beer.”
“I certainly hope not. Now, why don’t you go back upstairs and keep Dominic company?”
“Okay.”
Once Normie had gone upstairs, Monty greeted Maura, sat down across from her in the living room, and said, “Hope remains alive for my wrongfully accused murder client.”
“Oh? Have you taken on a new case?”
“No, same old case.”
“Then you’ll have to pardon me for doing exactly what I wrongfully accuse others of doing: not listening. Because I thought you said ‘wrongfully accused’ in relation to your current murder client, but that would be Pike Podgis, which doesn’t make any sense. So start again. I’m all ears.”
“There may be another suspect in play.”
“I see. Another suspect in addition to poor old Ignatius Boyle?”
“Ignatius Boyle, the sex offender.” Ignatius Boyle, known to the victim in years past, whatever happened there.
“I know, I know. I thought, at best, he’s a saint and a miracle worker. At worst, a harmless wino. Now he’s a sex criminal.”
“Just the indecency charge. Walking around starkers and maybe exposing himself to a couple of girls years ago. That’s it as far as I know. But you never really know with these things. What else might he have done without getting caught? But that’s not who I’m talking about.”
“Who, then? Another poor, disadvantaged man of no fixed address who can’t possibly come up with an alibi for one o’clock in the morning because nobody can say whether that was him asleep on the sidewalk in downtown Halifax, or just his pile of damp and mouldy rags?”
“This guy has a fixed address. Very fixed. If he was home, everybody would know it. And if he wasn’t, that would be a matter of public record.”
“A non-paying guest of the Crowbar Hotel.”
“Right. I just don’t know who, or what institution. Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.”
“Well! It’s just piling right up for old Pike, eh? Sounds as if the charges will be dropped before sundown, and he can go on his slimy way back to Toronto.”
“It needs work, I admit. But I have letters from a prison inmate to Jordyn Snider.”
“You already knew that. She had a boyfriend who went to prison.”
“This is a different guy.”
Maura sighed. “Tell me.”
“Her brother came in to see me.”
“The vic’s brother.”
“Yeah. Jordyn’s brother, Jason. Came in and gave me the letters. Told me his mother had found them hidden in the girl’s room.”
“So, do the police have them?”
“Not yet. They will, obviously.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“All identifying information has been removed from the letters.”
“Removed by whom?”
“Jason says by his sister. When the mother came upon them, the tops and bottoms of the papers had been cut off.”
“So the mother sent Jason to deliver them to you? Does she really think Podgis didn’t do it? She heard all the evidence at the prelim; your guy’s shoes were spattered with Jordyn’s blood!”
“If the mother had her way, the letters would have stayed buried. As Jason said to me, if that was my child, would I trash her memory by revealing these letters? But Jason wants to make sure we get the right guy. If it’s Podgis, Jason will happily lynch him. But, if it’s somebody else, he’ll want to save the rope for that guy.”
“So, how bad are these letters, that the mother would keep them under wraps rather than explore all possible suspects?”
“See for yourself.” He opened his briefcase, withdrew the envelope full of papers, and handed them over.
Maura read a few of the pages, the expression on her face darkening as she descended into the netherworld of the man of letters. “Listen to this.” She read aloud:
When you say you’ll do ‘anything’ for me, do you have any idea what you’re signing up for, baby girl? Do you even have a clue? I think not. Let me give you a bit of an education, baby. There’s two kinds of people in this world. Those who have power and those who do not. Only a moron would believe that everybody can achieve power. Because then there would be nobody to have power over, so that would mean no power. Right? We discussed this. Best thing you can do, if you’re not one of the powerful, is to form an alliance with someone who is. That person will protect you, keep you away from the bottom feeders of this world. In return, you give loyalty. Complete loyalty. And love. You love me. I love you, in a different way, but in a way you’re going to love and beg for more of. Like all the women who came before you, and I changed their lives forever. Before we found each other. You’ll fear me, but that’s only natural when you look into the face of power! Oh, yeah, you’ll see. When our time comes. But I expect something in return. You saw the word above. Loyalty. If you’re mine, you’re mine. Not anybody else’s. That includes, not just other guys. (From what you say, the only guys you’ve ever known are a bunch of losers.) But not just guys. Loyalty includes not listening to a bunch of weak-kneed nervous Nelly women who want to close you in, put limits on the heights of what you can experience in this world with me. They’re jealous of what we have. They’re losers.
“I can’t read any more of this trash.” Maura threw the letters in the general direction of Monty’s briefcase. “Who is this egomaniac? All the women begging for him! What’s the song you said Brennan sang to Podgis that night at the Midtown, taking the mickey out of him?”
“‘Bad to the Bone.’ Devastating to the female population. What Podgis would like to be. Maybe this guy’s the real thing.”
“And you think Podgis isn’t?”
“I don’t know what to think. His ex-wife showed up to support him. Surely she would not have gone out of her way like that if she saw him as a lady killer, in either sense of the term.”
“She wouldn’t be the first, would she?”
“I know, I know. What am I saying? It happens all the time.”
“And remember, Monty, you left me a phone message saying Phyllis took off the next day and went back to Toronto. That doesn’t speak well of old Pike.”
“But our visit to his apartment, hearing her tales of his family and his upbringing, didn’t that make you feel a little bit sorry for him?”
“I felt sorry for
her
. He should have been kissing that poor woman’s feet, not treating her like shit. If that’s how he behaves towards a woman who cares about him, imagine what he might do to someone who brushed him off, or made a snide remark.”
Monty could imagine. And he remembered something else about the encounter with Podgis and his ex. It almost seemed as if Podgis held her in contempt precisely
because
she cared for him. Was he contemptuous of any woman who would take up with a guy like him? Monty decided not to pursue that line of thought with Maura.
“Back to this guy.” He pointed to the letter written to Jordyn Snider.
“What’s his connection with Jordyn?” Maura asked.
“I have no idea. That’s what I have to track down. Find out who he is, where he is, whether he’s still inside, or whether he could have been in Halifax on the night of September twenty-third.”
“So we don’t know whether this is somebody she knew from here, or . . .”
“As far as I can tell, she saw his story on TV and began writing to him.”
Monty watched as his wife processed the information. It did not please her. “Another one,” she said.
“Looks like it.”
“What’s the guy in for? Let me guess.”
“Go ahead.”
“Rape or murder, or both.”
“Most likely. Serious violence of some sort. That’s the impression I get. Inflicting his form of love on the powerless. I have a call in to a Corrections Canada official. I’ll check and see if he’s called me back. Almost quitting time, but you never know.”
He went to the phone in the kitchen and dialled his office number to check his answering machine. Yes, there was a message from Harold Lowther. Monty called him and gave him the spiel on what he was looking for, and why. Half expecting the runaround, Monty was surprised to hear Lowther say he had two possibilities in mind. There had been two incidents involving violence and injured guards, one at Renous just over two years ago and another at Dorchester ten months back. Two inmates had been disciplined following the Dorchester episode, but one could be eliminated from consideration; Lowther had recognized his name and knew he could barely write his phone number, let alone a series of letters of the kind described by Monty. Lowther didn’t know the other inmate in Dorchester, or the one in Renous, but he would check into it, and call Monty when he had some news.
Monty thanked him for being so forthcoming to a member of the defence bar, and Lowther said, “No problem. It’s simple, really. If your guy didn’t do it, we don’t want him. And if one of these other two did, we’d like to get him back inside sooner than later, before he kills again.”
“Anything useful?” Maura asked when Monty returned to the living room.
“Sounds as if he can narrow it down. One of the letters referred to a riot, and the psycho was in the middle of it. This Harold Lowther is familiar with two incidents and is going to find out who was involved. He’ll let me know.”