The gallery was full again on the day of the decision. Brennan looked pale and wasted, nearly immobilized by stress, as he waited for the judge to appear. But the tide had turned in our favour. Justice Ross agreed to release him on a
$20,OOO
recognizance with one surety, Rowan Stratton, and with a number of conditions, including that he stay within the boundaries of Halifax County, surrender his passport, and have no contact with any of the Crown witnesses. We amended the order to allow contact with the people at St. Bernadette’s.
Brennan had the good sense to look humble and cooperative when the judge delivered his parting shot: “Don’t make me regret this.”
He refrained from giving malevolent looks or hostile remarks to the mob of reporters who dogged us till we got to my car and sped off.
“We’d better not go back to the rectory right away,” I advised him as I shifted gears and pulled into Upper Water Street. “The press will be waiting for you. How about a walk in the park? Bit of fresh air and sun before the real work begins.”
We made our way through the south end of the city until we were on Young Avenue, one of the city’s most exclusive streets, lined with massive
trees and stately old houses. At the end of Young was Point Pleasant Park, an oasis of nearly two hundred acres of trees, walking paths, picnic areas, and beaches lapped by the salt waters of Halifax Harbour and the Northwest Arm. The city still pays Her Majesty’s Government a rent of one shilling a year for the property. Brennan and I pocketed our ties and slung our jackets over our shoulders as we walked the paths.
“So, did a taste of life on the inside focus your mind, Brennan? Any ideas about who’s doing this to you?” He shook his head. “If not, all I can do is chip away wherever I can at the Crown’s case. Raise a reasonable doubt. It would be infinitely better if you could come up with someone with a killer instinct, who is out to get you.”
“This all sounds fantastical to me,” he replied. “You have to realize that.”
“And you have to realize that it sounds fantastical to me that you cannot identify a single person even remotely possible as a suspect.” He looked blank. “For Christ’s sake, Brennan, when are you going to start taking this seriously? After you’re convicted and sent back to prison for good? It could very well happen. Wise up, and tell me who could have done this.”
“You think I’m protecting someone, don’t you? Which means you must hold me in very high regard.” With a wry expression, he went on before I could reply. “‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.’ But think about it, Montague. If I were protecting someone, to the point where I would risk spending the rest of my life in prison, that person would much more likely be a woman than a man, wouldn’t you think? And although it’s possible that a woman committed these murders — we can’t rule it out, I suppose — it’s much more likely to have been a man. Psychopaths tend to be white males, right? Do you think I’d protect someone like that?”
I had, of course, thought about it, in much the same way as he set it out.
We wound our way through the paths and came out at the southern tip of the park, looking out towards the Atlantic Ocean. A couple of sailboats glided by. After a while we hiked back to the entrance, got ice cream cones at the corner store, then made the journey back downtown in silence. We had nothing to say. But the police had plenty.
What do I hear? Am I then sunk so low,
To have this upstart boy preferred before me?
— Handel/Jennens,
Saul
I
Now that charges had been laid, I had access to the evidence — and I hoped it was all the evidence — the police had against my client. I looked at the first Information, much more accurately named in French as the
Dénonciation.
Sergeant Ron Davidson, a member of the Halifax Police Department, stated on the form that he had reasonable grounds to believe, and did believe, that Brennan Xavier Burke, on or about the 15th day of February, 1990, at or near Halifax, in the Province of Nova Scotia, did commit first-degree murder on the person of Leeza Dawn Rae, contrary to Section 235(1) of the Criminal Code. The second Information made the same accusation against Brennan Xavier Burke with respect to the murder of Tanya Jane Cudmore on May 10, 1990.
The crime lab report for the Leeza Rae killing indicated that hairs found on the body matched those taken the day after the murder from Brennan Burke. I spent a lot of time with the gruesome photographs of the victims’ bodies. I had seen Tanya at Janeece’s funeral
but I had never seen Leeza. I had heard she was a good-looking girl; the photos showed only someone who had been brutalized. Both women had the initials
IBR
carved above the right breast, and a small crucifix carved above the left. This was an accurate facsimile of the cruciform scar on my client’s chest. According to the medical examiner’s evidence, the presence of blood in the markings indicated that the women were still alive when the mutilation was done. The cause of death was pretty well identical for both women, a depressed skull fracture in the occipital region (back) of the head. Pieces of the skull had broken off and become embedded in the brain tissue, resulting in contusion (bruising) of the brain, and intracerebral hemorrhage (bleeding) causing death. Leeza Rae suffered more blows to the head than Tanya Cudmore had.
There was much more witness information in Leeza’s file than in Tanya’s, which was not surprising given that Leeza had been killed after a dance where she had been seen by a hundred or more people. Personnel at the youth centre had been interviewed again while Brennan and I were in New York. The police were cagey when they asked about the dance. Physical contact was mentioned only in the wider context of how well, if at all, Brennan and Leeza knew each other. As to whether they had danced together, one of many questions about their relationship, the majority said yes. Eileen Darragh stuck loyally to no. She was quoted as saying: “I’m in that building every day, all day. As far as I could tell, Father Burke barely knew who Leeza was.” The investigators, acting on “information received,” also asked whether there had ever been any kind of argument or disagreement between Burke and Leeza Rae. Tyler MacDonald told the story of the confrontation in which Leeza’s shirt was partly unbuttoned. My question was:
what information received?
Was there an anonymous tip? Leeza’s file contained statements from two acquaintances, one male and one female, who said Leeza had boasted of a priest who “had the hots” for her and wanted to take her on trips out of town on the weekends. Junkets to Dorchester Penitentiary, I supposed.
The witness statements in Tanya Cudmore’s file indicated that Tanya had been ejected from the home of Janeece’s father immediately after the child’s death but had returned, or been allowed back, two days before Tanya’s body was found. Janeece’s father had not
been home at all the day before the body was discovered, so he was of no assistance as to where she was last seen. Neighbours in Tanya’s apartment block remembered seeing her in the afternoon but nobody was sure whether she was around in the evening. She often went to bingo, they said, so it was not unusual for her to be out. Family witnesses recalled that Father Burke had driven Janeece home on at least one occasion in his car, and they believed Tanya had met Burke when she had arrived late to collect Janeece after practice. They knew nothing about any conversation Tanya and Burke may have had, and certainly knew of no physical contact between them. Witnesses from St. Bernadette’s testified — reading between the lines I sensed their evidence was given reluctantly — about Burke’s apparent fondness for Janeece in the choir, his grief at the funeral, and his failure to stick it out till the end.
The onus was on the Crown to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt; it would be up to us to raise as many doubts as we could about the forensic and other evidence the police had gathered. It would be far better to come up with someone who might have borne a deadly grudge against the priest. Yet he could not, or would not, even provide me with the name of anyone on the North American continent who was familiar enough with his body (from the waist up was all I was asking) to be able to produce a facsimile of the cruciform scar above his heart. We desperately needed to find such a person. The next best thing would be to throw up another possible suspect as a smokescreen. So I directed my mind to the matter of alternative suspects.
II
I was standing by my secretary’s desk when I noticed a small, stainless steel teapot beside her computer. I opened my mouth to tease her about possessing stolen property from a diner, when I thought of Mrs. Kelly at the rectory. Had someone stolen her teapot? No, that was a remark I made after she told me there had been a burglary. Not at the rectory, but at the archdiocesan office. I hadn’t given the break-in another thought. But now, coupled with the vandalism directed at
Catholic churches in Halifax, it took on a whole new meaning as I struggled to fashion a defence for my client.
Jason, a young man who had been vandalizing Catholic churches, acting out of a rage against the Church and its clerics, could be the smokescreen I needed to conjure up a reasonable doubt for the jury. Something had happened to Jason, in reality or in his own mind; how else to explain why he had flinched away, not only from Burke, which was understandable, but even from Michael O’Flaherty? The Catholic Church had been around for two thousand years and had engendered more grievances than could possibly be tabulated. Jason could be, well, a godsend for our defence. It was a nice coincidence that, when confronted by Burke, he had jumped him and tried to strike him in the head with a heavy object, namely a full can of spray paint.
Jason would be good for us only if he had been in town when the murders occurred, in February and May. The fact that we did not have a full name for him would certainly hinder my efforts to present him as a suspect. But we had eyewitnesses who had seen and spoken to our vandal. I decided to call upon a forensic artist I had used in previous cases, to prepare a composite drawing from the description given by those witnesses. Time to reconvene the poker club.
It was a subdued pack of card players who turned up in the boardroom of Stratton Sommers to share their memories with my forensic artist, Stacey Mallory. To a man, they rallied around Burke and claimed they were happy to do this and anything else he might ask of them. I held the door for our receptionist, Darlene, when she brought in a tray of coffee. Father O’Flaherty thanked her profusely and blessed her for her kindness; the others smiled their thanks; Burke looked right through her. On her way out Darlene whispered to me in theatrical tones: “He doesn’t even know I’m alive!”
“You’re an occasion of sin for him, Darlene,” I whispered back, “and for all of us.”
“Mean that?”
“Sure.”
We got down to work. Michael O’Flaherty rose to the occasion, and had much to offer Stacey on the vandal’s appearance and demeanour. Dr. Shaw, familiar as he was with human anatomy, was the most precise and helpful in describing the young man’s facial
structure. After an hour or so, Stacey had produced a sketch that looked remarkably like the man we had met in the church that night: a thin face with thin lips and small eyes, patches of light facial hair, and the inevitable ball cap.
In truth, though, I wanted to go only so far with the Jason factor, and no further. Jason was more useful to us as a shadowy, unidentified figure who may, or may not, have committed violent acts and tailored his crimes to look like the work of a priest. The real flesh-and-blood young man had probably done no such thing. And could likely come up with an alibi that would reveal our speculation for what it was. We would not want that confirmed in front of the jury. There was another very compelling reason I wanted to keep Jason in the shadows. He was obviously a troubled individual; I did not want to add to his problems. I would use the sketch, but I would keep it to a very limited distribution. It would not be provided to the police or to the media. All I wanted was someone to say this face had been seen in Halifax on or before February 14, 1990.
The first place I took the sketch was St. Bernadette’s Youth Centre. I poked my head into the command centre of Sister Marguerite Dunne and Eileen Darragh. Eileen was not there but the boss was. Sister Dunne quickly confirmed that she had seen the young man. “I only remember one day when he was here at the centre, but he may have been around at other times.”
“What day was this, that you saw him? And why does it stand out in your mind?”
“It was career day. Early December. Every year we take the young people out to the workplace, to observe people in various jobs. If somebody is interested in nursing, we set that person up for a day at one of the hospitals. Everybody wants to get in with an airline pilot, but we haven’t had any luck there yet.”
“So, what careers were on offer this time?”
“Let’s see. I have the agenda here somewhere.” I had no doubt that Sister Dunne knew exactly where every piece of paper was in her office. She found it in seconds. “Yes. Tyler took two of the boys to the Metro Centre to see how they run a complex operation like that. Father O’Flaherty — he does this every year — took a small group on a tour of the police station. I think the good father would like to
come back as Sergeant O’Flaherty in his next life. Eileen took two girls to the law library. My niece is one of the librarians at the law school, so I set that one up myself.”
“Were all the young people that day regulars?”
“Yes, except for this Jason. He was considerably older than the others, but he could obviously benefit from some workplace exposure. So he went out, too.”
“What group did he go with?”
“He wanted to go on the police tour, but he missed it. Michael O’Flaherty had already left by the time Jason arrived. They never saw each other. I think Mike wanted to start the day at Tim Hortons, with an early dose of coffee and doughnuts. Getting into character. Jason went to the law library with Eileen and the two girls.”