II
I was torn between animosity and compassion when I saw my embattled client the next morning. He looked gaunt and desolate after being savaged by the prosecutor. None of it would have happened of course, if Burke had kept me informed. If he had, I would have taken a flame-thrower to the courtroom before I’d have let him take the stand. Now he was slumped in a seat in our regular room. He didn’t meet my eyes.
I sat down without speaking and started going over my final argument. I would speak first, which is the procedure when the defence calls evidence; then the Crown would sum up. I had the right of rebuttal. The summations would likely take half the day, followed by the judge’s charge to the jury. If the jury began deliberations that afternoon and failed to reach a verdict, they would be sequestered in a hotel overnight.
Silence from Burke should have been a blessing, but it had come too late. I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Didn’t it occur to you that I might want to speak to you last night, after the catastrophe you brought down on yourself in this building yesterday? I tried to reach you. Where the fuck did you go?”
I expected a belligerent reply but what I got was worse. He looked at me in silence and in his eyes I saw a depth of sadness and despair I could not have imagined in him. I asked him if he wanted an adjournment so I could take him to a doctor. He shook his head and looked at the wall. I checked my watch. “It’s time to go, Brennan.” He stood, adjusted his clothes and made for the door. We met Susan on our way to the courtroom. She and Brennan walked ahead of me. I had never realized how tiny Susan was until that moment. Her head only came up to his shoulder.
Susan noticed the state our man was in and looked up at him with concern. “Brennan! Dear. Don’t give up on us now.”
“As long as you two don’t give up on me,” he said, in a voice I hardly recognized.
It was my turn to be shaken. “Brennan. We’re not going to give you up.”
“Never,” Sue assured him.
We had to get to court. I took a deep breath as we reached the entrance. “All right. Let’s get our game faces on. Time to go.” Burke managed to assume his usual self-assured persona and he strode into the courtroom as he always did.
There was a heightened sense of expectancy in the jurors’ demeanour as they filed in. The courtroom was packed, and the press were in place with sharpened pencils. I leaned over to Burke and told him — again — not to react to anything Karl Schenk said.
I spoke for just over an hour. I emphasized the barber’s testimony and portrayed the hair evidence as a fatal flaw in the Crown’s case. I made the point that the Crown had failed to show any connection between Burke and the initials
IBR
carved above the victim’s right breast. The crucifix scar, I argued, was a sign of Father Burke’s innocence, not guilt. For him to carve his own cross into the body would have been tantamount to a confession. I referred to Father Eugene Cormier’s testimony that during the break-in at the archdiocesan office, the only thing the culprit had done was look through personnel files. Somebody was obviously after intimate knowledge relating to priests. I mentioned the vandal who had been desecrating Catholic churches. I reminded the jury that Father Burke, like all of us, was a human being with weaknesses and flaws. But his history was one of devotion to the Church, to God and His people. He had no criminal record or history of violence. The jurors had seen Father Burke here day after day. They knew in their hearts he was not a killer. I did what I could in a bad situation. When I was done I reached over and gave Burke’s shoulder a little squeeze. He nodded and gave me a slight smile.
Karl Schenk got to his feet and the defence team collectively braced itself.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is nobody else in the frame for this killing. Brennan Burke’s hair was found on the body, and there is no evidence that Mr. Burke had had any physical contact, at all, with Tanya Cudmore before the murder. The defence has made much of a discrepancy in the length of the hairs found on the body and the length they claim Mr. Burke’s hair was at the time. Well, I’m sure all of us could pull hairs from different parts of our heads and find them different lengths and shapes, no matter when we had our last trim.
Who knows what he was wearing when he killed Ms. Cudmore? Old clothes perhaps, something he had last pulled over his head when his hair was a different length. The fact remains: Mr. Burke’s hair was found on the body. Enough said on that subject.
“We do not know what the letters
IBR
stand for. Only the killer knows that. But we do know something about the crucifix scar. We have photographic evidence of it on Mr. Burke’s chest. We have no evidence of anyone local who may have seen Mr. Burke undressed from the waist up in the years after the fire. The theory of the defence, apparently, is that somebody who knew about the scar may have held a grudge against Mr. Burke, and then killed, not him, but an innocent third party. And tried to frame Mr. Burke. We are left to wonder who this person might be. The mark is there on Tanya Cudmore’s body; the only evidence we have tells us it must have come from the accused.
“In addition to the physical evidence, we have motive. It was well known that Mr. Burke was in mourning for little Janeece Tuck. And the next thing we know, the woman whose carelessness led to the child’s death is murdered. We heard Mr. Burke testify on cross-examination about the fire that occurred during a party when he was a young man, and the death of Mr. Burke’s friend in that fire. The accused admitted that Janeece’s death struck a painfully familiar chord with him. Was the crucifix on Tanya Cudmore’s body a mark of Mr. Burke’s own feelings of guilt? We’ll never know.
“The defence has conjured up a phantom suspect, a vandal with a beef against the Roman Catholic Church, a shadowy figure with no name who just may have gone out and murdered, not a Church official or a priest, but a complete stranger, the stepmother of a little girl who died in a tragic accident. Where did this no-name suspect get the hair and the perfect replica of the priest’s cruciform scar? I won’t waste any more of the court’s time on this except to say that the unfortunate young man, whoever he is, had already chosen his method of acting out against the Church. His weapon was a spray can.
“The evidence has shown what kind of a man Mr. Burke is: a man with serious flaws in his character; a man with a past he tries to hide; a man who makes vows and breaks them whenever he feels like it; an impulsive and irresponsible man who lies about his behaviour.”
Schenk went on for another two hours. Several times I had to put
a cautionary hand on my client to keep him from showing anger in front of the jurors. Schenk ended by reminding the jury that all the elements of the crime pointed to Burke as the killer: motive, opportunity, means, forensics, signature, character. All of it fit Mr. Burke, and nobody else.
We broke for lunch. Burke sat, catatonic, in front of his untouched sandwich. “We all knew what he was going to say,” I tried. “We just didn’t know what
you
were going to say.” But my words fell on deaf ears. I heard a soft knock at the door. I got up and opened it a crack. I mouthed the word “Maura” across to Burke and he made a “come in” motion with his hand.
“Professor MacNeil. What’s the state of the law on fleeing to Paraguay without a passport the night before the verdict? Got a full tank of gas?” Burke asked. She sat down and took his hand in hers. For once, she was at a loss for words. He spoke again: “Do you think my reputation will be salvaged if I minister to prison inmates till I’m, say, seventy-five years old?” He closed his eyes and massaged the sides of his head. Nobody spoke. Then the break was over.
Justice Fineberg’s charge to the jury took just over an hour and a half. And it was a good one, even-handed and correct in the law. The jury retired to begin deliberations at four o’clock. Not surprisingly, they had not reached a verdict by six o’clock, so they were bundled off to a nearby hotel where they would be sequestered. They would return to the courthouse for regular working hours, then go back to their hotel at night. Brennan’s fate was in their hands, and all we could do was wait.
III
Brennan, Maura, and I piled into my car, and put behind us the garish lights of the cameras.
“Has either of you got your pilot’s licence?” Brennan asked. “No? What’s the good of you then?” He continued, with an obvious effort at normalcy: “I should stop by the choir school. Then let’s eat. And drink.”
“My place,” Maura said.
I pulled up to the school, and we all went inside. “I’d better straighten out some choir stuff. Get things together.” He strode ahead. Maura and I exchanged glances and followed. As we approached the director’s office, we heard voices. Brennan didn’t turn his head, but kept going towards the choir rooms. I halted and put a restraining hand on Maura’s arm just before we got to the director’s door. Someone was sobbing inconsolably within. I thought I heard words, something about a baby, but could not make out more than that. I peeked inside. Sister Marguerite Dunne was sitting on a chair beside a distraught Eileen Darragh. They turned their heads towards us. Eileen’s face was puffy and streaked with tears.
Sister Dunne, all business, was the first to speak: “Eileen is worried about Father Burke. Did I see him strut by here?”
“Uh, yes. We just came from court. The jury has retired.”
The weeping resumed. Eileen reached out blindly and Sister Dunne, dry-eyed and matter-of-fact, put a tissue in her hand.
“We’re going to do our best for him, Eileen,” I said. “I’m hoping the jury sees him the way you do. If they don’t, we’ll file an appeal immediately and we’ll start all over again. We’ll make sure nobody has any doubts next time.”
She broke down, and Marguerite looked at us as if to say: “These young girls, what can you do?” She patted Eileen on the arm and stepped outside, closing the door behind her.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
“I think the jurors like him. I just hope they have enough confidence in that feeling to hold the line against the forensics. There has to be an explanation, but we haven’t been able to come up with it. Eileen’s having a rough time with it, eh?”
Sister Dunne responded: “None of us understands the significance of the fact that he was not wearing a crucifix around his neck when that image was burned into him. Eileen was quite taken with that aspect of the story. There’s even more to him than she had thought. Which, I suspect, was quite a bit in the first place. Then we heard about Brennan fathering a child when he was younger. I can’t say I was all that surprised.” She should be his lawyer, I said to myself. “I’ve never thought of Brennan as a tender virgin. Far from it. But that revelation seems to have set Eileen off. A child in his life, however briefly, and an old girlfriend
with whom he was intimate. She’s dying to find out more about it, but at the same time she can’t bear to know. I’m not sure whether any of his other escapades sank in. We are all wildly unrealistic about the people we’re infatuated with. I’m sure I’d be the same way.”
I doubted that, but kept it to myself.
“I know I was,” Maura volunteered, and gave me a look. “We haven’t been introduced,” she said to Sister Dunne. “And if we waited for Montague to do the introductions, we’d be here till the real killer came bounding in asking ‘What time’s confession?’ I’m Maura MacNeil, formerly married to —” she jerked her head in my direction.
The nun’s smile was back. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms. MacNeil. I’m Sister Dunne, first name Marguerite. It’s my job to run the school. And to keep Father Burke humble.”
“I think that’s been taken out of your hands now, Sister,” Maura said.
“I suppose you’re right. If there is anything I can do, at any point in this ordeal, please call.”
We heard footsteps and we turned as one to watch Brennan striding down the hall towards us, a cigarette in his mouth. Marguerite pursed her lips and seemed about to protest. But instead she said: “Brennan. We keep missing each other these days, understandably of course, but here you are. I must say I think you are capable of many, many errors in life. Misinterpreting Holy Scripture; giving far too much weight to certain heresies in the first four centuries of the Church’s life, instead of dismissing them and moving on with your analysis; not doing enough of the music of Purcell; and thinking too often with your penis and not your brain, like every other man. But all of that doesn’t make you a murderer.”
I saw Eileen standing just outside the office, her eyes still red, her mouth hanging open, appalled at the nun’s remarks.
Brennan replied: “Why, Marguerite. I’m all choked up. Those are the kindest words anyone has said about me for as long as I can remember.”
“You are in my prayers Brennan.”
“And I know you have God’s ear.”
“You can bet on it. Good evening.” Marguerite stalked towards
the exit, nearly bowling Eileen over, and the younger woman emitted a little cry. Brennan turned around.
“Eileen is concerned about you, Brennan,” I said.
“Do I look worried, Eileen? I’ll be all right. You just keep this place humming and take care of my little angels. Don’t let them sing anything by the St. Louis Jesuits if I’m gone for a bit.” I thought I saw my wife give him a little shove. He went to the agitated woman and put his arms around her. She clung to him, still speechless, and looked even more wretched when he let her go. Without being conscious of doing so, I was sure, she wrapped her arms where his had been and hugged herself.
“Let’s go,” Brennan said.
“We’ll go to the house,” Maura said, “have something to eat and open a bottle of wine.”
“Sounds good to me. I don’t feel like meeting my public tonight.”
I turned to Eileen, standing alone and bereft. I assumed that an evening with Brennan, dinner and wine, even under such terrible circumstances, was an outing she could only have imagined. Yet I could not bring myself to include her in the invitation. I did not, however, want to leave the woman in the state she was in. “You two go ahead,” I called to the others. “I’ll be right out.”