Children in the Morning

by Anne Emery

  “Come here, angel. We won’t talk about it anymore now.” Daddy pulled me onto his knee and held me, and I felt a bit better. I was still mad, though. Who wouldn’t be?

  I was even more upset after they took me to a psychiatrist! You wouldn’t believe what went on in there. Me and Mum and Dad were in the waiting room, and this man with his hair all shaved off went crazy, right there in the room with everybody looking! He started bugging the nurse at the desk about the doctor keeping him waiting. She tried to calm him down, but he picked up her papers and threw them at her. Daddy got up and told him to take it easy, and the guy started screaming in Daddy’s face. Then he turned and shoved the desk towards the nurse, and she nearly fell off her chair. Daddy went behind the desk and helped the nurse. I think she pressed some kind of secret buzzer, because she reached under the desk, and then made a little nod at Dad. The guy started screaming even louder, and tried to go behind the desk and grab the nurse, and then Daddy grabbed him, and wrestled him down on the floor and held him there. Mum went over to the nurse. A policeman or a security guy came in then, and the doctor came out of her office, and they all went outside into the hallway, and a few minutes later the doctor came back in by herself. All the time this was going on, a little old lady in one of the seats kept giggling, as if it was funny. Well, it wasn’t.

  I was shaking by the time it was all over. The man had said all kinds of things that didn’t make sense. But one thing I got, loud and clear. He yelled at the doctor that he had been coming to see her for two years, and she never cured him! Two years! So I knew it wasn’t going to work for me. When Mum and Dad got up to help the nurse fix up her desk and papers, I made a run for it. I ran out of the office and down the hall, and down a whole bunch of stairs till I was outside the doctor’s building on Spring Garden Road. I couldn’t remember where we parked the car, so I sat outside on the great big steps the building has. Mum and Dad came flying out the door two minutes later, and tried to talk me into going back in. But I’m not stupid. Either that doctor was no good, or mental patients can’t be cured. So there was no point in them dragging me back inside. I made a big, loud fuss, and they looked at each other over my head, and said we’d just go home for now. Sometimes you have to put your foot down, and say no!

  Chapter 5

  (Monty)

  That night at our local, the Midtown Tavern, Brennan lifted his pint, took a long sip, and asked: “How did things go today?”

  “A patient freaked out in the waiting room, tried to trash the place and attack the receptionist, and I had to subdue the guy till security came, and the guy revealed he’d been under treatment with this particular shrink for two years, and Normie saw and heard it all, and bolted, and refused to be dragged back inside kicking and screaming, so we took her home. That’s how things went today.” I picked up my draft, and downed a third of it.

  “Ah. A less than successful outing.”

  “So I don’t know where to go from here.”

  “Well, it just so happens that I called Patrick a couple of nights ago, and filled him in.” Patrick was his brother, a psychiatrist in New York.

  “Oh! What did he say?”

  “Paddy thinks there could be something to it. The visions, I mean, not anything physical. The child is certainly not making it up. Her tests are normal. She’s having visions of past or maybe future events. If they’re in the future, there’s nothing we can do unless they’re detailed enough to tip us off. If something has already happened, perhaps we can track it down.”

  “She’s heard so much about Delaney, and his wife dying, and all the children being without their mother. She’s become friendly with Beau’s kids. It can’t be anything Beau has done; they wouldn’t keep sending him foster children without being absolutely sure he’s above reproach. She’s met Beau. She knows he’s a lawyer who’s handled some disturbing cases.”

  “As have you.”

  “True, but surely she’s not having nightmares about me! She may be picking up images or emotions from some of the cases Beau’s done, those involving children.”

  “Or it may be something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, who knows?”

  “That’s not getting us anywhere, is it?”

  He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “What’s on your mind, Brennan?”

  He just shook his head.

  “If you knew what was causing this pain for my daughter, you’d let me know, wouldn’t you, Father?”

  “I would. Of course. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “Is there something going on at home, do you know?”

  “If there is, you’d best ask the MacNeil.”

  “I will.”

  “In the meantime, Monty, proceeding on the hypothesis that there may be a Delaney connection, let’s look at some of Beau’s cases. Do some research.”

  “I can’t say I like this, Brennan. Checking into the past of my own client.” I looked into his eyes, and he returned the look without comment. We both remembered all too clearly that I had looked into his past when I was defending him against false criminal charges. I fervently hoped that Delaney, like Brennan, would in the end be exonerated. In the meantime, if we could come up with something to show Normie — see, five years ago Mr. Delaney had to do his job and defend a client who mistreated a child; that must be what you’re seeing — it might be worth the qualms. But I still didn’t like it. “I’d rather not do this through my office, Brennan. You know, have a clerk or someone dig up old news clippings about our client.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “When are you going to have time for this?”

  “I’ll make time.” He caught the eye of our waiter, and gave him the signal for two more draft.

  I looked over at the television, which was showing a basketball game, and thought of another thing we could do. “They made a documentary about Delaney last year. We could check that out.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  So, the next day, Thursday, I stopped by St. Bernadette’s to pick up Brennan, who does not have a television, then headed to Robie Street, drove north to Macara, parked, pulled on the emergency brake, and ran in to the local private television studio, ATV, to pick up the videotape. When I explained that I was Delaney’s lawyer, they gave me a copy of my own. We took the tape to my house, shoved it into the VCR, and sat down to watch the show. It occurred to me then that Maura might want to see it. I knew Tom was home and could look after Normie and the baby, so I gave her a call.

  “I’ve got the documentary ATV News did on Beau. Would you like to see it? It’s a long shot but there may be something —”

  “— in Delaney’s life, or his case load, that could explain the visions. I agree with you that it’s a long shot, but it’s a start — Normie! You’re supposed to be cleaning your room, not hanging around down here. Up you go. Monty, see you in ten minutes.”

  The documentary opened with a shot of Delaney in full court regalia, speaking to reporters after one of his courtroom triumphs. He had just saved his client, a mother on social assistance, from going to jail for breaking the “man in the house” rule. She was accused of welfare fraud for accepting payments and not declaring that her husband, who had previously moved out, had moved back in. Delaney had made an impassioned argument that a poor mother on welfare should not be sent to jail for fraud while rich men — and he produced for the court a long list of recent examples — were not given jail sentences for tax evasion and other white-collar crimes. The judge agreed. That day marked the beginning of the end of “welfare mothers” being dragged away from their families and thrown in jail.

  The scene then switched to the Delaney home, where the camera panned around the house, taking in several bedrooms with bunk beds, and Beau and Peggy’s own room, where two little kids bounced up and down on the bed and giggled. Peggy’s closet was shown; it
was a jumble, and she quickly closed the door and laughed. Beau’s closet was featured next, and was notable for a rack full of shoes. Someone off camera made a joke about Imelda Marcos and her thousands of shoes, and Beau said when you had feet his size, you had to grab footwear when you could find it.

  Then there was a short biography punctuated with career highlights. His father was a surgeon; his mother was trained as a teacher, but stayed home to raise Beau. The only child. He had excelled in school, had gone on to St. Thomas University and Dalhousie Law School, where he won the much-coveted Smith Shield for the moot court competition. After graduation near the top of his class, he was hired by one of the big Halifax firms, then went out on his own doing criminal law. He was made a Queen’s Counsel and received various other honours. The focus switched to his large blended family of biological, adopted, and foster children. The family was shown in their customized minibus, on the way to the Commons for one of the sports and picnic days, to which all and sundry were invited. Some of his children spoke on camera; others just performed various hijinks in the grass. Then it was the cottage overlooking Lawrencetown beach; we saw a surfer catch a big wave, and heard squeals of appreciation from the Delaney kids. The next segment dealt with Delaney’s efforts to balance his life and work. Beau and Peggy answered reporter Charlene Fay’s questions about the stress and even danger that are part of life for a big-time defence lawyer.

  “Beau, it’s well known that you received death threats following your defence of Adam Gower, the man who committed the Gary’s General Store robbery, in which one young clerk, Scott Hubley, was shot to death and the other, Cathy Tompkins, left permanently disabled.”

  “Yes, I did receive threats. Feelings were running very high in the Blockhouse area. And I can understand that. Everyone has the right to a legal defence, and I did my job to the best of my ability in that case as in others. That doesn’t mean I am insensitive to the pain of the victims or their families. Or their community. It takes its toll even on those of us who work on ‘the other side.’”

  “You must have been especially concerned in that case, because the perpetrator, your client, was eventually tracked down and killed. Beaten to death.”

  “Yes, that happened the year after the trial, when Mr. Gower returned from a stint out west and came back to live in Blockhouse.”

  “He was murdered within days of his return. Pretty scary for you!”

  “Yes, I was watching my back for a while there.”

  The documentary then showed clips of movie star Jack Hartt playing the role of Delaney in Righteous Defender, as he stepped in and solved the murder of Adam Gower, thereby exonerating Cathy Tompkins’s brother, who had been wrongfully convicted of killing his sister’s attacker.

  “That wasn’t the only time a client met a violent death,” the reporter stated.

  The scene switched to a Mountie speaking to reporters outside an RCMP detachment. One reporter asked: “Was there a Hells Angels link to the killing?”

  The officer didn’t answer that, but said: “The victim, Travis Bullard, was shot to death. The weapon was a high-calibre handgun.”

  “Was he shot more than once?”

  “We’ll release more details at a future time. Thank you.”

  Then we were back with Charlene Fay in the Delaneys’ living room. “But they never did release more details, did they? Just that the man was shot to death. That happened several months ago. Sources have told us that this case is still unsolved, but that the Mounties have a suspect in mind, someone who has since gone to prison for an unrelated offence. They wouldn’t want to jeopardize their case by revealing details about the crime in a situation like that . . .”

  “Makes sense,” Beau agreed.

  “This man, Travis Bullard, had some unsavoury connections . . . links to the Hells Angels, people say.”

  “He travelled in some rough circles, yes.”

  “And so he ended up being shot to death one night in Truro.”

  “That was the longest night of my life!” Peggy Delaney exclaimed. “My God, I thought, if they —”

  “It’s a scary world out there,” Beau interrupted, “but those of us who work in criminal law can’t go through life second-guessing every client we take on. We have a job to do.”

  “That brings us to another point. You have a job to do, defending people accused of terrible crimes. Sometimes it must be very difficult to do that job. Particularly when the crime was committed against a child. You defended a woman who, along with her boyfriend, engaged in prolonged abuse of a child and then killed him. They were convicted despite your best efforts on their behalf.”

  “Yes, they’ll be behind bars for a long time yet.”

  “A lot of people must wonder: how can you do it? How can you defend someone who has killed or abused a little child?”

  Beau leaned forward. “I don’t take any of these cases lightly, I’d like to assure everyone of that. These terrible cases mean sleepless nights for defence lawyers, just as I assume is the case for the police, the prosecutors, social workers, and anyone else whose lives are touched by such tragedies.”

  “It’s not all tragedy and violence, though,” the reporter assured us. “Tell us about your dog case, Beau.”

  “I had fun with that. My client was charged with letting his dog run loose in one of the communities outside Halifax, contrary to a village bylaw requiring dogs to be on a leash. The bylaw enforcement officer, the dog catcher, never caught my client, but he claimed to have recognized the dog. It was a German shepherd called Fang. I made an arrangement with the film production company that did my movie to round up a bunch of trained German shepherds, and bring them into the courtroom the day of the trial. The dog catcher was on the stand. I asked him to point out the offending dog. Looking out to the gallery, all he could see was a row of virtually identical German shepherds sitting with their trainers. The dog catcher couldn’t identify Fang, and the judge laughingly declared my client not guilty.”

  The story then returned to Beau’s kids, and their hopes and plans for the future. “Any budding lawyers here?” Three hands went up. Everyone laughed when one little girl shook her head and said: “Not me, no way. I’m going to work at the Chickenburger!”

  I switched the VCR off and looked at Brennan. He said: “That child abuse case sounds dreadful.”

  “It was atrocious,” Maura said. “Normie may have picked up on that somehow, though I hope not.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked. “The last thing we want is for her to learn the details of that incident. Believe me.”

  “I believe you,” Brennan said. “There’s also the case in which Delaney’s life was threatened because of the feelings running so high about his client. Could Normie have detected something about that?”

  “But the client, Adam Gower, got his comeuppance in the end. I think any threat to Delaney would have evaporated after that. The community would have experienced a kind of catharsis once the perpetrator was eliminated. Not that I recommend that form of therapy! But once it was done, I can’t see much danger for the man who did his job and defended the guy in court. I think people understand the lawyer’s role after they cool off. And Beau redeemed himself completely once he cleared the young girl’s brother of murdering Gower. I mean, the story even made it to the big screen, with the Jack of Hearts starring as Beau. Hartt lives in Los Angeles, and he invited Beau and the family down for a weekend a few years ago. They all went to some kind of Hollywood wingding. Cavorting with the stars. Too bad Normie can’t have visions of that instead!”

  “No such luck,” replied Brennan. “So we haven’t found the answers we’re looking for. No surprise there, I guess. Time for me to embark on phase two of our research.”

  “What’s that?” Maura asked.

  “I’m going to spend a couple of hours in one of the libraries and do a CD-Rom search for cases handle
d by Delaney.”

  My face must have betrayed my surprise.

  “What?” Burke asked.

  “I never had you pegged as being in the vanguard of 1990s information technology.”

  “I do teach the odd course at the university level, Collins. My area of expertise may be twenty centuries old, but word reaches me of the latest research techniques.”

  “I stand corrected, Reverend Dr. Professor Burke.”

  “And so you should.”

  “I’ll do some legal research into his criminal cases.”

  “Depending on what I find, you may not need to. No point in duplicating our efforts.”

  “True enough. I’ll hold off till I see what you come up with.”

  (Normie)

  “What’s an ‘asylum’?” I asked Mum on the way to school Friday. I said it like “AZ-ee-lum” because I didn’t want to say “ASS-ee-lum.” But that wasn’t the right way to say it anyway.

  Mummy answered: “The usual meaning of it is a mental hospital. It can also mean giving shelter to people fleeing evil governments in other countries. But psychiatric hospital would be the most common meaning. You pronounce it ‘ah-SIGH-lum.’ Why are you asking, sweetheart?”

  “No reason, just wondering.” Mental people again! I couldn’t tell her why I was asking, because they might put me in an asylum! So I kept quiet about what I had seen in my mind’s eye when I woke up that morning. I drew a picture in my diary of what I saw. It was a really old building and it said “asylum” on it, and there were other words but I forgot them because I was concentrating on remembering “asylum” to ask Mum. I had heard the sound of screaming and crying coming from inside the building, and there was a feeling of sadness there.

  I saw Kim waiting for me in front of the school. She had one of her braids in her mouth the way she often did when she thought nobody was looking. “Kim!”

  “Normie!”

  We went in to school together, and I stopped thinking about the old building.