Blood on a Saint

by Anne Emery

“That’s what I’ve been trying to get across to you. It would be better to leave it.”

  “This girl is my alibi. I’ll find her once you get me out of this shithole. I’m not going down for this, Collins. I didn’t do it.”

  “What age are we talking about here?”

  Podgis’s thick lips twisted into a smirk. “Young. But not so young that I’ll be facing a stat rape charge after I beat the murder rap.”

  “If I can get you out on bail, you’re going to find out where she is, and who she is. Then you’re going to let me do the talking. Understand?”

  “What you gotta understand is that I’m not going to stay behind bars for something I didn’t do. I don’t want to hear if you get me out on bail. I want my hearing, I want it now, and I want it right. So when are we going to do that?”

  “It won’t be today. It will be in Supreme Court for a murder charge, not here. But looking ahead to that, you say Brett Bekkers has offered to put up bail for you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Now tell me: where did this tender love scene take place?”

  “I’ll fill you in on all that when I track her down.”

  “Fill me in now.”

  There was a lot more information Monty needed, including whatever happened when Podgis tracked Brennan Burke down at the tavern after the broadcast. “Where did you go right after the show? Did ‘April’ accompany you for — ”

  “I’m getting sick here, Collins. I’m surrounded by scumbags. I have a headache that’s just about splitting my skull in two. All I want to do is get out. They told me the arraignment would be at nine thirty. What time is it?”

  “They always say that. It will be sometime today. Likely this morning. I’ll see you up there. Now I’ll go and talk to the Crown, see what they have.”

  “They don’t have jack shit. I didn’t do it.”

  “All right. See you upstairs for the arraignment. You won’t enter a plea here. That will happen in Supreme Court, and that’s when we’ll set up a bail hearing. The onus will be on us to show that you should be released. As I say, it will take a few days to set up.”

  “So what happens to me till then?” His voice had gone up an octave and several decibels in volume.

  “You’ll be on remand out at the Halifax County Correctional Centre in Sackville.”

  Podgis ranted and raved about that, but there was nothing Monty could do. Procedure was procedure. He got up and knocked at the door. The sheriff came and led Podgis back to his cell. Then he returned and headed for the steel door. Monty had always been struck by the enormous key the sheriffs had for the door; if a child were to draw a picture of a jailhouse key, this would be it. Monty thanked Donny MacEachern and went upstairs to the main body of the courthouse. His first stop was the Crown’s office on the second floor. He was told Bill MacEwen was expected any minute, so he waited.

  When MacEwen walked in, they exchanged greetings. Then MacEwen said, “Podgis.”

  “Right.”

  “Here’s the Information.”

  That was the document formally stating the charge against the client. In this case, Sergeant Vern Doucette of the Halifax Police Department stated that he had reasonable grounds to believe, and did believe, that Perry Calvin Podgis, on or about the twenty-fourth day of September, 1992, at or near Halifax, in the Province of Nova Scotia, did commit first-degree murder on the person of Jordyn Jynette Snider, contrary to section 235(1) of the Criminal Code.

  “What can you tell me about the arrest?”

  “They picked him up at his hotel room at three o’clock, read him his rights, took him to the station, took his clothes and shoes.” MacEwen paused, then, “Blood on the shoes.”

  Long years of practice enabled Monty to hear this without reacting. He waited for more.

  “A witness saw him leaving the scene. Running from the scene, she said. Described his clothing, the clothing the police took.”

  This was going from bad to worse, but that was the usual trajectory of revelations in Monty’s work.

  “What time does your witness claim she saw my client?”

  “Middle of the night. We don’t have the exact time yet.”

  “And the time of death?”

  “The body was discovered — ”

  “By whom?”

  “Guy going home from work as a bartender, cutting through the churchyard around two fifteen. Police and ambulance got there in ten minutes. Medical examiner says she had been dead for an hour and a half, two hours.”

  “All right. Thanks, Bill.”

  Podgis was arraigned that afternoon in a courtroom packed to the rafters with reporters and onlookers. He was a very unhappy man, no doubt contemplating his immediate future, which would be spent on remand at the correctional centre with the general population of offenders until — unless — he was successful on his bail application. The client looked even more spooked when Monty tipped him off about the Crown’s evidence: that he had been spotted leaving the scene, and that the police had found blood on his shoes.

  “If blood got on my shoes, it wasn’t from killing her. It must have been splattered all over the place.”

  “All over the place where?”

  “Where do you think? The churchyard.”

  “You were there?” Monty practically hissed at him. “You told me you had an alibi.”

  “I do, Collins. But look where my hotel is. The Halliburton on Morris Street. Less than a minute away from the church.”

  “Blood didn’t fly from the statue of St. Bernadette down Byrne Street and across Morris! If so, it’s as miraculous as the bullet that killed Kennedy.”

  “I’ll explain it to you when you get me out.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  It took over a week before Podgis was granted a bail hearing in the Supreme Court on Upper Water Street. The Crown attorney argued forcefully against letting Podgis out, given that he was charged with murder, and the Crown had a great deal of case law on its side. MacEwen laid out the evidence of Podgis’s guilt and argued that this pointed to a likelihood of conviction and therefore a reason for Podgis to flee the jurisdiction if released. But after a four-hour hearing, Monty succeeded in getting him out on a fifty-thousand-dollar recognizance with one surety, that being his employer, and a number of conditions: he was not to leave the jurisdiction, he was to surrender his passport, abide by an eight p.m. curfew, report to the police every Friday, and he was not to have any weapons in his possession.

  The television cameras were waiting for the combative talk show host outside the courtroom, and he was true to form. He was being framed, there was a conspiracy against him, there were forces at work that were determined to remove him from the action, silence him for good, bring him down. But he was going to fight this thing. Nobody was going to stop Pike Podgis from getting to the truth. Wait and see. In the meantime, while these farcical charges were making their way through the system, the real killer was out there, and a poor girl’s murder was going unsolved. Jordyn Snider’s grieving family had his heartfelt sympathy, and he assured them he had not killed their daughter. Monty stayed well out of camera range and slipped away as soon as he had the chance.

  †

  On the Monday following the bail hearing, Monty arranged to meet his client at the television studio on Robie Street to watch the tape of the September 23 Pike Podgis Show, in the hope of spotting the alibi witness. The talk show was even more awful the second time around, but seeing Brennan Burke onstage was more fun this time because Monty could see him building up to a walkout. Summoned to discourse on the divine and the meaning of the universe, he looked instead as if he had been dropped into a steaming pile of excrement crawling with flies. Monty watched Podgis watching the show as the priest got up, dropped the microphone, and left the stage without another glance at his host. Next to him in the studio now,
Podgis was livid all over again, his anger palpable.

  But lawyer and client had another purpose for watching the detestable program, and that was to identify — or more likely, Monty thought, to select for the first time — the woman who could supposedly provide Podgis with his alibi. The camera panned the audience at regular intervals and whenever there was a particularly loud collective shriek or howl or stomping of hooves, but twenty-five minutes into the show, Monty was none the wiser as to the identity of the all-important alibi witness.

  “Where is she, Podgis?”

  “I dunno. I didn’t see her till after the broadcast, so I haven’t a clue where she was sitting.”

  Of course. The tape rolled on, Podgis stopping it every once in a while in an effort, or a feigned effort, to spot his beloved in the crowd.

  “There!” He pointed at someone in a seat near the back of the studio audience, ahead turned to the side,with only her white-blondhair and neck visible.

  “That’s the one, is it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Keep rolling it. See if there’s a better shot.” But Monty was doubtful. In all likelihood, his client had already gone through the tape, found an unidentifiable blond he could christen “April,” and reassured himself that there was no other image of her on the tape. A woman of mystery she was; a woman of mystery she would remain.

  “Hold it!” Monty instructed him.

  “What for?”

  “Go back a bit.”

  “No, she’s not there.”

  “But somebody else is. Go back and stop it.”

  Podgis rewound the tape. Reluctantly, Monty thought.

  “There!” Monty said.

  “What?”

  “Jordyn Snider, right there in your audience.”

  Podgis made a show of peering at the image. “That’s her?”

  Monty looked at him. “Did you meet her? During, before, or after the show?”

  “No! Of course not! I met that blond!”

  “The police will find this interesting, to say the least. I assume they came by right after your arrest for a tape of the show. Unedited.”

  “They came by for all kinds of things. Fuck ’em.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “They took a tape. They cornered members of the staff here; listened to office tittle-tattle and petty gossip.” Podgis said “petty gossip” with an intonation that suggested he was above that sort of thing, when in fact he had built much of his career on it. “They won’t find anything.”

  “Except the murder victim in the room with you hours before her death.”

  “A studio audience is not a few people gathered in the living room. I don’t know any of these people.”

  “Not even the blond you say you went off with after the lights went down, and before the blood started flying. Before you were spotted leaving the scene of the crime.”

  “I didn’t just say I went off with her. And I wasn’t leaving the scene of the crime. You really piss me off, Collins.”

  “Get used to it.”

  “Stay focused on the evidence here. I showed you my alibi witness. Now what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You’re the lawyer. What areyou going to do with this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe run ads in the papers asking the woman who was banging Pike Podgis two weeks ago at the time of the murder to come forward in a blaze of publicity.”

  “Fuck you,Collins.”

  Things did not progress much beyond that on the question of the witness. Monty discussed with his client the next major proceeding, the preliminary inquiry. The purpose of the prelim was to determine whether there was enough evidence against the accused to send him to trial. It was something the accused could waive if he chose, but it provided the opportunity to get a good look at the Crown’s case and its witnesses, to see the case the defence would have to meet. Podgis demanded that Monty get the hearing scheduled as soon as possible, so he could “get this over with.” He did not seem to grasp that this might never be over, that this crime and its punishment could constitute the rest of his life. When Monty left, the alibi was still an open question.

  Chapter 4

  Brennan

  Monsignor Michael O’Flaherty was a little too easygoing about the chaos in St. Bernadette’s churchyard, in Father Brennan Burke’s opinion. Brennan had succeeded in convincing Michael to clear the tents off the property and put an end to open fires, lowering the risk of the Church’s liability for an accident or a conflagration. Michael had been quite happy to arrange accommodation for visiting pilgrims in local convents and hostels. But portable toilets were still on the site, and Brennan had to concede they were a necessary evil, but he made sure they were moved out of sight. Out of his sight, and that of the church and school. He would rather have a slash up against one of the storefronts on Spring Garden Road than resort to one of these public cesspits. But they were there for the duration, he knew.

  More to the point, though, Brennan thought the monsignor should make a public statement that there was nothing whatsoever to the claimed sightings, and run the entire circus out of town. Instead, the affable O’Flaherty said he looked on it as a learning experience or, more properly, the opportunity for a bit of teaching about the Church’s belief in the occasional — extremely rare — miraculous event. With this in mind, O’Flaherty had scheduled an information session, to be offered outside by the statue of St. Bernadette. He had the children at the choir school make up colourful posters advertising the late-afternoon event, and he was putting the finishing touches on his presentation. Brennan was to be there at Michael’s side. Fair play to Michael; Brennan could hardly fault the pastor for wanting his curate along for moral support. But he had also dragooned Brennan into giving a lecture at a time to be announced. Brennan hoped and prayed that something would happen — a miraculous intervention, perhaps — between now and then to get him off the hook.

  For now, though, the game was afoot. And Monty Collins was here for the show. They were going to the Athens for a bite to eat afterwards.

  “I was hoping Brennan was going to prepare and deliver this lecture, Monty. But he got no farther than filling me in about the song.”

  “Song?”

  “The ‘Song of Bernadette.’ Not to be confused with the movie of the same name. The Leonard Cohen song. And who was it, Brennan, the woman who wrote it with him?”

  “What I heard,” Brennan replied, “was that Jennifer Warnes, who sings it so beautifully, had originally been named Bernadette. But all the other children in the family had names beginning with J, and they badgered their parents to stick to that pattern. So the baby’s name was changed to Jennifer, after Jennifer Jones, the actress who played Bernadette in the movie. Jennifer Warnes went to Catholic school and wrote an essay about Bernadette. Later, when she was touring with Cohen in France, near Lourdes, she mentioned her interest in Bernadette, and that was the genesis of the song.”

  “Lovely story, isn’t it?” O’Flaherty remarked.

  “Yes, it is,” Monty agreed.

  “But that’s the extent of Brennan’s contribution. Otherwise, he leaves it to an oul’ fella to do all the work. Just when I should be gliding into retirement.”

  “I’ll go out and tell the crowd you’re in delicate health, Michael, not up to the task.”

  “Kind of you, Brennan, but the multitudes are restless. I can’t bring myself to disappoint them.”

  “Disappoint them, Michael. Time they got used to it.”

  “You know the real reason he doesn’t like this stuff, Monty.”

  “No, I don’t understand. Father Burke is usually so co-operative.”

  “He’s not able for it. Too squeamish! He can’t bring himself to describe the condition of those who were cured, people with running sores and pus and all the unappetizing ma
nifestations of bodily ailments. That’s it, isn’t it, Brennan? Fess up, now.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “You can’t talk about some of these cures without making reference to purulent discharges and feces. Can’t tell the stories of the illness, the cure, or the test results without getting your hands dirty, my lad.”

  Brennan made no attempt to hide his distaste. Nobody could ever accuse Brennan Burke of avoiding the pleasures of the body. But he, like other people who had never been sick a day in their lives, wasn’t so hot when it came to its afflictions.

  “Never mind him, though, Monty. What do you make of all this talk of miracles?”

  “I have to confess to you, Mike, that I had never given it any thought before now. I’d hear the word Lourdes and it would go in one ear and out the other. I just assumed . . .”

  “Yes? You assumed?”

  “Well, that it was a bunch of pious claptrap. But that’s without knowing one single solitary thing about it.”

  “Not exactly the scientific method.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “You’re not alone. There are a whole lot of people who say they swear by the scientific method, then abandon the empirical method of inquiry when it comes to evaluating claims from, say, Lourdes. They don’t read any of the case studies, any of the doctors’ reports, and just dismiss it out of hand. They come to a conclusion based on no evidence and no observation.

  “And of course there are the conspiracy buffs, who think it’s all a gigantic fraud perpetrated by the Church and, presumably, by all those doctors. That would mean that a bunch of doctors, who don’t believe in any of this, pretend they do, at the risk of being mocked and derided by their colleagues and having their reputations ruined for good. Why would they do that?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Michael.”

  “Thousands of doctors have looked at thousands of cases over the past hundred and thirty or so years. The standards are extremely rigorous; that’s why so many cures, even though medically inexplicable, don’t make the final cut as miraculous according to the Church. Contrary to the idea that the Church wants to claim miracles left, right, and centre, it is in fact extremely cautious about these claims. Here we are in 1992, one hundred thirty-four years after St. Bernadette at Lourdes, and only sixty-five cures have been accepted as miraculous. And of course, most people are not cured and that can’t be explained either! But it’s time to get out there. Will you be joining us, Monty?”