Blood on a Saint

by Anne Emery

  “Try. Now give me your story.”

  “I met her at the studio. I told you that.”

  “Then where did you go?”

  “I didn’t stick with her then. I made plans to meet up with her later.”

  “Where did you go before then?”

  “Went downtown for a while.”

  “What for?”

  “Nothing. Nothing to do with this. Just kil — whiling away the time till we could meet.”

  “Why? What was she doing before then?”

  “After the show, she had to put in some time with a group of girls she had promised to meet, fill them in about the program, eat some chicken wings, whatever.”

  “Tell me where you went downtown.”

  “Walked around.”

  “Where?”

  “Why do I suspect you already know that, Collins?”

  “Your confrontation with Brennan Burke outside the Midtown Tavern didn’t take up a lot of your unaccounted-for time on murder night. Though you could start by telling me about that.”

  “Nothing to tell. I wanted to head downtown, maybe have a drink or two. I had heard it around town that Burke’s a lush. Spends a lot of time at the Midtown, so I decided to stop by there.”

  “Burke is not a lush.”

  “If you say so.”

  “He likes a drink from time to time, as a lot of us do.”

  “Like I said, so I heard.”

  “What happened?”

  “He came out of the bar with a glow on, and I saw him and told him what I thought of him leaving in the middle of my show after he had agreed to participate.”

  “This was a nice, polite disagreement, was it?”

  “I told him what I thought of him.”

  “What was his response?”

  “He was an asshole. I don’t see what you get out of hanging around with a prick like him.”

  “Okay. Where did you finally meet up with April?”

  “The waterfront.”

  “Why the waterfront?”

  “She said she liked it down there.”

  “Whereabouts on the waterfront?”

  “Down at the end of Salter Street.”

  “All right. You’ve told me. Now you’re going to show me. I’ll see you on the waterfront one hour from now.” Click.

  †

  Predictably, Podgis kept him waiting. Monty had walked down Salter from his office and was standing at the water’s edge, watching a navy frigate move silently past him in the fog on its way out to sea. Still no client, so he walked out on the wharf. The ferry was steaming across from Dartmouth, and something on the deck had attracted a flock of crying seagulls. Finally, he turned and saw his client lumbering towards him from the parking lot. He was encased in a sheepskin-lined bomber jacket with lots of wool trim and a matching hat with the front flipped up. There are many reasons men need wives, Monty reflected, but kept it to himself.

  “What are you doing way out there?” Podgis bellowed. “Me and her weren’t out on the wharf.”

  Monty joined him and said, “All right. How did you get here that night?”

  “Walked.”

  “Why didn’t she pick you up?”

  “She was coming from Clayton Park or someplace. I was downtown. It was easier for me to walk down the hill and meet her here.”

  “Why here?”

  “I told you, she liked it here.”

  “Liked it here for what?”

  “The view, I guess. The harbour. We didn’t discuss the beauty of the water and the boats.”

  “What did you discuss?”

  Podgis looked at him with what was almost a leer. It was all Monty could do not to turn away.

  “Where exactly did she park?”

  Podgis flapped his hand at the lot in general.

  “And you walked to the car and got in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Front or back seat?”

  His client looked at him as if he had asked something too indelicate to merit a response.

  “Were there other people on the waterfront?”

  “I didn’t see anybody.”

  That much was true, since he almost certainly had not been here.

  “Now let’s get back to the timing. I can’t escape the notion that the love scene at which you have hinted would not have taken a couple of hours to consummate.”

  “Have you gotten punched out much in your life, Collins? I’m not a violent guy usually. I’ve never killed anybody. Not Jordyn Snider. Not anybody else either. But I feel like beating the shit out of you right here and now. Because you fucking deserve it. You and all the other snotty little rich kids who grow up to be lawyers and sneer at everybody else.”

  It had been a long, long time since anybody had called Monty a snotty little rich kid. And, given the fact that Podgis had built a career out of sneering at people, Monty could not bring up any feelings of guilt about taking the mickey out of his client.

  “Attacking me would be yet another bad idea on your part, Pike. One, it would look very bad for you when you got arrested again. And two, I’d fight back and beat the shit out of you. Now let’s get back to how I can help you beat the murder charge. We were talking about timing. Without being overly crass, tell me what you and this woman did on the night in question for, what? Two hours?”

  “We had some drinks.”

  “I see. Where did you drink?”

  “The car.”

  “The car again! You wouldn’t even take her to a bar and buy her a drink?”

  “She had a bottle in the car.”

  “Bottle of what?”

  “Tequila.”

  Of course.

  “So we got into that.”

  “Glasses?”

  “She had a pack of styrofoam cups.”

  “Not the best date you ever had, I take it?”

  “Shows how much you know, pretty boy. Parts of that night were the best date I ever had. And I’ve had my share of good dates. The advantage of being a single man. What this chick lacked in crystal stemware she made up in other areas. As skilled as a French courtesan in some ways.”

  “Maybe she’s been servicing the NATO fleet. That would account for her affinity for the waterfront. Did she charge you?”

  “Are we finished here?”

  “No, we’re not. The two hours, were they all spent here in this spot in the car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I vamoosed back to the hotel.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “We’re going to retrace the route you took to the Halliburton.”

  Podgis headed up to Lower Water Street and turned left. Monty followed and stayed a few paces behind, even though it meant walking at an uncomfortably slow pace. Better than having to make any more conversation with his client. Podgis turned right on Bishop Street and went left almost immediately, cutting between two beautifully restored wooden apartment houses and on into the St. Bernadette’s churchyard. Naturally. This would be his explanation for the blood on his shoes. Monty had little doubt that the test results would show it was Jordyn Snider’s blood.

  Byrne Street was a cul-de-sac that opened onto Morris at the south end but stopped well short of Bishop at the north end. The rectory and church were on the east side of Byrne. The churchyard was a large rectangle of grass with a few stands of shrubs and trees in back of the church and rectory. The statue of St. Bernadette, in its grotto of evergreens, was just behind the two buildings.

  As soon as Podgis reached the edge of the churchyard, Monty called to him to stop. He caught up with his client and said, “Is this exactly where you entered the yard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All r
ight. Carry on.”

  They started walking again, diagonally across the yard. On their left were the spruce and pine trees partially enclosing the statue. Monty knew from the Crown’s evidence that Jordyn Snider’s body had been found in the grass between the statue and the trees, out of sight of the back windows of the rectory and the church. Now Monty and the man accused of the murder skirted the outer side of the trees on their way through the yard. A few of the Marian tourists stood around in the fog, making desultory conversation.

  Again, Monty asked his client to stop. “What did you see when you walked through here?”

  “Nothing. No people.”

  “No dead girl lying on the ground.”

  “I didn’t see any dead girl. I was just walking home, minding my own business.”

  “Is this where you were in relation to the trees?”

  “Yeah, right here. So where was the girl’s body found?”

  “On the other side of the trees. In between them and the statue. Out of view.”

  “Okay.”

  “So the closest you would have been to the murder scene was twelve to fifteen feet. Yet you had blood on your shoes.”

  “Yeah, which must mean I walked through blood.”

  “Which must mean, if Jordyn’s body was not here, it was moved from here after she shed some blood.”

  There was also the streak of blood on the face of the statue. It was possible that it had been the killer and not the victim who reached out to the face of the saint, but Monty had no way of knowing.

  “So that’s what we’re hoping, that the body had been moved. That’s what I’ll be looking for in the evidence from the police investigation and the medical examiner’s report. If there is no evidence the body was moved, we cannot explain away the blood.” The client was uncharacteristically silent. “Right?”

  “Yeah. Right. Obviously. I didn’t see any body, and I didn’t see any blood. But it got on my shoes. So it was here, and she wasn’t. No matter what their evidence shows.”

  “Their evidence will be evidence of the facts. We had better hope it is in our favour.”

  “It will be.”

  “You sound very confident.”

  “I am. I was here.”

  “Yes. You were.”

  Monty paused and looked around, then ahead towards Byrne Street.

  “The police of course know you were here because they have a witness who says she saw you running from the scene. Running down Byrne Street and out onto Morris.”

  “I wasn’t running from the scene. I was walking fast because I was cold. After being in an overheated car with an overheated young female, I nearly froze my ass off when I got out. So I was gum-booting it across the church property to get to my hotel.”

  They started moving again, making their way around the pilgrims and oddballs occupying the site. One man was walking around in circles carrying a foam rubber tablet with the Ten Commandments on it; every time he stopped by someone, he pointed at the tablet and thundered, “Thou shalt not kill!”

  The accused killer and his lawyer ignored him, and Monty stopped when they had reached the corner of Byrne and Morris.

  “All right. Now what I’m going to do is run an ad in the Herald and the Daily News, and anywhere else I can think to run it, looking for a young blond woman who . . . well, I won’t say ‘was with Pike Podgis.’ I’ll say ‘was in a small, dark car parked on the Halifax waterfront in the late night or early morning hours of September twenty-third to twenty-fourth.’ I’ll ask her to come forward to assist in a matter of great urgency. And I’ll give my office phone number. Do you think that will bring results?”

  Podgis looked miserable. Monty almost felt sorry for him.

  “I don’t know,” Podgis said.

  “Should I use the name April?”

  “Why? If she sees the ad, she’ll know it’s her anyway.”

  “If we use the name April and that is her real name, or if she goes by that name for some purposes, that increases the chances that somebody else will recognize who we are looking for and call April about it. Or call us. Right?”

  “Yeah,” Podgis said without enthusiasm. “Right.”

  Monty stood there and looked at his client, who took to staring defiantly into Monty’s eyes. Monty replayed the whole saga in his head, then said, “Mr. Podgis, I told you when this all began that a bad alibi is worse than no alibi. And your story just may be the worst alibi story I have ever heard.”

  The client turned on his heel and stomped away.

  The worst alibi story? Almost, but not quite. Monty had heard worse in his twenty-plus years in the courtroom: for example, the young boyfriend and girlfriend who both claimed to have been in their respective doctors’ offices, being diagnosed with cancer on the same day, and therefore were nowhere near the murder scene at the given time. But the story spun out by Podgis, if not the very worst, was highly implausible and smacked of desperation. He should have claimed he was in his hotel room alone. Reading, working, watching television. Nobody saw or heard him; still, nobody could prove he wasn’t in there. Once he committed himself to this unlikely tale of romance by the sea, with a person he could not identify, he was forced to pile on one unlikely fabrication after another. No identifiable address, no bed, no grassy field, so a car. Again, unidentifiable. Then he had to place the car somewhere. And he had to account for those two hours in the car, after their passion was sated. And, finally, he had to explain why he was at or very near the murder scene when the body would still have been warm, only to emerge with blood on his shoes.

  It was so bad, especially coming from someone who had the capacity to know better, that Monty was almost ready to give it the tiniest benefit of the doubt. There were countless real-life stories, tales of blunders and stupid decisions and screw-ups, even bizarre coincidences, that were almost unbelievable and yet were true. Could this be one of those instances? As obnoxious and crude as he was, Podgis was not without intelligence. He had enjoyed a long and successful career, at least on his terms, in television. Before becoming a talk show host, he had been an investigative reporter. Innocent or guilty, he could have made up something far better than this to stave off a murder conviction. Monty also had to acknowledge some of the idiotic things he himself had done, and scrapes he had got into, when he was young and trying to get laid. Podgis was a lot older than that and should have been wiser, but nobody would call him a handsome or a charming man. Were these the lengths he would go to for a night of female companionship? Was it possible that this ridiculous story was true?

  †

  Ridiculous or not, Monty dutifully wrote out his “Cynically Seeking April” ad and took it to his secretary, Tina, with instructions to submit it to the newspapers.

  Then he returned to his table and opened the file. The first item on his checklist was the question of whether or not Jordyn Snider had been moved during the attack — whether the struggle with her killer had taken place all in one spot or whether it had begun outside the stand of trees and ended on the inside next to the statue. In the alternative, had her body been moved after death? He hoped he could find this documented one way or the other in the records generated so far in the case. If he had to ask, that would alert the prosecution to one of the key elements of his defence. He wanted to postpone that as long as possible.

  He knew he had not registered anything about movement of the body, but that did not mean there was no reference to it. He may have glossed over it, though it was unlikely, or it may have been there between the lines and he had not drawn the inference. The Crown had delivered only scanty information so far, but the rest would come. The defence was entitled to full disclosure of the Crown’s evidence by law. And the real presentation of the evidence, with witnesses on the stand and the chance to examine those witnesses, would come with the preliminary hearing in three months’ time. For now, he had the statements
from the officers who responded to the call and from the arresting officers, the “will-say” statements from the woman who had seen Podgis leaving the scene and the man who had discovered the body. Monty also had the autopsy report.

  The autopsy showed without doubt that Jordyn Snider died from loss of blood from two stab wounds to the chest, one directly to the heart. There was a third, superficial, knife wound to the side of her neck. The murder weapon had been removed and not yet found. She had sustained a blow to her face. There were no cuts on her hands, no traces of blood or minute pieces of skin under her fingernails, for the simple reason that it had been an unusually cold night and she had been wearing gloves. There was blood on her gloves, but there were no tissue samples to compare with those taken from the suspect.

  Monty glanced over the “will-say” statement by Ward Sanford, who had found the body while walking across the churchyard at two fifteen in the morning on his way home from work as a bartender downtown. Jordyn was lying face up and it was obvious there were no signs of life; he stayed several feet away and did not touch her before making a dash for the nearest pay phone and calling the police. The other witness statement was from Betty Isenor, who was at home in the big wooden apartment building at the corner of Morris and Hollis streets, when she was awakened by noise outside her window. She described seeing Pike Podgis, whom she recognized on sight from his television show, running from St. Bernadette’s churchyard, down Byrne Street, and up Morris to his hotel. She said Podgis kept looking behind and around him. Although she had not yet known a crime had been committed, something in Podgis’s manner frightened her, and she stayed out of sight behind her curtains. She went back to bed but was awakened again soon afterwards by the sirens of the police vehicles and ambulance converging on the church property. She dressed quickly and went out to find one of the police officers; she told the cop what she had seen.

  The arresting officers described finding Podgis in his room at the Halliburton House Inn on Morris Street, which was located minutes away from St. Bernadette’s. They read him his rights as soon as he answered their knock on his door, but Podgis had not availed himself of the right to remain silent. When had he ever? He had been vocal in his denial of involvement in the killing. But the police had their witness statement and his clothing, which matched what the witness described and which he was still wearing when they arrived. And they had blood on his shoes.