Blood on a Saint

by Anne Emery

  Ignatius was shaking his head. “You don’t have to do this, Maggie. I’ll plead guilty to it. I can do the time. What have I got to lose? You have the little girls. What will they do without you?”

  “No, Ignatius, please! You can’t. I — ”

  Brennan put up his hand to silence them. “Maggie, I want you to come inside with me. Ignatius, you leave us now while I talk to Maggie. Do you have a place to sleep tonight?”

  “Of course, yes, don’t worry about me. Maggie, you talk to Father Burke. He will help you. And remember, my offer still stands.”

  Ignatius went off into the night, and Brennan gestured for Maggie to walk ahead of him into the parish house. They did not say a word until they were in his room with the door shut.

  Then she turned to him and said, “I did it because of what she did to me. And what she threatened to do to Celia and Florrie.”

  He knew that whatever this was, it was going to be excruciating. He wanted to establish the groundwork first.

  “Sit down now, Maggie. Let me get you a cup of tea.”

  “No, no, that’s okay.”

  She sank into the chair on one side of his work table; he sat in the other.

  “Maggie, are you a Catholic?”

  “Yes. But I haven’t been to Mass very much.”

  “That’s all right. Would you like to make a confession to me?” If he could get her behind the seal of the confessional, where Podgis had been . . .

  “Yes, I want to talk to you. But I’m still going to tell the police what I did.”

  “No. If you are going to tell anyone outside of this room, you are going to tell a lawyer, not the police.”

  She had started to tremble. “Okay.”

  “If you decide to go that route, I will take you to see a very good defence lawyer. Now take all the time you need, and tell me what you have to say.”

  She avoided his eyes as she began her story. “I knew there was a guy in the background. There always is. There’s always a guy and, no matter how low he is on the food chain, no matter what kind of a bottom-feeder he is, there’s a girl or a group of girls who want to go out with him. Girls who will go along with anything. They accept everything, they support everything, doesn’t matter how horrible it is.”

  He could feel the table shaking from the trembling of her arms on it. Her voice was barely under control.

  “He hid behind the curtain and pulled the strings. And the puppets danced along. They were there to do his bidding.”

  “They?” he asked quietly.

  “Jordyn and her best friend, Jade. They tortured me. Tortured me. At the request of Jordyn’s boyfriend. Because that’s what he wanted to see. I didn’t know who he was until a few months later, when I saw a story in the paper about this guy who raped a girl and beat her up. She was in the hospital for weeks. He got caught and went to court. The news story gave his name, Brandon Toth. And the story said there were two teenage girls who came to court to support him. And they giggled the whole time during the hearing. It was Jordyn and her friend. So I knew it was the same guy. He got sent to prison for eight years. Should have been eighty years. But anyway, he got his punishment and he’s still in there. So all I had to do was punish his two helpers. His supporters. The courtroom gigglers. I hated them even more than I hated him!”

  Brennan stayed silent. Anything he said, any stupid question, might only add to her pain. She was weeping by this time, and he longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knew he had to let her get it out her own way.

  “I hated them more because they should have been on my side. They were traitors. Traitors are hated by their own side even more than enemies are! Look how they get punished by their own people when they get caught.”

  Brennan had only to think of the dirty war in the North of Ireland to acknowledge the truth of this.

  “They betrayed me and other girls everywhere by going along with this sex criminal. They didn’t even have a motive of their own! It wasn’t providing any sexual thrill for them. They weren’t blinded by some kind of sick desire or anything like that. They knew it was wrong; they had nothing against me at all, but they did it anyway. They went along! Empty vessels to be filled with other people’s poison.”

  Maggie did an imitation of an official courtroom voice.

  “Why did you do it, Jordyn?”

  “Uh, ’cause, like, he wanted me to. So I was, like, ‘Okay! Tee-hee.’ Fucking idiot.” She looked out the window and said in a soft voice, “I despise people who go along.”

  “When did this happen, Maggie?”

  “When I was sixteen. They invited me to a party in somebody’s basement. It was outside the city somewhere. The other girl drove, and she went around so many twists and turns I had no idea where we were. And they covered my eyes when they dragged me out the next day, so I couldn’t see the way back or where we were coming from. They tied me up. I tried to fight them off but the other girl was too strong. So they did things to me. I was crying and screaming with pain, and begging them to stop. But nobody heard me except them, and the guy who ordered the torture. Brandon. I guess he was in the house somewhere too. Listening or watching through a hole in the wall, I don’t know. And the things they did were where my clothes would be over the injuries, so you couldn’t see them after. There was sick stuff they did, and took pictures. I wanted to kill myself. And they knew it, and laughed about it. I think they wanted me to do it.”

  “This is dreadful. Maggie, I am so very sorry to hear what you went through.”

  “I still have nightmares about it.”

  “I’m sure you do. Did you report this? Tell your parents?”

  “My father is dead, and my mother was really sick. She still is, and she spends all her time worrying about not being able to take care of me and Celia and Florrie. I couldn’t bear for her to know that one of us had been tortured. But I couldn’t tell anyway, and I couldn’t call the police. Jordyn threatened me that if I told, the cops would believe her and not me, because her stepfather was a friend of the police. And if it went to court, she would get up on the stand and say I did all this with a guy and just blamed it on Jordyn to get myself out of trouble. And everybody would know all the details, and would know where the marks on my skin came from. And I would never have a boyfriend or a husband or kids, because any guy would know I was a sicko and a whore. Especially after another thing they did later. But anyway, I had to keep my mouth shut about it.”

  Brennan was heart-scalded by what she was telling him. How could anyone treat another human being in such a way? What was wrong with the world, with the human race, that such things could happen?

  “But even with all of that, I might have been able to tell somebody. But not when she made the worst threat of all. Jordyn said she and her friend and some guys would hurt my little sisters. Do even worse things than they had done to me. If they were sent to jail, they would not be in there for long. And they’d learn all kinds of new ways to fight, and make sharp weapons out of things like nail files, and they’d come after Florrie and Celia and cut them up.”

  Her voice cracked on the last word, and she covered her face with her hands. Her whole body was shaking.

  “When I showed up at school, they were right there waiting for me, making slashing movements with their hands to remind me that if I talked, they’d get Florrie and Celia. I pretended to go along.

  “But I knew that if it took the rest of my life, I would get them back. It’s not as if my hatred would ever go away. I figured it might be years or even decades before I could get my revenge. Then Jordyn popped up on television. Made an ass of herself at the Virgin Mary shrine. You could tell she was trying to muscle the other one out of the spotlight. Befanee. So Jordyn made herself into a public figure, seeking attention as always. And she’d get it. I could do away with her, and make it look as if some nut ball had done it, some cr
eep who had seen her on TV. Jordyn had just succeeded in making herself a target.”

  She said it as if the story ended there. Brennan was not about to rush her. He rose from the table, plugged in his kettle, and made two cups of tea. When he returned to the table and placed her tea before her, she looked at the steaming cup as if trying to place what it was, where she was. Then she tensed and said, “What time is it? The girls. Mrs. Lewis goes to sleep at eleven. She doesn’t babysit them, but she keeps her ears open, you know . . .”

  “It’s twenty-five past.”

  “They’re alone. They’ll be worried. I’m hardly ever gone at night, and they’ve sensed something wrong.” Her eyes focused on him, and her expression deepened from agitation to horror. “I have to see them. Is this my last night? What’s going to happen to them? They have nobody! My mother can’t . . .”

  “One thing at a time, love. This is not your last night. I’ll take you home now to see to the girls. And whatever happens, I will make sure they are looked after. So we’ll go, and you’ll tell me the rest of the story after you get Florrie and Celia settled for the night.”

  †

  Maggie preceded Brennan up the stairs to her flat on Yukon Street. Brennan carried a manila envelope he had snatched on the way out of his room. Not a word had been said in the car on the way to Maggie’s home. She put her key in the lock and opened the door. Instantly there was the scramble of little feet in the apartment. A television voice was cut off in mid-bray.

  “Florrie?”

  The answer came through an exaggerated yawn. “Yeah?”

  “Are you in bed?”

  “Yeah. Well, kinda . . .”

  “Celia?”

  “Hi, Mag! Where were you?”

  “Maybe she had a date!”

  Florrie appeared then, in a long white nightgown, the hem of which was snagged in the waistband of her zebra-striped leggings. Maggie eyed the leggings but made no comment. Celia came in, successfully transformed into a little girl all ready for bed.

  “She did have a date!” Florrie crowed. “With Brennan! Ha ha.”

  “Ha ha yourself, you little brat,” Maggie replied, and clasped her youngest sister in a hug. She put her arm out, and Celia came into the embrace. The young ones looked up at Maggie with faces radiating love and contentment.

  Brennan knew the image of the little family was going to remain imprinted on his mind throughout a long and painful ordeal.

  “What’s that?” Florrie asked, pointing at the envelope when Maggie had released her.

  “It’s for you.”

  “‘Pussy Got the Measles’!”

  “Right. Lyrics and guitar chords.”

  “Great! I’m going to — ”

  “Not to be opened till morning.”

  “Aww!”

  “And there’s something for you in there too, Celia.”

  “Really?”

  “What’s she getting?” Florrie wanted to know.

  Brennan had remembered Celia’s interest in math, so he had grabbed a book of puzzles and games designed to illustrate the relationship between mathematics and music.

  “You’ll see tomorrow, after a good, long sleep.”

  “Do you have kids?” Florrie asked him.

  “No.”

  “Were you the boss of your own family?”

  “No, no. My big sister was the boss. Way it should be. And if Maggie wants you to go to bed now, that’s what you’re going to do. Right, girls?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Good night then, little ones. God bless you.”

  “Thank you!”

  “Yeah, thank you! See you tomorrow, Brennan.”

  Florrie reached up to put her arms around his neck, and he bent down to her. He gave her a hug, and she kissed him on the cheek. He planted a kiss on the top of Celia’s curls. He did his best to put on a front of casual cheerfulness, as if tomorrow would be just another day.

  Maggie dimmed the lights, took the girls by the hand, and put them to bed.

  †

  When she returned, her emotions barely in check, she sat down with Brennan at her kitchen table, and they took up where they had left off.

  “What happened that night, Maggie?”

  She looked past him into the darkness as she spoke. “As if it wasn’t convenient enough that Jordyn had become a public figure on TV, that Podgis freak announced he was coming to town. I’ve hated him for years, for all the shows he does exploiting people’s problems and their pain. Pretending he is sympathetic when he is just using them for his ratings. Of course I despised myself every time I turned his show on, but I watched it anyway. Like a train wreck we can’t stop looking at. What really nailed him for me was one particular show he did: girls who date guys who hurt other girls! How did he come up with that, you’re asking? Easy. It goes on all the time.” She peered at Brennan. “Don’t believe me?”

  “I’d believe just about anything, Maggie, unfortunately.”

  “I have a whole scrapbook of clippings I could show you. Ted Bundy, that serial killer in the States: he killed how many women? When they finally caught him, all these girls flocked to the courtroom to see him. And be seen by him. And all these other ones started writing him letters. There are other stories of grown women leaving their husbands to marry rapists and psychos who are in prison.

  “So Podgis was on to another well-known fact of life. And he was coming to Halifax. To do a show making fun of all the poor, deluded people who were hoping to see the Virgin Mary. It was perfect. I was going to set him up.”

  She had succeeded. Podgis was on his way to trial for the murder. But this was evidence that her own crime was premeditated, first-degree murder. Brennan stayed silent.

  “The setup began with a note to Jordyn’s place, pretending it was from one of Podgis’s minions. A public-relations person. Could Jordyn meet Pike after his show? He had seen her on the news and thought she could go far on TV. She had the looks and the personality. Blah blah blah. Why not meet at the shrine itself? He could do a bit of a photo shoot there. Unfortunately it had to be late — midnight — because he had commitments till then, and he had an early morning flight. I didn’t know when he would really be leaving, so I had to get it done that night. And I had checked out the shrine; everybody tended to clear out after suppertime.

  “Then I made a call to him at the hotel, pretending to be Jordyn, asking if we could meet after his show to discuss my chances of getting into television. How about the shrine at twelve thirty? Sorry about the late hour, but I work at Tim’s out in Bedford and I don’t get off till twelve. I made myself sound dumb and flirtatious, like someone who would do anything to get on TV. As you can imagine, he jumped at the idea. So that was the plan. I would do . . . what I was going to do to Jordyn at midnight, then get him there half an hour later. I would hide and wait till he showed up, then call the police with an anonymous tip, then go home and scrub myself and wash my clothes and all that. But things got out of control. You read about these perfect crimes or conspiracies, someone orchestrating everyone else’s moves. That’s not what happens in real life.

  “First of all, as soon as I got there and saw her, I changed my mind. Even though I hated her and had waited for years for this opportunity. I thought, ‘I can’t go through with this. I can’t kill somebody! Even her.’ She saw me and told me to get lost, because she was meeting somebody for a photo shoot. I started telling her what a horrible person she was, and she started making fun of me and telling me I would always be an outcast because of what had been done to me. She grabbed my jacket and tried to pull it away, and made a remark about the scars she had left on me. And I hit her, and she hit back. Then I said I was going to get her arrested for what she had done. And she told me she had a new boyfriend who was really tough, and she was going to send him to get me and Celia and Florrie, to make sure I
kept my mouth shut. It was only then that I took the knife out and stabbed her.

  “I couldn’t believe how horrible I felt, even though it was her and she deserved it. I had finally paid her back. I thought it would be exhilarating. But it wasn’t. And I couldn’t believe how frightened I was, and how all my plans went straight out of my head. I went running off to see Ignatius. It was me that hit him and knocked him out. I didn’t mean to!”

  “How did Ignatius fit in with this, Maggie?”

  “He is a sweet, kind man who’s had a tough life and spent most of his nights on the street. They always find a room for him in the homeless shelter, and he goes in there and takes showers and all that, but he ends up taking off and sleeping outdoors. He’s really religious and he would see some of us downtown, kids, and he’d try to help us. Counsel us to avoid drinking and drugs, and warn the girls to stay away from loser boyfriends. He was always good to me, and I liked talking to him. He’s really smart, and he reads a lot. He used to drink and pass out. But even when he was drinking he was never bad or mean. Jordyn and them started giving me a rough time about liking him. And they said rotten things to him about me.

  “Then, one night, they were driving along Spring Garden Road in somebody’s van and they saw Ignatius sitting on the wall in front of the library. They stopped and invited him to come with them and get something to drink. They took him in the van and went to the liquor store and got all this cheap booze, and kept giving it to him until he passed out. Then they put him in the back of the van and took his clothes off. They drove to my house and came to the door, and threatened that they would all come in and do stuff to my little sisters if I didn’t come out with them. Florrie came down to the door and they started playing with her hair and making creepy remarks that she couldn’t understand. She started laughing, trying to go along with the jokes that she was too little to get. I was terrified, so I took her upstairs and locked her and Celia in the house, and went out with them.”