Blood on a Saint (14 page)

The following day, just after morning Mass, Brennan was in the kitchen having a glass of orange juice when he heard a knock on the door. The priests’ housekeeper, Mrs. Kelly, came bustling in and said she would get it. She was back half a minute later with a heightened sense of alarm, over and above her usual case of the janglers, and announced, “It’s the police, Father!”

“All right. I’ll go see them.”

“There’s just the one. And he asked for you.”

“All the more reason for me to go see him.”

“What does he want?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll go see him.”

He left her fretting in the kitchen. Never in his life had he seen a person so permanently fretful and nervous as Mrs. Kelly. It was all he could do to maintain his shallow reserve of patience in her presence.

He went to the door, and there was a police officer who looked familiar, beyond the fact that he looked like the reincarnation of the soul singer Otis Redding. Brennan had seen this cop before, maybe the morning of the murder.

“Father Brennan Burke?” the cop asked.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“I’m Truman Beals. We haven’t met.”

Brennan put out his hand, and they shook.

“I’ve got something for you.”

“Oh?”

“A subpoena requiring you to testify at the preliminary hearing of the Podgis murder case, on Monday, the fourth of January, at the courthouse on Spring Garden Road.”

“Right.” Brennan took the document from the officer’s hand. “I knew this day would probably come. Still, it could be worse.”

“How’s that?”

“I could have been called to testify
for
the fucker.”

Beals looked startled for an instant, then laughed. “I hear you, brother. Father, I mean. Well, I’ll be off to spread more joy.”

“That’s the spirit. See you in court, Truman.”

“See you there.”

The officer left, and Brennan returned to the kitchen to finish his juice. Mrs. Kelly was bent over the table reading the
Daily News
.

“Have you seen this, Father? You’re in the paper!”

“No, I haven’t seen it.”

“Well, here. Look. It’s about the miracles they say happened outside the hospital.”

“Is there anyone left in this city who’s not playing host to the Virgin Mary or performing miracles and magic tricks?”

“Father!” The housekeeper looked at him with shock and disapproval, her usual attitude towards him. She had disapproved of him the day he arrived to start up the choir school and to replace the sainted Father Shea who had moved on to another parish, and Brennan had not found his way into her good graces yet. Never would, it seemed. Not that he made an effort. Mrs. Kelly’s prissiness and nervous manner around him were minor irritations; he had other things to occupy his mind.

“Here, Father, you read it. I’ve already seen it.” She went off to her duties elsewhere in the house, and Brennan read the news article.

He knew what it was about because he had been interviewed. More claimed miracles, this time supposedly performed by poor Ignatius Boyle after being released from hospital. He had largely recovered from his injury and had regained his ability to speak English. Brennan liked Boyle, and his heart went out to the man for the life he had endured and for his current difficulties. And Brennan was intrigued by Boyle’s sudden ability to speak excellent French and discuss theological matters in that language. But nothing could persuade him to speculate in public about whether Boyle’s newfound abilities were miraculous. That went double for the latest claims about the man. If he, Brennan, had the power and might and authority to do so, he would issue an index of words that would hereafter be forbidden to Catholics. Top of the list would be the word “miracle.” He looked at the news article.

“I
GNATIUS
C
URED
U
S
”: W
OMEN IN
V
IGIL
O
UTSIDE
VG H
OSPITAL

A woman from Hammonds Plains says she has been cured of a longstanding condition as the result of touching the hand of Ignatius Boyle. Boyle is the man who was found unconscious on Morris Street on September 24 and who woke up in the Victoria General Hospital speaking French for the first time in his life. Muriel Chisholm, 45, says she has always had a stammer. Something about Boyle’s story drew her to the parking lot of the VG where supporters of Boyle gathered after his admission to hospital. When Boyle was released, on October 11, he met with the group, thanked them, prayed with them, and shook hands with several of the people before going to the homeless shelter where he has spent much of his adult life. Chisholm said from the moment Boyle touched her hand, she was able to speak fluently without a trace of a stutter. The problem has not recurred.

Another woman, from Eastern Passage, tells a similar story. Agnes Dempsey, 68, says she shook hands with Boyle and prayed with him. From that moment, she says, a longstanding anxiety disorder and related phobias ceased to trouble her.

Father Brennan Burke was quick to dismiss the claim of a miracle. “The Church does not accept claimed cures of nervous disorders as miraculous. Unless it’s something physical, we do not even consider it,” he said. But Monsignor Michael O’Flaherty said there is no reason to discount the women’s claims entirely. “Even if there is no connection with Mr. Boyle, perhaps their prayers to God and their faith in Him gave them the strength to overcome their troubles by themselves. I will keep them in my prayers and hope that they maintain their recovery.” Muriel Chisholm was untroubled by the disagreement. Agnes Dempsey nodded her agreement when Chisholm declared, “I know Ignatius cured me. There is no doubt in my mind. It was a miracle, and Ignatius Boyle is a living saint.”

Chapter 8

Monty

The preliminary hearing for Pike Podgis got underway on Monday, January 4, 1993, in the courthouse on Spring Garden Road. Judge Ivan Thomas, a white-haired veteran of the Nova Scotia Provincial Court, would hear the case put forward by the Crown and decide whether there was enough evidence to send Podgis to trial on a charge of murder. In the usual course of things, Monty did not call any evidence for the defence at a preliminary hearing. There was no point showing his hand to the Crown with respect to the case he would be presenting on behalf of his client. But this time he had one witness to call. Otherwise, all he wanted to do was hear and evaluate the Crown’s evidence; he might do a bit of cross-examination if he could make that evidence a little weaker, or clarify a point or two for use in the future.

Another departure from the norm was his client’s insistence that the media be allowed to publish the evidence called at the prelim. Usually, the defence lawyer would apply for a publication ban, so that the evidence against the accused would not be out there tainting potential jurors for the trial down the road. If the defence applied, the judge was required to grant the ban. If the Crown applied, it was up to the judge to grant it or not. Pike Podgis, in his role as crusader for truth and freedom of expression, had instructed Monty to make a stand for the free circulation of information. Monty suggested to Podgis that he might regret it, but Podgis was having none of it. Monty had tipped off the Crown prosecutor, Bill MacEwen, in advance; after looking at his opponent wondering where the trap was, MacEwen said he had no interest in a ban himself and would not apply for it.

MacEwen presented his first group of witnesses: the police officers who first arrived at the crime scene, the arresting officers, the detectives who conducted the investigation, and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Jordyn Snider. A number of items were entered as exhibits, including Podgis’s heavy, brown, gum-soled, blood-tainted shoes and the lab report showing that it was Jordyn Snider’s blood on the shoes.

The facts were as Monty had read them in the file: the body was discovered at around two fifteen in the morning, lying face up near the statue. The Crown’s theory was that the struggle between victim and killer had taken place very close to the statue of St. Bernadette, and that Jordyn had at one point reached out to the statue, presumably to try to hold herself upright. There was a smear of blood on the face of the saint, and this had come from the victim’s gloved hand.

Monty had a few questions for Constable Truman Beals. “Constable, did you conclude that the victim had been killed where she was found, as opposed to having been transported from another location?”

“Yes, it was apparent from the scene — the blood distribution and everything — that the struggle had happened right at that spot.”

“A lot of blood around the area?”

“There was some on her body, yes, but not a wide distribution.”

The cop knew exactly what Monty was up to with that question, trying to find a way to claim Podgis had got blood on his shoes from walking through the grounds some distance from the body. Monty had one more question for Beals and then he would get off the subject. “From your experience investigating murders, Constable, stabbings in particular, would you expect the killer to have a lot of blood on his clothing?”

Beals was not going to give any more than he had to on this one. “It all depends on the circumstances. I’ve seen perpetrators’ clothes with a lot of blood, but I’ve also seen them without. You just never know.”

The medical examiner, Doctor Andrea Mertens, gave the cause of death as cardiac tamponade. She explained that the heart was enclosed in the pericardial sac, and that the killer’s knife penetrated the sac and the aortic root, where the aorta met the heart. As soon as the aortic root was pierced, blood would have rushed in and filled the pericardial sac. This would have compressed the heart and caused it to stop beating. The victim would have been incapacitated almost immediately. There was another wound to the chest, non-fatal, and a laceration to the side of the neck. The Crown got the doctor to confirm that the murder had been committed in the place where the body was found.

Then, to close off another avenue for the defence, Bill MacEwen asked about blood. “Doctor Mertens, you have testified that one of the two wounds sustained by Ms. Snider was to her heart. Would this cause blood to pump out and travel, so to speak, some distance? Onto the clothing of a person standing close to the victim?”

“Not necessarily. There would have been a great deal of internal bleeding. But with a wound like this, caused by a very sharp object, the skin and muscle tissues would have retracted when the knife was withdrawn, and this would have prevented a lot of external bleeding. The wound to the neck would have bled some, but there would have been no spurting of blood.”

The next witnesses were two receptionists at the Halliburton House Inn. One testified that Podgis had left the hotel around seven thirty, and she wished him good luck with his show that night. The other said he saw Podgis come in around one thirty in the morning. There was no conversation between him and Podgis.

After that came Ward Sanford, who had discovered the body when he walked through the churchyard on his way from work as a bartender. He testified to the facts set out in his statement, with one addition.

MacEwen asked him, “How close did you get to the body?”

“I went over to the point where I was about three, three and a half feet away. Then I took off and called the police.”

“So you may have been as close as three feet?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you have any blood on your shoes?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“I was wearing grey and white sneakers. I went back and waited near the scene for the police to arrive. Once I saw the precautions they were taking to avoid contaminating the crime scene, I began to worry that I might have done that myself. Or I might have got blood on myself. I looked everything over, my clothes, my sneakers. No blood. The police checked me out too, I guess to eliminate me as a suspect and to see what my sneaker treads were like. If they found my tread marks and they knew I wasn’t the killer, they’d be looking for other kinds of footprints. They didn’t find any blood either.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sanford.”

Thank you indeed. The witness was a godsend for the Crown. And bad news for Podgis, who claimed to have been much farther away and yet managed to get blood on his shoes.

Sanford was followed by Betty Isenor, a middle-aged woman who lived in the big grey wooden apartment house on the corner of Morris Street and Hollis. The nineteenth-century building was a landmark, with a great wraparound veranda and a rumoured history as a brothel at one point in its life. Now it provided rental accommodation for people of modest means who wanted to live downtown. On the morning of September 24, Betty Isenor had been awakened by noise, got up, and looked out her window, and saw Pike Podgis running from the churchyard. She pretty well stuck to her original statement, except to add that Podgis had been looking “wildly” behind and around him as he ran.

There were a couple of points Monty wanted to make with her on cross.

“Ms. Isenor, what time was it when you say you were awakened by noise?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look at the clock.”

“Where is your clock, in relation to your bed?”

“It’s on my bedside table but I didn’t turn the light on, so I didn’t see what time it said.”

“Is it a digital clock or the older kind?”

“Older, regular kind.”

So no LED light to show up in the dark.

“What was it that woke you up? What did you hear?”

“Footsteps and someone yelling.”

Someone yelling? This was the first Monty had heard of any yelling. And by the look on Bill MacEwen’s face, it was news to the Crown as well. If Podgis was running alone, who would he have been yelling at? Monty was about to break the old courtroom rule: never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer. But he could not pass up the chance that this might help him.

“Tell us about that, Ms. Isenor. What did the voice sound like? What was it saying?”