Sign of the Cross (35 page)

“Brennan!”

“What?” he moaned from the edge of sleep.

“Who wrote the first book of the Bible?”

“New Testament or Old?”

“New Testament, for starters. Who wrote the first gospel?”

“Mark.”

“What does Mark 2:18 say?”

“How the hell would I know?” This from a priest.

“I thought you guys knew the Bible front to back.”

“I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness. Though I think it may be something about the Pharisees.” He sat up and reached for something in the drawer of his bedside table, then turned on a small lamp and waved a Bible at me. “This is the one I’d recommend you read when you finally grow up and realize you’ve been missing out on the Word of God. Don’t quote me on this, but do not get one of the new dumbed-down versions. Mark 2:18 is all about John the Baptist and fasting. I can’t see anything for us in that, can you?”

“Not really. Is there a book of the Bible that starts with an I?”

“Is Isaiah, like the
BVM
, unknown to you, Montague?”

I took the Bible that was dangling from his hand, and thumbed through the Old Testament. I stared at the verse. “Brennan. This could be it. Isaiah 2:18: And the idols he shall utterly abolish.’”

“Ah.”

“An idol is something worshipped,” I began. “An image...”

“Speaking biblically, an idol is a false god.”

“So somebody thinks...”

“Somebody thinks Leeza Rae and Tanya Cudmore were setting themselves up as false gods? I doubt it.”

“Maybe you’re the false god.”

“If I’m the false god, why didn’t the killer abolish me, utterly? Goodnight, Monty.”

I wasn’t ready to give up on the false god angle. It struck me as exactly the kind of verse a religious zealot would fasten on. Burke had fallen asleep. I was lost in thought, flipping the pages of the Bible. Then I noticed something.

“Brennan!” I exclaimed, and the form between the sheets jolted awake again. “Matthew is the first book in the New Testament. Look!”

“I don’t have to
look,
Collins. I know where it is,” he said, in his talking-to-an-imbecile voice.

“But you said it was Mark. It’s really Matthew. I remember now: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

“Matthew is traditionally placed first in the New Testament. You asked me who wrote the first gospel. It was Mark. Chronologically. Biblical scholars have long known —”

I interrupted. “But the layman, or someone wanting to send a message to the laymen of the world, would likely use Matthew.
Numero uno, in Roman numerals, at least to the non-scholar. Let me see. Matthew 2:18...”

But Burke was ahead of me, sitting up and wide awake: “This one I know. ‘In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’”

II

“It’s either a woman or it’s a man who can easily identify with a woman.”

It was the morning after we solved the
IBR
riddle; Brennan and I were closeted in my office with a “hold all calls” order in effect. I pursued my line of reasoning: “How often do guys do that, do you suppose? Identify strongly with female characters in a story. I suspect women are better at understanding male figures, if only because they are so used to seeing males in the leading roles in a culture dominated by men. But I may be talking through my hat. What do you think?” Brennan shrugged. “Something tells me a religious man might have less trouble here, being steeped in the Bible and its figures, the saints, whatever. That’s just a hunch. Probably a preconception, given all the religious trappings to this case. And it’s obviously someone with strong feelings about children.” Burke had nothing to say.

“Let’s look at women then.” Silence again. “What’s the matter, Brennan? Has this given you some ideas about a suspect you’re not sharing with me?”

He shook his head.

Although there could have been any number of women saddened by the death of little Janeece Tuck, or outraged by the violation of the young girl who was the victim of the rape aided and abetted by Leeza Rae, we both knew there could only be a very small number of women weeping for both. The pool of suspects was especially limited when one factored in the connection with Brennan Burke. It had to be someone at St. Bernadette’s.

“So we both know who we’re talking about: Eileen Darragh, Marguerite Dunne, and possibly Erin Christie. There must be other
young women at the centre from time to time. Perhaps we’ll have to take a look at the teachers. You can fill me in on them. What you know about them and what you think they know about you. But let’s start with the known quantities, Marguerite and Eileen. Maybe Erin. I take it there’s no need to throw poor old Mrs. Kelly into a dank room and shine a bright light in her face.”

Brennan looked as if he had spent a long night with a cruel and merciless light shining in his face. He finally spoke: “Eileen Darragh? How can we be sitting here speaking calmly of the notion that she’s a killer? And Marguerite? She’d kill you with sharp words, not with a blunt object.”

“But think about it, Brennan. Take Eileen —”

“She’s spent her life helping young people at St. Bernadette’s. She’s not going to start killing them. Let alone go off the deep end and try to pin it on a priest. The whole idea is daft.”

“Well, she can probably identify with children. She told me some time ago that she was supposed to be adopted as a child, but it fell through. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t. What a shame.”

“Yeah, so she’d be sympathetic to children.”

“She’d be sympathetic to people who had a hard life. Like the two victims, both of them disadvantaged women with very unfortunate backgrounds.”

I could not argue with that. But maybe there was another angle to be played here. “Brennan, you must know Eileen has strong feelings for you.”

“What are you on about now, Collins?” He seemed genuinely confounded.

“Do you mean to tell me you have never noticed that she is in love with you, or infatuated, or has a crush?”

“Don’t be telling me that!” He put a hand up to ward me off.

“Very strong feelings on her part. Frustrated longing —” He had his hand up again but I persisted. “You don’t need me to tell you that kind of thing can be transmuted into a white-hot flame of hatred.”

“Where did all this come from? How do you know this?”

“It’s obvious to everyone but you, Brennan. Even the young people at the centre have noticed that she’s tongue-tied around you. I’ve
seen her blush painfully in your presence. And how could you forget the night the jury went out? She was sobbing uncontrollably. You had turned your back, so you didn’t see how she wrapped her arms around herself after you had held her for a few minutes.”

“Listen to yourself, Monty. You started out by saying she’s a murderer who wanted to pin the killings on me, and you ended up saying she was crying because she was afraid I’d be convicted. You’ve ceased to make sense.”

“I don’t pretend to understand the woman. But unrequited love —”

“Will you get off that? Even if there is something in it, what are you suggesting? She killed Leeza Rae in a jealous rage? Because I danced with her? I didn’t even like the Rae girl, to be brutally honest. I tended to avoid her. Eileen could probably see that, being at the centre every day. And what about Tanya Cudmore? What would be Eileen’s motive there? And do not, do not try to tell me Eileen was doing me a favour by killing off the stepmother of little Janeece. One killing out of hate and the other out of love. And if it’s love — as you put it, not I — what would be the point of having me locked away somewhere for the rest of my life? She’d never see me again.”

“She could start paying you regular visits. Have your undivided attention,” I needled him.

“You’re not a well man, Montague. Eileen can have my undivided attention any time she wants it. All she has to do is ask me to be a spiritual adviser. I do that for a few parishioners. One of the young girls at the centre, and other people. Have private talks with them about their faith, theology, all the rest of it. She knows that. But this is sick. So spare me.”

Brennan had both arms across my desk by this time and was leaning over as if to persuade me through sheer physical presence. “And besides, I can promise you that Eileen Darragh never got within sighting range of this thing on my chest. You asked me way back what women might have seen me undressed. Sex with Eileen? I’d have to go upstairs and get it stiff first. I only wish you hadn’t put me in a corner, where I have to speak of her that way.

“And what are you trying to say, that she rubbed up against me in the corridor in the hope that some of my hair just might fall out at
that moment and stick to her, and that she could then transfer it to two separate victims, three months apart? The second victim being Tanya Cudmore, who hadn’t entered anyone’s mind until after Janeece died? Oh Christ, Monty. Let’s get a grip.”

“All right, all right.” I gave him a few minutes to wind down. “We have to come up with a woman who is intimately familiar with the scar. But I don’t have any trouble finding a female motive. Maura linked the two cases without hesitation when we were talking about something else entirely. I’m trying to remember the conversation now. We were having dinner the other night, after a lot of bickering, and I brought up that case you sat in on, the mother who gave her child away and stayed with the child abuser.”

“Don’t be reminding me of that again.”

“Maura got all worked up and started talking about the two murder cases. ‘It’s just like Leeza Rae. It’s just like Tanya Cudmore.’ Same thing to her. Once again the female mind displays an advantage we don’t seem to have.”

Brennan allowed himself a smile. “So we’re looking for a woman who thinks like Maura.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her to murder with her bare hands someone who had hurt a child. Or who had stood by and let a child be hurt. If you can find a way to link her to the crimes, Brennan, I’ll turn her in myself.”

“I appreciate your dedication to your clients, Collins.”

“But for the forensics to work, particularly the scar, you would have to have slept with her.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, looked at his watch, and said: “Can you put off her arrest till morning? But, seriously, let’s get our brain cells in gear.”

“Marguerite. She withstood gunfire to bring women and children out of a battle zone in Central America. She was willing and ready to give up her life for them. How do you suppose she would view the way Janeece and the young rape victim were treated right under her nose?”

“She would take a dim view of it. But she didn’t go out and kill anyone. She likely didn’t even know the stories behind the rape or the death of Janeece. She probably wouldn’t have known Tanya Cudmore
from... Oh, wait, I guess she did know Tanya after all. I remember now. Tanya fell afoul of the good sister one day after choir practice, when she showed up two hours late to get Janeece. Marguerite gave her a tuning, the way I heard it. Flayed the hide off her. Mike O’Flaherty filled me in, in great detail. This was a verbal attack, I mean, as I’m sure you know. The woman has a tongue that would leave you skinned alive like St. Bartholomew.”

“So, we have Marguerite already clued in to the fact that Cudmore was a negligent stepparent. And she did know Leeza Rae.”

“But she didn’t know me, Montague, not without my clothes on.”

“Do you think it’s possible she came into your room some time to pick up a book when you were asleep?”

“For Christ’s sake, Monty.”

If anyone had the wherewithal to work her way around the church bureaucracies in New York, and unearth a photo or a description of that mysterious mark, it was Marguerite Dunne. But we had employed an investigator in New York to question anyone who might have access to old files or photographs of Brennan, and he was satisfied that nobody had been fishing for that kind of information.

“I have a new-found respect for the police, Brennan. How do they ever figure this stuff out? I’ll be quite happy to stay on the other side, picking apart whatever case they have made, rather than trying to make a case myself.”

Brennan was sitting back with his eyes closed. “Do you suppose we gave up too soon on that poor devil we caught in the church? That vandal. You said somebody had been rifling through the personnel files at the archdiocese office. And didn’t you once tell me he was at the law library, reading cases?”

“He wouldn’t have known the victims.”

“If he had been hanging around here, he might have met Leeza.”

“But not Tanya Cudmore. Everywhere we go we come to a dead end.”

“He wouldn’t have to know Cudmore, Monty, just my connection with Janeece. He could have seen that news story about the funeral.”

There was some truth in that. And, if he had been hurt in some way himself, he may have sympathized with young people being mistreated. Certainly something had happened to set him off. And
someone at the archdiocese office said Jason had participated in a protest. An older woman who had looked away when I turned towards her. I wondered if she was talking about a demonstration at the local abortion clinic. I would have to check it out. In the meantime, my client looked as if he needed a break. Brennan and I called it a day and went our separate ways.

Will I go to the Highlands with you sir?
Such a thing it never could be
For I know not the name you have taken or
why you roam ragged and free.
— Cameron/MacGillivary, “Elizabeth Lindsay Meets Ronald MacDonald”

I

My client wasn’t the only one who needed a break. That Saturday I read for a while and watched a football game. I called Maura just before suppertime, with the idea that we might have a family meal and watch a movie. Then she and I could take in Matt Minglewood’s “Rocking the Blues” gig at the Dirty O. But the kids were out, Normie at a friend’s for a sleepover, and Tommy at a party. My wife obviously had plans, and she did not share them with me. I was disappointed, but I would see the kids tomorrow. I didn’t so much decide my next move as sidle into it. I knew a lot of my fellow blues-men would be at the Dirty O, so that’s where I went. Ed, fellow Functus member, and his wife Donna were there, and so was Bev, with another woman named Cheryl. The music was great, as always, and everyone was in a party mood. I kept my alcohol consumption down. My judgment wasn’t one hundred percent, however, because I ended up breaking a rule I had made for myself long before. I brought Bev home to my place.