Chapter 5

(Monty)

That night at our local, the Midtown Tavern, Brennan lifted his pint, took a long sip, and asked: “How did things go today?”

“A patient freaked out in the waiting room, tried to trash the place and attack the receptionist, and I had to subdue the guy till security came, and the guy revealed he’d been under treatment with this particular shrink for two years, and Normie saw and heard it all, and bolted, and refused to be dragged back inside kicking and screaming, so we took her home. That’s how things went today.” I picked up my draft, and downed a third of it.

“Ah. A less than successful outing.”

“So I don’t know where to go from here.”

“Well, it just so happens that I called Patrick a couple of nights ago, and filled him in.” Patrick was his brother, a psychiatrist in New York.

“Oh! What did he say?”

“Paddy thinks there could be something to it. The visions, I mean, not anything physical. The child is certainly not making it up. Her tests are normal. She’s having visions of past or maybe future events. If they’re in the future, there’s nothing we can do unless they’re detailed enough to tip us off. If something has already happened, perhaps we can track it down.”

“She’s heard so much about Delaney, and his wife dying, and all the children being without their mother. She’s become friendly with Beau’s kids. It can’t be anything Beau has done; they wouldn’t keep sending him foster children without being absolutely sure he’s above reproach. She’s met Beau. She knows he’s a lawyer who’s handled some disturbing cases.”

“As have you.”

“True, but surely she’s not having nightmares about me! She may be picking up images or emotions from some of the cases Beau’s done, those involving children.”

“Or it may be something else.”

“Like what?”

“Well, who knows?”

“That’s not getting us anywhere, is it?”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“What’s on your mind, Brennan?”

He just shook his head.

“If you knew what was causing this pain for my daughter, you’d let me know, wouldn’t you, Father?”

“I would. Of course. But I don’t know what it is.”

“Is there something going on at home, do you know?”

“If there is, you’d best ask the MacNeil.”

“I will.”

“In the meantime, Monty, proceeding on the hypothesis that there may be a Delaney connection, let’s look at some of Beau’s cases. Do some research.”

“I can’t say I like this, Brennan. Checking into the past of my own client.” I looked into his eyes, and he returned the look without comment. We both remembered all too clearly that I had looked into his past when I was defending him against false criminal charges. I fervently hoped that Delaney, like Brennan, would in the end be exonerated. In the meantime, if we could come up with something to show Normie — see, five years ago Mr. Delaney had to do his job and defend a client who mistreated a child; that must be what you’re seeing — it might be worth the qualms. But I still didn’t like it. “I’d rather not do this through my office, Brennan. You know, have a clerk or someone dig up old news clippings about our client.”

“I’ll do it.”

“When are you going to have time for this?”

“I’ll make time.” He caught the eye of our waiter, and gave him the signal for two more draft.

I looked over at the television, which was showing a basketball game, and thought of another thing we could do. “They made a documentary about Delaney last year. We could check that out.”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

So, the next day, Thursday, I stopped by St. Bernadette’s to pick up Brennan, who does not have a television, then headed to Robie Street, drove north to Macara, parked, pulled on the emergency brake, and ran in to the local private television studio, ATV, to pick up the videotape. When I explained that I was Delaney’s lawyer, they gave me a copy of my own. We took the tape to my house, shoved it into the VCR, and sat down to watch the show. It occurred to me then that Maura might want to see it. I knew Tom was home and could look after Normie and the baby, so I gave her a call.

“I’ve got the documentary ATV News did on Beau. Would you like to see it? It’s a long shot but there may be something —”

“— in Delaney’s life, or his case load, that could explain the visions. I agree with you that it’s a long shot, but it’s a start — Normie! You’re supposed to be cleaning your room, not hanging around down here. Up you go. Monty, see you in ten minutes.”

The documentary opened with a shot of Delaney in full court regalia, speaking to reporters after one of his courtroom triumphs. He had just saved his client, a mother on social assistance, from going to jail for breaking the “man in the house” rule. She was accused of welfare fraud for accepting payments and not declaring that her husband, who had previously moved out, had moved back in. Delaney had made an impassioned argument that a poor mother on welfare should not be sent to jail for fraud while rich men — and he produced for the court a long list of recent examples — were not given jail sentences for tax evasion and other white-collar crimes. The judge agreed. That day marked the beginning of the end of “welfare mothers” being dragged away from their families and thrown in jail.

The scene then switched to the Delaney home, where the camera panned around the house, taking in several bedrooms with bunk beds, and Beau and Peggy’s own room, where two little kids bounced up and down on the bed and giggled. Peggy’s closet was shown; it was a jumble, and she quickly closed the door and laughed. Beau’s closet was featured next, and was notable for a rack full of shoes. Someone off camera made a joke about Imelda Marcos and her thousands of shoes, and Beau said when you had feet his size, you had to grab footwear when you could find it.

Then there was a short biography punctuated with career highlights. His father was a surgeon; his mother was trained as a teacher, but stayed home to raise Beau. The only child. He had excelled in school, had gone on to St. Thomas University and Dalhousie Law School, where he won the much-coveted Smith Shield for the moot court competition. After graduation near the top of his class, he was hired by one of the big Halifax firms, then went out on his own doing criminal law. He was made a Queen’s Counsel and received various other honours. The focus switched to his large blended family of biological, adopted, and foster children. The family was shown in their customized minibus, on the way to the Commons for one of the sports and picnic days, to which all and sundry were invited. Some of his children spoke on camera; others just performed various hijinks in the grass. Then it was the cottage overlooking Lawrencetown beach; we saw a surfer catch a big wave, and heard squeals of appreciation from the Delaney kids. The next segment dealt with Delaney’s efforts to balance his life and work. Beau and Peggy answered reporter Charlene Fay’s questions about the stress and even danger that are part of life for a big-time defence lawyer.

“Beau, it’s well known that you received death threats following your defence of Adam Gower, the man who committed the Gary’s General Store robbery, in which one young clerk, Scott Hubley, was shot to death and the other, Cathy Tompkins, left permanently disabled.”

“Yes, I did receive threats. Feelings were running very high in the Blockhouse area. And I can understand that. Everyone has the right to a legal defence, and I did my job to the best of my ability in that case as in others. That doesn’t mean I am insensitive to the pain of the victims or their families. Or their community. It takes its toll even on those of us who work on ‘the other side.’”

“You must have been especially concerned in that case, because the perpetrator, your client, was eventually tracked down and killed. Beaten to death.”

“Yes, that happened the year after the trial, when Mr. Gower returned from a stint out west and came back to live in Blockhouse.”

“He was murdered within days of his return. Pretty scary for you!”

“Yes, I was watching my back for a while there.”

The documentary then showed clips of movie star Jack Hartt playing the role of Delaney in Righteous Defender, as he stepped in and solved the murder of Adam Gower, thereby exonerating Cathy Tompkins’s brother, who had been wrongfully convicted of killing his sister’s attacker.

“That wasn’t the only time a client met a violent death,” the reporter stated.

The scene switched to a Mountie speaking to reporters outside an RCMP detachment. One reporter asked: “Was there a Hells Angels link to the killing?”

The officer didn’t answer that, but said: “The victim, Travis Bullard, was shot to death. The weapon was a high-calibre handgun.”

“Was he shot more than once?”

“We’ll release more details at a future time. Thank you.”

Then we were back with Charlene Fay in the Delaneys’ living room. “But they never did release more details, did they? Just that the man was shot to death. That happened several months ago. Sources have told us that this case is still unsolved, but that the Mounties have a suspect in mind, someone who has since gone to prison for an unrelated offence. They wouldn’t want to jeopardize their case by revealing details about the crime in a situation like that . . .”

“Makes sense,” Beau agreed.

“This man, Travis Bullard, had some unsavoury connections . . . links to the Hells Angels, people say.”

“He travelled in some rough circles, yes.”

“And so he ended up being shot to death one night in Truro.”

“That was the longest night of my life!” Peggy Delaney exclaimed. “My God, I thought, if they —”

“It’s a scary world out there,” Beau interrupted, “but those of us who work in criminal law can’t go through life second-guessing every client we take on. We have a job to do.”

“That brings us to another point. You have a job to do, defending people accused of terrible crimes. Sometimes it must be very difficult to do that job. Particularly when the crime was committed against a child. You defended a woman who, along with her boyfriend, engaged in prolonged abuse of a child and then killed him. They were convicted despite your best efforts on their behalf.”

“Yes, they’ll be behind bars for a long time yet.”

“A lot of people must wonder: how can you do it? How can you defend someone who has killed or abused a little child?”

Beau leaned forward. “I don’t take any of these cases lightly, I’d like to assure everyone of that. These terrible cases mean sleepless nights for defence lawyers, just as I assume is the case for the police, the prosecutors, social workers, and anyone else whose lives are touched by such tragedies.”

“It’s not all tragedy and violence, though,” the reporter assured us. “Tell us about your dog case, Beau.”

“I had fun with that. My client was charged with letting his dog run loose in one of the communities outside Halifax, contrary to a village bylaw requiring dogs to be on a leash. The bylaw enforcement officer, the dog catcher, never caught my client, but he claimed to have recognized the dog. It was a German shepherd called Fang. I made an arrangement with the film production company that did my movie to round up a bunch of trained German shepherds, and bring them into the courtroom the day of the trial. The dog catcher was on the stand. I asked him to point out the offending dog. Looking out to the gallery, all he could see was a row of virtually identical German shepherds sitting with their trainers. The dog catcher couldn’t identify Fang, and the judge laughingly declared my client not guilty.”

The story then returned to Beau’s kids, and their hopes and plans for the future. “Any budding lawyers here?” Three hands went up. Everyone laughed when one little girl shook her head and said: “Not me, no way. I’m going to work at the Chickenburger!”

I switched the VCR off and looked at Brennan. He said: “That child abuse case sounds dreadful.”

“It was atrocious,” Maura said. “Normie may have picked up on that somehow, though I hope not.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “The last thing we want is for her to learn the details of that incident. Believe me.”

“I believe you,” Brennan said. “There’s also the case in which Delaney’s life was threatened because of the feelings running so high about his client. Could Normie have detected something about that?”

“But the client, Adam Gower, got his comeuppance in the end. I think any threat to Delaney would have evaporated after that. The community would have experienced a kind of catharsis once the perpetrator was eliminated. Not that I recommend that form of therapy! But once it was done, I can’t see much danger for the man who did his job and defended the guy in court. I think people understand the lawyer’s role after they cool off. And Beau redeemed himself completely once he cleared the young girl’s brother of murdering Gower. I mean, the story even made it to the big screen, with the Jack of Hearts starring as Beau. Hartt lives in Los Angeles, and he invited Beau and the family down for a weekend a few years ago. They all went to some kind of Hollywood wingding. Cavorting with the stars. Too bad Normie can’t have visions of that instead!”

“No such luck,” replied Brennan. “So we haven’t found the answers we’re looking for. No surprise there, I guess. Time for me to embark on phase two of our research.”

“What’s that?” Maura asked.

“I’m going to spend a couple of hours in one of the libraries and do a CD-Rom search for cases handled by Delaney.”

My face must have betrayed my surprise.

“What?” Burke asked.

“I never had you pegged as being in the vanguard of 1990s information technology.”

“I do teach the odd course at the university level, Collins. My area of expertise may be twenty centuries old, but word reaches me of the latest research techniques.”

“I stand corrected, Reverend Dr. Professor Burke.”

“And so you should.”

“I’ll do some legal research into his criminal cases.”

“Depending on what I find, you may not need to. No point in duplicating our efforts.”

“True enough. I’ll hold off till I see what you come up with.”

(Normie)

“What’s an ‘asylum’?” I asked Mum on the way to school Friday. I said it like “AZ-ee-lum” because I didn’t want to say “ASS-ee-lum.” But that wasn’t the right way to say it anyway.

Mummy answered: “The usual meaning of it is a mental hospital. It can also mean giving shelter to people fleeing evil governments in other countries. But psychiatric hospital would be the most common meaning. You pronounce it ‘ah-SIGH-lum.’ Why are you asking, sweetheart?”

“No reason, just wondering.” Mental people again! I couldn’t tell her why I was asking, because they might put me in an asylum! So I kept quiet about what I had seen in my mind’s eye when I woke up that morning. I drew a picture in my diary of what I saw. It was a really old building and it said “asylum” on it, and there were other words but I forgot them because I was concentrating on remembering “asylum” to ask Mum. I had heard the sound of screaming and crying coming from inside the building, and there was a feeling of sadness there.

I saw Kim waiting for me in front of the school. She had one of her braids in her mouth the way she often did when she thought nobody was looking. “Kim!”

“Normie!”

We went in to school together, and I stopped thinking about the old building.

“I heard this really cool song on the radio,” Richard Robertson said to Father Burke when we were beginning choir practice that afternoon. “A choir was singing it. And they went ‘hoo hoo hoo’ and ‘yip yip yip’ and did all kinds of animal sounds in the middle of it. Can we do a song like that?”

“What you’re describing, Richard, is a choir having fun. Like a women’s choir singing the work songs of a chain gang or something with ‘Hey, nonny, nonny’ in it. Or, as you say, the hooting and braying of animals. Some of the most excruciating music in the world issues forth from choirs having fun. Well, no choir is going to have fun on my time. You are going to sing music that cries out to heaven in its beauty and poignancy. Pick up the Palestrina I gave you last week, Missa Papae Marcelli. Turn to the Kyrie.”

Everybody scrabbled around for their music. Except Richard. And Ian. They didn’t have it.

“Boys! Where’s your music?”

Ian didn’t answer. Father Burke glared at him, then at Richard.

Richard said: “I can’t find it, Father.”

“Fortunately for you, I have a couple of extra copies in my room.”

“I’ll go get them!”

“No, I’ll go,” Ian said.

“Neither of you lads will go. You’d be apt to lose them on the way back. Could you take a run up there, Normie? You know where my room is. All the music is piled on my table.”

The other kids gawked at me. None of them were ever allowed to go up there. And now they knew I knew where his room was. But that was only because I was up there with Daddy a couple of times. Anyway, I said okay and I went out of the school, across Byrne Street, and into the priests’ house. I told Mrs. Kelly, the housekeeper, that I was on an important errand for Father Burke. You have to tell her something like that, or she doesn’t know what to do. So I went up to his room and opened the door. The room was really tidy and clean, except for books piled all over the place and doubled up on the bookshelf. Also lots of CDs. There was a cross on the wall and some paintings. One was a picture of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus; He was really cute. Sometimes they have Him looking like a little old man, but not in that picture. It was done by somebody called Botticelli. I wondered if there were any more pictures by him. Angels, maybe. Anyway, I looked on the table, and there were all the music books. I picked them up and looked through them, and there were the Palestrina Mass books. I took two of them.

Then I saw he had something else there, under the music. It was a whole bunch of newspaper stories. One was from 1983, the year I was born! Another one was from 1989. They were all about things that had happened to kids. Crimes, even a murder. And I remembered something Mum said on the phone about my visions and bad cases Mr. Delaney worked on, and I knew then that they believed me about my dreams! Father Burke had all this stuff. He knew I wasn’t just making it up about the things I was seeing. He wanted to find out what happened. But I would be the best one to figure it out because I was the one having the dreams. So I grabbed the papers, along with the music. I planned to hide them, then sneak back into his room after I had read them. I would tell Mrs. Kelly I was on another errand. It wouldn’t really be a lie, because if Father Burke knew I took the papers he would want me to return them. Some time. So it would be an errand for him. Now I had to figure out how to hide them before I handed him the music sheets. My locker. That would be perfect. I got back to the choir school and snuck along the corridor, opened my locker, shoved the papers inside, and then went to the classroom and handed Father the music. “Thanks, darlin’,” was all he said. Whew! We sang the Mass and I tried to do a really good job, so it would seem like nothing else had happened.

But that night, I knew I’d been caught. I was home with Mummy and Tom, and the doorbell rang. Mum answered the door, and it was Father Burke. Uh-oh. I scooted into the dining room.

“Oh, good,” Mum said. “Mass for shut-ins. I didn’t get out to church today, Father. How kind of you to bring me the sacraments.”

“I’ll give you a sacrament you won’t soon forget, you blasphemous little rip! Now, let me in the door.”

I couldn’t find “blasphemous” in the dictionary at first because I couldn’t spell it, but finally I did. It sounds bad, but they were only joking, not really making fun of the sacraments. He’s always telling her she needs to go to confession, but not to him, because then he would need to go to confession himself after hearing all the evil things she said. He pretends to think Mummy’s bad, but he knows she isn’t.

“Mr. Douglas,” he said to Tommy, because my brother’s real name is Tommy Douglas.

“Hi, Father. How you doing?”

“Just grand, Tom, grand altogether. Still playing in your band?”

“Oh yeah. I’m heading down to the basement to practise some riffs for a gig on the weekend.”

“I’ll have to come hear you some time.”

“Sure. Just don’t show up in your collar!”

“No worries. I won’t cramp your style. I’ll come in-cog-neat-oh.”

I heard Tom go down the basement stairs. Then Father Burke must have made some kind of signal to Mum, because she called to me and told me to go to my room and finish my lessons. I was supposed to be doing math questions. It seemed like a bad time to argue, so I went up to my room. I opened my math book and scribbler on my floor, just in case, then I snuck out again and sat by the hall register to listen.

They yakked about boring stuff for a few minutes, then Mum said something about Giacomo phoning her about Dominic, and bringing his lawyer from Italy. Mum said she would get a lawyer of her own. I don’t know why, because she already is a lawyer and so is Dad. Anyway, after that, Father Burke told Mum about the news stories he collected.

“These visions she’s having, well, we’ve gone over this time and again. That they may just be bad dreams that any child would have, or they may be related to more personal concerns. Ahem! But with the Delaney fellow on trial —” Father Burke says it like fulla “— and her knowing his children, they could be visions of something that actually happened in the past.”

“Or something that is yet to come.”

“Let’s pray that’s not it, given the tenor of the visions. Anyway, I can’t help you with the future, but I said I’d do some newspaper research, and I did. I put together a file of old cases involving crimes against children here in the city.”

“Oh, God. Does anything match?”

“Couldn’t tell ya.”

“What do you mean?”

“The file disappeared before I had a chance to read the clippings.”

“Disappeared! Who would have —”

Father Burke didn’t answer, but I bet he made some kind of face or made his eyes go up, as if to say the guilty person is upstairs in this very house. Because Mum just said: “I see.”

“I sent her to my room in the rectory to pick up a piece of music. I forgot about the news articles being on the table. When I went up there after class, I remembered and saw that the papers were gone. Don’t be in a lather about it, now. I’ll not be pressing charges!” Mum laughed, and then he said: “But we won’t want her reading those stories. Terrible things happened in a couple of the cases. So you’ll want to retrieve them from her before she reads them and gets upset. I’ll leave it with you.”

“No, Brennan, hold on. I’ll go up and talk to her now.”

Oh, no. I heard her feet on the stairs, so I scampered back into my room. I had the papers hidden already, so I grabbed my pencil and sat there looking like I was doing my math homework.

“Hi, sweetie,” Mum said when she came in.

I looked up. “Oh, hi, Mum. This math is really easy tonight.”

“Good, good. Normie, did you by any chance borrow something from Father Burke’s room?”

“Like what?”

“A pile of news stories.”

It would only make it worse if I lied. They knew anyway.

“I saw them and I knew he must be trying to help figure out what happened. So I decided to borrow them only for one night, so I can help him investigate.”

“You wanted to see if any of the stories matched your dreams?”

“Yes.”

“Have you looked through them?”

“Only a couple.” That was true. I was going to get into them after everybody else went to sleep, so I only peeked at the first two, and they were nothing like my visions.

“Father Burke and I are afraid those stories will upset you. It’s not very often that people do bad things to children, but you know there are some disturbed people in the world, and sometimes things happen.”

“I know all that, Mum.”

“So why don’t you give me the news stories, and I’ll look through them. I’ll ask you some questions about them later. You’ve told us what your dreams were like, so if we see something that matches up, we’ll ask you.”

That’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to read them myself. But now I couldn’t. I thought of saying I’d left them in my locker, but she would know if I lied. She can always tell. So I had to give them up. But I didn’t want her to know where my hiding place was, so I said I would get them if she would go downstairs.

“No, you just give them to me now, sweetheart. That would be best.”

Lawyers always think people are doing something sneaky. She probably thought I was going to steal a couple of the papers and give only some of them back. But I wasn’t.

“Okay, but turn around and close your eyes. I don’t want you invading my privacy!”

“All right.” She turned away, and I went around the room, banging drawers and pulling things off shelves so she wouldn’t know about my hiding place under the bed. I have my secret box under there, and when she cleans she just shoves the box around with the vacuum cleaner. I’ve seen her do it. She probably thinks there are old toys or junk in the box, because I stuck a couple of old things on top.

“Here are the papers, Mum,” I said and gave them to her. She said thanks and gave me a kiss, told me not to worry, and went downstairs.

As soon as I heard the squeak of her chair in the kitchen, I went back to my listening post and sat down.

“Ah. Now, let’s see what we have,” Father Burke said. “Her visions began with the Delaney charges, and they involve harm or danger to a child. So I searched for cases involving children and Delaney’s name. Also unsolved cases involving children, but I didn’t come up with much there. By the time this class of crime is reported, they seem to know who to arrest for it.”

“Yeah, the stepfather,” Mum said.

“Right, and there are a couple of cases of foster parents charged with physical or sexual abuse.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Delaney’s a foster parent.”

“There’s never been a whisper of any problems there. The department keeps bringing children to the Delaney home, for temporary placement. You can be sure it’s been checked out over and over again. And from everything I’ve heard, it’s a very happy family.”

“Glad to hear it. Jenny and Laurence, the two Delaneys who come to our Four-Four Time program, seem fine. And devoted to their da. Now here’s a group of clippings about unsolved murders of young women. Teenaged girls.”

“That doesn’t seem to fit, but who knows?”

“A child was abused and murdered a few years ago, a little boy, but the killer was convicted and put away for life. No reference to Delaney. Another lawyer handled the defence.”

“Not Monty Collins.”

“No, not Monty on that one. He did a couple of the other cases, though.”

“I remember.”

“And here are the ones in which Delaney acted for the defence. There don’t seem to be any lingering mysteries about those cases. But that may not be the point. Normie may be seeing the connection between Delaney, the lawyer, and the clients he associated with in his work. It may be nothing more than that.”

“Let’s hope that’s all it is.”

“I also looked for unsolved cases and the name Beau Delaney. You’ll see them here. I didn’t get to them all.”

They didn’t talk for a few minutes. Then Mum said: “Here’s an unsolved murder of a young guy. Suspected drug dealer. The only reference to Beau Delaney is that one of his clients was questioned, and Delaney made a statement to the press that his client had an alibi, and Beau was going to make a formal complaint if the police didn’t stop harassing his client.”

“And here’s the Gary’s General Store case, the one where Delaney’s life was threatened,” Father Burke said.

“The one they made a movie about. Righteous Defender. Wouldn’t we all love to have that title attached to our name?”

“How did that go again? They discussed it in the documentary, but I’m not sure I have it straight.”

“Beau’s client, Gower, committed the robbery with another lowlife. Beau got Gower off. A year later, Gower came back to the community and was murdered. The young girl who was left disabled, Cathy, had a brother, and the brother was picked up for the murder. Beau, obviously fuelled by guilt over representing the shooter and seeing the brother charged — Cathy’s family victimized again — launched his own investigation, found out the brother was innocent, and fingered the real killer.”

“And people think the theology of the Holy Trinity is complicated!”