Sign of the Cross Read online

  S IGN of

  the CROSS

  A MYSTERY

  ANNE EMERY

  Copyright © Anne Emery, 2006

  Published by ECW PRESS

  2I20 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E IE2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW PRESS.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Emery, Anne

  Sign of the cross: a mystery / Anne Emery.

  ISBN 978-1-55022-819-9

  I. Title.

  PS8609.M47S53 2008 C8I3’.6 C2007-906559-7

  Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan

  Cover Image: Chris Amaral/Nonstock/Firstlight

  Typesetting: Mary Bowness

  Production: Rachel Brooks

  Printing: Transcontinental

  This book is set in AGaramond, and printed on paper that is 100 % post consumer recycled.

  The publication of Sign of the Cross has been generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council; by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation; by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada; and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program ( BPIDP ).

  DISTRIBUTION

  CANADA : Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Ave., Georgetown, ON L7G 5S4

  UNITED STATES : Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street,

  Chicago, IL, 60610

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

  for J and P

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable assistance: Joe A. Cameron and Patrick Duncan, Q.C., for their expertise in criminal law; Dr. Laurette Geldenhuys for the details only a pathologist can provide; Heather MacDonald for advice on forensics; Kevin Robins and Katie Cottreau-Robins for their knowledge of Halifax history and architecture; my troika of first readers: Rhea McGarva, Helen MacDonnell, and Joan Butcher; Jane Buss and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia; my editors, Edna Barker and Gil Adamson; and, for many reasons, PJEC.

  All characters in the story are fictional. Most locations are real; a few are made up. Any liberties taken in the interests of fiction, or errors committed, are mine alone.

  I am grateful for permission to reprint extracts from the following:

  MAN IN THE LONG BLACK COAT by BOB DYLAN Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider

  Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

  Reprinted by permission.

  BROWN EYED HANDSOME MAN words and music: CHUCK BERRY

  Copyright © 1956 (Renewed) Arc Music Corporation (BMI)

  SO IN LOVE words and music by COLE PORTER © 1948 COLE PORTER, © Renewed

  and Assigned to JOHN F. WHARTON, Trustee of the COLE PORTER MUSICAL &

  LITERARY PROPERTY TRUSTS Publication and Allied Rights Assigned to

  CHAPPELL & CO. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

  MACK THE KNIFE English words by MARC BLITZSTEIN original German words by

  BERT BRECHT music by KURT WEILL © 1928 UNIVERSAL EDITION

  © 1955 WEILL-BRECHT-HARMS CO., INC. Renewal Rights Assigned to the

  KURT WEILL FOUNDATION FOR MUSIC, BERT BRECHT and EDWARD and

  JOSEPHINE DAVIS , as Executors of the ESTATE OF MARC BLITZSTEIN

  All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

  I6 ANGELS by LENNIE GALLANT Lifeline — Lennie Gallant © Revenant Records,

  Canada ( SOCAN ) http://www.lenniegallant.com

  NEEDLE OF DEATH by HERBERT JANSCH Copyright © Careers-BMG Music

  Publishing ( BMI ) on behalf of Heathside Music Ltd. ( BMI ) administered by BMG

  Music Publishing Canada Inc. ( SOCAN )

  AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ music by THOMAS “FATS” WALLER and HARRY BROOKS words by

  ANDY RAZAF © 1929 (Renewed) EMI MILLS MUSIC INC., CHAPPELL & CO. , and

  RAZAF MUSIC CO. in the U.S.A. All Rights Outside the U.S.A. Administered by

  CHAPPELL & CO. , EMI MILLS MUSIC INC . and ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC.

  All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

  WHAT WAS IT YOU WANTED by BOB DYLAN Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider

  Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

  Reprinted by permission.

  DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD words and music by BENNIE BENJAMIN, SOL

  MARCUS and GLORIA CALDWELL © 1964 BENNIE BENJAMIN MUSIC INC.

  © Renewed and Assigned to WB MUSIC CORP. , BENNIE BENJAMIN MUSIC, INC. and

  CHRIS-N-JEN MUSIC All Rights for BENNIE BENJAMIN MUSIC, INC. Administered by

  CHAPPELL & CO. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

  SHOOTING STAR by BOB DYLAN Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music. All

  rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.

  DORCHESTER by MATT MINGLEWOOD Copyright

  © Matt Minglewood, Cape Music

  MORE OFTEN THAN NOT by DAVID WIFFEN Copyright © Bytown Music Ltd.

  SOMETHING UNSPOKEN by LENNIE GALLANT, CHRIS LEDREW

  Lifeline — Lennie Gallant © Revenant Records, Canada ( SOCAN )

  http://www.lenniegallant.com

  ELIZABETH LINDSAY MEETS RONALD MACDONALD by JOHN ALLAN CAMERON

  Copyright © Tessa Publishing Company ( BMI ) (Administered by MCS America,

  Inc.) All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

  TURN AROUND, LOOK AT ME words and music by JERRY CAPEHART © 1961

  (Renewed) WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. All Rights Reserved

  Used by Permission

  LEAVING NANCY by ERIC BOGLE

  Copyright © Eric Bogle

  FARE THEE WELL LOVE by JIMMY RANKIN Copyright © Jimmy Rankin/

  Song Dog Music Company Limited ( SOCAN ).

  All rights reserved

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask

  If he wanted to dance; he had a face like a mask.

  Somebody said from the bib
le he’d quote.

  There was dust on the man in the long black coat.

  — Bob Dylan, “The Man in the Long Black Coat”

  I

  Gargoyles. I hardly notice them anymore. Gargoyles are a part of your life when you’ve spent your entire career in the criminal courts. The creatures you see leering out at you from the Halifax Courthouse on Spring Garden Road are technically known as grotesques, fang-baring faces that were set in stone when the building was constructed in 1863. A plaque on the building describes the “vermiculated” stonework; it looks as if worms tunnelled through it. I’m not surprised.

  Thursday, March I, 1990 was a typical day at the courthouse. I had managed to get my client off unexpectedly at the conclusion of a three-day trial on charges of assault, extortion and uttering threats against his old girlfriend’s new boyfriend. His gratitude lay unspoken between us. He swaggered from the building, trailed by three teenage girls in leggings and stiletto heels.

  “Congratulations on the acquittal, Monty!” I turned at the sound of a voice as I was leaving the courthouse and saw our articled clerk coming out behind me. Petite, sharp-faced and keen, Robin Reid wore a lawyerly black suit that looked too big on her. I nodded absently in response. “Though I have to say,” she went on, “I didn’t think much of the judge’s remarks about our client. ‘Well, Mr. Brophy, you’re free to go. The system worked. If I see you in my courtroom again you may not find the system so benign.’ What kind of attitude is that to take to a man he just declared not guilty?”

  “It’s the attitude of a judge who knows I outlawyered the prosecution and knows he’d be overturned on appeal if he convicted my client.”

  Robin and I left the courthouse and crossed Spring Garden Road to the city library, where someone had built a snow fort around the statue of a striding, heavily masculine Winston Churchill. I was on a hopeless quest for a children’s book with a character named Normie. My wife and I, in the afterglow of a magnificent performance of Norma at La Scala, had named our baby Norma after the noble druid at the centre of the opera. With sober second thought, neither of us liked the name for anyone under forty. The best we could do was “Normie” after that. Now seven and wondering why she wasn’t named Megan like everybody else, she had looked askance at my brave assertion that there were lots of Normies in the world. She issued a demand: “Find me a book with somebody named Normie in it. It can be an animal; it can even be a bug. But,” she warned darkly, “it better not be a boy!” I was met with a sympathetic shake of the head yet again at the children’s desk.

  As we left the library, Robin returned to the acquittal of our client, Corey Brophy. “But Corey didn’t do it, Monty! You demolished the Crown witnesses on cross-examination; their stories fell apart.”

  I looked at her with surprise. “Of course he did it. You haven’t seen the file and you’ve never met the client. But that’s over and done. Now, tomorrow we have — Well! I spoke too soon. Looks as if you’re going to meet Corey after all.”

  Robin turned to follow my gaze across the street and saw my newly released client being manhandled by two police officers in the driveway of the courthouse. He twisted around and caught sight of me. “Are you just going to stand there, Collins? You’re my lawyer, for fuck’s sake. Get over here!”

  I sighed and crossed the street. Short, skinny, and scabious with a patchy goatee, Corey was the picture of belligerence.

  “What’s going on, Frank?” I asked one of the cops.

  “Mr. Brophy is under arrest for assaulting his ex-girlfriend.”

  “Corey, give me a call after you’re processed,” I told him. “In the meantime, keep your mouth shut. No statements.” The other cop bundled him into the cruiser for the trip to the station.

  “This must be a record for you, Monty,” Frank remarked. “Your client reoffending —”

  “Allegedly reoffending!”

  “— What is it, twenty-five minutes after he was released?”

  I didn’t tell him my record was a guy reoffending twenty-five seconds after his release; he had been overheard threatening one of the witnesses before he even left the courtroom.

  I glanced at Robin as we started back to the office, and was about to speak when she said: “You’ve got that ‘Robin, you’re such a bleeding heart’ expression on your face again. You think all our clients are guilty.”

  “And yet I defend them. Year after year after year.” I looked into her eyes. “So come on now. Who’s the bleeding heart?”

  Yes, criminal practice had its aggravations. But at least with the usual run of petty criminals, I could forget their existence as soon as I was out of sight of the gargoyles. In the kind of case I dealt with, there was no mystery involved; you knew all too well what went on at the crime scene. You knew your client was there. Your only hope was that he had kept his mouth shut when the police showed up. Soon, although I didn’t know it yet, I would be involved in a case I would not be able to shake when I left the building. Or even when I closed my eyes to sleep. For the first time in my career I would be flying blind, unable to fathom what was behind the brutal murder of a young woman whose body had been carved with a religious sign and dumped beneath a bridge. And the client? My mother had a saying: “Be careful what you wish for.” For years — decades! — I had been longing for a client a cut above the poor, uneducated, hopeless, heedless, unstable individuals I usually represented. A client more like... more like me. Well, I was about to have one. Be careful what you wish for.

  The next day my firm’s senior partner, Rowan Stratton, slipped me an envelope containing newspaper clippings about the murder and said we’d speak about it on the weekend.

  The victim was Leeza Rae and she was twenty years old when she was killed. On February fifteenth, a Department of Public Works crew spotted her body on scrubby, rocky ground beside a service road under the A. Murray MacKay Bridge, still known, twenty years after its construction, as the “new bridge.” It is one of two bridges joining the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The crew radioed the information to the Halifax Police Department just after three in the afternoon. Leeza was wearing an oversize black plastic raincoat with a hood. This had not been her attire when she was last seen alive, leaving a dance at St. Bernadette’s Youth Centre in downtown Halifax. News stories gave the cause of death as a fractured skull, believed to have been caused by a heavy, blunt instrument. The police stated that the victim had not been killed in the spot where she was found; the body had been dumped there after death. One report quoted an unnamed source as saying the body had been “tampered with.”

  I skimmed the clippings and put them aside. Rowan had asked me not to discuss the murder with anyone until we spoke. Why the secrecy, I wondered.

  II

  Saturday morning was bright and crisp, a beautiful day for a family outing. I picked up the phone.

  “What?” came her answer.

  “Well, I see today is starting off like all your other days.”

  “And I see you are still in need of a remedial class in, one, when to call and, two, when not to call. It is eight-thirty in the morning. We are, or were, sleeping in today because the children don’t have school. It’s Saturday. Far be it from me to encourage mindless consumerism, but I think it’s time to acknowledge the invention of an item known as the fridge magnet. I have invested in four of those for you and have utilized them to stick a calendar on your refrigerator. That calendar, had you consulted it, would have told you that this is the weekend, and you might then have surmised that we would be catching up on our sleep.”

  “For once I have to agree with you. You should catch up on your sleep. What do you do, by the way? Keep your tongue in a jar of acid beside your bed at night?”

  “Why not? It wou
ld be more attractive than what I used to see when I opened my eyes in the morning.”

  “All right, all right, enough pillow talk. I was calling to see whether the kids might like to come with me this afternoon for a drive.”

  “They’re with me this afternoon. Now let me go so I can get back to sleep and forget about this interruption.” Click.

  That of course was my wife. A failed social worker. Think for a moment about social workers. My perception of them is that they tend to be very accepting of human error, very non-judgmental, as they say. My wife, Maura MacNeil, had been in her last year of the Bachelor of Social Work program when it was decided that her “particular set of skills and abilities could be best directed to other challenges.” That was one version of events. Maura’s version was more succinct: “They turfed me out.” She had directed her abilities to the law and was now a professor, teaching poverty law. Scourge of the right, she was hardly more popular with the left, owing to her stubborn refusal to accommodate herself to the emerging sensitivities of the nineties. Politically correct she would never be. She and I had been living apart for years.

  So. No children for me today. I wrestled briefly with the temptation to go back to sleep myself, then spend the afternoon with cronies in the Midtown Tavern. Instead, I passed the day doing household chores that were months overdue.

  That evening found me in the library of Rowan and Sylvia Stratton, who lived in an elegant house overlooking the sparkling waters of Halifax’s Northwest Arm. The Strattons had come to Halifax from England at the end of World War II. My brother Stephen had married their daughter Janet. I considered Rowan an in-law once removed, especially since I was persona non grata with my own father-in-law. We had just had dinner, and Rowan was going to join me in the library. While I waited, I had another look at the news clippings about the murder.