Blood of Cain (Sean O'Brien (Mystery/Thrillers)) (46 page)

“What happened?”

“The woman who owned it refused to sell. It was in her family for more than three hundred years. A classic Irish estate was built there by the seventh earl of the Flanagan family. It burned to the ground in a horrific fire. Just an old caretaker’s cottage on it today, but the ownership of the land predates Cromwell’s invasion.”

“Can you give me directions to the place?”

“Of course. Follow N22 through Killarney to N70. Turn right or east on R565 and head toward the coast, on Skellig Road. The property overlooks Puffin Island.”

I said nothing. My thoughts racing.

Rebecca asked, “Are you in pain, Sean.”

“I’m okay.”

She smiled. “That part of Ireland is remote and so beautiful. Care for some more coffee?”

“No thank you. Cormac, I wanted to leave the pistol on the nightstand in the bedroom with you. I can’t take it on the plane, the guy I took it from won’t be needing it anymore, but I still might need it before I leave Ireland.”

He smiled. “I can only bloody assume that you’re being chased, hunted. You don’t have to tell us why if you don’t want to. You’re obviously American. I’d wager your appearance here it has something to do with your wound, and maybe your surname, too. Sometimes people run from something, sometimes they run to something. Which is if for you, Sean?”

“I’m not sure any more. I’m trying to locate a man in America, and the only person who knows, or knew where he is, lived here in Ireland.”

“And he’s dead, correct?”

“He committed suicide.”

Rebecca sipped a hot tea and asked, “Did he tell you what you came for before he took his life?”

“Not directly. Do you have a computer with Internet access?”

Cormac said, “Yes. Laptop. I’ll get it for you.”

Rebecca cleared the table as he brought in a laptop computer. He turned it on and handed it to me. I searched online for key words to what Father Gravel had said before he jumped.
‘A
place you’ll never find him. Maybe the distant Aideen … you need balm for the wound and your soul, lad, for your feelings of grief. Dillon found it, but you, I think not. You wretched soul … you enter my confessional, my private chamber opening my door, but there’s darkness there, nothing more and nevermore. Are you surprised?’

“You bastard,” I mumbled.

“What is it, Sean?” Cormac asked.

“The guy who jumped to his death was baiting me, cat and mouse like. He wasn’t about to tell me directly what I wanted. But he did utter a clue before he died. And made a very subtle reference, an alliteration, to the words and cadence from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem,
The Raven.
From the house of God to the
House of Usher
.”

“How’s that?” Rebecca asked.

“He mentioned Aideen. That’s a poetic allusion to the Garden of Eden.”

“It’s believed the Garden of Eden was somewhere near the Euphrates River in what today is Iraq.”

“I have a feeling the reference the priest left is somewhere in America. And I have to find it.”

I drove through miles of rolling farmland, terrain in shades of avocado and olive greens, pocketed in deep shadow around old growth trees, and ancient cemeteries where many of the dead from Cromwell’s conquest lay interred. More than twenty thousand died in battle, and there were tens of thousands more civilian casualties. As I drove by cemeteries, I thought of Abbey Island Cemetery, the place my mother had told me my father was buried.

Before flying out of Shannon, I’d find the cemetery.

I had the windows down on the rental car, the smell of the sea now in the wind. I followed the directions that Cormac had given me, the last turn was left onto Skellig Road. I drove up a slight hill, grass green and verdant on both sides of the narrow road. At the top of the hill, it was as if I’d opened a panoramic window into a world that might as well have been sixteenth century Ireland.

The green hills were like humpback leviathans bordering the cliffs and the sea, the lush acreage cascading down to the rock cliffs, the Atlantic Ocean a deep sapphire blue, the sounds of sea birds in the air. Less than a hundred meters off the cliffs was an island, and I knew it was Puffin Island.

A weathered hand-painted sign nailed to a slanting post read:
Wind ‘n the Willows
. I got out of the car and walked past the sign, down a long gravel drive to a small, egg-white cottage. I cupped my hands to one of the sea-stained windows. The place was modestly furnished, wooden furniture, throw rugs on the floors. I could tell no one had lived here full time in years. Yet, it was fairly well preserved. No sign of vandals or broken windows or doors. Now I really felt as if I’d entered a different time period—isolated, the sound of breakers present, waves of humanity not, a barren rugged land, secluded, yet a strong feel of ancient Irish history in the soil.

I followed an old stone slab fence down the property. The rocks looked ancient as Stonehenge, set by human hand from the top of the hill all the way down to the sea. The rock fence was less than three feet high, but it was at least the length of two football fields. I walked next to it to the end, the cliffs. From there the view of Puffin Island felt primal, as if I’d been transported through time to a Jurassic era and to a place humans weren’t supposed to go. It seemed only fitting that long-necked sea creatures should be breaking the surface off the island.

Although there were no plesiosaurs, there were dozens of seals. Some lying on the rocks, others diving into the indigo sea. Thousands of aquatic birds teemed over the island. I could see cormorants, razorbills, gulls, and many birds I couldn’t identify—and those that I could because I first saw them on my mother’s mailbox, the puffins. With their orange, red, and black bills, their tear-drop eyes, and chalky white faces, they looked like little clowns waddling on the rocks.

But it was in the air and water where their performance was anything but comical. They flew with bullet-like speeds over the ocean, diving and swimming like penguins on steroids hunting for fish. I couldn’t help but smile.

And then a rock exploded below my right hand.

I rolled off the stone wall, keeping the wall between me and the shooter. I peered through an opening in the stacked stones. A man, one lone shooter, crouched on a grassy hill, his rifle on a bi-pod, maybe a hundred-fifty yards away. There was one round left in the .357 under my belt. But to hit a target a hundred-fifty yards away with a round from a pistol was extremely difficult. I’d done it in the military, on shooting ranges under fairly controlled circumstances.

Not here.

Not with the wind blowing off the Atlantic. Not with a human target crouched in a near prone position. I crawled on my hands and knees behind the rock wall a little closer toward the parking lot. A second shot shattered a stone right above my head.

I found a spot in the wall where I could peer through it, like looking through a rocky porthole. The shooter stood, lifting a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Now was my chance. I aimed the pistol through the opening in the wall, looked at the way the wind blew the grass and leaves, watched a puffin fly into the gust off the ocean. I knew I had to aim above the man, calculating for the pull of gravity, the long-distance drop of the bullet, the trajectory of the wind.

He held the binoculars with both hands, lowered the glass and looked with his naked eyes, holding one hand above his eyes to shield out the sun’s glare.

I raised the sight at the end of the barrel to about one inch above the top of his head, calculating the distance for a torso shot. For more control, I placed a rock under the barrel. Then I held the stock with two hands. I glanced up to see a peregrine falcon call out; it rose from a tree, the bird startled from its perch. I didn’t breathe.
Focus
. I had to enter a mental state of total control. Silence. I squeezed off the shot. The concussion sound blowing back from the rock was deafening. I watched, aware that the bullet would arrive at the target before the sound.

He stood there. Lifting the binoculars.

One thousand one.

One thousand two.

The shooter fell to his knees and onto his back. I could see his hand flaying at the center of his chest. I ran hard to the road.

Someone was coming.

The falcon cried out in flight to Puffin Island, and then there was the unmistakable noise of a diesel engine chugging up the gravel road. I stopped running and walked to my car on the side of the road.

A school bus was only a few feet from my car, dozens of kids getting off the bus. Two adults, probably teachers, stood near the bus instructing the kids to line up on their march down to the cliffs to view the island. Many of the kids had binoculars, and books depicting birds of the world. I walked by them and smiled, hoping I hadn’t pulled the stiches in my bullet wound, hoping blood wouldn’t soak through the bandage and shirt. And I hoped they wouldn’t see the body of the dead assassin.

I got in my car and drove off, flying down the gravel road as fast as the rental could go, looking up into my rearview mirror. I couldn’t see anyone else following me. But because I couldn’t see them didn’t mean a thing.

I put a battery back into my mobile phone. I waited a few seconds for it to boot up, then I called Dave Collins and said, “I need you to upload the video confession in the river.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s the only way I can return massive fire.” I told Dave what happened and said, “They’re following me, somehow. The video, if it goes viral, will keep them in crisis control up until the election. Since my voice is on the video asking questions, if I wind up dead, if my body is recoverable, maybe a good prosecutor can indict Logan for murder.”

“And if you could find Courtney Burke, all of this could be moot when you prove she’s not the daughter of you and Andrea Logan.”

“I think I’m getting closer.”

“In Ireland?”

“No, in the states. The priest left a mocking, sardonic clue.” I told Dave what he said and added, “Try to research Poe’s poem,
The Raven
, and let me know if you can find a physical location to the translation of Aideen in
The Raven
—I know it means east of Eden … maybe there’s a connection to a location in the states. That’s where I think I’ll locate my brother Dillon, and if I can get there in time—maybe I’ll find Courtney.”

It wasn’t an island. Not by the real definition of the word. I reached for the bottle of Jameson’s that Cormac Moore had given me, rolled my pants up to my knees, and walked from the shore of Derrynane Beach through ankle-deep water to Abbey Island. The pristine spot was about fifty miles south of Puffin Island on the western coast of County Kerry. Within five minutes of walking and climbing, I could see the ruins of an ancient stone abbey and the nearby cemetery. My heart pumped.

The wind blew across the Atlantic, gulls chortling and riding the air currents off the cliffs. Cotton-white cumulus clouds floated like small nations across a cobalt blue backdrop of the universe. I scaled to what I knew was a sacred place in the history and hearts of Ireland. Suspended on what felt like the skybox of the Atlantic, on a high cliff overlooking the sea near the ruins of the old monastery, were dozens of graves marked with iron crosses, Celtic crosses, gravestones worn thin from time and the sea. It was the Abbey Island Cemetery, a place filled with the remains of Irish sailors, farmers, and their families. All of the headstones overlooked a horseshoe-shaped deserted beach that reflected the ice blue sky.

I walked slowly through the cemetery, the smell of the sea mixed with damp moss and aged limestone. I saw the gravestone of Mary O’Connell. The inscription read that she was the wife of Daniel O’Connell, known as The Liberator–a man who fought for Catholic Emancipation in Westminster Parliament.

I continued walking, carefully scanning each headstone for the name I’d come to find. Why? Why walk through an ancient cemetery off the Coast of County Kerry Ireland searching for the name of a person I never knew … would never know? What was the connection beyond the fact that my mother had told me about him. In the four hours I had with her, she painted a picture of a caring and kind man, a man who lived for his family, a man who eventually died for his family. I was only a baby when he was killed. I had no conscious memory of him. But my subconscious may have his whisper concealed. That was all the connection, all the bridge to the past that I needed. He was my father.

And I was his son.

I looked to my right, and there it was. A Celtic cross. For more than four decades it faced the Atlantic, faced the winds, sun and salt air. The old weathered cross was very much an old rugged cross, as was, I felt, the man buried beneath the cross—rugged and tough on the exterior, tender as a spring night on the inside. My mother had told me stories of his physical and internal strengths. How he could build a house from the ground up with plans he’d drawn and the expertise he had with his hands. And how inside his heart was at peace, and how he was her rock, her guiding light into an often too-dark world.

The inscription read:

Peter Flanagan

1946 - 1970

He trusted in our Lord

He soared on the wings of eagles

There was an old and faded embossed photograph of a man, and it was bolted to the lower part of the Celtic cross. I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture, almost as if it had a magnetic pull to it. He was dressed in a tweed sports coat, wide smile, angular face, thick dark hair and eyebrows. I felt as if I’d seen him before, dressed in the exact same clothes. But where? I looked at the old photo, the dark hair, the eyes, and I saw a little of myself.

And then I remembered.

It was at my mother’s funeral. Across the cemetery, after the others had left, the man appeared, fog swirling around his legs. He seemed to have worn the same style—the same cut of suit, same dark hair and rawboned face.
Impossible.
I felt fatigue build behind my eyes, my shoulder burning.
Move on.