False Mermaid (33 page)

She waved a thumb over her shoulder, and Frank leaned down to peer through the eyepiece of a microscope at varicolored crystals of soil particles, dull fragments of decaying leaves, and dozens of small, wrinkled spheres. They looked exactly like the seeds from Holly Blume’s poster, the one with a picture of that rare plant she’d identified from Tríona Hallett’s hair.
Plants are clever stowaways,
Holly had said.
They’re all about survival
. All at once, he felt a thousand flashbulbs going off in his brain, and the usual sour feeling in his stomach was suddenly swallowed up in a surge of hope.

“Listen, Jackie, can you do me a favor, and run a DNA comparison on samples from these clothes against these two cases?” He scribbled names and case file numbers in his notebook, then tore out the sheet and handed it to her. “I promise, I’ll fill out all the proper forms as soon as I can. And one more thing, too—can you take a sample of that dirt from the shoe treads and send it over to Holly Blume, the forensic botanist at the University?”

“And how soon do you need this done?”

“Yesterday. No, the day before—thanks, Jackie. I’ll owe you one.”

Garda Detective Garrett Devaney had just packed the last item in the boot of the car, his daughter Róisín’s fiddle case, resting lightly on top of their other luggage. He was always amazed at the apparent weightlessness of an instrument that could bring forth so much. “You’re sure that’s everything now?” he asked Róisín.

“Yes, Daddy.” She rolled her eyes, as if asking who should be more nervous about this trip—dear old dad, or the one who was actually going to be playing in competition. He’d tried to downplay it, his anxiety over this milestone, but it somehow seemed the measure of him, both as a teacher and as a father. He tried not to let it show, but Róisín understood exactly what her taking up the fiddle meant to him. She was determined not to let him down, and therein lay the danger.

His wife Nuala had tried to ease his mind a bit the previous night, slipping into bed beside him. “Just look at her face when she plays, Gar. She’s going to bowl them over. I wish I’d had that kind of confidence at her age.”

He hadn’t said anything, but his thoughts were troubled. Certainly, by rights, Róisín should bowl them over. But what if she didn’t? You were always at the mercy of adjudicators at these things—narrow-minded people, some of them, with their own parochial tastes. Róisín had talked about nothing but this Fiddle Week for months. She wanted to compete, and in the end, he couldn’t refuse her. He often observed her, head tilted to one side over the fiddle’s round belly, a picture of concentration. He had watched the secret notes seep into her ears, and then into her soul, and understood that what he was doing was only window dressing. What she needed to learn could never be taught, not directly. The music was a thing that could only be grown into, like a well-worn pair of britches or an oversized jumper.

Fortunately, Róisín had fallen in love with the sound of the fiddle, just as he had, with all its shades and feelings. No amount of technical ability could substitute for that. She had become a hunter of those
quicksilver flashes of genius that entered the soul and came out the fingers—the enchantment, the
draíocht.
All he could do was to show her his own way of recognizing those rare moments, how to receive them when they came.

Traditional tunes were only simple auld music, some argued. Notes you could learn out of a book. But the people who made such claims were not standing beside him as he turned off the light in Róisín’s room, as he looked back from the doorway, watching her fingers stretch to fourth position as she slept. You didn’t get that from any fucking book.

He had worried and fretted for weeks about whether the competition was a good idea, but decided that in the end, for a child like Róisín, at least it couldn’t do much damage. She had to develop confidence in her own ear, her own taste in music, from listening to others. She hadn’t even heard many fiddle players, apart from himself, and it was time to start expanding her musical world. The idea that she might find someone whose style she admired more than his own had not occurred to him until this very moment. What would he do then, if she found someone else to look up to and emulate? Knowing the field, he decided to take his chances.

Róisín waggled a hand in front of his face. “Da,” she said, “snap out of it, will you? We have to go.” He focused, and saw her looking up at him with an expression that held both anticipation and a bit of mischief. Cheeky, as well as smart.

Nuala came out of the house to see them off, giving Róisín a squeeze and a kiss on top of the head. She wouldn’t be able to do that much longer, the way the child was growing. Róisín was going to be twelve in a few months. How had that happened?

“I’ll be rooting for you, sweetheart,” Nuala said, speaking over Róisín’s head straight at him. “I know you’ll do your very best. I’m already so proud of you for that.”

Devaney raised his hand out the window as they drove away. At moments like this, he usually felt as if he didn’t deserve to be enjoying life so much. There had to be a stumbling block down the road. He could feel it waiting for him. And yet he carried on—did his job, lived his life. What other choice did he have?

Garrett and Róisín were hardly gone when the phone rang. Nuala Devaney picked up, thinking it might be her husband, having forgotten
something. But the voice on the other end was unfamiliar. Not to mention female, and American. “Hello—I was trying to reach Detective Devaney?”

Something to do with work, then,
Nuala thought. It wasn’t purely American, the accent. Her ears had become finely tuned over the years to strange voices on the phone. Being married to a policeman forced you to act the detective, whether you wanted to or not. “Sorry, he’s not available just at the minute—”

“I hate to trouble him at home, but he said to call anytime.”

Of course he had.
They’d argued about that endlessly—how he let people of every description ring their house at all hours. She had tried to make him understand the danger, and the calls had mostly stopped—until now. “If you’d like to leave your name, I could pass along a message.”

“No, it’s really—” The caller was trying to decide whether to ask for a mobile number, and eventually thought better of it. Just as well. There was no way she was giving out Garrett’s unlisted mobile to a stranger. Could be some tout who wouldn’t give a second thought to dragging him away from his Fiddle Week with Róisín. They’d been planning this trip for too long, and Róisín had worked much too hard for it all to be spoiled.

The caller must have sensed her resistance. “Why don’t I just try again later? Thanks for your help.”

After she set the phone down, Nuala’s hand lingered on the receiver. What help? She’d put up roadblocks right and left. Now she had two choices: she could ring Garrett and see what he wanted to do, or she could do nothing at all.

There had been no message. Surely it couldn’t be that important, could it?

Frank Cordova stared down at the items on his desk, just delivered by Tom and Eleanor Gavin. Along with the news that Nora was back in Ireland, they’d brought in three manila envelopes she’d prepared for him.

The first contained several items discovered at the river by the Cambodian fisherman, Seng Sotharith: a dirt-encrusted Nokia cell phone, and a handwritten note.
I know what you did. Hidden Falls 11 pm tonite.
The wording was the same as the note from Harry Shaughnessy’s sweatshirt pocket; it even had the same block capitals in blue ballpoint. Was the extra just a backup copy—or had somebody sent the same note to two different people?

In the second envelope was Nora’s account of her meeting with Harry Shaughnessy outside the library, a description of his bloodstained sweatshirt. She obviously didn’t know what had happened to Harry; she was asking Frank to find him.

The third manila envelope held a sheaf of articles about the Nash murders in Maine. Nora had circled the name of the lead detective on the case, a Gordon MacLeish.

He had just ended a call to the Maine State Police when his phone rang again. It was Nora.

“Frank, thank God you’re all right. I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Did Karin Bledsoe tell you I was trying to get in touch? She would only tell me that you were on leave.”

“I got tied up—some family business.” He couldn’t bring himself to talk about Chago, about the events that had landed him in the hospital. He pushed it all away. “Everything’s okay. Your parents were just here, dropping off your packages—they said you were back in Ireland.”

“And did they explain why I had to come back? Elizabeth ran away, Frank. She ditched Peter and Miranda when they arrived in Dublin, and she came looking for me. I couldn’t let them send her back to her father. I couldn’t.”

“So where are you now?”

She hesitated. “We’re okay, Frank. We’re safe.”

“You haven’t had any contact with Hallett?”

“No. I haven’t heard anything at all. I don’t even know whether he’s contacted the police. If he suspects that I have Elizabeth, I can imagine what he’s telling people—that I kidnapped her. But it’s not true—and this time I have witnesses to prove it. I tried getting in touch with a detective I know over here—no luck so far. That’s why I need your help, Frank. If you could talk to someone here, explain the situation, tell them Elizabeth is safe, that I’m not a danger to her—”

“Somebody here must have a contact in the Irish police. I’ll get in touch with the FBI and Interpol too, see if we can’t get some help tracking Hallett. You should have told me you were looking for Harry Shaugh-nessy—”

“I tried, but I couldn’t reach you, Frank. You have to find him, and ask him—”

“I’m afraid we can’t ask him anything. He was hit by a car, trying to cross Shepard Road. Killed instantly.” He could hear an intake of breath on the other end.

Nora finally spoke. “He was running from me, Frank. He thought I wanted something from him—and I did. That sweatshirt he was wearing—”

“—from Galliard. We’ve got it in the lab right now. The sweatshirt and a pair of shoes he was carrying both tested positive for blood. We’re checking against samples from Tríona and Natalie right now. It might be a break for us.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, Frank, and it’s too good to be true. I’m not trusting it, somehow. Even if the blood turns out to be a match to Tríona or Natalie, Peter is far too clever to leave such damning evidence. That sweatshirt can’t be his.”

“Let’s wait for the DNA results. You have to admit we’re doing a lot better than we were this time last week. If this is Tríona’s phone you got from the fisherman, we’ll finally have our first link to the primary crime scene. And even possible blood evidence. That note—”

“I think it may have been what sent Tríona down to the river that night. Maybe she thought the person who sent it could tell her what happened the night Natalie disappeared.”

“I thought of that too. We found a second note in Harry’s pocket, identical to that one—same words, same writing.”

Nora hesitated. “Two notes? That doesn’t make sense. Unless Tríona and the person who wore the sweatshirt both got one—”

“Which could mean a third party?”

“Maybe. Let’s see what the DNA results say. What about the murder case from Maine? And that anonymous letter addressed to Peter—what do you suppose he could have done to be threatened like that? I can’t figure out a connection.”

“I’ve got a call in to the Maine State Police. If I hear anything, I’ll keep you posted.” He felt the stabbing pain in his stomach again, and doubled over, hoping he hadn’t made any audible noise. But Nora must have heard something.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Frank? When I couldn’t reach you, I started to worry. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if there was something wrong?”

He cut her off. “My brother was sick.”

“Is he all right, Frank?”

He didn’t answer her immediately, but there was no way to avoid it now. “No, he’s not all right, Nora. He died.”

“Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry—”

“You didn’t know.” He didn’t expect her to understand. How could she? He’d never told her anything about his family. And now the subject was closed.

“I know all about your crash, Nora. About the bottle jamming the brake pedal. There were no prints on it but yours. But the crime scene investigators did find fingerprints on the car, above the driver’s side window—”

Nora was silent for a moment. “That could have been the security guard.”

“What security guard?”

“I went to the Cambodian place on University, and followed Seng Sotharith to where he lives in Frogtown, to see if I could talk to him. Some neighborhood hooligans were trying to spook me. A guy in a security uniform happened to be there, and he chased them off. He was driving a pickup—I didn’t get a license number, but the patch on his shirt said ‘Centurion.’ The prints are probably his—Peter wouldn’t be careless enough to leave prints, you know that.”

“He tried to kill you, Nora. You know it, and I know it. If he finds out where you are, that you’ve got Elizabeth, he’ll come after you again. He’s not going to give up—”

“He won’t find us. We’re safe here.”

Was it something in her voice? Frank suddenly knew where she was. With him—Mr. Serious. He felt gripped by a twisting jealousy. “Just tell me one thing. This friend of yours over there—he’s not a cop, is he?”

Her voice was quiet. “Frank, please don’t do this. I care about you. You were the one person who stuck with me through everything, who kept me from going under—the only one. But I wasn’t thinking straight that night we were together—I wasn’t thinking at all, to tell the truth. I don’t want to lose everything we had because of one reckless night.”

It was clear that she would never remember that night in the same way he had. Not ever. He couldn’t think how to respond.

“Frank, say something. Please.”

But there was nothing more to say. He pulled the phone from his ear and pressed the button to hang up.

Cormac had followed the sound of Nora’s voice to the kitchen. It was late—almost one in the morning—but he could have sworn she was speaking to someone. As he approached, he heard a bit of her end of the conversation:
I don’t want to lose everything we had because of one reckless night.
A pause.
Frank, say something. Please.