Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (67 page)

“I—” she began, but Father Jim’s eyes looked past her suddenly, and her skin prickled. Then a smile broke across his face, lighting the small space around him.

She turned, heart thumping painfully.

In the last pew he sat. Her heart picked up and she began to half run down the aisle. The dark head was bent down as though in prayer. Behind her she heard Sylvie emerge from the kitchen and give a small yelp of utter shock. Then she flew past Pamela down the aisle.

Not Casey then, but Pat. For which she was truly grateful, and yet she still felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach and winded.

She continued her walk down the aisle, limbs leaden with disappointment. She could hear Father Jim call softly after her, but she ignored him, unable to face anyone in this moment.

Sylvie was sobbing and Pat’s arms were around her, speaking softly, words of comfort and reassurance. She slipped past them, feeling that she was intruding on a very private moment.

Jamie stood outside the vestibule doors.

She smiled, knowing she wasn’t fooling him for a New York minute.

“It’s wonderful that you got him out. That he’s safe now.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t Casey. You know I would have moved heaven and earth—”

She shook her head. “Jamie you don’t need to apologize. I—it’s just that for a minute I thought it was Casey. If I hadn’t mistaken them I would have been thrilled that Pat is out.”

“I know,” he said, “but nevertheless I am sorry.”

His words, simple yet genuine, knocked her interior walls a little. Her face twisted, and she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to hold the tears back for long. She wanted to run headlong down the church stairs before the storm overtook her.

But Jamie, knowing her despair only too well, opened his arms, though he did not move forward.

She stepped into his embrace. And felt an immediate sense of relief and exhaustion as though all her carefully constructed barriers had melted at his touch. That for the moment she was safe. The tension leaked out of her shoulders.

Suddenly she realized she was clinging to him as though he were a life preserver, but he did not move nor flinch from her touch, knowing, as he so often did, what was necessary to her.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

“I’m afraid, Jamie,” she said, eyes closed against his shoulder. As if here and now she could be blind to sin and the need to atone for it.

It was a mark of Jamie’s understanding that he did not ask of what she was afraid, but rather responded simply to the fear itself.

“It’s alright, whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. You’re not alone.”

And suddenly she felt the shape of forgiveness, as insubstantial as a whisper in the dark and yet there all the same. Not forgiveness entire, but the possibility of it.

This, she knew, was as close to confession and the expiation of her sins as she was going to come just now.

“YOU’RE WORKING FOR WHOM?” Jamie asked, glasses slipping off the end of his nose in consternation.

Two weeks after Pat’s release, Pamela stood across from Jamie in his study, informing him that she had been, for the last two weeks, employed as a photographer.

“The police,” she replied, looking back steadily.

“They’ve hired you—with your bloody last name they’ve hired...” a grim look crossed his face. “You didn’t use Riordan, did you?”

She flushed, but tilted her chin up defiantly. “I can do good work for them, Jamie. I understand this work. I like it.”

“What did you tell them your last name was?”

“I used my mother’s maiden name—Vincente,” she said. “It’s my business what church I attend anyway.”

“That is completely beside the point, as you well know,” Jamie said flatly. “If your bosses ever find out who your family is, you’ll be fired directly, and that’s only if you’re very lucky.”

She knew Jamie wouldn’t be impressed by her reasoning, and so did not explain to him that it was work or go mad at this point. She needed something to fill the empty hours spent waiting to hear about a husband from whom, since that first terse missive, she had heard little. Only rare, much handled missives that, by necessity, were short on information and emotion. Pamela knew it was unavoidable, and that Casey was very aware how many sets of eyes might look upon his words, and would be careful to compromise neither her nor himself. Still it made for a most unsatisfactory form of communication.

Legal recourse had thus far proved frustrating in the extreme. She was stonewalled at every juncture, the lawyer she’d hired telling her he’d twenty-five cases identical to her own and that none looked terribly hopeful.

Jamie would be even less impressed if he knew she’d been receiving anonymous notes tucked into her lunch or sometimes in her car about files that existed regarding Brian Riordan and his early demise. But Jamie was distracted, for he’d had police roaming his property in an effort to discover what had led to a dead body in his stream. So far the result of that investigation merely pointed to a woman that had gone missing two days before Jamie and Pamela had stumbled upon her. The police weren’t entirely certain, but Jamie had told her all suspicions seemed to be aimed at an abusive husband who had merely used Jamie’s land as a conveniently remote spot to dump the body.

The first note Pamela received had shown up at the end of a particularly long day, when she’d stayed behind to finish developing pictures of a crime scene that had been especially gruesome. The body had been dumped off a country road just over the border of County Armagh. And it had been different from her usual purview in that it was the body of a woman, and it looked as though the murder had been sexually, rather than politically, motivated.

“Bar slag,” the constable who’d been with her had roughly said, and then gone and lit himself a cigarette while Pamela had started the process of photographing the body and the few small artifacts that surrounded it.

Though she strove to maintain a professional distance from her subjects, the woman had bothered her. In a week in which she’d photographed no less than six corpses in various states of torture and mutilation, this one had gotten under her skin.

Something about the woman’s chipped red nails, her peroxided hair and short skirt had made Pamela feel a wave of pity for her. Had she gone out in hope that night of meeting at last that special someone? Had she thought he was the one? Or was he just another in a long line of faces and bodies that ultimately proved disappointing? Or perhaps it was the bottle of Tabu that had fallen out of her purse—Rose had always worn Tabu and the scent was a poignant memory note for Pamela.

By the end of day she had been exhausted, the trembling fatigue of early pregnancy catching up with her. She was also more than a little depressed, having been once again sent a visitor’s pass to see Casey that had expired by the time it reached her.

The note was taped to the visor in her car. If the evening sun hadn’t been directly in her eyes on the drive home, it might have taken her several days to find it. As it was she had locked the doors immediately, and driven a good ways home before pulling over and opening the note.

It was only one line, but the wording was guaranteed to catch her attention.

‘I know what really happened to Brian Riordan.’

Other than that there was a small, crudely drawn symbol of two interlocking rings at the top of the paper.

More had come, sporadically, so that there was no pattern to their appearance. She never saw anyone near the car, though it chilled her to the core to know someone was getting in and out without being detected. This led her to the conclusion that it had to be one of the men with whom she worked. Whoever he was, he also knew of her relationship to Brian Riordan. All of which made her distinctly wary.

Yet the notes, which all seemed fragments of a much larger picture, did not frighten her. She had a sense that someone was merely trying to lead her to a conclusion and didn’t intend her any harm. The latest had been slightly more alarming in that it would require some action on her part. It directed her to the file room of the station where she worked, stating that something of interest awaited her there.

On each and every one of the notes was the same sketch of the interlocking rings. She knew she’d seen the symbol elsewhere, but couldn’t for the life of her remember where.

When she opened the latest note, a small heavy object had fallen into her lap. A tarnished key, which she felt quite certain would unlock the door of the file room. She only hoped she was ready for the Pandora ’s Box this key would unlock and bring to light.

She told none of these things to Jamie, though. She even managed to keep a stoic face as he listed the one hundred and two disasters that could occur as a result of her foolhardy venturing into police work.

Nor did she tell him she believed that through cataloguing the dead, gathering the sad bits of evidence that told the story of their end, she could make up for causing the death of another. Could atone, and perhaps buy her way back out of the cold into grace or life.

Part Four
When the Dark Night Seems Endless...

THERE WAS NO CHANCE OF GETTING into the file room until after lunch. The station was quieter then, the morning rush over and the evening one not yet begun. Outside it was raining again, and the station itself seemed as gray as the low skies beyond its barred windows. She spent some time fiddling about with the kettle, drinking unnecessary cups of tea, waiting until the hall outside the file room door was completely empty. The key seemed to be burning a hole through her pocket directly into the skin of her thigh.

Her chance came a half hour later. Most of the constables were out on calls and those left at the station were in a meeting about dealing with the post traumatic stress the city was overwhelmed with in the wake of the recent spate of bombings.

She unlocked the door, and after glancing both ways to be certain no one had popped into the hall, slipped into the file room. The room was cold and damp, the smell of mildew strong. The lights flickered and buzzed for several seconds before coming on. The light didn’t help; the room was bleak, with cement floors and cobwebs drifting in the corners.

She still didn’t understand exactly what the note writer wanted, nor what he’d been trying to communicate without actually saying anything directly.

She glanced around and sighed. Boxes were piled up to the ceiling and along steel shelving six layers deep. Every crime committed in Northern Ireland since Cromwell’s departure must be detailed and filed in here. She walked slowly down two aisles, seeing nothing out of the ordinary and feeling more confused by the second, not to mention a tad annoyed at the note’s cryptic words. Two more aisles yielded little in the way of inspiration, though she’d acquired goose bumps and a prickly feeling up the back of her neck. There were only three more aisles.

Midway down the first of these she saw a box hanging out, enough that it was set apart from the dozens of its fellows. It was on the second shelf from the top and just barely within her reach.

Her fingers just touched the bottom of the box. She stood on her toes and slowly levered it out from the shelf. It toppled, spewing dust and several pounds of paper onto her head. She froze. The noise was deafening, echoing off the stone walls and ringing tinnily from the shelving. The resulting dust cloud took several minutes to clear—time which she used to smother sneezes and clear her eyes of the grime. The noise didn’t seem to have breached the walls or the door of the file room, for no one came bursting in accusing her of meddling in things that could get her killed.

She righted the box and picked up a handful of papers, tidying them before placing them to one side and reaching for another handful. They appeared to be copies of official documents; letters between RUC personnel and government officials. Her eyes skipped through several paragraphs filled with the over wordy lingo of government correspondence.

“Pursuant to the section titled Part C...the aforementioned party of the third part...buildings subject to the city code established in...’
she sighed. Perhaps the note writer meant to kill her through sheer boredom. She picked up the next batch of papers and fanned them out. They all looked the same as the last batch. She bit her lip in frustration wiping a grubby hand down the side of her jeans.