False Mermaid

1

When Nora came through the sliding doors to the arrivals lounge at Dublin Airport, Sean Meehan was holding a hand-lettered sign: GAVIN. He’d promised to collect her, and was as good as his word. He was almost exactly what she expected: an ordinary working-class Dub, clean-shaven with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, gray hoodie under a black leather bomber jacket, black jeans. He was clearly sizing her up as well.

“Car’s outside,” he said. She had evidently passed muster.

“Look, Mr. Meehan, you really don’t have to do this. You’ve already done more than enough. Jack Donovan said he’d be glad to collect me from the bus—”

“Ah no—we’re going to Skerries, you and I, and you’re off the clock. No arguments. And call me Sean.”

He took her bag and they walked out to the car park. After paying at one of the automated kiosks, he turned to her. “I didn’t want to do this inside—anybody could have been watching—but I figured you might like some proof that I am who I say. Before getting into a car with me, like. So here you go”—he handed each one over as he spoke—“driver’s licence, passport, taxi licence, the wife’s mobile number—you can ring her if you like.”

Nora glanced at the cards, and pushed them back. “There’s no need for all that—I believe you.”

“Just want you to know—” He took the cards and the passport and stuffed them back into his pockets. “I’ve got to go up to Skerries. Wouldn’t feel right, leaving the little one without seeing how she’s getting on. I just keep thinking—what if she was me own kid?”

As Nora got into the car, she spied a snapshot tucked into the driver’s side visor. Three boys and a girl, all between the ages of six and twelve, and all dark-haired and blue-eyed, like the man beside her. “Your kids?”

“Ah, yeah, but that’s an old picture. The eldest, Damien, he’s nearly sixteen. Jaysus, where does the time get to?”

From the airport, they drove on in silence out the M1, through the village of Swords. Sean Meehan pulled a pack of Majors from his pocket and lit one up. Then he spoke, as though he’d been thinking about it for a while: “It’s not as if you can just make a child disappear. They’re sure to be on the lookout for her. What’ll you do?”

“I don’t know. Try to find somewhere to lie low, I suppose. We’re digging for new evidence on my brother-in-law at home, but whether it’ll turn into anything—”

“Want some advice?”

Nora considered Sean Meehan’s sensible idea from the day before, about getting Elizabeth out of Dublin. “What do you suggest?”

“Go as far away from Dublin as you can get. Somewhere in Cork or Kerry maybe, or Mayo—up the West, where there’s not too many people. Someplace remote. Up the side of some boggy mountain, where no one would ever think to look. A safe house. That’s where you want to be. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. And make sure you have transport that can’t be traced to you. I suppose stealing a car is totally out of the question?” Before she could respond, he cast a sidelong glance at her and grinned. “Only joking. Maybe the Donovans would give you the loan of theirs. Whatever you do—cash only, no credit cards.” He handed her an envelope with banknotes in it. “There’s about three hundred euro in there. I can get more if you need it. You’ll need a mobile as well, one of them pay-as-you-go jobs. I can pick one up in the next village—that way it’s traced only to me. And if you should need other transport—say, a boat, just for instance—give us a shout.”

Nora studied his profile for a moment. “I hate to ask how you know all this.”

“Let’s just say I knew people who knew people, back when.” He glanced over at her. “All water under the bridge now.”

He took one last, long drag on his cigarette, and flicked the butt out the window. “Just read of a fella up in Ballina, done for smoking in his own fuckin’ cab—two hundred fifty euro of a fine. Did you ever hear the bate of that? The youngest has been at me to give them up. I’m trying, but it’s a devil of a thing to quit, you know? You never smoked, yourself?”

Nora shook her head. “Not in my line of work.”

“Your friends were saying—you’re a doctor?”

“Pathologist.”

“What, like those fellas on CSI?”

“Not exactly. I teach anatomy. But what I see on the dissecting table—well, let’s just say it’s incentive enough to stay off the fags.”

“Sweet Jaysus.” Sean Meehan pulled the half-empty packet of Majors from his pocket and stared at it for a few seconds, then pitched the whole thing out the car window.

They arrived just before noon at the Donovans’ place in Skerries. The house was part of a Victorian terrace that looked out over the Irish Sea. Gulls wheeled and cried overhead as they drove up the narrow street and parked outside. The house and the wall around the postage-stamp garden were painted in storybook colors, bright yellow and blue. The air was redolent of seaweed and fish, and the seawall opposite looked down over sand and rocks that would be covered with water at high tide, and were now furry with brown kelp.

Nora suddenly realized that Elizabeth had probably seen Ireland only in pictures. Would it seem foreign to her, or would she have some impossible memory of the place, a pentimento written in blood and bone? She thought of something Cormac had said to her once: We’re made out of the water, the earth, the air of the places that fed our ancestors, quenched their thirst, the basic elements of the places that gave them life. Is it really so strange if we feel the heave and pitch of those places, even centuries later, in the vibrations of our atoms?

Saoirse Donovan met her at the door. “Oh, Nora, I’m so glad you’re here. Sean—thanks for bringing her along. Won’t you come in? Elizabeth is in the sitting room, Nora. I’ll let you go in to her while I make tea.”

Nora took her friend’s arm. “Is she all right, Saoirse?”

“She won’t speak to anyone but you, Nora. But I should warn you—” She hesitated, nervous.

“What is it, Saoirse? Tell me.”

“Last night she took a scissors to all that lovely hair—cut it all off, right down to the scalp. I feel so terrible, Nora—I ought to have kept a closer watch. I thought you should know before you see her. So it wouldn’t be such a shock.”

Sean Meehan frowned and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll be here if you need anything.”

Nora pushed through the door to the sitting room, her stomach heavy with dread. She found Elizabeth sitting cross-legged in the front window seat, a large book open across her knees. As Saoirse had warned, the child’s long hair was gone, roughly chopped off. What was left stuck up in strange tufts and ridges. Her eyes, so like Tríona’s, so large and luminous. Now, with her hair cut short, they were almost too large for her face. Nora watched her niece’s gaze flick to the bandage on her head.

She felt an impulse to rush forward and fold Elizabeth in her arms. And yet for some reason she could not do it. Something in the child’s questioning, wounded gaze stopped her. They stared at each other for a long moment, each wondering what to say, what to do next, how to bridge the chasm of the last five years.

Nora crossed to the far end of the window seat, keeping a space between them. “You wanted to see me,” she said. “Here I am.”

Elizabeth closed her book and began playing with the laces on her shoes, pulling the bows taut, winding herself tighter and tighter—waiting and wishing, Nora knew, for that bad feeling in the pit of her stomach to go away. Only it would not go away, not ever, not completely. It would seem to diminish for a while, and then, for no apparent reason, would blossom anew, reviving itself like a living thing.

Nora put out a hand to still the fidgeting fingers. “I’ve missed you, Lizzabet—”

Her head lifted. “Nobody calls me that—not anymore.” The child was an injured animal, snapping at any hand that came near, even those offering aid. Although Elizabeth’s instincts told her to resist, Nora was more than ready. She had been anticipating this moment; dreaming it and dreading it every day for five years. At last, she pulled Elizabeth close, wrapping her arms around the thin shoulders, feeling the force of the silent howl caught inside. Words were not enough. All she could offer right now was fierce steadfastness, a promise never to let go. There were no tears, from either of them. Plenty of time for those, Nora told herself. They would come. She stroked Elizabeth’s hair, wondering how on earth they were going to get through this. There were practical decisions to be made, plans to be laid, as if their lives depended on it. Perhaps they did. She would not allow anyone to harm this child. And if that meant breaking the law, if it meant not seeing people she loved for a very long time, then she would do it.

But Sean Meehan was right. They had to go somewhere remote, a place no one would think to look. Then she remembered the way Cormac had described his father’s house. A very remote spot, he had said. I didn’t know places like this still existed.

She had resisted heaping her troubles on him; it didn’t seem fair. And yet what choice did she have, when there was so much at stake? She tipped Elizabeth’s head up and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me, Lizzabet. I think I know a place we can go.”

2

Frank Cordova slid over the threshold of consciousness. A few random ghosts seemed to lurk at the edges of his perception: there was the sweep of a leaf fan, the oppressive heat and dust, and that odd, sudden, thick-thin sensation he had felt as a kid, and had never been able to explain. The room was dark, and for some reason he felt exhausted, even though he was just waking up. He opened his eyes, vaguely aware that he was gripping a woman’s arm, but he couldn’t seem to feel his fingers. His legs were heavy, and there was a continual, low-pitched buzz in the back of his head. His mouth felt chalky. “What’s happening?”

“You’re in Regions Hospital. You’ve been sedated for a bit. I’ll call the doctor and let him know you’re feeling better.”

He raised his head slightly to look down at his legs. No cast. No bullet holes. So what was he doing in the hospital? He said to the nurse: “How long have I been here?”

She smiled. “You were admitted Thursday night—well, Friday morning, I guess, technically speaking. And today is Saturday—”

“Saturday? I have to get out of here.”

“I really think you need to speak to the doctor first—”

He tried to sit up. “You don’t understand. I’m working a case, and I haven’t got time—” He stopped speaking as fragments of memory began to stir again: Veronica’s teary face, the sound of ragged breathing, that horrible disinfectant smell, and an almost noiseless scuffle against a hard, cold floor. He knew then what he’d put off knowing in long hours of shadowy sleep. A spasm of anguish gripped him, and he knew that the strange dreams he’d been having were not dreams at all.

Chago.

There was nothing he could do to protect his brother. Not anymore. The room began to spin, and he lay back down on the bed, hot tears trickling into his ears. Santa María, Madre de Díos, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte—Now and at the hour of our death.

“Rest for a while.” The nurse began tucking the blanket around him again. “Sometimes it helps if you just try to concentrate on breathing.”

He nodded, but as soon as she left the room, he tore the tape off his IV and removed the needle, applying pressure to stop any bleeding. He found his clothes in the cupboard, but his wallet, badge, gun, and cell phone were all gone—as were his car keys. He distinctly remembered driving to the ER after Veronica’s call. Picking up the room phone, he dialed his partner, and cut straight to the chase. “Karin, I need a lift.”

Her response was wary: “I take it you’re feeling better?”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t tell from her voice whether she knew about everything that had happened—although it was probably safe to say she knew a lot more than he did. That thought made him uncomfortable. “I’m at Regions. I need you to pick me up, right away.”

“Do you think that’s wise, Frank?”

“I don’t care if it’s wise. If you won’t pick me up, I’ll take a cab.”

“All right, all right—I’m down at the shop. See you in ten at the main entrance.”

He slipped down the nearest stairwell and made his way to the ground floor. Karin was already waiting for him.

“You sure you’re all right, Frank?” She was looking at his hand, still bearing the IV tape. “I had patrol bring your car back to headquarters the other night, but I can drive you straight home, if you’d rather—”

“I’ll be okay.” He turned to Karin. “It’s Saturday. What are you doing at the shop?”

“With you out, we were a little shorthanded, and we got a couple of new cases. Your friend Dr. Gavin drove her car off a bluff down at Hidden Falls Thursday night.”

Frank felt a sudden stab of fear. “Is she okay?”

“A little banged up—nothing serious. But she claimed it wasn’t an accident—she says somebody jammed her brakes.”

“And you don’t believe her?”

“Hard to say. We’ve got the car up in the garage right now. It looks like a water bottle just got loose and rolled under her brake pedal. No prints on the bottle but hers. We can’t prove a thing.”

Frank took in this new information. Peter Hallett might as well have left a signature. Jigger the brakes so it looks like Nora might have done it herself. Then she looks extra crazy, trying to pin it on him. “What’s the other case?”

“Hit-and-run yesterday. Homeless guy, maybe you knew him—Harry Shaughnessy?”

3

Nora drove northward and westward toward Donegal. She wasn’t used to thinking like a fugitive—never spent time thinking about how to avoid being noticed, how to communicate without being tracked. She had told no one where she and Elizabeth were headed from Skerries, not even Sean Meehan or the Donovans, whose car she’d managed to cadge. Even so, she knew they were far from safe. The authorities were no doubt searching for Elizabeth, but she didn’t dare turn on the news to find out. Peter would be just as adept at manipulating official opinion here as he had been at home. Donegal was at least far away from Dublin, but nowhere on the island felt secure.

She drove through the pastures of Meath and Cavan, sticking to secondary roads, winding through villages fluttering with county flags to support whatever team was headed to the next regional championship. As they wound around the small hills of Leitrim, carefully skirting the border—no need to invite official scrutiny by crossing into the North—the rain poured down, obscuring the view.

Elizabeth remained silent, eyes trained out the window. The child would have a terrible crick in her neck by the time they stopped. Occasionally, she would wipe the moisture from the glass, but the vapor from their breath only beaded up again.

What happened? Nora wanted to ask. Did you remember something? Did you just figure it out on your own?She tried to reconstruct her own consciousness at age six, about the time she and Tríona and her parents had come to America. When did a person begin to emerge from that fantastical sea of childhood onto the dry land of adult existence? Elizabeth, now at eleven, was standing at the edge of that ocean, heels still in the water, already missing the pull of the surf. It was easy to feel clumsy and ungainly in the new world of adulthood; breathable air must feel thin and insubstantial compared to childhood’s all-enveloping sea.

Norea turned to her niece. “Shall we have some music?”

No response. Nora switched the radio on anyway, speeding past the stations blasting bright commercial patter, finally landing on some traditional music, Raidió na Gaeltachta, the Irish-language station. Just what she was looking for. Not a word of English. No chance that they’d hear urgent updates about a nationwide search for a missing child. At least not in any language Elizabeth would understand. The tune ended, and the presenter began chatting away about the selection they’d just heard. Elizabeth’s head snapped around. She listened intently for a few seconds. “What is that?”

“It’s Irish. The language people speak here.”

Elizabeth considered for a moment. “I thought people here spoke English.”

“Well, yes—they do. But some people speak mostly Irish, especially in places like where we’re going.”

Elizabeth listened to the radio presenter again. “It sounds”—she spent a few seconds trying to dredge up the right word—“soft.”

Nora had to agree. Irish had always struck her as such an expressive, musical language, and she regretted not knowing more of it.

After four hours on the road, they were coming up on the outskirts of Donegal town. They stopped at a station shop and bought some anemic-looking sandwiches and crisps, apples and bananas, bottled water, and a few biscuits. Past Donegal town, the road wound down along the coast, and cut inland at Mountcharles. Elizabeth kept her face to the window. At Bruckless, it was time to take a break from driving. Nora turned off the main road, and headed down a quiet, wooded lane that led to a rocky beach. She parked the car at the edge of the wood.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s take our sandwiches down to the shore.”

Elizabeth looked skeptical, but followed her out onto a rocky peninsula that trailed out into Bruckless Bay. They sat on a pair of flat boulders and set out the sandwiches and drinks. The briny smell of seaweed filled the air—not the strong, rotting odor that sometimes came at low tide, but a cleaner, lighter scent. It was a mystery why some coasts were more malodorous than others. Nora pointed across the water to a house high up on the side of the hill. “See that house? It’s very like a place we stayed one summer when I was your age. Your mama would have been about six or seven.”

In fact, the more Nora studied the surrounding hills, the more she became convinced that this was the very place where the seal had rescued Tríona from drowning. It must have rained sometime during those summer weeks, yet Nora couldn’t recall even a single cloudy day. She and Tríona had spent hours climbing among the rocks, searching for sea glass and other treasure. That shard of blue-and-white delft in her treasure box had come from somewhere along this coast. Visiting the grandparents in Clare every summer was never a holiday in the usual sense. There were eggs to be gathered, cows to be milked, garden patches to be weeded, honey to be collected from hives. Here in Donegal, there had been no responsibilities, only endless days of exploring and make-believe. She had dreamt of shipwrecks all summer long.

“Look!” Elizabeth’s voice had an excited edge.

Nora shielded her eyes against the strong afternoon sun, and peered out over the water to see a dark head bobbing just above the calm surface. “I see it.”

The seal swam closer, evidently curious about the pale creatures stretched out on the rocks. As it drew near, Nora could see that the left side of the animal’s face was damaged. It regarded them with a single dark and glassy eye.

Elizabeth jumped to her feet and ventured as far out on the spit as she could go, feeling her way over the rocks, never taking her eyes from the sleek head in the water. Girl and seal studied each other with intense interest. The creature’s nose and whiskers twitched as it huffed the air for clues about the human child, and Elizabeth’s hand remained half-raised in a gesture of greeting. Then the seal began to spin, rising up out of the water in a joyful dance.

Nora watched, fascinated, thinking of all the instinctive, animal ways of knowing that humans had begun to forget as soon as they had words. After a few moments of silent communication, the seal’s head slid beneath the surface and disappeared from view, leaving only a circling eddy where it had been. Elizabeth stood searching the water for a few more minutes before she turned around. Nora studied her face as she trudged back up to the flat rocks.

“Were you saying something to that seal?”

“No!” Elizabeth’s newly exposed ears glowed bright red.

“It’s all right, Lizzabet. Your mother used to talk to them. She said they didn’t understand when she spoke English, but they seemed to have a bit of Irish.” Elizabeth looked up, as if she had just confirmed something that had lurked in the murky realm of suspicion for a long time.

That was exactly what Tríona had said. Nora had completely forgotten until the words came out of her mouth. Strange, how revisiting a place could bring back memories in that way. The smell of the seaweed, the texture of the stone underfoot, the way the light hit the water at a certain angle—if she closed her eyes, she could see pale limbs underwater, hair floating upward, a pair of coal-black eyes looming close.

Back in the car, the radio sprang to life with the engine. As they reached Carrick, a tune began flowing from the speakers, and Nora knew she had heard it somewhere before. The fiddler slid his bow along the strings, expertly teasing great feeling from the notes, starting low and rising up in exhilarating waves.

It was the same tune Cormac had sent her in his e-mail the other night, she was certain.

When the music ended, the presenter began chatting in Irish, from which she could only pick out a few words—go hailainn, wonderful; an fhidil, the fiddle. The tune’s title went by in a flash. Something i Meiriceá—in America. He had promised her the name of the tune the next time they met. It wouldn’t be long now.

Outside Carrick, they hurtled by a handmade banner fluttering from a pair of stakes at the roadside. Nora registered what it said only after they’d gone past: FÁILTE FIDLEIRI!—WELCOME FIDDLERS! FIDDLE WEEK IN THE GLEN.

When they reached Glencolumbkille, the post office was closed, but the publican at the óstan, the inn next door, knew the Maguire place.

“It’s about three miles outside The Glen, just beyond a little place called Port na Rón,” the man said. “The village itself mightn’t be on your map. There’s no one living in it for years now. But head out this road, anyway, until you come to a fork. Keep to the left there, and the Maguire place will be on your left as you go down that lane, kind of up under a hill. You can’t miss it. And if you get all the way to Maghera, you’ll know you’ve missed the turn entirely.”

“Do you know Joseph Maguire?”

“Sure, wasn’t I in school with him? Josie, we used to call him, in them days. His auntie Julia was our schoolteacher. She’s the one left the house to him there about three years ago. We heard he was off in Bolivia or somewhere. Never thought he’d come back. But that’s the thing about Donegal people, you see. They’ll go off, for years sometimes. To America, Australia, Scotland, all sorts of foreign shores. But they always come back. Something about this place that draws them—something in the blood. You know, it’s amazing. Maguire’s after having a fierce rake of visitors lately. I was terrible sorry to hear about his trouble, taking ill like that—he’s still in hospital beyond in Killybegs. I’m surprised you didn’t know, being a friend of the family, like.”

Nora saw the gossip hunger in the eyes that peered over the glasses at her, and she scrambled to make up a credible lie. “I have to confess—I don’t actually know him. He’s a third cousin to my husband, something like that. My daughter and I are up for the Fiddle Week—my husband is joining us at the weekend. We’re staying with friends up in Ardara, but I was supposed to call in, if we were passing this way. Still in hospital, though—that’s a pity.”

“I’m sure he’ll be up for visitors soon. But aren’t you lucky to have friends in these parts? When you came in, I was afraid you might ask if we’d any rooms left. I would have hated to turn away such a lovely wee woman as yourself.”

Down the road where the barman had directed them, the car climbed up past the church and out of the Glen. Houses were few and far between beyond the village, surrounded on all sides by treeless, mountainy bog. They passed shallow black cuttings, clamps of turf walled in by pallets held together with rope and netting to foil thieves, and thatched with rushes to fend off unforgiving wind and rain. Stone and wire fences hiked up over the hills, marking narrow fields for grazing sheep. The place looked barren, but Nora knew that—at least culturally speaking—nothing could be further from the truth. From the poorest places came the richest music—it had always been that way.

Suddenly she felt so tired that it was difficult to keep her hands on the steering wheel. She looked over at Elizabeth in the passenger seat. Was she doing the right thing, coming here, landing on Cormac without a word of warning? “Hang in there,” she said to Elizabeth. “We’re almost there.”

As she spoke, Nora felt a wave of exhaustion verging on dizziness. She reached up and touched the bandage on her forehead. More than anything in the world, she longed to sleep, but a host of worries pressed down on her. Around the next curve, they came to a Y-junction. Turning to the left, Nora coaxed the car along a rough patch of road. There it was, ahead on the left, a hill with a house tucked under it, just as the barman had said. Nora had never been so glad to arrive anywhere. The long dusk was beginning to settle. There were two cars parked outside, and she could see a light through the windows. Cormac was home, then. She pulled in behind his Jeep and turned to Elizabeth.

“Let me go in first—” She saw trepidation in her niece’s face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Elizabeth didn’t look up. She picked at the zipper on her backpack, and Nora noticed for the first time how the skin around her nails was chewed ragged. And the child never let go of that bloody pack—what on earth was she carrying around in there?

The door of the house was open as Nora rounded the corner, and the tinny noise of an old fiddle recording trickled out through the open door. She peered inside and saw the back of Cormac’s head, and felt a breaker of homesickness so strong it threatened to knock her down. He was sitting on an old leather sofa in front of the fireplace. She was just about to call out when a mop of ginger hair lifted from the crook of his shoulder. “Please don’t, Roz,” she heard him say. “Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right.”

The ground seemed to roil under her feet, and the music grew louder. She gripped the doorjamb, trying to remain upright, but felt her knees buckle. The floor came up abruptly to meet her.

Nora felt herself drifting in and out of consciousness for what seemed like a very long time. A damp cloth against her face, the sound of whispering voices. She had the same sensation as when she was a child, riding in the backseat when the adults thought she was asleep. The image of a car pricked her into alertness, and she sat up abruptly.

“Where’s Elizabeth? I left her in the car—”

Cormac’s voice was near, mingled notes of worry and relief: “Elizabeth is right here, Nora.” The child’s face loomed close as he continued. “You’ve only been out for a minute or two. We just got you inside the house.” His fingers brushed her face. “Rest awhile.”

Nora felt small, cold fingers press into her hand. No sign of the ginger-haired female. Maybe she was imagining things. She seemed to be drifting away again on the tide.

It must have been some time later when the chiming of a clock awakened her. Elizabeth was curled up at the other end of the sofa, draped in a blanket and fast asleep. Nora felt someone stir in the chair beside her. She looked up to find the ginger-haired woman, the one who’d been crying on Cormac’s shoulder. She was dry-eyed now, and spoke in a whisper: “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Nora tried to sit up without disturbing Elizabeth. Her muscles were still stiff and sore from the impact of the crash. “How long was I asleep?”

“About an hour and a quarter,” the woman said. “I’m Roz Byrne, by the way—colleague of Cormac’s from UCD, and extraneous houseguest. He’s just gone into the kitchen—I’ll send him out to you, shall I?” She retreated through the sitting-room door, and Cormac emerged a second later.

“Nora—” He knelt on the floor and brought his face close. “How are you?”

“I’m all right. You must wonder what we’re doing here.”

“You’ve hardly had a chance to explain anything. Including that—” He gestured to the bandage on her head. “I was beginning to think you might have a concussion.”

“No—it’s just a scratch. Really.” Nora glanced back at Elizabeth, still slumbering deeply. It was amazing how much younger children could look while they were asleep. “It’s a very long story. Any chance of a cup of tea?”

Cormac helped her up, circling an arm around her waist as they moved across the room. Out in the hall, he stopped, pressing her against the wall with the length of his body, cradling the back of her head, kissing her with gently parted lips until she was floating, breathless with desire. He pressed his forehead against hers. “Sorry. But God, how I missed you, Nora. It seems like decades since you left.”

She raised a hand to touch his face. “I know. Lifetimes.”

4

Harry Shaughnessy’s clothing was laid out on the table at the center of the crime lab. Frank Cordova stared at the bloodstains on the sweat-shirt—that’s what they seemed to be, here under the bright lights of the lab—heavy, fresh stains around the neckline, and several large, lighter areas under the white letters spelling out “Galliard.” What was Harry Shaughnessy doing with a sweatshirt from Peter Hallett’s alma mater? Frank reminded himself that the shirt hadn’t necessarily belonged to Hallett—he could think of several other people in the Twin Cities who might belong to the same alumni association, including Marc Staunton. Harry might have picked the shirt up at the Goodwill, or the St. Vincent de Paul shop on West Seventh Street.

Jackie Smart, the forensic scientist, was going over the sweatshirt inch by inch with magnifier, tweezers, tape, and swabs, on the hunt for DNA. “Somebody said you knew this guy,” she said.

“Everybody knew him.” It was true. Generations of Saint Paul cops knew Harry Shaughnessy. He’d haunted Rice Park ever since he got back from Korea in 1953. Never the same after. And there were plenty like him—more after every war—sleeping under bridges, unable to cope with “normal” life, men who took to raving on street corners or quietly drinking themselves to death. Probably plenty of others, too—playing golf, puttering around in garages and basement wood shops—who were never the same either. Most of them just managed to hide it better than Harry Shaughnessy had. “Have you tested these spots that look like bloodstains?”

“The police lab did the presumptive—it’s definitely blood. There wasn’t much from the accident, the ME said. The vic’s heart stopped pretty much on impact. To me, those stains under the letters look quite a bit older than the accident anyway. See how the surface here is all cracked, and completely flaked off in places? What do you make of that?” She pointed to a small scrap of paper next to the sweatshirt—a handwritten note, gray with grime, and worn tissue-thin. “I found it in the pocket.”

Frank studied the faint block letters, written in blue ballpoint: I know what you did. Hidden Falls 11 pm tonite. It sounded like a threat. Hidden Falls tonight, or else. Or else what? I’ll tell where you buried Natalie Russo? The note made nailing down the DNA evidence even more crucial.

He said: “Jackie, can you get wearer DNA on all these things?”

“Sure, I can try—we usually get pretty good samples under the arms, around the collar.”

Frank picked up the nearly new pair of black running shoes, examined their slightly muddy soles. “What about these?”

“Again, the presumptive for blood comes up positive; we have to do more tests to see if it matches the blood on the shirt. It’s kinda funny—the vic was wearing all these clothes, but not those shoes; they were stuffed in his backpack. He had on these lovely size twelves.” She held up a battered pair of high-top sneakers. “The running shoes would have been way too small for him. But somebody wore them—I found white cotton threads inside when I was swabbing for DNA. There was quite a bit of dirt in the treads, too. When I’m done here, I’ll send all this over to trace. You can have a look—”

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.”

5

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?

6

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.

He stood at the door, conflicted about whether to knock or to hold back, not wanting to make it so obvious that he’d overheard. There were clearly some things she was not telling him. How easily the seeds of doubt and jealousy were planted. He hesitated a moment longer and pushed through the kitchen door.

“You’re up, too?” She gestured to the phone lying on the table. “I was just talking to Frank Cordova.”

“Any news?”

“Everything comes in such small increments. We may have found Tríona’s cell phone, which could help pinpoint the crime scene. They also have a bloodstained sweatshirt from Peter’s college—they have to run DNA tests to see if the blood could be Tríona’s.”

“Well, that would be something, wouldn’t it? I mean, all this time you’ve been looking for evidence—”

“Yes, but there’s something not quite right about it. They don’t know for sure that it’s Peter’s sweatshirt, and I just don’t believe he would be that careless—about anything. He plans things, figures out every angle. Making a stupid mistake like that—it isn’t like him. Trust me, I know from experience how he manages every last detail. I haven’t told you the half of it.”

“Will you tell me now?” He pointed to the bandage on her forehead. “I’d especially like to know how you got that.”

“Only if you promise not to lecture me.” He held up his hand as if to swear, and she continued: “My car went off the road. I think someone jammed a water bottle under the brake pedal—”

He couldn’t help reacting. “Jesus Christ, Nora.”

“You promised not to lecture. There’s no proof, of course. No fingerprints but mine. Nothing to say the bottle didn’t just roll under the pedal by accident. Or that I didn’t put it there, trying to incriminate Peter.”

Cormac glanced up the stairs where Elizabeth was asleep. “We have to talk about what to do if he shows up here. He could be headed in this direction right now.”

“How would he know where to look?”

“Sooner or later he’s going to be able to connect us, Nora—if he’s half as clever as you say. At least a half-dozen people in Dublin knew I was coming up here.” He drew back and looked at her. “How did you find this place?”

“I stopped at the óstan in Glencolumbkille—but I made up a story, about bringing my daughter up for Fiddle Week, about your father being a distant relation—”

He spoke quietly: “Still, you’re an American, traveling with a child. I’m not criticizing, Nora. All I’m saying is that it won’t be difficult to track you, if he’s really intent upon it. We’re only being prudent to realize that. We should have a plan, a rendezvous spot, in case we’re separated. There’s an abandoned fishing village called Port na Rón just the other side of the headland from here. Roz told me about some caves under the rocks on the far side of the bay. That might be a good place to meet, even stay for a while if we had to.”

Nora looked at him curiously. “You’ve been thinking about this.”

“No such thing as too careful.” He reached for a bag under the table and pulled out a pair of walkie-talkies. “Mobile coverage can be spotty up here, so I thought we could try these—I use them on excavations. They’re on the same frequency, good up to twenty-six miles. We could each carry one.”

“You really think he’ll come here?”

“I think we have to be prepared for it. Would he have reported Elizabeth missing?”

“Probably,” Nora said. “He must have been surprised when she ran away, because he knew I was still in the States. But Elizabeth didn’t. I imagine he’d go to the police—he’s always had great luck with them so far.” After a moment she added: “Most of them, anyway.”

“If your picture’s likely to show up on the television, it might be best to steer clear of civilization. Keep out of sight.”

“I do have the offer of a boat—” She tried to force a smile, but couldn’t. “Oh, Cormac, I never meant to put any of this on you—”

He leaned closer. “Will you stop? Your troubles are my troubles, Nora. We’ll get through this—we just need to be vigilant. Let me show you how to find the caves at Port na Rón.” He reached into his bag for a map and flipped to the area showing the cluster of houses and outbuildings where they sat, with long, narrow plots of bog and pastureland going up over the mountain. “Go over the headland to the south here, and you’ll come to the village. You’ll see a rocky beach. The caves I mentioned are here, around the south side of the harbor. I’ve got to go see on my father in hospital tomorrow morning; you and Elizabeth could go over and have a look at the caves while I’m away. I can stop on my way back and get some extra provisions to stash there if we need them.” He drew back and looked at her. “Has Elizabeth told you why she ran away?” He was thinking of the long, fair hairs and the lone shoe he’d found under the cot at the selkie cottage. “Maybe she knows something she’s not telling. Children notice a lot more than we realize.”

Nora shook her head. “I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to draw her out. Once in a while I get the impression she wants to talk, but feels as if she can’t—maybe out of loyalty to her father. In spite of everything, he is still her father. That’ll never change with wishing, unfortunately.”

Cormac put his hand over Nora’s, and let his glance stray to the hall that led to his father’s empty room. “No, I don’t suppose it will.”

7

Elizabeth awakened to a room bathed in light. Heavy bedclothes pressed down the length of her body, and the air smelled strange—cold and musty, damp. Nothing had felt real since they arrived here. She had no recollection of getting to this room on her own—maybe someone had carried her. Opening her eyes a crack, she could make out the dark outlines of flower-patterned wallpaper, the bulk of a wardrobe at the foot of the bed. She sat up slowly and glanced around. From the small window she could see down a driveway, out to the road. Would they just stay here, never go back to America? If they were supposed to be hiding, this strange, bare place didn’t seem like a very good spot. This house was odd; its windows were small and close to the floor, like something from a fairy story. Old black-and-white pictures crammed the walls, and there were bookcases everywhere, even up in this bedroom. She tilted her head sideways to read the titles of the books on the nearest shelf: The Sea Folk. The Selkie in Folklore, Myth, and Legend.

Yesterday already seemed like a dream, waking up to the sound of the sea outside at the Donovans’ house, then the long drive to this place, and stopping at that spit of land where the one-eyed seal came swimming up to her. It was just as if they had never been apart. Her brain said it wasn’t possible—her old friend from Useless Bay couldn’t have followed her all the way to this place. Ireland must be at least halfway around the world from Seattle. But how many seals had such an identical star-shaped spot? And the way it had watched her, too—bobbing high out of the water, just like her friend back at Useless Bay. She wanted to call out to it in that strange, inhuman language she had sometimes heard it use, but she had not made a sound.

A dull pressure in her abdomen said it was time to find the bathroom. She slid out of bed and crept down the hall, holding her breath when her foot set off a loud creak from one of the floorboards. The bathroom door had a rippled glass window; inside was a deep bathtub with feet, and one of those high, old-fashioned toilets with a chain for a handle. She slipped inside and shut the door, imagining that everyone downstairs could hear her moving about. Each embarrassing noise—the click of the latch, the squeaking hinges, and especially the hollow splash as she emptied her bladder—seemed magnified in the echoing room.

While washing her hands, Elizabeth examined her newly shorn head in the mirror, pulling at the uneven tufts, remembering the weight of each handful of long hair as it was cut, how it looked at the bottom of that wastebasket. She had never held any desire to be part of the secret, grown-up world, and had focused all her energy the past few months on refusing to be dragged over that threshold. But the transformation was happening anyway, against her will. She didn’t know the person who looked back at her from the mirror. At times it felt like there was someone else, something else inside her—a dangerous, wild creature who might come screeching out if she opened her mouth.

She opened the bathroom door and stood listening to a pair of voices from downstairs. One was Cormac—was he Nora’s boyfriend? From the way he’d acted last night, she thought he might be. Elizabeth tiptoed to the top of the stairs and saw him in the hallway below talking to Roz, the woman they’d met last night. Cormac was speaking to her now in a low voice, as if he didn’t want Nora to hear. “Please don’t go, Roz. You don’t have to leave.”

“I do, Cormac. I can’t stay here.”

“He could come back to himself anytime.”

Elizabeth wondered who they were talking about.

“Please, Cormac—we both know he won’t. I‘m not sure I can take that look in his eyes, day after day.”

“What about your work here—do you not want to go back to the selkie cottage?”

“I’ve finished all the interviews I had planned. I’m never going to find Mary Heaney, Cormac. She just became an excuse to stay on—”

Roz began to cry, and Cormac put his arms around her. Elizabeth’s stomach began to squeeze tight. Maybe he wasn’t Nora’s boyfriend after all. She went back to the bedroom, unsure whether she should go downstairs, and remembering another conversation she’d overheard three days ago. Her dad hadn’t known she was on the landing, but she had heard every word they said.

“I can’t believe you don’t see what she’s up to. All this acting out, trying to get your attention, just when we’re supposed to be going away? It’s her way of getting Daddy all to herself again. That’s what she’s wanted from the beginning.”

“She’s only a kid, Miranda.”

“You really don’t see it, do you? I can’t believe you’re so blind—”

“That’s enough. Something could have happened to her down at the river.”

“Nothing happened.”

“All right, maybe nothing did happen, but what was she doing, running off like that? Did you say something?”

“Oh, that’s rich. The kid runs off, and naturally I’m to blame. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe she’s more like her mother than you thought—”

Elizabeth hadn’t actually seen the slap, but its sharp noise still seemed to reverberate in her ears. When her father spoke again, his voice was almost unrecognizable. “Don’t ever let me hear you talk like that again, do you hear me? Stay away from my daughter.”

Remembering that confrontation, Elizabeth began to feel queasy again. Miranda and her father had never argued like that before, at least not that she knew. It was all her fault, for running away. Why did she have to go and find all that stuff on the Internet and mess everything up? It was better not to know. She missed the empty space inside her that was now filled with doubts and questions. All she wanted was for everything to get back to normal.

She crawled back into the narrow bed, pulling the covers over her head. Maybe running away had been a mistake. She knew what they were all thinking, Nora and everyone else, that she was running away from her dad, but it wasn’t true. He got angry sometimes, but he had reasons. She was always messing up, doing stupid things—like climbing up on that wall. He was trying to protect her. That’s why he got mad when Miranda said those things. He couldn’t have hurt Mama—if he had, he would be locked up, wouldn’t he? You couldn’t do things like that and not go to jail. She felt the questions crowding, pushing into one another inside her. Nora, her dad, Miranda, her grandparents—they all said something different, and it couldn’t all be true. Somebody had to be lying.

She hadn’t actually planned to run away at the airport until they were walking off the plane. What did Miranda mean—maybe she’s more like her mother than you thought? Sometimes when she lay in bed at night, with darkness close around her, certain memories came back, mostly as she was drifting off to sleep, or just waking. Suddenly she felt a string of words rising up inside her, each a separate bubble, bursting as it hit the surface: Lizzabet—Mama’s tired.

And then it all came back, like water under a door, rising around her ankles in a flood. All the days Mama was so tired she couldn’t wake up. Elizabeth remembered wandering through the silent house—frightened by the noises from the icemaker, looking up at the sink piled high with dishes, hallways and bedrooms strewn with toys and clothes. Whole days playing alone in her room, eventually having to brave the rumbling refrigerator for something to eat. Then she would go back into the bedroom and try shaking Mama’s shoulder again. Why wouldn’t she wake up?

The damp air under the covers pressed down on her, until she had to throw off the blankets and take a breath of cool outside air. With it came the smell of toast and bacon, floating up from below, awakening something in her—a hollow, cavernous hunger she hadn’t felt for days, and with it a sharp memory of her dad making toast on Sunday mornings, cut into triangles just the way she liked it, dripping with butter. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her stomach, fighting the hunger inside. She missed her dad so much. Running away had been a mistake.

8

Truman Stark always took the back streets home from downtown. Ninth to Broadway to Grove Street, up past police headquarters on Olive, along the tracks at Phalen Boulevard to Clarence. From his bedroom window, he’d watched the workers put up the shiny new building on the corner. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA. Sort of like the state FBI. They thought they were so special, the people who worked there. He had watched them, talking, laughing, getting into cars at the end of their shifts. He even followed a few of them, once in a while. They were just regular people, like him. Nobody special at all. So why did they get to work at a place like that, while he was stuck in a parking ramp, staring at TV screens, marking time? The injustice of it all stuck in his craw, threatened to choke him every time he looked out his bedroom window.

He turned left on Clarence, knowing what would happen when he got home. What always happened: his mother would have some little chore for him, some stupid job like changing a lightbulb or running up to Walgreen’s for her medicine. Or she’d want him to sit with her and watch one of her game shows, when he had more important things to do.

As long as he was out of the house, he could forget about all the stacks of junk mail and newspapers and the garbage bags full of old clothes, forget the reek of cat piss so strong from downstairs that it made his eyes water even all the way up in his room. His mother hadn’t been like this when the old man was alive. It was like she’d lost a screw or something.

He saw the cops as soon as he turned the pickup into his own street. A man and a woman. Detectives. You could tell by the way they were dressed, the way they moved. The woman was smoking, but dropped the butt on the weedy boulevard when she saw his truck. That was when he remembered all the pictures tacked up on the wall in his room. He thought briefly about gunning the engine and making a run for it. But he didn’t. For one thing, the street was a dead end, and besides, they’d already spotted him. He didn’t have a hope of getting away. There was something else, too. Some part of him was itching to find out what they knew.

“We’re looking for Elwyn T. Stark.” Karin Bledsoe flashed her badge and ID. “Are you Elwyn?”

The young man squinted at her. “Nobody calls me that.”

“What do they call you?

“Truman.”

“All right, Truman. I’m Detective Bledsoe; this is Detective Cordova. Do you mind answering a few questions?”

“I don’t mind.” The kid practically grinned at her. Frank could see Karin’s eyes flash, and heard her voice in his head: You cocky little son-ofabitch—who do you think you are? They knew who he was. Stark worked for Centurion, the company that provided security at a dozen downtown parking ramps, including the one where Tríona Hallett’s body had been found. They’d matched his fingerprints from the company database. Stark shifted his weight and avoided looking at the house, a posture that said he wasn’t anxious to have them any closer.

“Just checking to see if you happen to know this woman.” Frank held up Nora’s photo, the image he’d pulled from DMV driver’s license records.

Stark examined it. “Never met her.”

Not quite a straight answer. “But you’ve seen her before?”

“Might have. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember seeing her at your parking garage on Thursday afternoon? Your supervisor told us you got off at three that day.”

Stark was starting to look alarmed. “What’s this about?”

“Do you mind telling us where you went after work on Thursday?”

Stark looked away, uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I was just driving.”

“Did you stop anywhere, talk to anyone? Can anybody vouch for your whereabouts?”

“Probably not. I told you, I was just driving around.”

Karin said: “We have a description of a pickup like yours at a disturbance in Frogtown just after eight that night. A security guard in a Centurion uniform chasing off a bunch of neighborhood kids with a baseball bat. Was Frogtown one of the places you just happened to be driving around?”

“Might have been. Like I said—I don’t really remember. I went lots of places that night.” He crossed his arms in front of him.

“You asked what this was about,” Karin said. “We got your prints off the car that was involved in the Frogtown incident. The same car that crashed into a ravine at Hidden Falls a little while later that night.”

“What about this person—do you ever remember seeing her?” Frank held up a photograph of Tríona Hallett, and watched Stark’s face go pale. “Maybe I can refresh your memory. Her body turned up five years ago at the parking garage where you work. Ring any bells?”

Stark licked his lips nervously. “I kinda remember something like that, all right—”

Frank held up Nora’s photo again. “But you’re telling us you didn’t follow this woman after she left your parking garage Thursday afternoon? Maybe you’d better look again.”

Karin said, “I guess you thought things had died down after the murder. Maybe you didn’t appreciate somebody poking around, stirring everything up again. You wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to make trouble for you.”

“That’s bullshit. I never touched those brakes—” He stopped, too late to snatch the words back.

Frank rubbed his chin, letting Stark twist for a long couple of seconds. “Tell me, Mr. Stark, why would you jump to the conclusion that brakes had anything to do with why we’re here?”

“No reason.” The young man’s whole body suddenly shut down.

“I’m sure I didn’t mention it,” Karin said. “And I don’t think you did either, Detective Cordova. Looks like we’ll have to go over a few details with Mr. Stark back at headquarters.”

A tiny, gray-haired woman came to the screen door of the house and peered out at them. “Truman—what’s going on? What do they want?”

“Nothing, Ma. Go back in the house.”

The woman’s voice climbed into a higher register. “Why are you people bothering my son? He’s a good boy. Truman?”

Stark tucked his head to one side and barked: “Jesus Christ, Ma, just go inside and shut the fucking door!”

Standing nearly three feet away, Frank almost felt the heat of the young man’s shame. Without warning, all the emotion that had been building inside him burst out: “Why try to pin it on me? Can I help it if you’re not doing your job, protecting people? Where were the cops when those punks broke in here and stole my ma’s TV, huh? Look at her—that stinkin’ television is the only thing she’s got. But when she asked about getting it back, the cops just laughed in her face. Like she was some kind of moron for wanting her own goddamn TV back. You people make me sick.” He spat the last word at them. “Go ahead, drag me down to the station, give me the third degree if you want. I never did nothing to that redhead, or the other one either. You’ll never prove I did.”

Once they got Truman Stark down to Grove Street, it took another couple of hours to get a search warrant, but Frank eventually pushed his way past the garbage bags full of clothes and stacks of old newspapers and climbed the stairs to Stark’s third-floor attic bedroom, with Karin right behind him. In contrast to the lower floors, the attic was neat and orderly, but despite air fresheners placed strategically throughout the room, the smell of cat urine still permeated. On a bookcase and table at the top of the stairs were a police scanner, a latent fingerprint kit, several types of batons, cans of pepper spray and several pairs of handcuffs, and a pair of night-vision goggles.

Karin said: “Holy shit, Frank, will you look at this stuff? I knew there was something up with the little weasel, and whaddya know—we’ve got us a serious cop wannabe.”

“There’s a good chunk of change in all this gear.” Frank opened the closet door to find a crisply pressed wardrobe of official-looking blue uniform shirts, along with an ironing board and iron, and half a dozen cans of spray starch.

The double bed tucked into an alcove would have passed any boot camp quarter test. Frank had to crane his neck back to see the pictures plastered all over the sloping ceiling above it. A series of grainy black-and-white images of a woman, looking over her shoulder. Even without color there was no mistaking all that beautiful long hair, those eyes, those cheekbones, the curve of the throat.

Karin, crouched beside him, squinting up at the pictures as well. After a moment, she said, “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that—”

“Tríona Hallett,” Frank said softly. “Yeah, it is.”

9

Cormac sat in the chair beside his father’s bed. The old man had been breathing well on his own since yesterday, the doctors said. But he still hovered in that otherworld between life and death. Cormac thought about telling his father that Roz was gone, but what good would it do, if he had no memory of her? Instead he leaned forward and said: “I might have to go away for a bit. If it happens, I wouldn’t be able to visit for a few days. Just thought I should let you know. In case you can hear me. It’s Cormac, by the way.” No reply, just breath in, breath out. “All right—see you later, then.”

When he got back to Glencolumbkille, the village seemed completely overrun with fiddle players. A flapping banner emblazoned with musical notes and spirals stretched between the shops above the street, and there was an excitement in the air that hadn’t been present on his earlier trip through the village: teenagers toting instrument cases dashed across the road; knots of people gathered on street corners; shop signs advertised spare rooms turned into festival lodging, most with NO VACANCY posted over the top.

Cormac headed into the shop to stock up on tinned goods that would do in case of emergency. After finishing that part of his shopping, he turned to the hardware section, perusing the selection of heavy dead-bolts and window locks, trying to remember what sort of security his aunt Julia thought necessary at Ardcrinn. Beside the deadbolts hung a few tin whistles—and a great selection of violin strings. Only in this part of the country, where fiddle players grew so thick on the ground, were violin strings among the daily staples you might find in any corner shop. He’d picked up a couple of sets, thinking he might restring that fiddle he’d found in the wardrobe in his father’s room. It wasn’t as if the old man was going to be able to take up the fiddle and play. But there was also nothing like music to lure a man back from the gate of the grave.

As Cormac was paying for his purchases, a dark-haired girl passed by on the path outside the shop window, deep in conversation with a man sporting a distinctive head of silver-white curls. The man’s face was turned away, but there was something familiar about his bearing.

The pair appeared again as Cormac was loading his box of provisions into the back of the Jeep. This time they were headed into the pub, and he decided to follow, just out of curiosity. The pub’s interior was dim after the bright day outside, but thanks to the smoking ban, at least it wasn’t filled with a noxious haze of cigarette smoke. Cormac ordered a glass of ale and turned to survey the room. The silver-haired man and his young companion had found a place at the back. They’d begun to take out their instruments when Cormac’s attention was pulled away by a pair of middle-aged men who stood to the bar at his elbow. The first wore a plain flat cap, the other a narrow-brimmed tweed fedora—and a broken expression.

“Never mind now, Denis, never mind,” said the cap, trying to cheer his friend. “There’s always next year. Your young one will catch up next year.” West Kerry, Cormac surmised, from the broad accent.

But Denis the Hat was having none of it. He made a disgusted gesture. “I wouldn’t mind, but that little one is only after taking up the fiddle a twelvemonth ago. Playing like that after a twelvemonth—doesn’t it bate all?” He shook his head sadly and downed the shot of brandy his friend had ordered, then started in on his pint, downing nearly half of it before coming up for air. “I’ll tell you one thing, Michael—” He wiped the foam from his lips with the back of a hand, pausing for dramatic effect. “When I get home, that fuckin’ television is goin’ straight out the window!”

Cormac turned back to the fiddle players in the corner. It was no wonder the silver-haired man was familiar; now that his eyes were used to the pub atmosphere, Cormac could see that the man in question was Garrett Devaney—the policeman he and Nora had met down in Galway. What class of coincidence was at work here? As he was often reminded, very few things were completely random. Even what humans perceived as chaos had patterns.

Devaney must be here for the Fiddle Week. That was something of a surprise. He hadn’t seemed like the type who went in for music competitions. From the look of her, the girl was his daughter; maybe that was explanation enough. Cormac watched as the pair tightened their bows with an almost identical flick of the wrist, and launched into “The Pigeon on the Gate” in G minor. Cormac found himself struck by the looks that passed between them as the tune whirled along, the obvious delight they took in the music, a conversation expressed in the secret language of notes. The girl was definitely the policeman’s daughter, and clearly his pupil as well. Cormac thought of his own father, lying in the bed back at the hospital, feeling again the full measure of what he had missed. Too late now. Sometimes the resentment still flared inside him, imagining what they might have had. If only. Then he thought of the story Roz had told him about his own grandparents, and the sound of those two fiddles on the old 78 recording. It was Aunt Julia who had played with his father all those years ago. Perhaps the detail was insignificant. But perhaps it was part of the complex story, the reasons why Joseph Maguire had never learned to be a father.

Cormac stood listening to the sound of two fiddles in tight unison, going note for note, and felt something inside him breaking up, cracking apart, ice on a frozen river. The winter he had held so long inside him would soon be past. His anger, once a means of protection, didn’t seem to serve much purpose anymore.

Looking up as the tune finished, Devaney recognized Cormac, and raised his pint in greeting. He set down the fiddle, handing the bow to his daughter for safekeeping, and made his way through the bar patrons to Cormac’s side. His face glowed a healthy pink. “Maguire, by Jaysus, how are you getting on? You’re not here for the competition?”

“I’m not, no. Just visiting—relations nearby.” My father.He still couldn’t say those words in sequence. Still had trouble even thinking them.

“Is Dr. Gavin about?”

Cormac suddenly felt ears all around him, listening in. “She went home to the States for a bit.” He changed the subject. “You seem to be celebrating. Good result today?”

Devaney gave his characteristic tight-lipped smile. “Ah, Róisín did well enough. But that’s not why we’re celebrating. No, one day into it, and she’s made up her mind that competitions are a load of bollocks. I couldn’t be more fuckin’ delighted. You haven’t the machine on you?” he asked, looking around Cormac’s person for a flute case. He tipped his head in the direction of the corner. “Nice spot for a tune, that.”

“Sorry, can’t stay—I just came into town for a few things, and I’ve got to be getting back.”

“Right. Well, sure—” Devaney reached for a beer mat and produced a biro to scribble down a phone number. “We’re here for the week, anyway, hoping for a few tunes and a bit of craic. That’s my mobile. Give us a shout, and we’ll have a bit of music next time you’re about.”

Cormac looked down to the corner where Róisín sat waiting for her father to return, fingering the next tune on the neck of her fiddle. “You’ve taught her well.”

Devaney tried to downplay the compliment. “Ah, she’s coming along. You know as well as I do, teaching’s got very little to do with it.”

Cormac tapped the edge of the beer mat in a parting salute, then tucked it into his pocket as he headed for the door.

10

Karin Bledsoe sat on the edge of the table and addressed Truman Stark. “Okay, let’s go over it once more. We’ve got your prints on a car that crashed because someone jammed the brakes. And you’re telling us you don’t know anything about it?”

“That’s right.”

“Come on, Truman, just tell us what happened. We can’t work with you if you won’t work with us.”

They’d been talking to Stark for three hours. So far all he’d done was deny everything. Frank looked down at a sketch he’d made in his notebook, an oval filled with interlocking hexagons. Karin had been batting the kid around like a puma playing with a turtle. And Truman Stark did what any creature would do in that situation—he withdrew. His eyes had that watchful look of a person who’d been struck too often to trust anyone. But if he knew somebody had tampered with Nora’s brakes, why wouldn’t he tell them? Who was he trying to protect?

“We found the pictures, Truman—the ones of Tríona Hallett up in your bedroom. Did you enjoy making up little scenarios for the two of you to play out? What happened—did things not go quite the way you’d planned?”

Truman sat, hands in his pockets, staring at the tabletop. He hadn’t asked for a lawyer , and Frank couldn’t shake the notion that he wanted to give them something—but what?

Karin tried again. “What do you do with all that gear we found in your room?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that. I think you go out on patrol. Almost like a real cop. You think you’re Superman and Batman and Spiderman all rolled into one, don’t you? With your radio and your handcuffs, and your big nightstick. What happened—did you wash out of law enforcement at community college? Maybe you never made it that far.”

Stark’s breathing grew shallower, more agitated. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know it’s illegal, impersonating an officer.”

“I never told anybody I was a cop.”

“No, just went out on patrol every night in your spiffy uniform and your shiny fake badge. That wouldn’t be anything like impersonation, hell no.”

“Somebody’s got to—”

Karin set her face only inches from Stark’s. When she spoke, her voice was deadly quiet. “What? What were you going to say? ‘Somebody’s got to do it?’ Don’t make me laugh. If we have to let you go, and I find out down the road that you’ve just been jerking us around, that you really did smash those women’s faces in, you are going to need serious reconstructive surgery yourself, my friend. Do you get me?”

At that moment, Stark’s defiance seemed to mask something else—was it shock? For a split second, Frank imagined that Truman Stark had never known exactly how Tríona Hallett died—or that she wasn’t the only victim. Unless he was mistaken, Karin’s tiny slip was the exact moment Truman Stark had found out. But they were still getting nowhere. He cut in: “Detective Bledsoe, can I talk to you for a minute?”

They stepped out into the corridor, and Frank kept his voice low. “Karin, this isn’t working. He’s not going to give us anything at this rate.”

“Are you dissing my interview technique?”

“No—I just think we need to switch gears, try a different approach.”

“Be my guest. You haven’t exactly been keeping up in there so far—”

“Look, if you’re upset with me for some reason—”

“What reason could I possibly have for being upset with you, Frank? Let’s see—ignoring my phone calls? No, couldn’t be that. Going off on your own, checking leads on cases we’re supposed to be working together—that’s not really it. Oh yeah—maybe it’s the fact that your brother died, and I had to find out you even had a brother from Don Padgett in patrol. We’re supposed to be partners, Frank. Does that mean anything to you? You’ve cut me off. You’ve been dancing around, trying like hell to avoid me ever since you got that fucking phone call from Dublin. You know it’s true.”

It was true. But he suddenly felt so weary of it all—of Karin, Nora, everything. “Look, do we have to talk about this right now? We’re in the middle of something here—”

“No—you’re in the middle of something, Frank. And I’m out in left field. I’m fucking miles away.” She studied him for a few seconds. “Okay—you deal with Stark. Be my guest. I’m going upstairs to start filling out paperwork for a transfer.”

“Karin—” He could hear the note of resignation in his own voice, which meant she could hear it too.

“Cheer up, Frank. I know it’s a relief for you. And let’s face it: I’ve never exactly been the sentimental type. We’ve both seen this coming for a while.” She turned on her heel and walked away.

Frank waited a few seconds before going back in. He sat across the table from Truman Stark, and opened a file he’d been carrying with him. He read a flash of panic in the kid’s eyes, but went about his business calmly, methodically.

He set a photo of Nora on the table in front of Stark. “We know this woman was in your parking garage the other day. Looking at the place they found her sister’s body.” A quick glance up said Truman Stark hadn’t been in possession of that fact. “Yeah, sisters. Bet you wondered why she was so interested in that space. What did you think—that she was a reporter, maybe a private eye?” No eye contact. “You chased those kids away in Frogtown, kept her from getting roughed up. So I’m wondering, why you would do that if you were just going to try to harm her later? Doesn’t make much sense.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m not saying you did. But you saw something, didn’t you?”

Frank had imagined a gloved hand, Peter Hallett’s hand, slipping that water bottle under the brake pedal, hoping to be rid of Nora Gavin once and for all. He was so close to nailing that bastard right now, he could taste it. And at this moment, Truman Stark was all that stood in his way. Hard not to pressure the kid, but he knew that would be exactly the wrong move.

Instead he slid a glossy headshot of Tríona Hallett across the table. Stark tried not to look, but in the end, he couldn’t resist.

Frank said: “Beautiful, isn’t she? I could understand somebody just wanting to watch her. To admire her.” No reaction. Frank continued: “Used to see her around Lowertown, didn’t you? Don’t worry, I’m not trying to pin anything on you. I just need information.”

After a long pause, Stark mumbled: “She used to park at the garage. I’d see her on the cameras. Not every day, but pretty often.”

Frank studied the young man’s miserable expression. “Did you ever speak to her—at the garage or anywhere else?”

Stark shook his head wordlessly.

“But you copied her picture off the video at work. You followed her.”

“It wasn’t like that—”

“What was it like? Tell me.” Frank waited. Silence—the interrogator’s best friend. He watched the kid’s eyes dart back and forth, his lips twisting with indecision. “We talked to everyone who worked in the parking garage. But you’re the only one who definitely saw Tríona Hallett in the neighborhood, and lied about it. You told us at the time of the murder that you’d never seen her before, and it turns out you’ve got pictures of her plastered all over your bedroom. You do see my problem, don’t you?”

Stark said nothing.

“What happened, Truman? Did you follow her, try to talk to her? Maybe you didn’t mean to hurt her. Accidents happen—we get that. The thing is, you lied to us—and I have to tell you, that part doesn’t look good at all.”

“I never touched her, I swear. You said you weren’t trying to pin anything on me—” His voice was becoming a reedy whine.

“And you said you were at home on the night she was killed. Your mother backed you up, but you weren’t home that night, were you, Truman? You were out on patrol, just like you were on Thursday night, like you are every night. I’ve been inside your house. I know why you can’t stay there.”

“If I told the truth you wouldn’t believe me. You’ve got it all backwards—”

Frank heard something new in the kid’s voice. “What have we got backwards?”

“You just don’t get it. I would never hurt her—I was trying to protect her.”

“And why did she need protecting?”

“She was always looking over her shoulder, like somebody was after her.”

“Did you ever see anyone following her?”

“Once. Maybe.”

“Was it this man?” He fished a picture of Peter Hallett out of his folder, and slid it in front of Stark.

“No, not him.”

Frank felt hope sputter and fizzle out. Truman Stark looked him directly in the eye for the first time. “Wasn’t a guy at all—it was a woman. Blonde. Kinda stuck-up looking. I saw her again at the river on Thursday night. With her—” He pointed to the picture of Nora. “They were arguing about something.”

11

The road that passed in front of the house at Ardcrinn was empty for miles, but Nora still couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder as she and Elizabeth made their way over the headland to the fishing village of Port na Rón. She had slipped one of Cormac’s walkie-talkies into her jacket pocket before leaving the house—just in case. He must have taken the other one into town. She glanced over at Elizabeth, trudging across the treeless upland, staring at what must seem like nothing but windswept desolation. The blanket bogs here in Donegal were completely different from the high bogs of the midlands. Here the peat was only four or five sods deep—a thin brown mantle stretched over unforgiving stone. This place, like all bogland, only appeared barren and empty; it was actually teeming with life: foxes and pheasants, hares and birds and insects and strange plants, a huge variety of miniature and microscopic worlds.

They found the ruined village as deserted as the road. But the view from the headland was spectacular. A beach of round stones stretched in a crescent shape from the foot of the cliff around the mouth of the bay. The waves were wild today, rumbling like thunder on the way in, hissing and tumbling the pebbles as they withdrew. A silent white waterfall cut into the green cliff around the side of the small bay. A dozen mottled black-and-white sheep grazed in the pasture above the rocky strand, their shaggy flanks splotched with bright azure dye. From the height, Nora could also see several craggy islands, and the dark shapes of seabirds clinging to their precarious nesting places. The caves Cormac had mentioned must be over below the falls somewhere. The wind was relentless as ever, but the salt air it carried was warm and damp under heavy clouds. Nora plucked at her jersey front. They’d not even begun the climb down the beach, and she was already starting to sweat.

She had told no one of the tiny, unsettling detail she had observed yesterday on the cross-country journey. Elizabeth had left everything behind in her luggage at Dublin Airport, so they stopped at Dunnes Stores on the outskirts of Sligo to pick up toiletries and a few items of clothing. Passing by the curtained fitting room, Nora had caught a fleeting sideways glimpse of Elizabeth in her white cotton briefs—and something else as well. A piece of sheeting, or something like it, wrapped tight around her child’s slender torso, fixed in place with a safety pin. The image actually took a moment to register. Nora’s immediate thought was of the old ballads about girls who bound their chests and dressed in sailors’ clothes to go off to sea. What was Elizabeth’s reason for disguising her developing shape? All sorts of disturbing possibilities loomed, and now Nora teetered once more upon the point where she had remained suspended for nearly two days now: broach the subject, or keep silent and wait?

In the end, there was no guarantee that waiting would bring about a result. She said: “Lizzabet, I want you to know that I’m ready, whenever you want to talk.” No response. Nora felt as though she was treading on dangerous ground. She pushed on: “I remember being your age, not wanting to grow up, and wishing everything could just stay the same—”

Elizabeth stared at the ground below her feet, newly exposed ears glowing with mortification, and Nora knew she’d gone too far. “Never mind. We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

Nora’s probing words had left Elizabeth slightly unsettled, but standing here above the rocky beach, she turned toward the sea and felt her spirits lift. This place was the closest thing yet to her own Useless Bay. Following Nora down the embankment to the beach, she felt her attention drawn to tufts of wet grass that grew between the rocks, fascinated to find perfect spiderwebs sagging with tiny beads of dew, the curling fiddleheads of ferns, black-and-white-striped snails leaving shiny trails on the undersides of every prickly thistle leaf. As they reached the stony beach, she stopped to lift the drooping head of a delicate purple flower.

“A harebell,” Nora said from beside her. “I didn’t know you were interested in plants.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I don’t know the names—I just like looking at them.” She bent to pick up a smooth oval stone, examining its tumbled, whitened surface. “I like collecting things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Rocks and shells, mostly—I had to leave them in Seattle. My dad said there was no point in carting worthless crap halfway across the country.” She set the first stone back, and picked up another. “I kept the sea glass, though. It’s kind of hard to find.”

Nora turned away abruptly, and Elizabeth stood for a moment, wondering if she’d said something wrong. “Is it all right if I look around?”

Nora nodded without turning back. Elizabeth stepped away gingerly, following the line left by the high tide, eyes zeroing in on the ridgy cups of limpet shells, the blue glint of mussels with their bright pearly insides. She stooped to pick up a small scallop shell and glanced back at Nora—who was still standing, arms crossed, like she was stuck in that spot.

Elizabeth picked her way across the rounded stones that looked as if they had tumbled out of the sea. She was hunting treasure, but finding mostly trash instead—fishnets and nylon rope and yogurt cups, their bright colors standing out against the stones. She glanced up at Nora, who was hanging back and watching her. She thought about what Nora had said, about not wanting to grow up. It was hard to know what to tell, and what was better kept to herself.

She thought of the book she’d stolen from the library, and began to imagine its story played out on this beach. She could almost see the strange seal woman being rowed to shore by the fisherman, helping him to pull up the boat, going home with him and becoming his wife. She tried to summon an image of how exactly someone changed from seal to human. Did it hurt to slip from your sealskin? Was it as simple as taking off clothes, or was it messier and more complicated—like that film she’d seen once on television, of a calf being born? All that icky wetness had made her feel strange. She tried to picture a woman oozing from a sealskin, strange and slippery, her new skin underneath as pale and tender as a newborn baby’s. If you got your old skin again, like the boy’s mother did in the story, how exactly would you go about putting it back on? What if it didn’t fit? The book hadn’t bothered to explain any of that.

The weather was warm here, not at all what she’d imagined. She sat down on a flat rock and removed her shoes and socks, then stood at the water’s edge and closed her eyes, putting her hands to her face and tasting the salt and seaweed on her fingers. There was no mistaking it now. This beach was just like the ones in her dreams. The ones where she walked with the red-haired stranger out into the water, out past the rocks and down through swaying seaweed to where the sea people carried on, safe in their secret, hidden world. She had seen it all in her dreams.

Nora shielded her eyes to watch two huge brown sea eagles flapping and fighting over something at the edge of the precipice. She had been watching Elizabeth explore, but her attention had been pulled away for a moment by the birds. When she looked back to where she’d last spied the child, all that remained was a pair of empty shoes and socks. Elizabeth was walking out into the water. Waves were breaking at her chest, now over her shoulders, and all at once, her head disappeared behind a rising swell.

Nora stripped off her pack and began to run, the round stones slowing her progress. It felt as if she were moving through some awful dream. Finally she splashed into the shallows, and flung herself into the waves, head down and arms churning, until she felt the wake of Elizabeth’s flailing limbs. “Put your arms around my neck,” she shouted. She felt the child’s sharp elbow deliver a solid blow to her cheekbone. Somehow she managed to hang on through an exploding field of stars. “It’s all right—I’ve got you. Just hold tight.”

With one arm, she clasped the child to her side and took long, even strokes with the other until they finally reached a spot shallow enough to stand up. She seized Elizabeth by the arms. “What the hell were you doing out there? Do you not know how dangerous it is—”

She watched the child’s huge eyes fill with tears. “Please don’t be frightened, Lizzabet. I’m not angry with you, love, I promise. I was just scared, that’s all. If anything were to happen to you—” She felt Elizabeth begin to shiver. “Promise me you won’t wander off like that again. Will you promise?”

Elizabeth nodded. Nora looked around, spotting a ruined cottage just above the beach. “Come on, let’s get out of the wind.”

They made their way up the steep bank to an abandoned house. A fisherman’s cottage, Nora thought, as they crossed the threshold. Decaying nets hung from the roof beams. There was a washbasin beside the back door, and a rude sideboard with bits of broken crockery and piles of limpet shells stacked where cups and saucers had been. The little light that pierced the room came from a gaping hole in the roof at the far corner of the house, and the relentless wind that came through shattered windows had reduced the curtains to gray tatters, airy as cobwebs.

She settled Elizabeth on a low chair beside the hearth. The child still shivered violently. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light inside, Nora could see that the abandoned house was strangely intact—furniture, candles, bedclothes, even a pipe on the mantel. The effect of everything left in place was quite eerie, as if the occupants had simply walked away. She spied a basket beside the hearth and opened the lid. “There’s a little turf in here. I’m going to try building a fire.” Gathering a few handfuls of straw from a ruined mattress and a candle stub for a firelighter, she dug in her pack for a couple of strike-anywhere matches and managed to get a small blaze going, astonished that the ancient peat was still dry enough to burn. She beckoned to Elizabeth to come closer. They sat in small chairs pulled up to the fire, and Nora alternated rubbing Elizabeth’s arms with blowing on the meager flame.

“D-does s-s-somebody live here?” Elizabeth asked through chattering teeth.

“Not anymore. Cormac said this whole village was abandoned—” She stopped as her gaze fell upon a primitive muslin doll in Elizabeth’s left hand. It had one small black button eye on one side of a long nose; a bit of stuffing escaped from a frayed seam. “Where did you get that?” she asked.

“Over there.” Elizabeth indicated the cot pushed up against the wall.

“May I see it?” Nora asked. The single button eye stared blankly. The arms were flat and stubby, like flippers, the lower half all of a piece. A seal. She finally handed the doll back, and Elizabeth cradled it on her lap.

Nora took a deep breath. “You know we’ll have to talk about it, sooner or later, Lizzabet. About why you ran away. I think I can guess part of it. You found out, didn’t you—about what happened to your mama?”

Elizabeth stared wordlessly at the floor. After a few seconds, she wiped away a tear, and Nora felt as if her heart would burst. “Oh, Lizzabet, I wish we could have explained, but you were so little. It was so hard to know what to say—” She reached out a hand, but Elizabeth pulled away.

“Does everybody think my dad is a murderer?”

“Elizabeth—”

“He didn’t do anything, I know he didn’t. He couldn’t have.”

“There’s still so much we don’t know—”

“I don’t want to know! I’m not going to listen.” Elizabeth covered her head with both arms and began to weep. Nora felt helpless. What could she say to this child? What reassurances could she possibly offer?

She said nothing, but pulled the child to her side. Elizabeth tried to fight, but in the end clung on just as she had out in the water, frightened and overwhelmed. This is it,Nora thought. This is where it begins.

At last, warmed by the tiny fire, and no doubt worn out by jet lag and tears, Elizabeth’s limbs began to grow heavy. Nora cradled her, afraid to move, knowing how desperately she needed even the temporary respite of sleep. By the time either of them stirred, twenty minutes later, Nora’s whole right side had gone numb.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and pulled away, evidently surprised to be in the cottage still. “I had a dream about this place,” she said. She seemed dazed, unsettled, perhaps still half in the dream. “There were people living here. Somebody was singing.” Elizabeth found the muslin doll on her lap, and began to fiddle with its ragged tail.

“Do you know, even with your hair cut short, you’re very like your mother?”

Elizabeth didn’t want to let on how interested she was in this information. “Really?”

“The same hair, the same freckles, even the same scabby knees. Tríona was always falling off her bike.”

“Is that true?”

“It is.” She reached up to smooth a ragged lock over Elizabeth’s forehead. “Do you remember much about her?”

Elizabeth stared at the floor again, thinking. “I remember how she smelled—like lemony soap.” A slight hesitation, a rubbing of the eyes. “Sometimes she let me climb up in the bed with her. She said she would read to me, but usually she just fell asleep. She slept a lot. That was okay. I knew how to make my own breakfast.”

Climbing back over the headland again a short while later, Nora felt something heavy and damp strike against her shoulder and fall to the ground. She looked up to find a sea eagle, probably one of the pair she’d spied earlier, flapping and calling out in dismay. She bent to pick up the object the bird had dropped. It was a black woolen stocking. Quite fine, if slightly moth-eaten in places, and the heel was thickened with darning. Strange thing for a bird to be carrying in a place like this. She was about to drop the stocking on the ground, but reconsidered and hastily stuffed it into her pocket. She could have a closer look at it back at the house.

12

Truman Stark seemed tired; it was nearly four in the morning, and he’d been answering questions since late afternoon. And yet he didn’t seem anxious to go home. Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some extra piece of information the kid wanted to give up—but he didn’t know how.

Frank tapped the pen against his notepad. “Okay, let’s go over it one more time. You admit to following Dr. Gavin from the parking garage on Wednesday afternoon—”

“I knew she had something to do with the murder, the way she was looking at that parking stall—the one where they found the body.”

“So you thought you’d do a little investigation on your own?”

“No law against it, is there? People do stuff like that all the time—when the police fall down on the job—”

“Let’s leave the department out of it for now. So you followed Dr. Gavin home on Wednesday night, and tailed her all the next day. You must have. How else would you know where she was going to be that evening?” Stark didn’t respond, and Frank took it as an admission. “You chased away those kids in Frogtown.” Still no answer. “Then you followed her to the river road, watched her talking to this mystery blonde down at Hidden Falls. They got into an argument, and then what happened?”

“The blonde headed back up to the road. Walked right by me—she was pissed.”

“But you stuck to Dr. Gavin?”

“Yeah. She went back to her car, headed south on the river road.”

“And—?”

“And nothing. I went home.”

“But you knew somebody had fiddled with her brakes.”

“I didn’t know. I just—”

“You just what, Truman?”

“Assumed.”

“You saw what happened. How she started taking the curves a little too fast. You knew she didn’t have any brakes. And then she went over. Why didn’t you do something?”

“I panicked, all right? I knew you’d think I had something to do with the crash, and I didn’t.”

“If you were so concerned about her, why didn’t you stop to see if she was injured? You didn’t even call 911, Truman.”

“She didn’t land very hard. There were lots of small trees—I thought I could see her moving around, and there was no fire or anything—it looked like she was going to walk away. I couldn’t afford to get mixed up in it, okay? My mother depends on me for everything. I got back in the truck and went home.”

“But you were already mixed up in it, Truman—I guess you forgot about leaving your fingerprints on the car. It was just lucky for you that she was okay.”

Stark stared at the table with a miserable expression.

“Okay, let’s go back. You said you saw this blonde—the same one who was arguing with Dr. Gavin—following Tríona Hallett in Lower-town a few days before her murder.”

“Yeah. I’ve told you that, like a hundred times.”

“How can you be sure it was the same person?”

“’Cause I knew her. I saw her at work.”

Frank sat forward. “Tell me.”

“I never got her name. She was putting on some big charity thing at the building across the street—”

“The Great Northern Trust?”

“Whatever—I don’t know what it’s called. The boss brought her around on a tour. She was going on and on about VIP security—she had a couple of movie stars and some big football player coming in for the party. They were going to use our ramp for valet parking, and she wanted to make sure everything was cool on our end. The boss started bragging to her about our new state-of-the-art system, how it was going in the next week. She asked a lot of questions.”

Frank felt as if someone had pulled all the air from his lungs. Stark looked up, wounded and defiant. “Yeah. All this time, and you never knew about her. I could have told you—”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because nobody ever asked. That was your job. To talk to me like I wasn’t just some piece of shit from the bottom of your shoe. But nobody ever did.”