'The Mountains Wild' Chapters 27 & 28

She lays the papers down on the desk and I flip through them: There’s a printout of unsolved homicides in Ireland and the UK: two teenage girls who went missing in Donegal in the ’70s, an unsolved murder of a forty-three-year-old woman in Cork. A woman raped and murdered in Limerick. Another woman raped and murdered in Limerick. A teenage boy in Tuam.

On the UK lists, Griz has highlighted the ones up north, the Newry ones and some unsolved murders of women in Belfast and Antrim. She’s crossed out some of the murders, ones she’s labeled “sectarian” and then ones in England, Scotland, or Wales. These are endless, lists of geographically linked murders or disappearances — five disappeared and then murdered women in East London, three teenagers murdered in a car in Manchester, four young women who’d gone missing in Croydon over ten years, their bodies found a couple of weeks after they’d disappeared; the murders of three women hiking near Snowdon Mountain in Wales; on and on and on. It strikes me that Ireland really is a lot safer than most other places in the British Isles. It seems important somehow.

It’s usually someone known to the victim.

Griz turns on the television for the news at one. Someone brings in ham sandwiches for us and we eat while we watch. They’re expanding the search in Glenmalure, around where they found the button, and the newspapers are full of pictures of Niamh Horrigan’s family, her mother tearfully pleading for anyone with any information to come forward. She’s been missing for eleven days.

We get back to work.  

 

***  

 

“Hang on,” Griz says. I look up from my files, my eyes throbbing from the focused effort over so many hours.

She has my accordion file emptied out on the table and she’s sorting pieces of paper into individual folders. “What have you got?” I ask her.

“Well, look. I was going through all these receipts and things and there’s one that I ... well, look.” She pushes over an AIB bank receipt. I read it carefully. It looks like Erin changed $100 worth of traveler’s checks and got back 70 Irish punts. It shows the exchange rate on the day she changed them. It looks just like the other receipts that I found with Erin’s things at the house. As far as I remembered, she’d had them in the zippered pouch she’d used to hold all her financial documents. I’d looked through a lot of it when I was in Dublin and then I’d looked through them again when the boxes Emer and Daisy had packed had arrived in the US. I’d kept all the receipts together, but there hadn’t been anything very interesting there.

But I see why Griz picked this one out.

“The date is the eighteenth of September, 1993,” she says. “In Dublin.”

“You’re right. I didn’t notice it before because they all looked the same. Griz, this is a good catch.” I stare at the receipt. “You know what this means, right?”

Griz’s eyes are wide. “She came back to Dublin. She came back, she changed money, and she went back to the flat and left this there,” she says. “Why? To get something? To meet someone?”

“Yeah.” My mind is going a hundred miles an hour. This could explain why it seemed like she took a lot of clothes for a day or two. She didn’t, but she came back to the house to get more clothes because she knew she was going to be gone for a while.

“But why didn’t the roommates tell us that?” Griz asks.

“Because they weren’t there. They were mostly out during the day. They hadn’t checked her room so they wouldn’t have known if anything was missing. They would have had no way of knowing she came back. Can you find me the statements for Daisy and Emer?”

She finds the file. “Here.” Daisy and Emer both signed statements saying that they were out all day on the sixteenth. They came home that evening and found Erin gone. They were around the house on the seventeenth, but she didn’t come home. Then, my memory is right. Daisy and Emer said they were out all day on the eighteenth. They’d gone shopping on Grafton Street and then met some friends at a pub and hadn’t gotten home until late Saturday night.

I say, “So she was in Glenmalure on the sixteenth and the morning of the seventeenth. And she was still in Dublin on the eighteenth.”

“But what about the bus time on the piece of paper?” Griz asks.

“Why did she have the bus time if she wasn’t going somewhere on the seventeenth?”

It hits me. “What if she was meeting someone at the bus station? It wasn’t so she could take a bus, it was so she could pick someone up?”

“That’s good,” Griz says. “That’s really good.”

“But who was she meeting and where did she sleep the night of the seventeenth?”

“I don’t know,” Griz says. “We should ask Roly. They must have interviewed the neighbors. Did anyone see her on the eighteenth?”

“Let’s check.” We find the interview reports and read through the door-to-doors on Somerset Road. It looks like Bernie did most of them, and her notes indicate that they talked to all the residents of the street, as well as the surrounding streets. No one saw anything on the seventeenth or eighteenth.

“I’ll see if I can find clerks who worked at the bank then who might remember her,” Griz says. We both know it’s a long shot. “Are the phone records in there?” I ask, pointing to the file. “I always wondered who called the house on the sixteenth and if there was anything interesting there.”

“Not really,” Griz says. “There was a call from a pay phone on O’Connell Street that morning, but I think the roommates thought it was one of their friends.” She leafs through the papers in the file. “Yeah, it’s in Emer’s statement. She figured it was a friend of hers calling about homework.”

“They never talked to the friend, though?”

“Doesn’t look like it.” She looks up at me and raises her eyebrows. “Was there anything else in those boxes?” she asks. “I checked our files and I didn’t see anything, but your uncle ended up with everything from her room, right?”

“Actually, I have them in my basement. I’ll call my ex-husband later and see if he can look. But I’m pretty sure I went through everything.” I look at the receipt. “Wow. Nice work, Griz. We figured she’d come back to Dublin but we didn’t have proof. But what was she up to?”

Griz doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll say it if you won’t,” I say. “It looks like she was getting ready to run.”  

 

***  

 

We gather everything together and Griz starts putting things back in the files. We have two main points for further follow-up: Robert Herricks and Erin’s AIB receipt. There’s likely nothing in either of them that can help Niamh, but it feels good to have something, scraps, even if they lead nowhere.

When we’re done, I tell Griz I’m taking her for a pint. We walk down to the Palace Bar, blinking at the late evening sunlight. Everything looks throbbing with color and light after our conference room prison. It’s Wednesday night, early summer on the air, and the streets are filling with early drinkers and shoppers.

“Did you always know you wanted to be a guard?” I ask her once we’re settled in against a wall with our pints.

She laughs. “It was about the last thing I thought I’d be.”

“So, what happened?” I’m curious about how her family ended up in Ireland, curious about how she became a guard.

“We came here when I was eleven,” she says. “There were a lot of Poles, lots of Czechs coming over then. The EU, you know. There were jobs. Everyone thought it would be easy since Ireland’s a Catholic country. It wasn’t easy. My father couldn’t find work and went back. My mother had lots of cleaning work but she hated it. I did well at school but I never felt Irish, even though I worked my arse off to get rid of my accent. There was a nun who was pushing me to apply to university. There was some scheme to get recent immigrants to take the leaving cert and go for university places and they held an information night. The Guards were there, too. I’d always loved detective novels and shows. My mam and I used to watch Law and Order.” She grins. “I imagined myself as the detectives, not the solicitors. So I guess there was something there. But joining the Guards, it was totally impulsive. I didn’t even know you could be one if you weren’t a huge big blondy lad from the country with an Irish name. But I signed up that night. Best decision I ever made.”

“You’re good,” I tell her. “You’re really good. I’d hire you to my team in about two seconds. But Roly would kill me.”

She grins. “I don’t know, America might be fun. Thanks.”

 “What’s it like being ... not Irish? Not originally Irish.”

“Ah, better than it used to be. Ireland’s changed. You wouldn’t know it looking at that lot.” She points back toward Pearse Street. “Though Joey’s ma is from Pakistan and there was a guy who was born in Nigeria in my class at Templemore. It’s getting better. I think it’s harder being a woman, honestly. What about you?”

I take a nice long sip of my Guinness, starting to relax, just a little. “Before ... Erin, I had thought I was going to get my graduate degree in literature. But there was something about all of that, about the frustration of not finding her. I wanted to know, you know? And it drove me crazy that we didn’t know. There were these two cops, detectives on the organized crime squad, and they came into my uncle’s bar all the time and I loved listening to them discussing their cases. I asked them how someone could become a detective, and it turned out that the academy was giving the test that summer. Like you, I just ... jumped. It was hard when I was in uniform, when I had a baby. The sexism. It’s better now, though. Too.” I smile. “The homicide squad is my place. I love it there.”

Griz gets another round. When she’s back, she looks at me seriously and says, “Can I ask you a question? When you found Anthony Pugh, did you know? Was it a feeling, an instinct? How did you do it?”

I feel the panic start. His name makes it especially bad, I think because it must bring back the aftermath, the days and weeks when his name was in the paper every day, every time I turned on the radio. I take a deep breath. “I just worked it. That’s all I can say. The FBI thought he was a doctor or a nurse, someone with a healthcare background, because of the drugs they found in his victims’ blood. But I wondered about him being a veterinarian instead. I caught his last victim. I went out and saw the scene; he dumped them on the beach. Her name was Maria. Anyway, I stuck with the vet angle, mostly because no one else was and it was a place I could get some space, you know? I made lists of all the vets on Long Island, figured out where they lived.”

She’s watching me with wide eyes, completely focused on my story. This happens a lot, with other cops; people hear my name, make the connection with the Anthony Pugh case, and they want to hear the story. I hate it.

“I started mapping it out, like, ‘This guy lives here, that guy lives there, this is his route to work. This is where he drives every day.’ And I looked at where the women had been picked up, where they’d been dumped, and I started to see it, on the map. Dr. Anthony Pugh. He had a vet practice in a town called Northport and he lived about ten miles away, and it just ... it just made sense. I asked some other vets about him. Most of them said they’d heard he was good, but this one young woman, just out of vet school, she said she’d treated a dog, the owner said she’d taken him to Pugh for a stomach problem but the dog had ended up with a broken leg. The vet told me that she’d heard a rumor about him operating on animals without anesthesia.”

Griz looks horrified.

“I started driving by his office on my way home. It was out of the way. He liked to drive around kind of aimlessly, you know, and that made me wonder. Anyway, a call came in that a woman was missing. Her friend didn’t want to give her name — they were both working as escorts—but she said that her friend Andrea had been picked up by this guy and hadn’t come back when she was supposed to. I knew. I just knew. I put his plates out, a description of his car. A uniform in King’s Park called it in. He was behind the car and the guy was driving erratically.”

I have the line memorized for times I have to tell the story, and now I say it even though all I want to do is jump up off my stool and run out into the street and keep running until I can’t remember the stale smoke smell of his car, the way he never looked at me or the guys arresting him, the way the drugs made her look frozen: “I got there just as they were cuffing him. She was in the trunk, in bad shape, but still alive. He was heading for the beach.”

I stand up before she can ask anything else. My head hurts, my mouth feels dry, my breath tinny. “I don’t know about you, but I’m wrecked all of a sudden. You ready to go?”

“Yeah, of course.” She’s startled and she drops her purse, bends to pick it up. I take a deep breath, force my heart rate down.

Out on the sidewalk, I say, “Griz, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it’s been working with you. Thank you for everything.” I give her a hug.

“You too,” she says. She watches me for a minute. “And listen, Maggie, I’m going to find out, about Erin, for you. I want you to know that. I’d like it to be now, so we can find Niamh. But even if it takes another twenty years, I’m going to do it for you. I’m going to work this case.” She smiles, gives me a little salute, and takes off.  

 

Chapter 28

1993

 

BY LATE OCTOBER, there was nothing more on Erin, and I had become all too used to the rhythm of the Dublin pubs. At four o’clock, it was old men, exhausted-looking tourists, and students going for a pint after class, depending on the pub. By six, it was a respectable crowd of workers, couples meeting up. The really touristy pubs served a lot of food between five and seven, the rest handed out sandwiches to drinkers to line their stomachs, but things tended to clear out between seven and eight for a bit and then filled in again with after-dinner drinkers and students out for pints or, on the weekends, a night on the tow

Then you settled in.

I had come to love Dublin at night. It wasn’t romantic, exactly, not Paris or even New York. When I think of Dublin now, I think of empty stretches of sidewalk, skittering leaves at dusk, sideways rain. Lights on the Liffey. The looming darkness of the Dublin mountains on one side and the wide emptiness of the sea on the other. The sudden burst of sharp yeasty warmth that hit you when you got inside the door of a pub.

I spent a lot of time sitting in warm pubs, thinking, counting hours, talking to people I’d never talk to again, old men and girls made up to look old enough to order pints, and married couples out for a treat. I listened to a lot of sessions, the circular rhythms of traditional tunes taking me out and back again, letting me out, reeling me in.

But the waiting was getting to me.

The phone rang one night at the house and when I answered it, there was only silence on the other end.

“Hello?” I couldn’t hear anything but static.

“Who’s there?” I shouted. “Erin? Erin?”

When I turned around, Daisy had come out of her room and she was standing there with a terrified expression on her face.

“Are you all right?” Her eyes were wide. “Was that ... ?”

“I don’t think so. I thought ...”

She went back to her room.

One night, I drank at Brogan’s on Dame Street and then walked around Temple Bar, tpsy and sad, hoping I’d see Conor, but he never materialized from the darkness, never stepped out of the café. I went home, fell into a drunken, dreamless sleep that left me with a headache and a healthy dose of self-disdain the next morning.

Emer and Daisy watched me warily that week. When they asked how the investigation was going, I answered with platitudes about the long game and having patience.

I kept looking for Brenda’s family in the phone book. I was walking home from the pubs one evening when I got the feeling that I was being followed. It was still pretty early, people heading for home after work, and I slowed down right around Bolands Mills and bent down to tie my shoe. When I turned my head, I saw someone walking quickly on the other side of the street.

I turned onto Barrow Street and walked straight along to the house. It was dark; Emer and Daisy were out. I went inside and, leaving the lights off, I looked out the narrow panes of glass next to the door.

He didn’t come onto Gordon Street, but I saw him stop at the corner of Barrow and find a doorway to turn into. He stood there, his back pressed against the door, and casually lit a cigarette. He didn’t look in the direction of the house.

I rummaged in the drawer next to the kitchen sink and took out a Phillips-head screwdriver. I tucked it into my coat pocket. Outside, I stopped in front of the house for a minute and buttoned my jacket up around my neck, to give him time to see me, and then I set out again, walking east on Gordon Street.

There weren’t many people out and about now, and when I turned left, I saw him walking slowly, the cigarette a distant red glow. He was keeping his distance.

I was scared now and I thought of finding a phone booth and calling Roly to come meet me. But I was worried he’d take off if he saw me make a call and it felt like this might be my only chance to figure out who he was and why he was following me.

I turned onto Irishtown Road, wanting to stay where there was more traffic for a little bit so I could think. Finally I decided to try to draw him out. I turned down one of the little streets just off Irishtown Road and waited to make sure he was behind me before I made another turn and then sprinted to the end of the street and darted into one of the lanes. There was a knee-high cement wall and I hid behind it, waiting to see what he’d do.

He wasn’t stupid. He didn’t sprint after me and stand on the corner looking in both directions. He just came down the street, walking very quickly, still smoking the cigarette. He looked the opposite way down the street, toward a little shrine to the Virgin Mary, and then reversed direction and walked past my lane. I looked up at the windows above me. The lights were blazing in most of the houses. I was pretty sure someone would come out if I screamed.

I waited until he was almost to me and then I swung out of my hiding place holding the screwdriver in front of me. “Why are you following me? Did you know Erin?” I asked him.

He barely started. He was young, close to my age, with thick dark hair and a pudgy face. He was wearing a dark overcoat and underneath I could see a light shirt collar peeking out.

He watched me for a long moment, his body relaxed. “I think you’ve got it wrong, miss,” he said in a quiet, controlled voice. Dublin accent. “I’m not following you. I’m just walking home from the office. Taking a stroll, like.”

“You’ve been following me. I recognize you,” I told him. “Who are you? Why are you following me? Did you know Erin?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d take care with that, if I were you.” He nodded to the screwdriver, then he winked at me and walked off, slowly and deliberately, in the direction of Irishtown Road.  

 

-------------------------------------  

 

When I start high school, I think Erin and I are going to get close again. We’re riding the same bus and I assume we’ll sit together the way we did the year we were in junior high with each other.

But when I get to the bus stop, she’s already there and she’s already talking to Jessica. She says hi and asks me if I’m ready, but when we get on the bus she and Jessica sit together and immediately start whispering.

I walk into the building alone.

The first couple of weeks are fine. Once in a while, Erin and Jessica talk to me on the bus. They sit in a group with the boys in our neighborhood, Brian and Chris and Devin and Derek. They make fun of each other and talk about our teachers, about how they dress and how lame they are.

Devin O’Brien is telling a story about a party his older brother, Greg, had at their house, about how out of hand it got. Brian tells about how his older brother, Frank, lied to their parents about where he was and then his dad took the dog for a walk on the beach and found him passed out in a dinghy by the club pavilion. They’re all laughing.

How about you, Maggie?” Devin says suddenly. “You like to party?”

I look up from my book, terrified. It feels like a trap. If I say yes, they’ll laugh. I can’t say no. I stare at him for a minute.

Then Erin says, “Maggie doesn’t party, guys. She thinks we’re all just so ridiculous. She’d rather stay in and study.”

There’s a moment of utter quiet. She meant it as a joke, but something in her voice tells us all that it’s not. I flush and look back down at my book, tears springing into my eyes.

“You’re such a bitch,” Jessica says.

“I’m totally kidding,” Erin says, too loud.

When the bus gets to the high school, I get off first and walk straight inside. I ask my mom to drive me the next few days, without telling her why. She doesn’t ask, but after a week she says she has a doctor’s appointment and I’ll have to ride the bus.

When I show up at the bus stop, Erin’s head is bent over something in her hands. Jessica’s not there. “Hey, Maggie,” Erin says, too brightly. “Hey, you know I was just kidding, right?” She watches me. “That time. Totally joking around.” “Yeah.” I can’t look at her. If I do, I’ll start crying.

I can hear Devin and Derek joking around as they walk down to the bus stop. They’re almost here.

“Hey,” she says. “Look at this.” She’s holding a piece of paper out to me. I look down. It’s a photocopy of a phone book page. I’m confused until I read down the names and find “Flaherty, Brenda M.”

“Where is this?”

“The city,” she says. “She lives in the city.”

 

 'The Mountains Wild' main page   |    Next: Chapters 29 & 30