'The Mountains Wild' Chapters 37 & 38

He hesitates. “As far as I can figure out, it was the day she went down to Glenmalure.”

“Did she say anything to Bláithín?” Her name feels strange in my mouth, like glue. “Did she tell her why she was upset?”

“I don’t think so. Bláithín said Erin was a bit vague, like she was thinking. She asked if I was there. When Bláithín said no, Erin asked could she use the toilet. She came out, still sorta ... spacey, Bláithín said, picked up her rucksack, and took off. Bláithín noticed that she’d left her jacket and she hung it in the press so I’d see it. I think that’s it.”

“She’ll have to talk to the Guards, too,” I tell him. “She should have told them. You should have told them.”

“I know it.” He looks awful, his face pulled down in worry. There’s something that still isn’t making sense here. I hesitate. “Were you in love with her?”

He looks up. He looks so sad I have to look away.

“No,” he says. “No, it wasn’t that.”

But I don’t think I believe him.

“Can I ring you later?” he asks when I get up.

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. His face is crumpled in shame and disappointment. My last glimpse is of his dark eyes, pleading with me. Outside, the river is choppy. The wind has come up and it looks like rain. I hunch into my jacket and head west again, following the Liffey.  

 

Chapter 38

Monday, June 6, 2016 

 

I CALL ROLY AND TELL HIM I need to talk to him.

“D’arcy. We’re right in the middle of —”

“Now,” I say. “It’s important.”

Something in my voice convinces him. “I’ll come to the hotel,” he says. “There are reporters everywhere.”  

 

***  

 

“You need to interview Conor Kearney and his ex- wife,” I say as soon as he’s closed the door behind him.

“Why?” His eyes are lined with exhaustion, his suit is wrinkled, and there’s a stain on his white dress shirt. For Roly, this is as bad as wearing his pajamas to the office.

“I ran into him a few days ago. I’ve been ... spending time with him,” I say. “A lot of time.” I tell him about what Bláithín said, about Conor’s story. “I’m sorry, Roly.”

He just stares at me for a minute, as though he can’t believe this is happening.

“This looks bad, D’arcy. You were seeing someone who’s a person of interest and we let you get close to the investigation. He lied to us. We let you in the files.” He stands up and starts pacing. “Did you say anything to him about the investigation?”

“No, Roly ... No. He knows the body isn’t Erin, but ...” Suddenly I remember Conor asking me about the case, about whether the body was Erin’s. “I didn’t say anything about evidence. You don’t have to worry about that.” But now I’m thinking back. What did I actually say to him? “But it shows that Erin was . . . that she was upset about something, right? It’s new information, you know? Right, Roly? She was upset about something. I think there’s something more there.” I take a deep breath. “More than he told me.” I have to say it. “Roly, what if the reason she was so upset when she went to Conor’s was that she had just killed Katerina Greiner? We’ve been trying to explain how the scarf and the necklace got there.”

He looks over at me. “So, she went down to Wicklow, killed Katerina Greiner for some unknown reason, came back, went to Conor’s all upset, then went back to Glenmalure and stayed at Mrs. Curran’s overnight, then came back to Dublin, met someone at the bus station, slept somewhere that night, got a bit of cash, and ... disappeared into thin air?”

“Let’s just say she did.” But it’s nuts, a screwed-up, missing-pieces puzzle of a theory, and I know it.

“You’re saying she fled the country and she’s been in hiding all this time? Where is she? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Or she was with someone,” I say. “And whoever it was killed her, too.”

We’re both quiet, thinking about that. “We’ll get them in,” he says finally. “You need to just stay put. You need to —” His phone rings and he looks at it.

“I know, Roly. I’m sorry.” I sit down on the bed.

“Hang on. I should take this. Yeah?” He turns away, going to the window and moving the sheer curtain aside to look out at the street.

He’s listening to whoever is on the other end.

Then he says, “Jaysus!” and he’s gesturing wildly at me, pointing at my laptop. I open it. “Look at the Independent,” he mouths. “Open it up.” He’s agitated.

“What is it?” I’m scrambling to type it into the browser and as soon as the front page loads my stomach seizes up and I slam my fist into the bedspread. “Damn!”

The headline is huge. Stephen Hines’s byline looks huge, too.  

 

HORRIGAN INVESTIGATION:

Gardaí Reveal Confidential Information to American

Detective in Secret Relationship with Person of

Interest in Southeast Killer Investigation.

Family Concerned Investigation Has Been Compromised.  

 

It’s a mess. I don’t need Roly to tell me that. I know exactly how much of a mess it is. I’ve dealt with messes like this. I’ve dealt with the aftermath of messes like this.

“I swear to you, Roly. I swear I didn’t say anything to Hines. He’s tried to approach me a few times. He set up the thing with the Horrigans. But I swear to you, whoever leaked that to him about me reviewing the cases, it wasn’t me.”

I can’t tell if he believes me or not. He looks tired, just absolutely exhausted, worn down to the most basic level of a human being: walking, breathing, not much else. He’s lost weight just since I’ve been in Dublin.

“The hotel’s under siege,” he says. “Don’t go out. Order room service if you get hungry. Don’t contact your man Conor. We’ll be talking to him and his ex-wife today and you can’t have any contact with him. None at all. Okay?”

“I’m sorry, Roly.” He just nods and goes out. The door shuts behind him and then I’m alone.

The story isn’t as bad as it could have been. Stephen Hines doesn’t name Conor, but he’s got my name all over it and he quotes the Horrigans as saying that they had hoped bringing me in would lend an expert outside view of the case but that they had no idea I was having a romantic relationship with a person who had been interviewed by the Guards in my cousin’s disappearance.

“We just pray that this doesn’t affect the operation to find our daughter,” Mrs. Horrigan said. “We just pray that this hasn’t set us back.”

Sixteen days.

I call home, hoping for some comfort from Lilly, but she’s subdued. I can tell she wants to get off the phone so I ask her to put Brian on.

“Everything okay?” I ask when he gets on. “She sounded down.”

“Yeah, hang on. I’m just going outside.” I can hear him push through the swinging door out onto the deck. I imagine him standing there, looking out across the bay, at the dusky water and clouds, meeting at the horizon, the shadowy line of Connecticut imagined in the distance. I feel a pang of homesickness so strong, I sink onto the bed. I want to shove everything in my bag, get on a plane, run into Lilly’s room, and hug her until she won’t let me anymore. And Brian. I want Brian to stand there quietly, to make me feel like everything’s going to be okay. “Sorry,” he says after a minute. “She’s in the living room. I think something happened with a ... well, with a guy. Hannah dropped her off and after Lilly got out, Hannah yelled out the window, ‘He’s an asshole anyway, Lil! You’re like a thousand times prettier!’ I had to pretend I didn’t hear. But she’s been in a massive funk, slamming doors. I’m just going to stay out of her way.”

“Probably the right thing to do. Poor Lil.”

“How are you? You sound tired.”

“I am. I am tired. I don’t know, Brian. I may be coming home soon. They haven’t found anything. This poor girl is probably dead.”

I hear him hesitate. “I saw the ... story, online. Are you okay?”

“No, I ... I’m just worried I messed every thing up. It was a massive screwup. I —” My voice catches. If I start crying, I won’t stop.

I imagine him looking out across the bay. It’s early there, the pinky sky slowly turning gray and blue, a Boston Whaler chugging out as the day begins. I can smell the beach and the sand, can hear the play of the waves around the rocks at the point.

His breath catches. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. I know Danny appreciates that you’re over there.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks. Give Lil a hug for me. Tell her I’m coming home soon.”  

 

***  

 

I sleep fitfully that night, thinking about Niamh Horrigan, thinking about Conor, thinking about Erin. At some point, I get out of bed and take out all of my notes, everything I’ve collected about the case.

I keep coming back to the question I asked Emer: Why did Erin go down to Glenmalure? What was she looking for?

And then I remember something. Conor. When we were sitting at the Palace the night he walked me home. He said that Erin had asked him about mass rocks, where Catholics celebrated mass in secret during the period of Irish history when the practice of Catholicism was outlawed. Was that what she was looking for in Glenmalure? That might explain why she’d gone down twice. She hadn’t been able to find them the first time. But why?

Had she been meeting someone there?

I search for “mass rocks Glenmalure.” I don’t come up with a specific location, but I do find a reference to a local story about a group of worshippers celebrating mass at a rock near Glenmalure and being slaughtered by Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers. It seems to be a spot of significance for hiking and history groups from Glenmalure, and there’s something about a celebration of the preservation of the spot.

A map on the hiking group’s Facebook page tells me that it’s very close to Drumkee.

I go round and round with it, all night, trying to make it all fit.

Why would Erin have gone down there? What would the mass rock mean to her? Who had she been meeting?

I text Brian: You told me that Erin was trying to talk to you guys about riots up in Northern Ireland when you visited. Do you remember that? Anything more? Did she say how she got interested?

It’s an hour before he texts back: I remember her saying it but nothing more. I can ask Jess. Sorry.

I look at the map again. There’s something there, some pattern I’m not seeing. All night, I scan my notes, trying to arrange them into some order that will make sense.

When I sleep, I dream of Erin, Erin running through the woods, someone after her. I am her; I can feel the cool damp of the air in the trees and then I’m falling, tripping, and when I turn, I see someone looming over me and his face is familiar, his name almost on my lips, but then I’m rising up through sleep and wheezing to wakefulness again in my bed in the hotel and I’ve forgotten his face, forgotten the name.

 

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