The Mountains Wild

by Sarah Stewart Taylor

  “And you didn’t see her after you told her which way to go?”

  “No. Is she all right then?” she asked again. “The Guards were in a few months ago asking about a German girl. I think they found her, though. They didn’t ask about your cousin.”

  “No, they … We just don’t know,” I said. “I want to walk up that way.”

  Emer cleared her throat. “Do you not think we should ring the Guards?”

  “I want to look first.” I pointed back the way we’d come, along the Military Road. “Back that way. That’s where the trail is?” I asked the girl behind the bar.

  “Yeah, you’ll see the signs.” She looked worried. “Take care. Come back and let us know, will you?”

  Outside, the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. The air was heavy, suddenly teetering on the edge of rain.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” I told Emer. “I just want to see where she went. If I don’t find anything, we’ll call the police.”

  “No, I’ll come along,” she said, without hesitating.

  We started walking up the road, climbing gradually back the way we’d come. The road was narrow, lined with moss-covered stone walls, the ground obscured by fallen leaves and mud-brown bracken. After ten minutes of walking, we came to a little turnout on the left. “There’s the marker,” Emer said, pointing to a wooden sign with a little yellow hiker icon. The trail disappeared into the woods ahead of us. “Do you think she’s here?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s just walk up there a bit,” I said. “Okay?”

  Emer nodded and we set off.

  The clouds crowded in around us; I had the sense of the looming shapes of mountains ahead of us and all around us, but I couldn’t see them through the mist. The woods got thicker as we went. We were back in a fir tree plantation now and there was something menacing about the uniform shapes of the trees, the way they reached toward the sky. When I turned around, I could no longer see the road. We were all alone in the woods.

  Where are you, Erin?

  Emer trudged along. I could feel her annoyed energy behind me but I wanted to keep going. I felt something in those woods. I knew Erin had been there.

  “Maggie, do you not think—” Emer started.

  “Hang on.” I’d been scanning the ground next to the trail, but it was only by chance that I caught the glint of silver, the sliver of purple an alarm against the brown and dark green.

  I fell to my knees, scrabbling in the leaves on the side of the track.

  A silver claddagh necklace, tangled and nearly buried. The chain was broken at the clasp, the small silver link on one side now in the shape of a C; whatever force had done it had bent the metal until it gave.

  At the center—a pale purple amethyst.

  Erin’s necklace.

  5

  TUESDAY, MAY 24,

  2016

  While I try to get the boxes back together, I think about giving Brian his stuff tonight, just to get it out of the basement. But his apartment doesn’t have much space and I’m about to ask him a big favor, so I leave them where they are and bring my notebooks and a few of the files up and tuck them into my leather messenger bag for the trip. I’ll have the six hours across the Atlantic to go through them.

  The lasagna’s in the oven when Brian comes through the door. He knocks first, always trying to be respectful, which annoys me, unreasonably, and he has a bottle of white, which is my favorite. We’ve gotten relatively comfortable with each other since the divorce, but we’re not huggers or kissers. I take the bottle and say, “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  Lilly melts away to her room and I pour him a glass of red and we head out to the backyard. It’s up a bit from the beach; my dad always said that the more expensive houses with beachfront down on Ocean Street were likely to get flooded but that we had the benefit of the view without the risk. The patio table’s in the corner and we sit down and he leans back in his chair. He looks middle-aged, his hair thinning on top and his chest and stomach newly soft. I suddenly remember the desperate crush I had on him when I was sixteen and he was seventeen. I loved how tall he was, how the veins ran down the inside of his arms. I can still see that seventeen-year-old in his face.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  “Uncle Danny got a call from Dublin last night. They found Erin’s scarf. Not far from where she disappeared. He wants me to go over.”

  He doesn’t say anything, but he reaches out and touches my shoulder, just for a second. “Oh, Mags,” he says finally. “I’m so sorry.” I can feel his emotion. He cares about me, about Danny. He’s a good guy. He really is.

  “And there’s another girl missing. That’s how they found the scarf.”

  “But … is it connected to the other two? Did they find anything else?”

  “No.” But now I’m wondering what Roly hasn’t told me. “Can you take Lilly for a week or so? Maybe more. I don’t know how long it will take.”

  He hesitates and I know it’s his embarrassment about his apartment. “Yeah, of course.”

  “It’s probably better for her if you just stay here, since it’s for so long. Do you mind?”

  “No, no, of course not. Probably better for her.” I can hear the relief in his voice. I’m supposed to pay him spousal support, but he won’t take it. He was okay for a few years, after the divorce, but lately he’s had bad luck with jobs, layoffs and workforce reductions and so on. His family had money once, a lot of it. Brian and Frank were like royalty at our high school, their house one of the biggest and most expensive along the beach. But his dad went bankrupt in the early 2000s and he now lives in Florida with a twenty-six-year-old girlfriend. Lilly tells me that Brian gets into a bad place sometimes, thinking about that.

  He was angry for a while, after we split up, but now he’s forgiven me for my together life, my career success, the nice house, inherited from my parents, which was half his before the divorce, the fact that I stopped loving him before he stopped loving me, the fact that maybe I never loved him at all. I flash back to an afternoon in the counselor’s office, Brian spitting out the words: I never had a chance. You loved someone else the whole time. I don’t even know who it is.

  He wasn’t wrong. But that’s a long time ago now.

  “Thanks, Bri.”

  “’Course.”

  After we eat, Lilly asks if we can go down to the beach. She’s hesitant, not sure what we’ll say, but Brian nods and I say, “Great idea!” a little too enthusiastically. The three of us walk down and stand on the sand. The beach is busy tonight; everyone in the neighborhood can feel spring on the air, the new sweetness of the days.

  We watch the sun coming down over Long Island Sound. The gulls are calling overhead. A clam boat’s coming in. We watch a lone fisherman against the horizon.

  We’re about to head back to the house when Jessica and Chris Fallon and their twins come down the beach, their dog running circles around the boys. Jessica and Chris were in Brian and Erin’s high school class; I was a year behind them all. They wave and Lilly runs to say hi to the twins.

  “Hey, guys,” Jessica says. When she leans in to hug me, I can smell her perfume, too strong, even in the fresh air. Jessica was always thin, but middle age has rounded her out and like me, she’s suddenly got a lot of wrinkles around her eyes and across her forehead. I saw her once on Main Street and thought, That’s an old lady, before I realized it was her. But now, looking at her small nose and greenish eyes and the high cheekbones she always put too much bronzer on, I can see the sixteen-year-old she was. Chris has thickened, too, his football player’s body gone to fat. I feel a sudden surge of affection for them, for Brian, for all of us. We’re the parents now. We’re the middle-aged fogies.

  We watch the three kids throwing rocks into the water for the dog.

  Something on my face makes Jessica turn serious, searching my eyes. “Is everything okay, you guys?”

  I glance at Brian. “Yeah, we just … Uncle Danny got a cal
l from Ireland last night. They found something they think belonged to Erin. I’m flying over tomorrow.” Brian rubs my shoulder again. I think about how we must look to someone coming down the beach. Two couples, talking, watching their kids.

  “Oh.” Jessica’s eyes go wide. She was Erin’s best friend in high school, but it’s been so many years. I can see it’s completely out of the blue, that she’d stopped thinking we’d find anything. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. Do they think that … Do they think it’s her?”

  “They just don’t know. I’m heading over. Brian’s going to stay with Lilly.” I nod toward the house.

  Her breath catches. Her eyes fill with tears. “I just keep thinking about the last time we saw her. When we were all Eurailing over there and stopped in Dublin. She seemed different, but good. Like she was happy there.” She looks up, meets my eyes. “Settled, I guess. And you know, for Erin … that was … I guess even once they found those other women, I always wondered if she might not just walk in someday and have some crazy explanation. I’m sorry, Maggie. This must be awful.”

  “No. I think probably I always thought that, too,” I tell her. “Hopefully we’ll get some closure. For Uncle Danny.” The dog barks and we all watch it run down the beach, back toward Jess and Chris’s house. Chris calls to the boys to head back.

  “Bri, let us know if we can help with Lilly this week,” Jess says. She hugs me again, too tight. I can feel her tears on my cheek.

  “Nice time of year,” Brian says once they’re gone, his voice heavy with sadness.

  “Yeah. It’ll be summer before we know it.”

  He nods.

  A gull calls somewhere over the water. The sound tosses me back—a low, gray skyline, the air damp and touched with peat smoke, gulls wheeling over the Liffey, Mespil Road, Raglan Road, Sandymount Strand, Leeson Street, Sutton, The Four Courts, Delgany, Roundwood, Glenmalure. I walk the maps in my mind.

  Brian coughs. We watch our daughter walk toward us.

  “She looked so old to me tonight,” he says. “I mean, I just saw her last week. But when she came out to the car after school, she looked up and she was just … older.”

  “I know. It’s crazy. That’s been happening to me all the time lately.”

  “She’s a good kid. We’re lucky. She’s got her head on straight.” I know what he means. Not like Erin.

  The sun hovers for a moment and then it’s gone. We stay there, watching the empty stretch of sky as it changes color, purple, then pink, then orange.

  6

  THURSDAY, MAY 26,

  2016

  The Aer Lingus nonstop to Dublin runs overnight. I sleep a little and when I wake up they’re serving tea and coffee. The coffee is strong and dark, and I’m awake and on edge, teeth brushed and face washed in the airplane restroom by the time we land. Ready. I get through immigration and customs quickly, with a wink and a “Don’t work too hard now, love,” from the officer when I say I’m here on business.

  This time, I arrive on a perfect day. Blue skies. White clouds. Sun shining. One in a million. The airport seems completely new, shiny silver and glass, a chic restaurant with pale wood décor just outside the passenger arrivals area. There are huge black-and-white pictures of Irish men and women lining the hall, some pale-skinned, red-haired, freckled, but not everyone, not anymore. There are little stories below the photos. I grew up in Lagos and came here for medical school. My family is from Enniscorthy. Not a psychedelic carpet to be seen.

  I’ve read the stories. In the twenty-three years since I was last here, Ireland’s been up and then down and now, maybe, from the looks of things, up again.

  Roly Byrne is waiting for me. I catch a glimpse of him through the crowd. He’s craning his neck, looking around, and when he sees me, his face breaks into a huge grin.

  He surprises me by wrapping me in a tight hug. He smells good, lemony, like expensive soap and aftershave.

  “You’re looking great, D’arcy,” he tells me, taking my carry-on without asking and leading the way through the waiting crowds. “Getting on agrees with you. Myself, on the other hand…” He runs a hand through thinning blond hair, cropped short, and makes a funny face that emphasizes the lines fanning out from his eyes. He’s fit, still wiry, a greyhound of a person.

  “You’re no worse than you always were,” I tell him.

  He puts a hand on my arm and says, “What do you want to do? I need to head down to Glenmalure. I can take you to your hotel, you can have a shower and then I can tell you what we’ve got once you’ve had a sleep.”

  I think for a moment. “Let’s head to the scene and you can brief me on the way.”

  “I won’t be able to take you up to the site,” he says, giving me a sidelong glance. “You know that. At best you’ll be able to see the staging area for the search.”

  “I know. But it’s been so long. I just want to remind myself of the place, see how far it is from where I found her necklace, that kind of thing.” I force myself to make it sound breezy.

  He hesitates for a minute and then says, “Cool.” Kyoooool. I completely forgot about the way Roly Byrne pronounces cool and I smile in spite of myself. He points toward the airport exit. “I’ll take you through the city center so you can see the changes. Let’s go.”

  His car is a late-model silver BMW, so clean I can practically see my reflection on the door. I run a hand over the hood. “Fancy car, detective.”

  “Feck off,” he says good-naturedly and tosses my bag in the back seat. The interior of the car smells strongly of lavender. “Sorry,” he says, noticing me sniffing the air. “The wife has some special oil she plugs in. She says the car smells of stinky runners after I’ve been in it.” He grins, looks over at me. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? We’ve both kids, you’re a cop now. It’s twenty-three years.”

  “It is weird,” I say. “Getting older is weird.”

  Once we’re out of the airport, he hands over a paper cup of coffee. “That’s for you there, D’arcy.”

  “Thanks. How thoughtful of you.”

  “Oh, I’m a very thoughtful lad these days. You should see me, always doing the washing up, doing the school drop-off. I gave Laura a week at a yoga retreat for her fortieth, so.”

  “Yoga? I never would have thought it.”

  “You wouldn’t find me doing the yoga, now.” He winks at me and I laugh.

  “So,” he says. “Do you even recognize the place?”

  Coming down O’Connell Street, it’s almost the same, the wide bridge ahead, shops and neon signs, Dubliners crossing in every direction, but as we cross over the Liffey, I lose track of where I am for a second. There are new buildings, a new bridge, shaped like a harp. But then I see Trinity and the Bank of Ireland and the bottom of Grafton Street and I get my bearings again before we turn. “You should see her old neighborhood,” Roly says. “It’s all Facebook and Google offices down there. They’re even making some kind of skyscrapers out of Bolands Mills.”

  We head south, through quieter Ballsbridge and Donnybrook. I’m off center from the changes to the landscape, the new buildings, the jet lag.

  “I’m glad to see you happy,” I say. “Tell me about the job.” I’m not ready to talk about Erin yet.

  He follows my lead. “Yeah, job’s good. I’m detective inspector on our Serious Crime Review Team, which is our cold-case squad. It was formed in 2007 and they put me on because I was a detective on the task force looking at the Southeast disappearances. I must have told you that. I’m hoping for the homicide squad at some point, but it’s good, so. Now, I’ve a bit of irony for you. My superintendent will be a familiar name to ya.”

  “Wilcox?”

  “That’s the one. He’s all right, though. Mostly leaves me to it. He’d rather play golf most days. But when I mentioned you were coming over he warned me off letting you get too close to the case. Again.” He looks over at me, serious now. “I’ve to watch myself, D’arcy. Just so you know.”

  “Of course,” I say, f
eeling my spirits sink a bit.

  “Anyway, I’ve a good team. You’ll meet them. I have a sergeant and two detective Gardaí I’ve assigned to the discovery. They want to ask you some questions about your … about Erin. They’re just getting up to speed now. The scarf’s only just been found. We have a tech designated to the team and she’s working away. Hopefully she’ll have something for us. It’s all a bit more reactive than the way we usually work. Normally we’d identify evidence for testing or witnesses to be interviewed again, but because of Niamh Horrigan we’re working parallel to the missing persons investigation. It’s a bit mad, to tell the truth, but if there’s a possibility of uncovering anything from the other cases that might help find her we’ll keep at it.”

  “Of course. I’d like to help however I can.” The look on his face makes me add, “However Wilcox lets me.”

  “How about you, D’arcy? How’s the job for you now?”

  “Yeah. Job’s good on this end, too. I’m still working homicides. I like my team, like the work. Nothing to complain about. I made lieutenant a few years ago. Sometimes I don’t know how I got through the years after I got divorced, when Lilly was little, but she’s fifteen now and it feels like I’ve got room to breathe again.”

  “Fair play to you,” Roly says. “Laura was home full-time during all the years ours were little. There were weeks I hardly saw them. But she kept things going. She’s a great woman now. You’ll meet her.” Roly and Laura have four kids, two girls a little older than Lilly and two little boys. He sent me a picture a few years back, the boys blond and impish, the girls tall and pretty, everyone dressed in Christmas best. “I saw you had a big case there a few years back,” he says quietly. “On those serial murders.”

  I feel heat rise toward my face, every nerve ending in my body suddenly alert. I do the thing I do to stop the rush of adrenaline. I breathe. Inonetwothreefour. Outfivesixseveneight. The first breath slows the response, the second chases back the heat. “You Googled my cases, Roly?”