The Mountains Wild

by Sarah Stewart Taylor

  I don’t realize I’m shaking until I get to the canal. I want to sit on a bench for a minute and calm myself down, but it doesn’t seem safe. Suddenly the dark streets seem newly sinister. I force myself to breathe and keep walking, pushing her words out of my head. Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow. Just get back to the hotel.

  My phone starts buzzing as I’m walking. So sorry. She just left. Can we talk? They keep coming, but I ignore them and walk faster.

  Why am I so upset? So what if there was something between them? I’m an adult now. So is he.

  It’s that he lied. I asked him and he lied.

  Did you know?

  Did you know?

  Did you know?

  I walk all the way up Baggot Street, skirting the green, then down Grafton Street to the Westin. The woman behind the desk in the lobby doesn’t look a bit surprised to see a middle-aged woman stumbling home at nearly five a.m. I’m sure she’s seen stranger things. I take a hot shower, turn my phone off, and get into bed. I don’t fall asleep until it’s starting to get light.

  When I’m ten and Erin’s eleven, my parents take us to Disney World. It’s the first time Erin’s ever been on a plane and my mom says she should have the window seat.

  “Look at that,” she keeps saying. “Look at that. We’re above the clouds. It’s like we’re in heaven.”

  “I think we are in heaven,” I tell her. I lean across her body, feeling the warmth and weight of her. “I’m going to live on that cloud over there.”

  “I want that one.” She points. “Imagine how soft and peaceful it would be to fall asleep in a cloud.”

  “All your furniture would be made of them.”

  “All your clothes and food.”

  We hold hands almost the whole flight, so excited we can’t nap.

  37

  MONDAY, JUNE 6,

  2016

  When I finally wake up, the sun is a bright knife through the gap in the curtains. I sit up for a minute. It’s eleven already.

  Monday. Niamh’s been gone for sixteen days.

  Sixteen. June Talbot was killed between days twelve and fourteen. On day sixteen, Teresa McKenny was already dead too.

  I remember last night in a rush of pain. When I turn on my phone, there are three missed calls from Conor.

  I shower and dress and start walking toward Ringsend and the canal. I check my phone again, almost call, then don’t.

  Did you know about him and your cousin?

  I try to think of explanations.

  Why didn’t he tell me? I asked him, straight out. He said no.

  Did you know?

  I walk down Erne Street to Lime Street and then I’m on the quays.

  I’m nauseous, sick. I think I’m going to throw up and I put my head down just in case. The Liffey runs dark and silent, swirling around unseen obstacles beneath the surface.

  A few minutes later I stand up and look out over the river. Then I dial. He answers after one ring.

  “Maggie? I’m so sorry about last night. Can we chat? Where are you right now?”

  “I’m around the corner from the Ferryman,” I tell him.

  There’s a longish silence and then he says, “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I order myself a Guinness and I’m sitting at a corner table when he comes rushing in. I can’t look at him but I can’t not look at him. He looks terrible, his eyes lined, his shirt wrinkled. He smells like cigarette smoke.

  “Maggie,” he says. “Look at me. Bláithín was angry.”

  “What was she talking about? Was there something between you and Erin? I don’t care if there was.” Liar. “But you lied to the Guards. You’re going to have to talk to them.”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “I know it, but let me tell you first.”

  I take a long drink of my Guinness. The pub is quiet, chilled. It still smells of cleaning stuff. I know this moment of the day, when you’re still on top of things, when the bar’s fresh and new and under control. The familiarity steadies me. “Okay.”

  He puts his face in his hands for a moment and then he looks up at me. “It’s hard to explain. It’s so long ago and some of it I only know now, but here’s what happened. I had class all day. Bláithín had slept at my flat the night before so I guess she was there when, well … I guess I should back up and … I came home around four or five and Bláithín was there. I knew something was wrong immediately. She has this way of … She just goes absolutely silent and cold when she’s mad and I knew she was mad. But we were . . Jaysus, we were just kids. Our communication skills were pretty shite.” He breaks off and smiles at me. I don’t smile back and he keeps going. “She wouldn’t say a word. I sort of hovered around her for a bit, asking what was wrong and she just kept saying, ‘You know. You know what’s wrong.’ It was fucking madness. I look back now and I wish I could say, ‘Run for your life, lad!’ But there were … I felt like it was my fault and to be fair, I could be right moody myself. So I left her alone.

  “I was getting ready for work and I went to get my coat out of the press in the hall and then I knew why she was mad. Erin’s leather jacket was hanging there. I recognized it immediately. I didn’t know how long it had been there because I hadn’t gone in the press for a while. But I saw it. I knew it was hers immediately. I didn’t say a word.”

  I watch him for a moment, waiting for him to say it. He doesn’t.

  “You thought she’d left it there when she was at your flat another time.”

  “Yeah. It’s … Bláithín was in France one weekend visiting her family and a group of us from the café went out and Erin got langered. I was worried about her and I brought her home with me. She slept on the couch. There was nothing … nothing happened. But given the way Bláithín had gone crazy the night Erin went out dancing with us, I just decided not to tell her. When I saw the jacket, I assumed that Erin had left it that night.”

  “When was that? When she stayed over?”

  “A couple of weeks before she went missing.”

  “So, what happened?” I watch him. He’s not meeting my eyes and he’s tearing a napkin into tiny pieces while he talks.

  “She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We were going down to her parents’ holiday house that weekend and we did and we just … went back to the way things had been. And then Erin didn’t show up for work and I went to the flat and, well, you know the rest.”

  “What happened to the jacket?”

  He sighs. He still can’t look at me. “I panicked. The first interview with the Guards was really scary. They thought I knew something. They were sure I had a romantic interest in her. If they searched my flat and found the jacket … I shoved it in my rucksack and took it into college. I stayed at the library late one night and then I went into the bathroom and put it down in the bottom of the bin.”

  I stare at him for a second. I think I believe him, but I don’t know what to say.

  He finally meets my eyes. “I’m sorry. I know it’s…”

  “You’re going to have to tell the Guards,” I tell him. “They’ll have to bring you in and interview you and everything. That was evidence. Conor, this is…”

  “I know, I know.” There’s something more, though. I wait. “The thing is … I always wondered if she had left it. The more I thought about it, the more I became sure that it hadn’t been in the press. I wondered if … I don’t know. It was a little thing that was between me and Bláithín, all those years. Sometimes I wondered about Bláithín, if she’d actually stolen it or if she knew something …

  “A couple years ago, things were really bad. It wasn’t too long before we split up, maybe a year. We had been going to a counselor and it just shook all kinds of things loose. In a good way, I suppose, but we were fighting all the time. And one night she said, ‘You’ve never loved me. You’ve always loved that American girl. She even came here. She sat right on your couch and she pretended there was nothing between the two of you. She left her jac
ket and you never said a word!’”

  He looks down at the table for a long moment before he goes on. “And I saw it. How the jacket got there. Bláithín told me that Erin had come to the flat, looking for me. She said she was upset and she came in and asked to use the toilet and that was when she must have taken off her jacket and left it in the bathroom.”

  “When did she come to the flat?” I demand. “What day did she come to the flat?”

  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.

  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 fucking 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.

  “Fuck. 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 fuckin’ 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 fucked-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. “Fuck!”

  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 o
ut, 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 fucked everything 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.