Deadly Ancestors: A Bernadette Callahan Mystery (Bernadette Callahan Detective Series Book 5)

by Lyle Nicholson

  “Ah, well then…perhaps tonight,” Cahal said, standing up as Bernadette got up from the table.

  “Sure, we’ll meet then,” Bernadette said. She went to the bedroom, grabbed her badge and gun, and gave Chris a kiss as he came out of the shower. “Hey, sweetie, Cahal’s up, he’s got a coffee, and I gotta go. Make sure the dog doesn’t eat him, I don’t want to have to fill out the incident report.”

  Chris gave her a big hug. “You two have a conversation?”

  “The opening shots were fired,” Bernadette said.

  Bernadette went into the garage, hit the garage door opener that pulled up with a groan as it dislodged itself from a patch of frozen ice, and started the Jeep. As she pulled out of the driveway, her phone began to ring on her dash. She hit the hands free.

  “Detective Callahan,” Bernadette said. She didn’t recognize the number; she thought it might be someone calling in a tip on the murder suspect.

  “Is this Ms. Callahan?” a female voice asked.

  “Yes, it is, how may I help you?”

  “This is Melinda from the Emerald Lake Lodge in Field, British Columbia. You’d sent an enquiry about having your wedding here in May. There’s been a cancellation, and the good news is we have your exact date, and I have twenty rooms available,” Melinda gushed over the phone.

  Bernadette pulled her vehicle into the parking lot of a convenience store and threw it into park. She picked up the phone and stared at it for a second.

  “Are you still there?” Melinda asked.

  “Ah, yes Melinda, I’m here. I had to pull off the road. You kind of took me by surprise. We didn’t expect to hear from you.”

  “Well, today is your lucky day. We have both the Vice Presidents Room and Cilantro on the Lake available for the wedding. I can put a hold on them, but I’ll need a credit card for a deposit. Do you have one handy?”

  “Just a minute,” Bernadette said. She sat there for a moment. This had been her bright idea. Chris and she had spent a weekend there when they were first getting to know one another. They’d had sex there until they almost couldn’t stand, then had sat on the veranda in the bent wood wicker chairs and stared out at pristine lake sipping wine, watching the clouds move over the mountains.

  Bernadette pulled her credit card out of her wallet and gave Melinda her number. “How long do I have to decide?”

  “I can give you until Tuesday next week, but then I’ll need an answer. We get a lot of May weddings here, and very few cancellations. So, if you don’t want it, I just go down the list.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Bernadette said. “I’ll be in touch soon.” She closed her phone, put the Jeep in gear and joined traffic. Damn me and my bright ideas, she said under her breath. Chris had wanted the wedding to be in their little city. No fuss, then off to Emerald Lake Lodge after. But, oh no, Bernadette had asked and got what she wanted. Be careful what you wish for, she thought.

  She drove passed the RCMP detachment and saw the line of news trucks. This was no longer a local event. The big national news networks had shown up. She could see some of the lead anchors from CBC and CTV and Global TV, a who’s who of celebrity anchors. They must have taken the redeye from Toronto to get here. She kept driving, using the back entrance to park. The shit show, as they called it, had begun.

  15

  Bernadette walked into a beehive of activity in the detachment. Every officer was involved in the meeting as the chief inspector went over last night’s events and today’s duties. The sole focus was on the murderer, the blonde women, the unidentified suspect, who’d got away.

  Inspector Davis was a lifer in the RCMP; he’d come up the ranks like the rest of them and had done his time from the desolate far north to the suburban streets of Vancouver. He was pushing sixty and sported a bushy mustache and eyebrows to match. Standing ramrod straight in his blue uniform, he addressed the troops.

  “I can’t emphasize the effort you need to put into this search. Every store or gas station with a CCTV camera has to be looked at. Every person in that hospital who may have had eyes on our suspect has to be interviewed. We’ve set up a roadblock around the perimeter of the city. Officers have been there all night. You’ll be replacing them.”

  “Were there any cars stolen from the hospital parking lot last night?” a constable named Parks asked.

  “Good point,” Constable, Davis said. “No cars were taken. The suspect is either on foot or had her own car.”

  Evanston came into the room. “Inspector Davis, we got a hit on our suspect from the officers in Banff.”

  “What have you got?” Davis asked.

  Evanston read from her notes. “Two of the Irish Nationals, Alana Cassidy and Joseph Nolan left the group on landing in Calgary. They told the group they had a sick relative in Ireland and had to take the return flight home. There is no record of them boarding a return flight from the Calgary airport.”

  Evanston put the pictures up on the screen. Bernadette stared at it, doubting the woman used her real name. There were the same eyes she’d seen yesterday. But the eyes had no light, killer eyes. Why hadn’t she acted?

  “We sent the pictures to the police at the Calgary airport. They’ll be checking every car rental desk for their CCTV cameras and the airport hotels,” Evanston said.

  “Good work,” Davis said. “Now, we have ID’s of our suspects. We need to check every hotel, every motel, and every VRBO and Airbnb house in this city. We’ll have the pictures sent to the news media as persons of interest, do not approach.”

  Bernadette stood at the back of the room, wondering where these two could be hiding? They’d come as a team, that was certain.

  Evanston came to the back of the room to join Bernadette. “How you are holding up?”

  Bernadette closed her eyes then opened them. “Like a rag doll with a broom stick up her ass to keep her upright. Thanks for asking.”

  “About the usual, then,” Evanston said.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “What’s our plan?”

  “We run the two suspects into our facial recognition software to see what it comes up with,” Bernadette said.

  “That can take a few days before it comes up with a match, and hopefully the two have a sheet on them somewhere, otherwise we’ll get nothing,” Evanston said.

  “You’re right. In the meantime, we start with our victims. We need to find out why someone is after Father Dominic and who wants him dead, and why they killed Father Frederick. I said I thought we might have someone coming from Ireland to attempt the murders. I was right.”

  “Here’s the problem with that. I tried to find the ID’s of Dominic and Frederick, and they are held by the Holy See of Rome. You must know about that, you being a Catholic,” Evanston said.

  “No, that is news to me. And remember, I’m a barely practicing Catholic; I go to confession once a quarter to keep my mother from turning in her grave,” Bernadette said. “We’ll need to get on the phones and go through channels. This might require time and coffee.”

  It took them hours. Both Bernadette and Evanston worked the phones to go through numerous levels of Catholic administration until they finally received an email of the former identities of the two priests.

  “I’ll be damned,” Evanston said with a whistle when the files arrived. “Look at these two. They were really good-looking back in their day. I don’t mind saying I would have flirted hard with either one of these guys.”

  Bernadette looked at the file. “Brendan McLaughlin was Father Dominic and Padraig O’Reilly was Father Frederick.” She looked up at the clock on the wall. “You think we still have time to call the Garda in Ireland?”

  “Why the Garda?” Evanston asked.

  “I got a feeling all of this stems from something to do with the IRA, and I have a feeling the police in the Republic of Ireland might know more about them than the one’s in the north.”

  “That’s as good a hunch as any,” Evanston said.

  Bernadette looke
d on the website and found a contact number for the serious crime’s division of the Garda in Dublin. It rang several times before an Irish accent that she could barely understand over the long-distance line told her it was The Garda.

  After a long pause and some background noise that sounded like someone clanging teacups, another voice came on.

  “Detective Patrick Sullivan here, how may I assist you?”

  “This is Detective Callahan of the Serious Crimes Division of the RCMP in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. I’m calling to identify the records of two individuals who were involved in a serious incident here.”

  “You calling from Red Deer, are you now? I’ve read about the sorry business you have going on there. Must be one hell of fix you’re in trying to sort that out,” Sullivan said.

  “Yes, Detective, you’re right, it’s one hell of a fix. We’ve identified Father Dominic, who was injured, as Brendan McLaughlin and Father Fredericks, who was murdered, as Padraig O’Reilly.” Bernadette said.

  “You’re calling it a murder? The papers said you were still investigating.”

  “This is for your ears only, Detective. The assailant was a woman who arrived in Canada as Alana Cassidy. We believe her accomplice is Joseph Nolan. Both names were fake when we ran them through our files.”

  “Your two priests were high up in the IRA ranks. I’d always wondered where they’d got to. They both disappeared back in the nineties. I thought maybe they retired and moved to Spain. Looks like they sought redemption as men of the cloth,” Sullivan said.

  “I was told by another priest that they might have been writing a memoir of some sort. Would you have any idea of that?” Bernadette said.

  Sullivan blew out a breath. “My God, there’s so many memoirs that have been written about the Troubles in Ireland. I thought at one point we’d have a lack of paper to print them on.”

  “Is there anything the two could have been writing about that could have made them targets?” Bernadette asked.

  “That’s a great question. The IRA had so many factions between the official IRA and the provisional IRA that it was hard to keep track. I’m sure that somewhere in there, McLaughlin and O’Reilly must have witnessed something that others wouldn’t want to come to light.”

  “Is it possible I could see their files?”

  “I’d have to have that cleared at the highest level. Most of the IRA was pardoned and their files sealed. But as this is a murder investigation, I’m sure I can do something.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.” Bernadette said. She paused for a moment and glanced at Evanston. “There’s one more thing. Do you have any records of a Cahal Callahan?”

  Evanston was beside her and shot her a look. She was going too far. If the chief of detectives found out, she’d be in deep trouble.

  “Do you have a DOB?” Sullivan asked.

  “Yes, December fifteenth, nineteen-forty-four.” Bernadette said trying to avoid Evanston’s look.

  “Let me take a quick look,” Sullivan said.

  During the long pause, Bernadette wondered if she’d find the real truth about her so-called uncle.

  “No, there’s nothing here. This man has no arrest record, not even a traffic ticket. Where did he grow up?”

  “Kildare,” Bernadette replied.

  “Kildare. That’s a small town of about eight thousand not far from Dublin. I’d only hear of this man if he’d been in some kind of trouble. Seems he hasn’t.”

  “Thank you, Detective, you’ve been a great help. When we get a positive ID on our suspects, we’d like to send them to you to get further information,” Bernadette said.

  “Of course. All of Ireland is buzzing with the news of the two priests in Canada. We’ve got no end of speculation as to the cause. We’re ready to help in any way we can.”

  “Thank you, Detective Sullivan, I’ll be in touch,” Bernadette said. She put the phone down. “This case gets more complicated all the time.”

  Evanston looked at Bernadette. “You know, we checked Cahal Callahan’s record when we arrested him.”

  “Yes, but I wanted to double check,” Bernadette said.

  Detective Sullivan went down the hall of see his partner Dennis Bishop. Sullivan had been a detective for ten years. He was forty-five, medium height and stocky. He played soccer with a local pub team on weekends and spent the rest of his time with his wife, who put up with his long hours of work. The branch they worked for was the Special Detective Unit (SDU) based in Dublin City on Harcourt Street. They worked in conjunction with the Defense Force Directorate of Military Intelligence, referred to as G2.

  Dennis was holding a sheaf of papers looking over the latest bombing reports in Northern Ireland. Dennis was just past fifty with the stocky body of a prize fighter who looked like he could still go several rounds and keep standing. Twice divorced, his hair had turned a silver shade of gray and his deep blue eyes kept him in trouble with the ladies.

  “You find anything that connects the bombers to known suspects?” Sullivan asked as he sat down in front of Bishop’s desk.

  Dennis looked up with a look of exasperation. “Not a bloody thing. I was just about to come find you to go for a pint.”

  “Then who do we think these unsubs are? Hasn’t MI5 or G2 come up with anything?”

  “No one has a clue. To top it off, there have been some killings of old IRA men. O’Dea was killed, point blank range, and Brady was shot in his car as he drove to the bank.”

  “But these guys are past ancient, for Christ’s sake. What good would it do to kill them now? Didn’t both of them have terminal illness?”

  Dennis nodded. “Doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. And the bombings…someone claims they’re the Real IRA, but no communication to the media.”

  “Sounds daft, as usual. But I’ve come to see you about something else—the two Irish priests in Canada.”

  Bishop sat back in his chair. “Yes, I’ve heard of that, what’s it all about?”

  “The one who is wounded is Brendan McLaughlin, the dead one is Padraig O’Reilly.”

  “I’ll be damned. I thought they’d gone to Spain and fell into a vat of sangria.”

  “Seems they became men of the cloth,” Sullivan said. “As good a place to hide as any, I suppose.”

  “The priests do get served wine, so I’m sure they did okay. Do the Canadian’s have any idea who killed the one and attempted to kill the other?”

  “They have an Alana Cassidy and Joseph Nolan as suspects. They made a positive ID of the female as the one who attempted to kill Father Dominic.”

  “Do the names check with any known priors?”

  “None, both clean. Fake ID’s, fake passports, the usual.”

  “You suspect a hit team?”

  “Yes, I do. The Canadian detective is sending us pictures of them. I’ll run it through all our known databases and check our sources. I can’t see how these two haven’t shown up somewhere.”

  Bishop leaned forward in his chair. “Aye, most killers have practiced somewhere. Now, how about that pint.”

  “I’m as ready and thirsty as you are,” Sullivan said. “But one more thing…”

  “What’s that?”

  “The detective, she said her name was Callahan. She wanted to know if we had any records of Cahal Callahan.”

  Bishop was about to grab his coat; he turned to Bishop. “Not the Cahal Callahan?”

  “She gave me his exact birthdate and place of birth in Kildare.”

  “You know, I’d seen his name come up in the papers last week, but they had him pegged as a younger man. I didn’t make the connection. Did you tell the detective we know him?’

  “No, there’s no record of him in our system or anywhere else that I know of.” Sullivan said.

  “The man has been a true ghost. Never let his picture be taken, no driver’s license or identity card. It must have given him a fright to have sat for a passport photo.”

  “But that’s just it. Why would he venture
there?”

  “I have no idea. Right now, he’s Canada’s problem,” Bishop said. “Now, let’s get that pint before the pub gets crowded with all those young winkers.”

  16

  “Have we hit a wall?” Evanston asked as she sat back in her chair, thumbing a ballpoint pen and making a clicking sound that Bernadette found was getting into her head.

  “Not until we find out what the hit team was after,” Bernadette said. She looked up at the clock on the wall. “Damn it, how did it get to be ten o’clock?”

  “Time flies when you’re following leads that go nowhere?” Evanston ventured.

  Bernadette got up and went to the coffee machine. As she poured her coffee with her mix of two sugars and cream, she wondered what they’d missed. Instead of going back to her desk, she went into the squad room.

  Constable Stewart was sitting at his computer. She leaned over his shoulder. “You find anything as to hotels and rental cars on our suspects?”

  “Not much,” Stewart said. “We got a positive hit on the car they picked up from Hertz at the airport. It was a white GMC SUV. We ran the tags through all of our highway cameras, and we didn’t come up with much.”

  “They might have taken the back route into the city. There are no cameras on Highway twenty-one and twenty-two.”

  “That’s the long way around,” Stewart said.

  “If they didn’t want to be seen, avoiding main highway cameras would be the way to do it. When you’re coming to kill someone who doesn’t expect you, you got time on your hands,” Bernadette said.

  “I guess you’re right. I’ll have the constables on those roads check in with the gas stations to see if they stopped there. We can maybe get another visual on them.”

  “Great,” Bernadette said. “Any luck on hotels and motels?”