The Killer in Me
Page 23
I sit up; the blanket slides down onto my lap. “The media?”
“Whoever was sending Conor Sheridan these letters refers to ‘them’ and ‘youse’ or ‘you lot,’ says ‘you’ll all pay.’ There’s a few clippings pasted into the letters. Newspaper clippings of cases where people were wrongly accused, you know, trial by media kind of thing.”
I shift my weight, an ache spreading down my leg; the scar on my temple begins to itch. Both reminders of the past. Reminders of what happens when you get too close. I rub the ache away, pull the lever under my seat, let my right leg stretch out under the dash.
“More?” Steve asks.
“Go on.”
“Sheridan visited a few dating sites about five months ago. Here’s his profile.”
Another email expands in my inbox. I tap the phone and it opens.
Conor Sheridan’s smiling picture appears and a paragraph about himself in his own words.
Steve continues. “He had a couple of hits. Nothing that stuck. We can’t find anything on his computers saying he was sparking with anyone, so whatever he was telling Lynch about an online girlfriend doesn’t ring true. We do have his calendar though, and on the night he went missing he had attended an AA meeting. The meeting was in Tallaght town center and we’ve now got his car leaving the community hall grounds where it was held and heading north to Clontarf.”
“So we’ve got shot of those dark hours. Anything on who Conor was on the phone to that night?”
“No, and there’s nothing I can find that indicates why he was heading to Clontarf. Although, there’s one obvious reason.”
“Jane Brennan.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking that’s where he was heading and then for whatever reason it was called off. But this is the most damning thing we’ve gathered from the computer—”
I press the phone closer to my ear.
“—Conor Sheridan had spent years researching the Hennessy case. He has folders and folders of scanned news articles. Transcripts of the court case. Photographs of the crime scene gathered from the press, even the funeral. Pages of notes, journals on his findings. The works. It’s clear that the hate mail got to him. That he wasn’t able to let the case go.”
I remember Jane Brennan telling me how Conor was plagued by guilt after Hennessy’s arrest.
“Ultimately,” Steve goes on, “the guy was doing a better job at unraveling this case than the guards were. It’s like he felt bad about the article and wanted to put things right. Over the last few months, he tried to contact Seán Hennessy himself.”
The breath catches in my throat. “What was the angle?”
“He wanted to apologize.”
I peer into the rearview. Look back out at the black street.
“The content?”
“A long letter. Again scanned into this file. The brunt of it was how sorry he was if he’d gotten the sitch wrong in the Hennessy family followed by a suggestion that they could meet up to clear the air.”
“Any response from Hennessy?”
“Yes. Hennessy’s response was: ‘Fuck you. I hope you rot in hell.’”
I look out at Hennessy’s place. The curtains drawn on the single lit window on the third floor. Occasionally I think I see his shadow cross the room. “That’s something all right,” I say.
“I thought so,” Steve says.
“Thanks. Feed back with anything else,” I say, and hang up.
Time is ticking on, ten P.M. on a Saturday night and not a wink of movement from Hennessy’s place. A swell of chatter and laughter grows from behind me then passes on down the street. A few cars turn into the nearby hotel, people in their fancy gear out for the night and returning to the hotel for a nightcap and then bed.
I pull the blanket back up around my neck and settle down to wait. But suddenly he’s there. Stepping out onto the low concrete step in front of the block of flats. He’s wearing a baseball cap, pulled down over his eyes. The security light thrusts a halo over his head. He’s looking into his phone.
He laughs at something on the screen. He takes his time, responds to whoever is on the other side of that laughter. Then, pocketing the phone, he strikes out from the flat, away from me, toward Strand Road. I wait awhile. Try to count out a minute but I don’t want to lose him. Reaching out, I start the engine and pull on to the road, keeping my speed low. I pass him, just as he turns into Smith’s bar.
CHAPTER 20
THERE’S A SIDE ENTRANCE to Smith’s, always another door to an Irish pub should you need it. It leads to a lounge. I step up and push the door open. The bar area is long, people packed like cattle along it, all baying for a pint or a chat. I see Seán Hennessy at the far end; he keeps his eyes and space to himself. Baseball cap pulled down low. No one bothers him. The barman nods when he gives his order and shortly a pint of lager is deposited in front of him, his change already counted out on the bar.
I order a glass of wine, sit down near the front of the room. I wish I had a book. A prop. I take out my phone, scroll through the messages, take a few sips of wine. My heart in my mouth. Excitement. I’m this close. When he sees me, he’ll come over. He can resist it as much as I can.
He turns, casts around for a seat. Spots me. His expression lifts. He approaches, his chest high, steady footsteps through the shouts and laughter.
“Frankie,” he says. Then shakes his head. “Is that okay? I mean, you’re off duty, no?”
I nod to the glass of wine. “Sure.”
He motions to the empty seat across from me. “You mind if I sit?”
“Help yourself.”
He sits. Adjusts his cap over his eyes. The free man hiding in plain sight. “You visiting family?”
“Something like that.”
Eyes narrow around a cutting blue. “How is everyone?”
“Great.”
“Someone once told me that a good detective never clocks out.”
I force a laugh. “I guess there’s some truth in that. You meeting friends?”
He lifts the brim of his cap, wipes a hand over his head, replaces the hat. “If only. I’m still working on my popularity. Turns out small towns have long memories.” He takes a drink, leans in, lowers his voice. “I was going grand, you know. People were edgy, sure, they didn’t know how to take me, but they were coming around. The documentary was helping and reading the papers you’d think that people might be more sympathetic, you know. But these new murders and that press conference, it’s stirring shit up again.”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard for you.”
He looks down, lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s raking through old coals, you know.”
“People say stuff to you?”
A sharp exhale through tight lips. “A bit.” He reaches for his drink and I see a tremble in his hand. “I’ve had some trouble with a few neighbors. But mostly I can feel it. Eyes”—he looks around—“as sure as hands on my back. They’re watching me. I keep myself covered up, stay inside like, but a man who’s free should be able to walk down the streets of his hometown.”
“That’s true.”
“Maybe when they’ve seen the whole documentary or when Tanya gets her case together”—he sighs, a tail of longing on his breath—“maybe then they’ll see.”
I ask him about Rona O’Sullivan, or Rona Clancy as he would have known her. He looks pained, but when he answers he surprises me with his honesty. He doesn’t deny that he had lied about being with her when his family was attacked, killed. “I don’t feel bad about that.”
“No?”
“I mean, yes, she was right, I didn’t stay the whole day with her but I did stay. At least if she’d told the truth, even if it didn’t help me, it would have went some way toward making me look human. Someone’s boyfriend. As it was, to the public, to the guards, I looked incapable of keeping my family or my
friends. She dropped me to one side like I was a stinking turd. And when the public thinks you stink, they back off too. She left me with no one.”
I peer into the red glow of my wine. “How about your sister? Have you tried reaching out to her?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start. Do you . . . You know where she is, right?”
I take up the glass, feel the tang of the wine on my tongue. “It would be difficult, even for me, to get that paperwork through the red tape.”
His mouth turns down. “What am I doing?” He drops his head, cradles it in his hands.
And I feel a stirring of pity for him. Seán Hennessy is a stranger in his own home. He doesn’t fit. His darkness has followed him and I know what that feels like. “You must’ve suspected she might not want a relationship with you?”
“If she knows I didn’t do it, why wouldn’t she want to reconnect?” When I don’t reply he continues: “The evidence? Did Tanya fill you in? They really fluffed that, didn’t they? Cross-contamination. Even Cara’s testimony. She was so young. How’d she remember what happened?”
“You remembered Lola.”
“Sorry?”
“You were what? Twelve when you had to kill those pups? That’s only two years older than Cara when your parents were killed, and you remembered that in great detail.”
His mouth works, jaw tenses. He drags a hand down the side of his face. His fingers rest at his ear. “I know what I look like to you. I know you can’t see me, you see only a killer.” He glances out at the full room from beneath his cap. “That’s all they see. Why would you be any different?”
“Maybe I’m not so different,” I say, and watch the frustration creep up his neck.
After a moment he lets his hands fall to the table, settles them round the base of his pint. “You want me to tell you what you want to hear? Is that it? Make it so you can sleep easier at night because the thought that they put away the wrong person is too troubling for you?”
I don’t answer and he pulls back, just a little, his shoulders straightening.
His lips tighten as he speaks. “It only took a few months inside before I remembered that evening. The knife in my hand. The heat of the day, the sun spinning white orbs from the windows into my eyes. The stillness. The fizz of the hedgerows, alive with the sounds of parched insects. The crazy whoop of a blackbird in the garden.” The pint rotates between his fingertips, a slow grind on the table. Gold-tipped lashes drawn down over his eyes.
“I waited in the kitchen for a while. Just watching them. I was calm, like really calm. Not myself, I don’t think. They were just there, a few feet away, but it could have been another galaxy for how close it felt. Dad was in and out of the garage, something wrong with the mower, bottle in his hand, giving the thing a kick every now and then. Mam pulling weeds on the other side, the sun slowly burning the back of her neck. Cara reading, cross-legged on the lawn.
“I thought there’d be screaming. But there wasn’t much. The hardest first. Get it over with. Cara. Mam, she turned, ran to her, shouted my name. Just once. I thought he’d come at me then but he didn’t. Frozen he was, on the other side of the lawn. A big fucking coward. Every drive of the knife added to the frenzy. The madness. I felt indestructible. For the first time. The first time ever. Ten feet tall. The man of the house.
“When he came for me, he was blustering with rage, spittle flying from his lips. Tears of horror. I remembered enjoying that, however long that moment was, seconds, less, more. I held on to that look. It felt like redemption. It was the sweetest thing. His anger, his grief, his desire to control made him clumsy. Helped me win. All those years, terrified of this man. And there he was, panting like a dying dog against the back wall, begging for death to bend down and kiss his drunken mouth. All those years, terrified of this man,” he says again, “this monster, and he was only made of flesh and blood. Flesh and blood like us all.”
I’m pinned to the seat. My mind catches on the imagery he uses. The lawn mower. Where was that? It wasn’t at the crime scene. Cara reading. There was no book. “Are you confessing?”
Disappointment grows on his face, a sad, retired look in his eyes that I don’t seem to be getting what he’s trying to say. “I was in that cell, alone with what had happened. It pressed in on me, those walls. Those fucking walls. Pressing in. And I was trying to make sense of it. I thought if everyone believes I did this, I must have, right?” When he looks up, there are tears in his eyes. He wipes them away quickly with the back of his hand. “My lawyers! My own sister! I began to believe it, you know. Fuck. I began to think this is what must’ve happened. But it didn’t. It didn’t.” He pulls back, shakes his head. “It fucking didn’t.”
He lifts his pint, drinks. “The system only picks the evidence it wants,” and there’s a flinty bitter edge to his voice. After a moment, he clears his throat. “What happens to the rest?”
“That’s up to your defense.”
He nods slowly and shrugs. “I had no defense.”
There’s silence then he says: “You’re here. I’m here. You’re working on a case. My experience with the law says this was no accidental meeting.”
“No.”
He laughs. “Well, why is that not surprising.” He lifts cautious eyes to mine. “What is it?” he asks, and I hear fear shaking in his voice.
“Conor Sheridan.”
“What about him?”
A shout goes up from the bar. A group of thick-waisted blokes, packed into Levi’s and faded rugby shirts, chant some god-awful drinking game while one of them downs a pint of slop. The drinker smacks the glass onto the bar amid heavy back-slapping and nods of pride. When I look back at Seán, I see him watching them; envy huddles in his eyes.
“I think you know,” I say, bringing his attention back to me.
“I never met him. I only know about his stupid piece for the local paper. What?” he says, catching judgment on my face. “You expect me to feel sorry for him?”
“He was a human being. He died a terrible death.”
He grips the front of his shirt, leans close. His voice rattles with intensity when he speaks. “I don’t have room to feel sorry for Conor fucking Sheridan. I don’t have any more fucking sorrys left in me. I’ve spent seventeen years saying sorry for something I didn’t fucking do, and now you expect me to say it for a guy who helped ruin my life?” He lets go of his shirt, the furnace of his anger red on his face. But he gets himself under control, takes a few deep breaths. “It’s sad that a man lost his life. Another one. All of it’s fucking sad. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
The fury of his words scrapes back my doubts and rings the bell of truth. Here is real emotion. Not rehearsed. Not staged or played out nicely for a camera. And I believe what he’s saying. But my mind is caught on his accusation that Sheridan ruined his life. “Conor Sheridan was hardly responsible for your conviction. What’s one journalist’s opinion?”
His bottom lip comes up in distaste. “It has to start somewhere. He believed his occasional meet-ups with my dad through Gaelic football gave him insight into the type of man he was.” He gives a short laugh, leans in. “This is a small town, and he took the line people wanted to hear. That John Hennessy, salt of the fucking earth, could not have attacked his family. But the young brat coming in his wake, who gardaí were holding for questioning, who had no alibi and a criminal record. He had killer written all over him.” He gives me a pleading look. “Aren’t you sick of seeing headlines describing perfect husbands, perfect fathers murdering their perfect families?”
He snatches a quick breath, goes on: “Conor Sheridan gave me a trial by media and left me to hang by the end of a rope. Every paper in the country went with it then, and he was quoted in almost all of the press. He became the go-to character witness on what a grand man my da was, and he rode my fucking conviction until it smashed up against the prison gates.”
“No.” He throws the answer out the side of his mouth. Doesn’t meet my eyes. Then he sighs. “There might have been a letter, well not so much a letter, a note.”
I feel the tension peel away from my shoulders. Relief that he’s admitted replying to Sheridan’s letter. No lies, no guilt. “What did it say?”
“He wrote to me when I was inside. Wanted to meet up. I sent back my reply, which was the longer version of fuck off.”
“Do you have an alibi for Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning? When we believe Sheridan’s body was left on Clontarf beach.”
He swallows. “Seriously? No. I’m on my own here.”
“Do you have a neighbor? Someone who might be able to say they saw you on Tuesday night?”
“I don’t know; it’s an old guy, off his head most of the time. I’m pretty sure he pushed dog shit under my door a couple of days ago.” There’s a desperate look growing on his face. He turns a finger in on himself. “Am I a suspect? Is all that I’m reading in the press true? You’re gunning for me?”
“There are connections to your case and these murders, the Shine murders and Conor Sheridan’s. I need to follow up on all leads.”
He throws himself back on the seat, closes his eyes, and I wait for him to offer his alibi, wait for him to reveal himself as the organized killer behind these crimes. An organized killer would have his alibi solid. Offer it up smooth as you like. To an organized killer, their story is important. The lie requires embellishment, swathes of detail to convince, and plenty of imagery, feeling, and padding to cover the little black vein of truth that hides the heart of their tale. I wait for Seán to give me his.
After a moment, he leans in, a desperate note to his voice. “I don’t have an alibi for that night. Please, this can’t happen again, Frankie. You have my DNA on file. Run it against this guy; do whatever you do to link people to crimes. Rule me out.”