by Lisa Alber
“I won’t stay long,” she said. “I’m looking for someone. Plus Liam asked for tea.”
She rubbed at the back of her neck and came away with fingers smudged with blood. A miniscule amount, but it startled Alan, who pulled her toward the peat fire for a closer look. He felt the locals observing them, ready to pass on the word later. On the return run, he might learn that he’d snogged Merrit in full view of his customers.
She pulled her hair to one side and obliged him by leaning into the firelight. She continued to peruse the room, now on tiptoes. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a scratch.”
A perfect line of abraded skin rounded the back of Merrit’s neck. “Who did this?”
She pointed toward Bijou and Gemma.
“Her?” Alan said.
FOUR
DANNY SETTLED HIS EXPRESSION into a neutral mask. Unflappable. Detached. Objective. Yet inside he felt a squirm clear into his bone marrow. He’d never get used to death. If Danny could, he’d escape into the fog that shrouded the thickets. He’d blend into the murkiness, his own version of Grey Man, he supposed.
Instead, he settled his gaze onto the far edge of the pasture in which he stood, toward a few lingering shops and pubs marked the edge of the village proper. He’d sent one of his men to manage the gawkers who had already started to gather. Detective Officer Simon O’Neil and some of the others strung crime scene tape. Other than that, Danny had the scene to himself and a few minutes to look on his victim as more than a case number.
The boy lay as if he were sunbathing. He looked to be asleep, with an angelic smile and his eyelashes resting on the tender skin below his eyes. His pale skin held memories of life, still waited for his first shave. His chapped lips hadn’t started to draw back.
Danny’s forensic suit crinkled as he stooped to get a closer look at the boy’s head. Blood had dribbled out of his hairline toward his ear, and Danny thought he could make out a lump on the side of the boy’s head.
This boy was too far from home, lost. This boy in his skinny black jeans laid out in front of grass bundles that stood almost as tall as Danny’s six-plus feet. What was a boy with three silver rings, a pierced eyebrow, and useless city boots doing in Blackie’s Pasture?
With a surreptitious glance at his men, Danny peeled off one of his gloves and reached toward the boy’s cheek with the back of a finger. The warmth startled him and he jerked back when the boy’s eyelids twitched. Heart thumping, Danny placed his hand on the boy’s chest and pressed down. Air wheezed out of the boy’s mouth. When Danny let up, the boy’s chest heaved on an inhalation.
“Jesus and Mary.” Danny scrambled for his mobile and dialed. “I need an ambulance.”
While he spoke, blue eyes, dulled but aware all the same, blinked up at him. Danny rang off and grabbed one of the boy’s hands. He had articulate hands, like an artist with slender fingers, or simply the hands of a sensitive boy.
Danny leaned over the boy, hoping that he found comfort in Danny’s presence. Please, let there be comfort.
“You’re okay. I’m here. You’ll be okay. An ambulance is coming.”
The boy continued blinking as if he’d already caught sight of his luminous afterlife. His mouth moved around words that slid past in an undecipherable mumble. His eyes closed but the half smile remained as his hand slipped to the ground.
“No,” Danny said. “No, no, no.”
He tilted the boy’s head back, pinched his nose shut, and blew two breaths into his mouth. The boy’s lips were so warm that he must be alive in there somewhere. A rush of chirping and flapping wings sailed over Danny as he proceeded to pump the boy’s chest. Birds, yes, call him back with your song. Danny grew lightheaded but he continued breathing and pumping.
Behind him, footsteps approached at a run. “Sir? Benjy the Bagger’s here.”
“Get him over here.” Danny was panting. “Tell him to forget his fecking cigarettes for once.”
“Ahern,” he heard a moment later, “what the bloody hell are you doing?”
Benjy, the state pathologist, shoved at Danny hard enough that he stumbled as he stood. He moved off, giving Benjy space to resuscitate the boy. Ten minutes later, Benjy checked his watch. “Death confirmed, 10:53 a.m.”
Danny watched as a small flock of sparrows hopped and fluttered about on top of the mounds of fodder. In one wave they rose, leaving one to flounder with a droopy wing. It flew a few feet with a lopsided flutter, only to crash-land in the grass next to the boy’s shoulder. Its head cocked toward Danny.
“Oh and here we are,” Benjy said, “a proper harbinger of death, this one. Sparrows carry the souls of the recently departed.”
“And you know this how?”
“Me sainted mother, God rest her soul.”
Benjy grinned and made a move toward the bird—a male with a brown head, black bib, and grey belly. Danny waved Benjy away. “Leave him alone. Let him find his wings again.”
“True or not, I swear there’s a hovering that hangs over some bodies. Sometimes I can feel it in the morgue like a lingering stain. And this victim? Worse than usual, poor soul.”
Danny breathed deep. What little dappling effect the sun had over the landscape had disappeared. A grey envelope of cloud passed over them, sealing them into its gloominess. The boy had looked straight at him, right into the murkiest part of his soul. Danny swallowed down a rookie’s urge to vomit.
Serious again, Benjy squinted up at him. “Sorry, Dan-o, I suspect there would have been no saving him even if an ambulance had arrived in time.”
“I checked his pulse, but I didn’t feel anything.”
“The carotid is a bigger pulse but it can be harder to find. And it doesn’t help that you’re wearing gloves. It’s not your fault.”
Oh, but it was. He should have checked the boy’s wrist when he didn’t feel a pulse on his carotid. Instead, he’d assumed he was looking at what he’d been told he’d find: a potential suspicious death. He’d let lingering family concerns distract him from his job.
“No identification, no mobile,” Benjy said.
Danny gazed down at the victim. Tall and gangly like he, Danny, had been as a youth. And like Petey looked to be growing into.
“He looks seventeen at most.” Danny averted his gaze once again. “A boy.”
Besides the obvious puzzle of a city boy laid out in the middle of Blackie’s Pasture, Danny sensed that the hovering something Benjy had mentioned had already insinuated itself into local life. Into his local life.
Danny strode away from the silage bundles, noting their expanse of shiny black plastic. There were three of them, and they sat in the pasture like entombed beasts ready to burst out of their shells. He shook the image out of his head. He didn’t like his imagination sneaking up on him like this. He’d spent too much time alone in the year since he’d moved out of the house. He had to stick with reality. A boy—a lost boy—had died in his arms.
“Sir,” Detective Officer O’Neil called after him. “Crime scene tape all hung now.”
“Better get started on the door-to-door,” Danny said. “And we’ll need a sketch artist too. I’d like a picture for the newspaper.”
He continued on toward the other end of the field, nicknamed Blackie’s Pasture after a swaybacked gelding that had befriended everyone who cut across his territory. The horse was long gone but the name had stuck. It was only a five-minute walk back to the plaza but this side of the village was sparsely laid out and not well lit at night.
Two men stood next to a harvester that stank of petrol and grease, and Danny imagined it belching its waste into the otherwise crystalline air. He used the image to help him regain his footing: detective sergeant, remote, official.
It didn’t work. “Which one of you sorry bastards found the boy?” he said.
The men smoked and stared. The older one performed a quick sign of the cross before nodding askance toward the younger one. Danny knew the look of an old codger who wanted nothing to do with e
vents. He’d seen that flinty gaze and those sucked-in lips dozens of times over the years. Danny turned to the younger man, who extinguished his cigarette with his fingers and tucked it behind an ear.
“That would be me,” the man said. He introduced himself as Milo, owner of an operation called Milo’s Silos, a for-hire grass harvester. He pointed out the man next to him as the owner of Blackie’s Pasture, who had arrived after Milo called him with the sorry news about the death. “I work all through Clare and Galway,” Milo said. “Quite the thriving business, I have.”
“That’s just plummy,” Danny said. “Tell me, did you check the boy’s pulse?”
“What the hell for? Even I know not to touch a dead body.”
Danny gritted his teeth. “The boy was alive. Maybe he could have been saved if you’d called an ambulance when you bloody well found him.”
Milo’s already buggy eyes went buggier. He stepped back, holding out his palms. “You can’t blame me—”
Catching himself, Danny drew in a long breath. Milo may be more stupid than a box of hair, but Danny couldn’t blame him. Danny blamed himself instead.
“Fine, let’s get on with it.” The remnants of a shiner told Danny that this git spent a good portion of his profits in the pubs. “A little late in the season harvesting this field, aren’t you?”
The field owner made a spitting noise.
In a subdued voice Milo stated that he’d had a family emergency this week. “I got part of the harvest done last week, and what’s today? Wednesday? Grant me leave to take care of me poor ma, will you?”
The owner grunted what sounded like “fecking bollocks.”
Upon closer questioning, Milo confirmed that he hadn’t visited the pasture since the previous Friday when he’d finished work for the weekend.
“And neither of you had so much as peeked at the pasture since then?” Danny said.
“And why would we?” Milo said. “I had me business, and this bag of bones lives with his cows over toward Doolin.”
“So you with your pub mates never take to hauling off to a dark pasture for a business transaction of some sort?” Danny asked.
“Transaction? As in drugs?”
“You tell me,” Danny said.
Milo’s googly eyes satisfied Danny that the man was as daft as he’d surmised. Still, he took down their names and numbers, and promised that one of his officers would be speaking to them in depth at a later time. Meanwhile, they agreed to wait for the scenes of crime techs to arrive for fingerprinting.
In his notebook, Danny jotted the date and time of their conversation. He’d have to take care with this case because his career wasn’t exactly in high gear these days. Last year’s disastrous investigation, the one that had caused the rift between him and Merrit, had all but sunk him in the eyes of his superintendent.
Across Blackie’s Pasture, a spasm of surprise jerked at the guards now gazing down at Lost Boy. A moment later, the sparrow flew out of the cluster.
“Jaysus,” Benjy said when Danny returned. “You missed it. That bird hopped onto the victim’s chest, chirped a bit, and then flew away right as rain. Took our Lost Boy’s spirit away with it, I’ve no doubt.”
FIVE
IN THE PLOUGH AND Trough, Gemma turned the milky blue stone over. It glowed from within as if it wanted to impart its knowledge to her. The moment she’d caught sight of it out on the plaza, she’d known it was a sign. Why, she wasn’t sure, and this was what had frightened her. If she didn’t know why, then her impulse to rip it off the woman’s neck must stem from the bottomless well. That scary place, the place inside Gemma’s head where she had long ago stored the bad stuff that bided its time until her memory decided to start working again.
“Excuse me,” a woman said, “I’d like my necklace back, please.”
Gemma turned toward the wall, still fingering the stone. The comforting mass of the pub dog snuffled and adjusted itself against her back. Unfortunately, she’d have to engage with this woman because answers were required. She hated the inevitable necessity of communication with strangers that set her bones to feeling like glass and her skin to feeling like parchment.
Above and behind her like towering speakers, several voices rose at once. Dermot loudest of all, telling the woman to stand back. Gemma heard the shock in the woman’s voice when she said, “You?”
“Back off from Gemma, if you’d please,” Dermot said.
“No,” the woman said, “I won’t. She stole something precious from me, and I want an explanation. From her first, and then from you. How dare you”—she lowered her voice but Gemma’s acute hearing caught her words—“walk up to Liam like that, full of accusations?”
Another voice, male, softer and with a slight accent, called the dog. “Bijou, come.”
Bijou. Gemma smiled toward the wall so no one could see. Maybe the dog was a sign. A good sign. She knew enough French from listening to language tapes to know that the dog’s name translated to Gem or Jewel. Someday, she’d open her mouth and speak French; it would come out in a perfect stream. Dermot didn’t understand her need to study a foreign language. She’d never explained that someday it might be easier to talk in a new language. To start fresh.
She snapped back to the conversation above her—the inevitable pull of the world.
“Gemma?” Dermot said. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
She concentrated on the pendant that glimmered in her palm, observing how the scant light played ghost games within it. Here she was, causing Dermot problems once again. She could hear it in his voice—the you’re-my-burden gruffness.
I wasn’t going to keep it, she signed with her hand. Ask her where she got it.
Dermot stooped and lowered his voice. He spoke in the careful tone he often used with her. “What’s wrong? You don’t steal.”
She held the necklace up in an open palm toward Dermot, watching his face. He tried to hide his uneasiness beneath nonchalance, but he couldn’t stop his skin color from fading to ash. He turned over the pendant, examining the silverwork.
And?
Nothing, he replied in sign language.
Ah. Switching to sign language gave him away. He often signed when he wanted privacy or to hide something. And right this second she could tell by the prissy way Dermot pursed his lips that he was hiding his emotions. He was her dear brother, but he was also a smidge on the stodgy side for a thirty-six-year-old man.
“Oh, okay then,” came the soft male voice again. “Go on back if you must. Good dog.”
Bijou returned to the pillow. Her tail whapped against the suede, and the scent of cedar rose into the air when her squat body dropped with a huff. Gemma reached back to pet Bijou. The dog’s tawny fur tracked smooth over burly shoulders and lean waist. Gemma felt the ripple of skin over ribs before her hand reached well-muscled thighs. This dog was in excellent condition, and Gemma respected the owner’s diligence to his caretaking duties.
Dermot stood. “Gemma apologizes. That’s not her usual behavior, believe me, right, Gems?”
Because she felt guilty about causing Dermot problems, because the other man was a good dog owner, and because, in the end, she was curious about the woman, she steadied herself and turned around. Her heart accelerated and sweat dribbled out of her armpits, but she congratulated herself for, if not making eye contact, at least letting her gaze rest on the woman’s chin.
“Good job,” Dermot said. “Like going on stage, right? Worse beforehand, but once you’re there, you’re fine.”
So you say, Gemma signed.
Dermot held up the stone toward one of the sconces and it brightened like an eye. The broken chain dangled below his hand. “This is pretty, Gemma, but if you wanted me to buy you a necklace, why didn’t you ask? Of course, I will buy you a new chain for it, Miss—?”
Introductions circled between the three of them standing above her. They hurried through them as if they didn’t care to stay acquainted. The dog owner, Alan, was also the pub ow
ner. The woman, Merrit, was American. “And Gemma McNamara meet Alan and Merrit,” Dermot said.
Merrit said hello, and Alan reached out to give Bijou a pat. Over by the bar, pint glasses clanked and someone howled with laughter.
Ask her where she got the necklace, Gemma signed.
Dermot returned the broken necklace to Merrit. “She would like to know where you got the necklace.”
“Oh, is that all?” Merrit’s face brightened when she smiled. Gemma liked her for not treating her like a curiosity and for stooping to answer her. She didn’t raise her voice or slow her speech either. Her hair glinted with red highlights even in the shadows, and her light hazel eyes glowed from within like the moonstone, except with a green glow rather than blue.
“I got the necklace from my mom,” she said, “who’d gotten it from my father.”
“That’s the simple version,” Alan said. “Most interesting is who Merrit’s father is.”
“And why,” Merrit said, “must I explain when we both know that the minute I leave the whole lot of you locals will rush to confess my many sins to Gemma and Dermot?”
“Come, Bijou,” Alan said. “Time for a walk.”
Eighty pounds of dog flesh sat up again and leaned against Gemma, then followed Alan’s stiff form out of the pub.
“Sorry,” Merrit said to Gemma. “Village politics. Long story short, I came to Ireland to meet my biological father and stayed. Or, am staying for the moment.” She paused. “My dad is Liam the Matchmaker. I’m the grand usurper and demon seed, especially because his son, Kevin, moved away last year pretty much because of me and hasn’t been seen since. He was adopted, and here I arrive, a blood relation—anyhow, I’m suspected of casting him out with a hex, I’m sure, not to mention wrecking a marriage and bringing murder to the village, which of course I didn’t. Not really, anyhow. You’d think people would lighten up after a while.”
Merrit smiled and shrugged, but Gemma caught the discomfort beneath the nonchalant gesture. “To answer your question, my father the matchmaker gave my mother this necklace as a love gesture back in the 1970s, and I inherited it when she died.”
