Whispers in the Mist

by Lisa Alber

  Gemma relaxed back into her car seat. Thank you for telling me the truth. I understand.

  “I thought you might.” A cemetery with hundreds of Celtic crosses slipped past their windows. So picturesque, so peaceful. Merrit loosened her grip on the steering wheel. “Besides, you could use the help, couldn’t you? There’s a lot going on what with the graffiti, your cousin, Brendan too. Not to mention the whole thing with McIlvoy and your mom. But how is it all connected?”

  I’m not leaving until I know. I don’t care what Dermot says.

  Gemma turned away from Merrit and grabbed a clean tissue from her pack.

  “Thanks for letting me drag you along. I’d forgotten what it feels like to hang out with someone who doesn’t know me, or think she knows me. I had a friend in the village—Marcus—but he’s not around right now.”

  By the time they arrived in Ennis, Gemma had wiped her eyes and returned to blinking at nothing in particular. She was out of the car and walking toward TK Paint & Décor before Merrit had opened her car door, but her bravado faltered when she reached the entrance.

  Catching up with her, Merrit quipped, “Okay, let me do the talking,” and was gratified to see Gemma’s lips soften into an almost-smile.

  A pudgy man with the roundest face Merrit had ever seen stepped away from a display of color swatches. “’Allo, and what’ll I be helping you with today?”

  “Are you the in-house color consultant?” Merrit said.

  “That would be me wife, the K in TK Paint & Décor. Kathleen!”

  Kathleen stood a head taller than her husband and just as pudgy. She wiped orange-spattered hands on her smock as she approached. Gemma wandered toward the swatches.

  As soon as Merrit mentioned the word graffiti Kathleen clapped her hands in delight and said how much she relished working with artists. “We have a fine line of spray paints that you can use on masonite board, plywood, canvas, you name it.”

  “Not graffiti as art, unfortunately. Here, let me show you.”

  Merrit led Kathleen outside. Ripping away the garbage bag that was still taped to the car door, she explained that she was new to Lisfenora—a year but that was nothing by Irish standards—and was hoping for some clues about the paint. Maybe it would help her narrow down who had vandalized her car.

  “Oh, love, that’s a shame. Why, look at that. How interesting. Your vandal used a paintbrush, not a spray can. I can tell you right now that he’s no artist.”

  “I could have told you that,” Merrit said.

  “Not for the reason you think—the shoddy penmanship, not an inch of creative flair to be seen. I’m after telling you no graffiti artist in his right mind would use a paintbrush or this type of paint. This is a semi-gloss for pity’s sake. And an inferior brand if I’m not mistaken.”

  Kathleen scraped at the paint. “Just as I thought. Already flaking away. Well!”

  By then, Gemma had caught up with them.

  “What does it mean?” Merrit said.

  “This is interior paint. Your average wall-painting paint. Won’t stand up to the weather. And this particular hue—it’s been out of fashion for a few years now. The good thing is that a car shop should be able to fix you right up, good as new.”

  Kathleen patted Merrit’s shoulder. “Poor you—the village slapper, are you? And American too, by the sounds of it. Ah well, live and let live I always say.”

  Gemma didn’t bother to hide her grin as they drove away. Merrit didn’t mind that it came at her expense.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ELLEN TOSSED ASIDE HER novel, dismissing its romanticism as pure bollocks. She couldn’t concentrate. Earlier, Danny had bundled the children off to his car and reminded her that Gemma and Dermot needed to find a new place to stay. She still didn’t understand what the fuss was about. He didn’t live here anymore, and it wasn’t like she had any connection to his investigation. But that was the least of her worries.

  During confession the previous day—the first in months—Father Dooley had suggested that her recent behavior was her final wake-up call, that now was the time to reconcile with her daughter Beth’s death and to mend her marriage. “What’s next for you?” he’d asked.

  “Yes, what’s next for me?” she said under her breath.

  She’d fixated on the word behavior. Her behavior. Bad behavior. She’d wanted Danny to catch her, and she’d longed for him to hear her. She’d done everything but scream in his face, hadn’t she? She felt as mute as Gemma, signaling from the bottom of a pit.

  She pulled her diary out of her robe pocket and tried to jot her agitation away with a diary entry, but it didn’t work and a few minutes later she wandered toward the kitchen where Gemma had retreated after Merrit, of all people, had dropped her off. Merrit couldn’t help herself, could she? She had to link herself to Danny, even if only through Ellen’s houseguest.

  Shaking her head in annoyance, Ellen peeked in at Gemma. Gemma waved and went back to washing dishes. No conversation to be had there, poor thing. Ellen continued through the living room and into her bedroom to hide her diary away, checking on the kittens while she was there. On her return trip to the living room, she peered into Beth’s room. The room had a new smell to it now, a combination of the fungal odor that emanated from the sleeping bags and the minty chemicals from toothpaste and shaving cream.

  She inhaled the scent of the living. This room did have life to it. It deserved life. Danny had been correct to urge her to yield the room back to the living, to their warm-hearted and rambunctious Mandy, who currently shared a bedroom with Petey.

  Outside, a wall of fog hung in front of the windows. Shivering, she pulled the curtains closed, not wanting to look into darkness anymore.

  Maybe it was time to crawl back up to the light. She opened a bureau drawer. She’d start with Beth’s toddler jeans, brand-new and worthy of the donation box.

  She’d made it through half a drawer when a bang from the front of the house startled her.

  “Dermot, you returned?” she called as she headed toward the living room. “We need to chat about your staying here.”

  Tuesday

  No one ever knew his own father.

  Theodore Alois Buckley

  THIRTY-FIVE

  DANNY SAT ON HIS shabby couch with a plastic action hero digging into his thigh. Superintendent Clarkson stood over him, but Danny saw him as if through a backwards telescope: tiny, distant, blurred. Clarkson’s mouth moved but his words didn’t translate.

  Just after midnight Danny had received the call from Dermot McNamara, who’d still had Danny’s card in his pocket. The chirrup-ing mobile had jerked Danny out of an exhausted wasteland of a dream, a dream that featured white limbs stretching out of silage bundles and skeletonized sparrows picking at rotting flesh.

  Now, a voice broke through Danny’s daze. “Go, we have this,” O’Neil said. “You see to Ellen in the hospital.”

  Somewhere in the background, amidst the industrious bustle of the scenes of crime officers, Dermot’s voice rose with high-pitched agony. “Where’s Gemma?”

  Danny’s knees wobbled as he stood. They felt as shaky as his thoughts, jumping from the mundane to the practical in confused leaps. The kittens needed a caretaker; Mandy and Petey would be heartbroken if their pets died. What about the kids? He’d have to hire a nanny, or Grandpap Marcus could move back in with them if he’d managed to maintain his sobriety. Of course, Danny would move back home now. How strange to think of himself back in the marital bed.

  He stared at the jumble of purses and backpacks piled near the front door. Someone had ransacked them. Lipsticks, books, and wallets littered the floor.

  “The intruder was looking for something,” he managed to say before Clarkson’s hand landed on his shoulder. With a little shove he ordered Danny to go with the ambulance. But Danny didn’t want to go with the ambulance. He could wait hours at the buzzing and claustrophobic hospital in Ennis, hoping for word on his wife’s injuries, or he could help track down Ge
mma while waiting for word on his wife’s injuries. He could drink bad coffee in a forlorn waiting room or he could drink bad coffee while helping find the person who’d laid waste to what was left of his marriage.

  The paramedics had immobilized Ellen’s neck in a thick brace and attached an oxygen mask. On the gurney, she appeared impossibly young, her skin pale as an infant’s. Danny concentrated on her eyelids, smooth and still, rather than her matted hair or the bloody rivulets dried to her neck and face. He blew on her eyelids, hoping to see them twitch. A twitch would be a hopeful sign, he thought.

  “Off with you then,” one of the technicians said.

  Ellen had been conscious when he’d arrived. At the sight of him, she breathed “my fault” then slipped into unconsciousness. She’d been waiting for him, he knew this, and her strength of will so long buried under depression made him want to laugh and cry and feck all who knew what else.

  He slapped the paramedic on the back and stepped out of the way. Danny kept slapping at nothing for a few beats before letting his arm drop to his side. Within a minute the ambulance was gone with siren blaring. Danny pivoted toward the master bedroom. The closet door stood open. He dropped to his knees. Almost weeping with relief, he picked up the kittens. Their little claws grabbed at the towel they slept on and dragged it with them. Carefully Danny unhooked them and snuggled them each into a pocket of his jacket. Safe. They were safe.

  He tossed the towel aside. Ellen’s diary stared up at him. He grabbed it up and shoved it into his waistband.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” Clarkson said from behind him.

  Danny shouldered him aside and strode outside, away from the metallic stink emanating from the kitchen and the shush of fingerprint powder brushes, away from the tossed drawers and emptied cabinets. Thank Christ the children weren’t here. Thank Christ Merrit had run down the track from Liam’s house to Fox Cottage to watch the children, unheeding of how she appeared in her bathrobe and Wellies.

  But then, perhaps with a full house, Ellen’s assailant wouldn’t have dared enter. Not to mention, perhaps if he, Danny, still lived at home—

  But then he couldn’t go there. The guilt was already too much without going there.

  Danny turned in a circle. He cursed the fog that had swallowed up the wailing ambulance. He cursed the house lights that lit the ground around him. Outside their circle of light and sound, the unnatural stillness of pre-dawn was a wall of silence.

  “Ahern, you’re out of here.”

  Danny turned full circle again, staring into the fog, expecting—hoping—that Grey Man would solidify out of the murk so he could beat it, him, whatever, to a bloody pulp. He’d predicted a Morrigan third, hadn’t he? To go along with the three graffiti messages. And he’d been right. His sense that something more lurked out there had come true as if he’d willed it into being. He’d warned Merrit to be careful when he should have remembered the hovering sparrow. Lost Boy had tried to warn him to take care of his own.

  “’Allo, Ahern!” Clarkson barked. “Get the hell out of here.”

  Danny snapped back to the hushed scene. He didn’t like this, being on the other side of the violence. Powerless, flayed—a victim.

  “Also, I don’t need to tell you that you’re too close,” Clarkson said. “You’re not to so much as burp near the evidence. You’re off the current investigations. Hell, best to take it a step further: You’re on compassionate leave as of right now.”

  Danny blinked, confused for a moment. His thoughts stuttered back to the larger picture and its various connections. Gemma had been staying with Ellen, and Gemma was missing. Gemma, Dermot, and Toby were siblings, and Brendan was part of the equation too. Of course this assault was connected to the deaths. It had to be. Didn’t it?

  O’Neil stepped off Danny’s porch with a large brown evidence bag. The alabaster statue of entwined dancers appeared through the bag’s clear plastic window. Aware of Danny’s stare, he tucked the bag closer to his body and hurried it into the trunk of his car. Too late, Danny almost yelled. Too fecking late! He’d noticed the red-stained implement as soon as he’d entered the house. He’d almost pulled Ellen’s blood-soaked hairs off it in a nonsensical fit of shame. Shame that this could happen in his house.

  “We bought that statue in Italy,” he said. “Our last great splurge before the children started coming. Lots of alabaster in Italy, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you know. We bought that statue from an artisan out in the countryside somewhere. I can’t remember where, one of those Tuscan hill towns. Ellen would know. She’s good with names.”

  He broke off, detesting the sound of his vague and rambling comments. To think, earlier in the evening he’d laughed with his children as they’d eaten dinner at the Plough, where the crows and everyone else had fussed over them as usual. The children hadn’t noticed anything amiss with Dermot and Seamus slaughtering themselves in a silent battle of the pints while Malcolm tried to rally everyone’s spirits before declaring it useless and taking his leave.

  Back at Fox Cottage, he’d had a devil of a time settling them down, and had just drifted off himself when he got the call from Dermot.

  “Ahern!” Clarkson said. “Go.”

  A yowl of pain erupted out of the predawn fog. Dermot appeared, flailing from one guard to another with O’Neil in tow. “She left her mobile!” he bellowed. “She wouldn’t have left her mobile. Why won’t anyone listen to me! If no one’s going to search for her, then I will.”

  In the midst of his panic, his gaze landed on Danny. He pushed past O’Neil and shoved a mobile into Danny’s face. “What’s this number here, in her contacts list? This is a Clare exchange, isn’t it?”

  The number loomed into Danny’s sightline then disappeared when Clarkson swiped the phone from Dermot. “We need to get him out of here too,” he said.

  “I’ll take him back to Fox Cottage,” Danny said. “That’s the easiest. Where’s he going to find lodging at this time of night?”

  “Ahern.”

  Danny ignored Clarkson’s warning tone and Dermot’s continued bellowing. “It’s fine,” Danny said. “No problem. He was Ellen’s guest. Now he’ll be mine.”

  “Go then, but I’m ordering you not to get involved with the investigation. None of your bullshit.”

  Fine. No bullshit from him. He was on leave.

  Danny pulled Dermot to his car by the elbow. “Detour first. That was Alan’s number on Gemma’s mobile.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE BANGING STARTED INSIDE Alan’s dream of peeking into a window with his fists bloodying themselves against the glass, and then he was awake with someone banging on his front door and Bijou woofing in her deep-throated way, sounding like a guard dog despite her friendly intentions. He checked the clock. Jaysus, half four.

  “Open the bloody door,” Dermot called.

  So Alan did. Dermot pushed past him and Bijou. Danny followed.

  “Gemma!” Dermot called.

  Sleep-fogged, Alan followed Dermot as he raced through the small house and pulled back the tangle of blankets on his bed. “I don’t care if you’ve had at her, just tell me she’s here.”

  “If Gemma were here,” Alan said, “she wouldn’t be hiding.”

  If Gemma were here. Alan backtracked from the thought. “What the bloody hell is he on about?” he said to Danny.

  “Your phone number is in her mobile. Did Gemma text you tonight?”

  “No. I gave her my number in case she ever needs a lift.”

  Danny’s face was a series of craggy planes outlined by deep grooves that reminded Alan of the limestone terrain he hiked most days with Bijou: hardened by time, eroded by nature. It looked like it wouldn’t take much to crack him apart. Meanwhile, Dermot searched through closets and behind and underneath furniture. He’d already cracked, that much was obvious.

  “I knew it. That fecking McIlvoy ventured out of his lair and snatched Gemma. He’s got her, I’m telling you, and we have to do something. Now.”<
br />
  “I don’t understand,” Alan said.

  “The man who killed our mother!” Spittle flew out of Dermot’s mouth. “He’s here somewhere, and he took Gemma. He saw her, and he grabbed her.”

  “Why?”

  Dermot pushed Alan against the wall. More spittle sprayed out of his mouth. “Because Gemma saw him kill our mom. Why the fecking hell do you think she’s so paralyzed in life? She suppressed it all and went silent.” He stumbled backwards, choking on his pain. “She could put that bastard away if she’d just get her memories back.”

  Without thinking, Alan crossed himself, that old habit from a bygone era in his life. The gesture didn’t comfort him, but Bijou’s weight leaning against his leg did.

  Danny stirred, weight shifting from foot to foot. He spoke in a low tone. Alan knew that tone well. “You complete and utter gobshite.”

  Dermot didn’t flinch, didn’t seem to notice when Danny stood over him. Muscles twitched in his forearms. “You sleep in my house, put my family in danger, and now my wife’s in the hospital because you couldn’t be bothered to tell me that Gemma witnessed your mom’s murder?”

  Alan stepped between them. “I’ve got Dermot. You go to the hospital.”

  “Fine. Hold out your hands.” Danny felt around in his pockets, handed two kittens to Alan, and strode to the front door. “I knew that bloody sparrow had something in store for me.”

  Outside Alan’s house, Danny paused before ducking into his car, trying to expel all emotion with loud breaths. He needed to think straight. Needed to set aside Dermot’s utter shite for brains. Think.

  He propped his mobile on the car roof and punched in O’Neil’s number. “Here’s what needs to happen.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DANNY GULPED DOWN A cup of bitter coffee while watching his men shuffle out of the incident room after a morning meeting he hadn’t been invited to because he was “off duty until further notice.” They lifted fingers in vague salutes as they passed. Most, he could tell, preferred to give him his space after what had happened to Ellen, but he still caught a few shoulder pats and murmured condolences.