The Last Night at Tremore Beach

by Mikel Santiago

  Clem descended on the kids. She hugged them for a long time, examined every inch of them, and showered them in kisses. Only then did it actually hit her that she was in Ireland.

  “Jip was the one who told us we had to run, and Judie understood right away. She told us to run out the back door,” Beatrice told her mother, as my father and a stupefied Niels looked on. “Jip led the way. He said we had to run toward the rocks and hide in these tiny caves. We stayed there for a long time, and then we heard gunshots. I started to cry. I thought they’d killed Judie, but Jip wouldn’t let me leave the cave. Eventually, we saw someone coming for us. It was Dad.”

  Clem and Niels were tanned from their vacation, but their faces showed the wear of not having slept much the last two days. In a way, I was glad to see them. And I’m glad Niels didn’t wait outside the room. Instead, he came in, shook my hand, and asked me how I was doing. I told him I was okay. The last time I saw him, I’d busted his lip. This time, I was the one with the busted lip and broken ribs. When I said it out loud, the three of us laughed.

  “I’m still not clear on what happened. The police haven’t explained much at all to us. Just that there was a shooting at your neighbor’s house, and some men tried to rob the place. Some television reporter was saying there was a shoot-out and your neighbors were hurt. . . .”

  Everyone wanted the story. But the real story was hard to explain. Besides, I was still coming to grips with what had happened myself.

  Did anyone know anything about Leo and Marie? The last thing I remember in those dizzying minutes after the police and ambulance arrived was Judie applying pressure to Marie’s wounds while I rushed out to find the children on the beach. I returned in time to see both loaded into ambulances. Marie was in bad shape. She was as pale as the moon and had an oxygen mask over her face. Before any of us could say anything, the ambulance sped off. In the distance, over the rise on Bill’s Peak, I saw another set of ambulances headed toward Leo’s house. I’d left him lying on the floor of his living room with two gunshot wounds. Now, no one could tell me whether he was alive or dead.

  My dad asked around, but when he came back to the room he informed me that my neighbors were no longer in Dungloe. “They’ve been taken someplace else. I’m not sure where or why.”

  More unanswered questions.

  “They said you’d been taken to the hospital the day before, that you’d had some kind of nervous breakdown and you left without telling anyone. Is that true?”

  That part of the story was especially interesting to the detectives. “Tell us exactly how you ended up in town since you were supposed to spend the night in the hospital for observation.”

  I didn’t lie. I told them I left because I’d gotten a bad feeling that something was about to happen to my family. I told them every detail about my trip from Dungloe to Clenhburran, including the part about the young man and his grandmother who gave me a ride. I told them about my stops at Andy’s and at Judie’s boarding house, where I borrowed a bike. I told them every verifiable detail, including where I had fallen off the bike, and the criminals had picked me up on the side of the road. How they’d immediately raised my suspicions and, how, luckily, I’d been able to warn Leo and Marie in time. The detectives wrote everything down but kept giving each other sideways glances. “Tell me more about this ‘bad feeling’ you got.”

  I saw them talking later with Dr. Ryan and John Levey, the hospital psychiatrist. Both doctors were shaking their heads. I couldn’t hear them, but I could make out the gist of the conversation: There was no reason to suspect I’d done anything wrong, but the story didn’t completely add up.

  Maybe that’s why there were two officers posted at my hospital door until late that day. They finally let Judie in, and we were together in the room, along with my dad and Niels. Clem had taken the kids for some fresh air after they gave their statements to the police. She, Niels, and my dad had thanked Judie endlessly for the brave way she whisked the kids out of harm’s way but stayed behind to risk her life and face the criminals. But everyone kept asking her the same thing: How did you know they were coming to hurt you? How could you know?

  “I just . . . got a bad feeling,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Besides, we’ve been hearing a lot of things about robberies lately. They recently ransacked a house near Fortown while the owners slept. Things like that. I just saw that van and something told me there was danger.”

  “Well,” my father said, “thank God for that instinct, Ms. Gallagher.”

  THE DETECTIVES bought the story. Maybe it was Judie, with her bandaged, angelic face who finally convinced them.

  I later learned that doctors Ryan, Levey, and Kauffman issued a joint statement about my so-called “premonitions.” They called my visions a “fortunate” coincidence “that was, naturally, completely disconnected from reality.” The report also mentioned my visit to the Dungloe police station and the interview with Sgt. Ciara Douglas, who corroborated my testimony: “He was genuinely concerned about the safety of his home. He seemed a little paranoid to me. But maybe that’s what helped him survive.”

  “It’s an isolated incident,” a neighbor told Ireland’s RTE television. “Nothing like this had ever happened here before. Although there’s talk of a gang of Eastern Europeans. What I do know is it’s not some B.S. story made up by the alarm companies. It’s a real threat, apparently, and our small, isolated communities need to be better protected. Or our residents have to be ready to defend themselves the way Mr. Harper did. You want my opinion? I’m glad he did what he did. Four fewer scumbags in the world.”

  In the evening, other detectives came around and told us Leo and Marie had been transferred to a hospital in Derry. They were alive, though Marie was in intensive care.

  “Is she going to make it?”

  “We won’t know until morning. In the meantime, I’d like to go over a few statements your neighbor Leo made, if you don’t mind. . . .”

  There were four bodies to account for, after all. The detectives didn’t leave until after midnight.

  THE NEXT DAY something changed. The police took off, saying they’d had some “new information.”

  They also told us Marie was out of danger. “She’s still in a fragile state, but her condition is improving.”

  We were allowed to go home the next morning but were told not to leave the country for the next few days. There were still questions to clear up and probably a visit to the courthouse.

  Clem and Niels stayed another day, until Judie and I were released from the hospital. I told them they should take the kids and return to Amsterdam. The sooner they put some distance between themselves and this place, that house, the sooner they’d be able to heal. I promised the kids I’d follow them soon.

  “You swear, Dad?” Jip said.

  “I do, baby. As soon as this whole mess is cleared up, I’ll meet you guys in Amsterdam.”

  It was hard to say goodbye, as the taxi idled in front of Judie’s hostel. Half the town had turned out. A few friends Beatrice and Jip had made during their short but intense summer in Donegal came to say goodbye with flowers and other little trinkets. Laura O’Rourke, Mrs. Douglas, and half the regulars from Fagan’s had come out, too. No one asked too many questions. At this point, there was an official story—Thieves meet an untimely end during an armed robbery in Donegal—and neither Judie nor I were going to contradict it.

  Alarm vendors and self-defense courses all of a sudden were getting more business. Even Mr. Durran had started selling motion-sensing outdoor lights. The teenage store clerk from Andy’s gave a nervous television interview and said the four criminals had given her the creeps. They had four espressos, and one of them had left his pack of cigarettes on the table. At least her story helped clear up any suspicions about me. She said she remembered me coming in, asking about the four and rushing out again.

  On Sunday July 21 the Irish Times ran a story in which a police commissioner was quoted as saying that he doubted the four were “co
mmon criminals,” and that INTERPOL was looking into the case. He was sure they’d have more information soon.

  If there was ever new information, it never made it into print.

  DAD STAYED A WEEK, spending the night at the hostel with Judie and me. The old curmudgeon was gone. He became another person overnight. He made breakfast every day and forbade Judie from working at the store. “I’ll take care of everything, dammit, you’re in no condition to be working.” Maybe all he needed in life was a reason to care about something. I was glad to see him back to his old self, and I convinced him it was okay for him to go home at the end of the week. I’d be by to visit soon.

  Meanwhile, there was no news from Leo or Marie. I called the hospital in Derry and was told they’d been transferred. “The woman was stable, and they left in an ambulance toward Dublin two days ago,” the hospital operator said. Destination unknown.

  Their cell phones had been disconnected. I tried the detectives, and they told me Leo and Marie had gone to make a statement at the courthouse in Dublin and to meet with members of the US Embassy. The case was in “someone else’s hands,” he said.

  “Whose hands?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Harper. But I can tell you two things: The people who tried to kill you were no common criminals, like the newspapers claim. They weren’t your average thieves. And your friends? They weren’t your average neighbors, either.”

  A MONTH WENT BY. The town returned to normal. I stayed on with Judie at the hostel. My house, as well as Leo’s, were still considered active crime scenes and were off-limits. There was no word from Leo and Marie. None. Not a single phone call.

  ON AUGUST 26, police took the crime tape off the doors of both houses. Imogen Fitzgerald went to work and got me out of my lease without any penalty. She also got a cleaning crew in there, and in a couple days, they left it like nothing had ever happened. She set me up with an international moving company and on September 15, I’d hand the keys over and say goodbye to Clenhburran.

  Judie hadn’t said anything about coming with me to Amsterdam, and I respected her silence. We were both still hurt. Weak. Many a night, I woke up with a shout, in a cold sweat. Tom would show up at the foot of my bed in a dream, intent on revenge, the ax still wedged in his skull, his mouth and eyes twitching from the blow . . . Now, it was Judie who woke me up from my nightmares instead of the other way around. She would hold me and kiss me sweetly on the cheek, and after an hour or two, I could finally get back to sleep.

  THE WEEK before I was due to leave Ireland, I finally returned to the house. Judie wanted to come with me, but I told her I’d rather go alone. I needed to go alone.

  It was a gray and drizzly morning when I set foot back on Tremore Beach. The sight of the fence, rebuilt and braced while the cement set, sent shivers down my spine.

  I went around to the back of the house, where Tom’s corpse would have laid before they tagged him and bagged him. Imogen’s cleaning crew had painted the drain around the septic tank a brick red, perhaps to hide any blood they hadn’t been able to wash away. I stood there, at that de facto tomb, but I didn’t say a prayer. I thought back on that night. The sound of his skull cracking resonated in my memory.

  The house was still when I finally stepped inside, only the sound of rain pitter-pattering on the roof. The sliding door to the terrace had new glass. The living room furniture and rug had been removed. Imogen said it would be forever before anyone rented this house again, especially now that it had a backstory (not to mention it was expensive and remote). But it was a pretty house. Perfect for an artist looking for a hideaway.

  There were a couple of boxes in the attic from when I’d moved in. I brought them downstairs. There wasn’t much left to pack besides clothes, some books, and my instruments. I’d have it all sent to my studio in Amsterdam. I’d figure out what to do with it later. Pat had offered to let me stay at his house. He had called me the moment the news went out on the AP wire. Somehow (and I had my theory), the story had made the news back home: Composer Peter Harper injured in attempted robbery in coastal Ireland. It had been big news. I’d been described as some kind of hero who had defended his children and neighbors with an ax. Of course, the tabloids ate it up. And now Pat was getting a dozen calls a week about new projects for me. “Free publicity, Pete. (All it cost me was couple of broken ribs.) You can’t say no, now. You can smell the money coming in. Everyone wants your music. You have to get back to work. . . .”

  An hour later, I was sitting on the floor of the living room, packing up the final items. The rain had let up, and the sun was setting. The house was starting to get chilly, so I decided to get some firewood to start a fire. I came back with the remaining logs from the shed. Despite everything, I’d miss this place. Waking up in the morning and hearing the birds, the waves crashing. Chopping firewood and lighting the fireplace. Hell, even mowing the lawn. And watching Leo run up the beach and calling out to him to come in for a beer.

  I started piling the remaining kindling into the fireplace, as well as the stack of magazines next to the couch, a final act of warmth for this old house. Just as I lit the match and was reaching in to light it, something happened. A draft from the chimney blew out the match. And it was immediately followed by three solid knocks at the wooden front door.

  Thump, thump, thump. Three quick knocks.

  My heart jumped. I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be . . .

  They knocked again.

  I stood up and walked slowly across the room to the front door. I didn’t even bother asking who it was. What was the point? I turned the lock and opened the door.

  A person was waiting at the door. A person I knew. Soaked through and through. Wearing a smile.

  “Harper! Thank goodness you’re here,” said Teresa Malone, the mail carrier. “I was about to leave.”

  “Te . . . Teresa?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  She was wearing her rain gear, from head to toe. Her scooter, which I hadn’t heard with all the wind and rain, was parked out front next to my Volvo.

  “Judie told me you were here, and I thought I should, well . . . even though this place gives me the creeps. I don’t know how you got the courage up to come back here. Anyway, I got a package for you. I felt I should hand it to you in person.”

  She gave it to me, wrapped in a plastic bag. It was a small package with nothing but a simple phrase written on it: “Hand deliver to Peter Harper.”

  “It came inside another box addressed to the local post office. When I opened it, I found this.”

  I just stared at it.

  “Who sent it?”

  “There was no return address, but the postmark is British. The address to the post office was handwritten on the side.”

  “So . . . it must be someone from town. Someone who knows me. And you.”

  We looked at one another and smiled.

  “Have you heard anything from them?” Teresa asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Two moving trucks arrived at their house yesterday,” she said. “They took everything. I know because my cousin Chris knows one of the officers from Dungloe who had to go over there to oversee the move. He asked where the movers were taking all the stuff, and they told him it was going in storage. There was no final destination. But the message was clear: They weren’t ever coming back. I can’t blame them. After something like that? Still, I thought there would be some kind of goodbye. Something . . .”

  Her eyes turned to the package.

  “Thanks for bringing this over, Teresa.”

  “I hear you’re moving, too. Is that true?” she said, touching my arm. “I was so sorry to hear what happened to you and your children. All of us in town are still horrified. Promise me you’ll say goodbye before you go.”

  “I promise.” I said.

  I smiled goodbye and watched her walk back to her scooter in the rain. She beeped twice as she turned and headed back toward Bill’s Peak.

  I closed the door, lit t
he fire, and opened the package.

  There was a letter inside.

  I leaned in to the light from the fireplace, unfolded it, and read it.

  Peter,

  I wish I had more time to write, but I don’t know where you’ll be in a few months, nor where I will be. And I wanted to make sure you got the explanation you deserve. I’m not allowed to contact you, and I’m writing to you almost in secret, but I feel obliged to do it. I owe you and your family a great debt, and I feel you should at least know the truth.

  First, I hope your and Judie’s injuries have healed, and I pray that your children are okay. I hope that one day this whole nightmare for which I feel completely responsible will be nothing more than a distant memory or, at least, one that will make a great story.

  Second, I want to say thank you for saving our lives. Marie suffered a serious, nearly fatal, gunshot wound, but the surgery was a success and she’s completely out of danger, thank God. She’s a strong woman. As for my knee, well, I guess I won’t be able to run as fast as I used to, but I’m alive to tell the tale. And that’s all thanks to you.

  If you hadn’t come to our door that night . . . if you hadn’t insisted that I carry a gun with me, everything would have turned out very differently. The day I visited you at the hospital, and you warned me the way you did, I went home and tried to shake the idea, but I couldn’t let it go. I went into the shed and dusted off an old revolver I’d bought years ago. At first, I thought I’d just keep it nearby, in the living room somewhere or even under my pillow. But that night, the night everything happened, your kids were coming over to spend the night, and I didn’t want to leave a gun lying around. Plus, there was that storm. . . . I thought, is it possible you were right about everything, after all? Either way, the gun ended up on my ankle, you came through the door . . . and you saved our lives, Peter. You gave Marie just enough time to escape. And sure, we each took a couple of bullets. But we never would have had a chance without you, without your stubbornness, without your craziness, without your gift. . . .