False Mermaid (12 page)

I know you have not seen your father for many years, and I cannot tell you what possessed him to leave Ireland, nor how he chose the path that he has taken. For all I know, you may have no wish to see him ever again. No one would blame you, I daresay. I can only tell you that there has always been a streak of the Wild Geese in Joseph since he was a boy, and no denying it. But one important thing I have learned in living so long is that anger does not diminish love; it has been my experience that the two may live together, side by side, for a very long time.

It’s a great pity that we’ve never had a chance to meet. I have followed your accomplishments from afar all these years with great interest, and I should like to have known you better. We’ll say no more about that. But I didn’t want to make my exit from this world without leaving a small passage open to you. As you well know from your work, the door to the past and the door to the future are often one and the same.

I realize these words may have little effect, coming as they do from a stranger, but they are things that wanted saying, nonetheless. If you should decide to visit Donegal, just ask at the post office in Glencolumbkille and they will direct you to this house. That’s all for now, dear Cormac. I wish you well.

The letter was signed, “Highest regards, Julia Maguire.” The signature was larger and steadier than the rest of the script, as if accomplished in a last burst of strength. The pages had laid on his desk for several days as he tried to work out how to respond. But as it turned out, writing the letter and seeing it posted were quite literally the last things his great-aunt Julia had done.

Gazing at the motionless figure in the bed, Cormac felt the past spilling over him, a torrent of images and sensations that felt as if it might overwhelm and drown him: he saw a solitary boy walking along the sea road, repelling all disapproving or pitying looks with his invisible shield; he saw the row of syringes lined up on a metal tray, and the worn chaise where his mother rested, wrapped in her paisley shawl; he felt in his bones all those years of digging, searching for answers in the distant past; and through all of it, the urge to flee so strong again now that he could taste it in the back of his throat. He bowed his head and grasped the edge of the bed for support.

It would be a simple act, getting up from the chair and heading down the hallway, out the front door again. He closed his eyes and saw himself crossing the threshold in the hospital’s modern glass foyer, not stopping, not looking back, just walking until he disappeared down the road. Toward the airport. To Nora.

When he opened his eyes, Cormac discovered that his father’s hand had slid down the bedclothes and come to rest against his own. The old man’s flesh felt warm against his, and he realized it was their first physical contact in nearly thirty years. For some reason, he could not bear to pull his hand away. Perhaps one day the words might come. For now, all he had was the faint hope of yet another resurrection.

Frank Cordova stood next to his car in the parking lot of the medical examiner’s office. Nora Gavin’s eyes seemed to drill into him. “Who is Natalie Russo, Frank? You know something about her—please tell me.”

“I’ll let you have a look for yourself,” he said. He opened his car trunk and pulled a slender file from the carton of missing persons reports he’d been hauling around the past three days. He remembered his own first sight of Natalie, down at the river three days ago, and how he’d felt that distinctive cold trace down his neck, wondering if this girl’s death was somehow related to Tríona Hallett’s. Nora took the file and climbed into the passenger seat. He knew what she was looking for, because he’d searched for it himself: an overlapping circumstance, a possible proximity, some person or place that would connect the dead girl and Peter Hallett. But there was nothing like that in the file.

Natalie Russo had been a recent transplant to Saint Paul when she disappeared five years ago. She had a job as a bike messenger for a company whose regular client list included law firms, graphic designers, people whose incomes depended on speed. But she worked only part-time, to leave plenty of hours in the day for training. Rowing was definitely her priority. The emergency contact on her employment application was a coach from the Twin Cities Rowing Club, Sarah Cates. Nothing out of the ordinary the week she disappeared: pickups and deliveries for the usual clients, rowing practice, her morning run along the paths at Hidden Falls. On Friday, she didn’t show up for work or rowing practice, but no one realized anything was wrong until her bike was spotted in its customary place outside the rowing club. Her teammates had turned out to help with a foot search, but they found nothing. She was just gone.

Frank’s cell phone began to vibrate, and he glanced at the number. His partner, Karin Bledsoe. She had already called twice this morning, probably wondering where the hell he was. He shoved the phone back in his pocket. She would have her answer soon enough.

He glanced over at Nora, watching the way she flipped through the
pages in the file, the way her thumbnail absently brushed against her lower lip as she read. He felt suddenly unnerved by that gesture, and all the thousand other things he’d tried so hard to forget. It was stupid, thinking he could handle being with her again, any better than he’d handled it the last time.

Last night had started out innocently enough. It was sickening, wondering what he’d said and done. There was no car parked in front of the carriage house the first time he drove past in the afternoon. Never mind that the apartment was on a narrow, one-way street where nobody just happened to drive by. He could have turned around then, gone home. Instead he’d gone to a bar down on Grand Avenue to grab some dinner. Then he’d started ordering tequila shots, trying to talk himself out of going past the carriage house again on his way home. By the time he went back, there was a rental car out front. If she’d only been inside the apartment, he’d have been spared any humiliation. If memory served, he hadn’t even managed to ring the bell. Just his luck that she’d been out, and found him on the doorstep as she came home. There was one small mercy—at least he hadn’t tried to drive.

He’d awakened this morning just as he had three years ago—with a sore head, and a curious, buoyant feeling that lasted only until he’d turned over to find himself alone. Three years ago, after their one night together, Nora had managed to avoid him, and then left the country without a word. Not even a phone message or a note to say she was going away, that what had happened had been a mistake. That part he’d had to figure out all on his own. He’d been present when the need took her, but now it seemed he was nothing but a momentary lapse in judgment, a slightly embarrassing memory. Strange—even knowing all that didn’t seem to change the way he felt. Something had taken hold of him that night, and he had never been able to shake it off.

Nora finally spoke. “There’s nothing here, Frank. Nothing to connect her to Peter—except the river. He used to run down at Hidden Falls. That’s probably where he was the morning after Tríona disappeared. And the blows to the face—”

In addition to the dental match, the forensic odontologist had determined from the fractures that the injuries to Natalie Russo’s face had been made by someone with remarkable upper-body strength, most likely using a heavy, rounded object about the size and shape of a small grapefruit. Frank knew that Nora was thinking about the profiler they’d consulted
at the time of Tríona’s murder. Injuries to the face—like those sustained by Tríona, and now Natalie Russo as well—that sort of an attack was usually personal. Much more likely to occur, according to the profiler, when the killer and the victim were involved in an intimate relationship. As if murder itself wasn’t enough, whoever had destroyed these women’s faces had taken a step beyond and tried to rub them out, deny their very existence. A strange sound floated through his head, an old man’s voice, like the buzzing of a fly:
Susto, susto
. He felt a tightening inside, a queasiness that hadn’t gone away since last night. He never should have started drinking tequila.

Nora said, “Have you checked through the evidence from Hidden Falls? If we could line up the two crime scenes, or find something that would link Peter to Natalie Russo—”

“The crime scene unit just finished processing, but we’ve got some of the stuff logged in down at evidence storage.”

“If they found something of Tríona’s at that site—”

When they arrived at police headquarters a few minutes later, Nora followed Cordova down a chilly stairwell, listening to their footsteps reverberate against concrete. The few people they passed greeted Frank by name, and she felt their eyes surreptitiously checking the name on her visitor’s pass. Some of them would remember the trouble she’d stirred up five years ago—and no doubt pity Frank, having to deal with her again. When they reached the basement, he led her to property and evidence storage, a vast expanse of shelving behind a glass window, home to thousands of cardboard file boxes. And this wasn’t even a tenth of it—there was another whole warehouse somewhere close by, filled with thousands more sealed cartons. Somewhere in this place they could also find Tríona’s blood-soaked clothing, all the physical details that painted the gruesome picture of her last moments. As many times as Nora had been here, for some reason it had never struck her before in the same way, this vast system of enumerated transgressions. This library of crime reduced every offense, even the most horrific, to office work. Perhaps boxing up and storing away all the disturbing details of robbery and rape and murder was a way to feel as though you could contain them somehow.

She hung back while Frank signed out the evidence files. He took the first two boxes from the property officer; they’d have to wait while the others were retrieved.

In the meantime, Frank led her into an evidence exam room and shut the door behind them. He set his boxes on the table. “Like I said, there’s probably more on the way, but we can go through what’s been collected—” He suddenly winced and tilted forward, pressing two fingers to his chest.

Nora felt stabbing fear. “Frank, are you all right?”

He waved her away. “It’s nothing—I’m okay.” He fumbled in his pocket and quickly popped two antacids.

“How often are you taking those?”

“I don’t know—a couple of times a day.” Cordova straightened, but his face was ashy. He let out a slow breath. “It comes and goes. I’m fine.”

“Have you seen a doctor? It could be more than heartburn.”

He turned on her. “Jesus Christ, Nora—will you stop mothering me?”

She took a step back, shocked by his sudden flash of anger. “I’m just worried about you, Frank.”

“Well, do me a favor and stop worrying.” He kept his face turned away, shielded his eyes with one hand. “For three years, I’ve been trying to tell myself that what happened with us was a mistake. Unprofessional on my part, a slip-up. But every time I try to get that night out of my head, it won’t seem to shake loose. I’m not sorry it happened.”

“But it wasn’t real, Frank—”

“How do you know that? You never gave us a chance to find out. For Chrissake, Nora, we never even talked about what happened. Can you honestly tell me you don’t feel anything—”

“Of course not—it wouldn’t be true. But things happen, Frank, things outside our control—”

His eyes narrowed. “You met someone. Over there.”

“It’s got nothing to do with you and me, with what happened—”

He let go a bitter laugh. “Christ, some detective I am. It was staring me right in the face. Here’s an idea—why don’t I stand here and make a fool of myself just once more, and you can stand there, laughing—”

Nora had never seen him like this; the change was bewildering. “Do you see me laughing? I care about you, Frank, and God knows I’m indebted—” She winced, regretting the choice of words.

His voice became deadly quiet: “So that’s what you were doing with me that night—paying off a debt?”

The heavy metal door banged open suddenly, and a handcart piled high with file boxes seemed to roll on its own into the room. A uniformed
officer, a wiry terrier of a man in his mid-fifties, cocked an eye at them above the boxes. “Where do you want these, Frank?”

Cordova shaded his face with one hand. “Just stack them up along the wall, I guess, Charlie. That’s not everything, is it?”

“Hell, no—I got another half dozen in the lockup.” He glanced sideways at Nora as he unloaded the cart. “You might need a bigger room.” When the boxes were unloaded, he spun the empty dolly with a dancer’s finesse, whistling as he steered it out the door and back down the hall.

Nora waited until the door was shut to speak: “Frank, please—you know very well that’s not what I meant.”

“Just tell me if you met someone. Yes or no.”

Nora felt her throat tighten. “Yes.”

“Is it serious?”

“I think so—yes.”

Cordova’s head had dropped forward. He stared at the floor for a moment, then took a deep breath.

Nora felt a sudden urge to reach out to him, but resisted. “I was confused. You were the only person I could really trust. In the morning, I was afraid I’d completely messed things up between us, and I didn’t want to do that. I see now that going away wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair—I’m so sorry, Frank.”

He looked up at her again, but he wasn’t listening. His eyes had gone flat, and he seemed to be looking straight through her. “I should give Charlie a hand with the rest of those boxes.”

When he had gone, Nora sat down at the table and buried her head in her arms. She had known since last night that this conversation was in the cards. But could it possibly have gone any worse?

A few seconds later, the door swung open, and Nora turned to see an athletic-looking woman about her own age, with pale blue eyes and a summer tan set off by short-cropped, naturally white-blond hair. She was dressed in a neat brown suit and a white blouse open at the throat. The ID on the lanyard around her neck said “Detective” in bold letters.