False Mermaid (35 page)

He turned left on Clarence, knowing what would happen when he got home. What always happened: his mother would have some little chore for him, some stupid job like changing a lightbulb or running up to Walgreen’s for her medicine. Or she’d want him to sit with her and watch one of her game shows, when he had more important things to do.

As long as he was out of the house, he could forget about all the stacks of junk mail and newspapers and the garbage bags full of old clothes, forget the reek of cat piss so strong from downstairs that it made his eyes water even all the way up in his room. His mother hadn’t been like this when the old man was alive. It was like she’d lost a screw or something.

He saw the cops as soon as he turned the pickup into his own street. A man and a woman. Detectives. You could tell by the way they were dressed, the way they moved. The woman was smoking, but dropped the butt on the weedy boulevard when she saw his truck. That was when he remembered all the pictures tacked up on the wall in his room. He thought briefly about gunning the engine and making a run for it. But he didn’t. For one thing, the street was a dead end, and besides, they’d
already spotted him. He didn’t have a hope of getting away. There was something else, too. Some part of him was itching to find out what they knew.

“We’re looking for Elwyn T. Stark.” Karin Bledsoe flashed her badge and ID. “Are you Elwyn?”

The young man squinted at her. “Nobody calls me that.”

“What do they call you?

“Truman.”

“All right, Truman. I’m Detective Bledsoe; this is Detective Cordova. Do you mind answering a few questions?”

“I don’t mind.” The kid practically grinned at her. Frank could see Karin’s eyes flash, and heard her voice in his head:
You cocky little son-ofabitch—who do you think you are?
They knew who he was. Stark worked for Centurion, the company that provided security at a dozen downtown parking ramps, including the one where Tríona Hallett’s body had been found. They’d matched his fingerprints from the company database. Stark shifted his weight and avoided looking at the house, a posture that said he wasn’t anxious to have them any closer.

“Just checking to see if you happen to know this woman.” Frank held up Nora’s photo, the image he’d pulled from DMV driver’s license records.

Stark examined it. “Never met her.”

Not quite a straight answer. “But you’ve seen her before?”

“Might have. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember seeing her at your parking garage on Thursday afternoon? Your supervisor told us you got off at three that day.”

Stark was starting to look alarmed. “What’s this about?”

“Do you mind telling us where you went after work on Thursday?”

Stark looked away, uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I was just driving.”

“Did you stop anywhere, talk to anyone? Can anybody vouch for your whereabouts?”

“Probably not. I told you, I was just driving around.”

Karin said: “We have a description of a pickup like yours at a disturbance in Frogtown just after eight that night. A security guard in a Centurion uniform chasing off a bunch of neighborhood kids with a baseball bat. Was Frogtown one of the places you just happened to be driving around?”

“Might have been. Like I said—I don’t really remember. I went lots of places that night.” He crossed his arms in front of him.

“You asked what this was about,” Karin said. “We got your prints off the car that was involved in the Frogtown incident. The same car that crashed into a ravine at Hidden Falls a little while later that night.”

“What about this person—do you ever remember seeing her?” Frank held up a photograph of Tríona Hallett, and watched Stark’s face go pale. “Maybe I can refresh your memory. Her body turned up five years ago at the parking garage where you work. Ring any bells?”

Stark licked his lips nervously. “I kinda remember something like that, all right—”

Frank held up Nora’s photo again. “But you’re telling us you didn’t follow this woman after she left your parking garage Thursday afternoon? Maybe you’d better look again.”

Karin said, “I guess you thought things had died down after the murder. Maybe you didn’t appreciate somebody poking around, stirring everything up again. You wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to make trouble for you.”

“That’s bullshit. I never touched those brakes—” He stopped, too late to snatch the words back.

Frank rubbed his chin, letting Stark twist for a long couple of seconds. “Tell me, Mr. Stark, why would you jump to the conclusion that brakes had anything to do with why we’re here?”

“No reason.” The young man’s whole body suddenly shut down.

“I’m sure I didn’t mention it,” Karin said. “And I don’t think you did either, Detective Cordova. Looks like we’ll have to go over a few details with Mr. Stark back at headquarters.”

A tiny, gray-haired woman came to the screen door of the house and peered out at them. “Truman—what’s going on? What do they want?”

“Nothing, Ma. Go back in the house.”

The woman’s voice climbed into a higher register. “Why are you people bothering my son? He’s a good boy. Truman?”

Stark tucked his head to one side and barked: “Jesus Christ, Ma, just go inside and shut the fucking door!”

Standing nearly three feet away, Frank almost felt the heat of the young man’s shame. Without warning, all the emotion that had been building inside him burst out: “Why try to pin it on me? Can I help it if you’re not doing your job, protecting people? Where were the cops when
those punks broke in here and stole my ma’s TV, huh? Look at her—that stinkin’ television is the only thing she’s got. But when she asked about getting it back, the cops just laughed in her face. Like she was some kind of moron for wanting her own goddamn TV back. You people make me sick.” He spat the last word at them. “Go ahead, drag me down to the station, give me the third degree if you want. I never did nothing to that redhead, or the other one either. You’ll never prove I did.”

Once they got Truman Stark down to Grove Street, it took another couple of hours to get a search warrant, but Frank eventually pushed his way past the garbage bags full of clothes and stacks of old newspapers and climbed the stairs to Stark’s third-floor attic bedroom, with Karin right behind him. In contrast to the lower floors, the attic was neat and orderly, but despite air fresheners placed strategically throughout the room, the smell of cat urine still permeated. On a bookcase and table at the top of the stairs were a police scanner, a latent fingerprint kit, several types of batons, cans of pepper spray and several pairs of handcuffs, and a pair of night-vision goggles.

Karin said: “Holy shit, Frank, will you look at this stuff? I knew there was something up with the little weasel, and whaddya know—we’ve got us a serious cop wannabe.”

“There’s a good chunk of change in all this gear.” Frank opened the closet door to find a crisply pressed wardrobe of official-looking blue uniform shirts, along with an ironing board and iron, and half a dozen cans of spray starch.

The double bed tucked into an alcove would have passed any boot camp quarter test. Frank had to crane his neck back to see the pictures plastered all over the sloping ceiling above it. A series of grainy black-and-white images of a woman, looking over her shoulder. Even without color there was no mistaking all that beautiful long hair, those eyes, those cheekbones, the curve of the throat.

Karin, crouched beside him, squinting up at the pictures as well. After a moment, she said, “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that—”

“Tríona Hallett,” Frank said softly. “Yeah, it is.”

Cormac sat in the chair beside his father’s bed. The old man had been breathing well on his own since yesterday, the doctors said. But he still hovered in that otherworld between life and death. Cormac thought about telling his father that Roz was gone, but what good would it do, if he had no memory of her? Instead he leaned forward and said: “I might have to go away for a bit. If it happens, I wouldn’t be able to visit for a few days. Just thought I should let you know. In case you can hear me. It’s Cormac, by the way.” No reply, just breath in, breath out. “All right—see you later, then.”

When he got back to Glencolumbkille, the village seemed completely overrun with fiddle players. A flapping banner emblazoned with musical notes and spirals stretched between the shops above the street, and there was an excitement in the air that hadn’t been present on his earlier trip through the village: teenagers toting instrument cases dashed across the road; knots of people gathered on street corners; shop signs advertised spare rooms turned into festival lodging, most with
NO VACANCY
posted over the top.

Cormac headed into the shop to stock up on tinned goods that would do in case of emergency. After finishing that part of his shopping, he turned to the hardware section, perusing the selection of heavy dead-bolts and window locks, trying to remember what sort of security his aunt Julia thought necessary at Ardcrinn. Beside the deadbolts hung a few tin whistles—and a great selection of violin strings. Only in this part of the country, where fiddle players grew so thick on the ground, were violin strings among the daily staples you might find in any corner shop. He’d picked up a couple of sets, thinking he might restring that fiddle he’d found in the wardrobe in his father’s room. It wasn’t as if the old man was going to be able to take up the fiddle and play. But there was also nothing like music to lure a man back from the gate of the grave.

As Cormac was paying for his purchases, a dark-haired girl passed by on the path outside the shop window, deep in conversation with a
man sporting a distinctive head of silver-white curls. The man’s face was turned away, but there was something familiar about his bearing.

The pair appeared again as Cormac was loading his box of provisions into the back of the Jeep. This time they were headed into the pub, and he decided to follow, just out of curiosity. The pub’s interior was dim after the bright day outside, but thanks to the smoking ban, at least it wasn’t filled with a noxious haze of cigarette smoke. Cormac ordered a glass of ale and turned to survey the room. The silver-haired man and his young companion had found a place at the back. They’d begun to take out their instruments when Cormac’s attention was pulled away by a pair of middle-aged men who stood to the bar at his elbow. The first wore a plain flat cap, the other a narrow-brimmed tweed fedora—and a broken expression.

“Never mind now, Denis, never mind,” said the cap, trying to cheer his friend. “There’s always next year. Your young one will catch up next year.” West Kerry, Cormac surmised, from the broad accent.

But Denis the Hat was having none of it. He made a disgusted gesture. “I wouldn’t mind, but that little one is only after taking up the fiddle a twelvemonth ago. Playing like that after a twelvemonth—doesn’t it bate all?” He shook his head sadly and downed the shot of brandy his friend had ordered, then started in on his pint, downing nearly half of it before coming up for air. “I’ll tell you one thing, Michael—” He wiped the foam from his lips with the back of a hand, pausing for dramatic effect. “When I get home, that fuckin’ television is goin’ straight out the window!”

Cormac turned back to the fiddle players in the corner. It was no wonder the silver-haired man was familiar; now that his eyes were used to the pub atmosphere, Cormac could see that the man in question was Garrett Devaney—the policeman he and Nora had met down in Galway. What class of coincidence was at work here? As he was often reminded, very few things were completely random. Even what humans perceived as chaos had patterns.

Devaney must be here for the Fiddle Week. That was something of a surprise. He hadn’t seemed like the type who went in for music competitions. From the look of her, the girl was his daughter; maybe that was explanation enough. Cormac watched as the pair tightened their bows with an almost identical flick of the wrist, and launched into “The Pigeon on the Gate” in G minor. Cormac found himself struck by the looks that passed between them as the tune whirled along, the obvious
delight they took in the music, a conversation expressed in the secret language of notes. The girl was definitely the policeman’s daughter, and clearly his pupil as well. Cormac thought of his own father, lying in the bed back at the hospital, feeling again the full measure of what he had missed. Too late now. Sometimes the resentment still flared inside him, imagining what they might have had. If only. Then he thought of the story Roz had told him about his own grandparents, and the sound of those two fiddles on the old 78 recording. It was Aunt Julia who had played with his father all those years ago. Perhaps the detail was insignificant. But perhaps it was part of the complex story, the reasons why Joseph Maguire had never learned to be a father.

Cormac stood listening to the sound of two fiddles in tight unison, going note for note, and felt something inside him breaking up, cracking apart, ice on a frozen river. The winter he had held so long inside him would soon be past. His anger, once a means of protection, didn’t seem to serve much purpose anymore.

Looking up as the tune finished, Devaney recognized Cormac, and raised his pint in greeting. He set down the fiddle, handing the bow to his daughter for safekeeping, and made his way through the bar patrons to Cormac’s side. His face glowed a healthy pink. “Maguire, by Jaysus, how are you getting on? You’re not here for the competition?”

“I’m not, no. Just visiting—relations nearby.”
My father.
He still couldn’t say those words in sequence. Still had trouble even thinking them.

“Is Dr. Gavin about?”

Cormac suddenly felt ears all around him, listening in. “She went home to the States for a bit.” He changed the subject. “You seem to be celebrating. Good result today?”

Devaney gave his characteristic tight-lipped smile. “Ah, Róisín did well enough. But that’s not why we’re celebrating. No, one day into it, and she’s made up her mind that competitions are a load of bollocks. I couldn’t be more fuckin’ delighted. You haven’t the machine on you?” he asked, looking around Cormac’s person for a flute case. He tipped his head in the direction of the corner. “Nice spot for a tune, that.”