My voice is whining. I’m ashamed and yet I want in on this so much, I don’t care what he thinks of me.
Roly rubs his eyes, watches a group of teenage boys cross the street in front of us. Finally he says, “D’arcy, I’m doing everything I can, but you are a civilian.” He puts a hand up when I start to protest. “Yes, when you’re here, you’re a civilian. And I know that if it was you at the top of the investigation, you would be saying the same thing as well. You have a role to play here. You knew her better than any of us did and you were here twenty-three years ago and I know you’re a fucking amazing detective. I read the stories.” He fixes his gaze on me. His eyes are a pale ice blue in the direct sunlight. “I know what you did. But this is my show, and even more importantly, it’s Wilcox’s show, and if I let a civilian sit in on a briefing with the deputy state pathologist, Wilcox will have my head and we won’t be any closer to figuring out what happened to Erin or to saving Niamh Horrigan from whatever psychopathic piece of shite plucked her out of the mountains.”
Sirens scream outside, somewhere up near O’Connell Street.
“Okay,” I say. “I know. You’re right.”
Roly’s hair looks thinner somehow. I have that displaced feeling of déjà vu, except of course it actually is happening again. His words, his exhausted face and voice.
He reaches across me to open my door. “I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve got anything to report.”
He pulls out so fast he almost clips me before I can jump onto the curb, and I’m still startled, stumbling back toward the Westin’s main lobby door, when a large man, his belly stretching his shirt beneath a voluminous tweed jacket, his eyes friendly behind round glasses, puts himself between me and the hotel. He has a straggly dirty-blond-and-gray ponytail. He was one of the reporters standing outside the pub in Glenmalure.
“Are you Detective Lieutenant Maggie D’arcy?” he asks.
“Yes.” His face lights up in a smile and he sticks out a hand. I shake it, feeling vaguely manipulated.
“I’m Stephen Hines,” he says. “I’m a reporter for the Independent and I’m wondering if I could ask you a few questions.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just plows ahead before my training kicks in and I can shut him down. “Is that your cousin they found in Glenmalure? Is that Erin Flaherty? Do you think she was a victim of the Southeast Killer? Are you going to help them find Niamh Horrigan?”
“I’m not going to comment on that,” I say, pushing past him.
“You’re an excellent detective,” he calls after me. “You got that psycho guy on Long Island. Shouldn’t they be using you to find Niamh Horrigan?”
I keep walking until I’m through the hotel’s revolving door and safe in the elevator heading up to my room. It’s not until the elevator doors close that I realize I’m still holding my breath.
14
1993
While Roly Byrne and Bernie McNeely searched the bed-and-breakfast in Glenmalure and questioned neighbors and possible witnesses, Emer and Daisy went to classes, and at home Uncle Danny smoked too much and tried to get in touch with Jessica Friedman’s mom, I walked the streets of Dublin.
Over the Grand Canal, past the building painted with the words Bolands Flour Mills as the chilled wind whipped my face, fast up Pearse Street, past gray shops and around the back of Trinity College on Westland Row and onto Nassau Street, where I could see boys in striped shirts running back and forth on green lawns, around the black gates to College Green, where it felt like all of Dublin opened up before me, a wide avenue reaching across the Liffey, and the big round fortress of the Bank of Ireland.
From this side, the pale gray facade of Trinity rose above the street, the blue clock and huge bronze statue of Edmund Burke. I had seen them before, on a poster and in a brochure in the Notre Dame career counseling office. I had imagined myself walking beneath the archway, heading to classes.
I stood there in the forecourt, wondering where exactly Conor Kearney studied the history of Ireland in the twentieth century, and then I wandered the city some more, taking shortcuts down little side streets, finding my way back to Grafton Street, Dame Street, Nassau Street. Dublin was a city of lanes and alleys and gray cobbles, of pubs and old men and teenagers. Everywhere I looked, I saw them, boys in leather jackets, talking, smoking, watching people walk by, girls in jeans and sweatshirts or school uniforms, laughing and grabbing hands as they dashed across the street to bus stops.
By lunchtime I was back to Temple Bar, not far from the Garden of Eating, and I ducked into a little pub called the Raven, painted a bright yellow, and ordered a cup of coffee, enjoying the warmth and the cozy interior. I recognized the décor—if it wasn’t exactly the same as Flaherty’s, it was what Uncle Danny was going for: tin ceiling, stained glass, dark wood bar with bottle-lined mirrored shelves behind it, old photos of Dublin on the walls. It was a little touristy; there was a line of backpacks just inside the front door and I picked out Australian and American accents in the orders being shouted up to the bar.
I downed the coffee and ordered a Guinness, taking a long sip and sighing in pleasure. The bartender, an old guy with a gray moustache and a kind smile, grinned and said, “That’s the best review I’ve had all week.” Tat’s.
I grinned back. “My uncle has a bar on Long Island. We have a sign up over the bar that says, ‘Best Guinness Outside of Dublin.’”
He laughed. “Is it?”
“It might be, but it’s not this good. Don’t tell him I said so.”
At the end of the bar, a tall guy with bright red hair in a thick ponytail was switching out a keg. He looked up and stared at me for a minute. I smiled, thinking that maybe he knew Erin, but he just looked confused and went back to switching the keg.
“I used to know a man had a bar on Long Island,” the bartender said. “It was in a place called Smithtown. Do you know it?” We talked about Long Island geography and Irish bars for a bit and then he left me alone. I watched him unloading glasses from a tray and suddenly, with an intensity that surprised me, I missed Uncle Danny. When I left, I told the bartender goodbye and that I’d be back for another one of those pints.
I was crossing Essex Street when I looked up to find Conor Kearney walking toward me, his head down.
“Hey,” I said. He started, the way he had when I’d walked into the café, and I could see his brain processing my face. Not Erin.
“Hiya.”
“Maggie,” I said.
“No, I knew. I just—Maggie.”
We stared at each other awkwardly for a moment. Finally he said, “Is there anything new on Erin? The Guards were round to me. They told me they’re looking down in Wicklow.”
“No, nothing.”
He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He had a manila folder under his arm. A woman holding the hand of a small child in a raincoat came up behind him and he stepped to the side, bumping my hip. “Pardon,” he said, then, “It must be torture, waiting. Seemed like the Guards thought maybe she’d come back to Dublin.”
“I think they don’t know what to think.” I pointed to the manila folder. “You look like you’re on an important mission. Top-secret spy stuff?”