My cell phone buzzes on the bed and I scramble for it. “Roly?”
“Yeah, hiya, D’arcy. Sorry I’m just ringing you. It’s been a long night. We don’t know a lot about the remains yet, but I can tell you what we’ll release to the press later today.”
I mute the TV and say, “Hang on, Roly. You gotta tell whoever’s advising Niamh’s family that the mom needs to be softer. She needs to feel like an ally to our guy, you know?”
“They’re on it, D’arcy. Don’t worry. Here’s what they’ve got so far on the excavation. We’ll be making most of this public to try to get a match. Yesterday the techs recovered most of an intact skeleton. Analysis of pubic symphysis indicates the victim was likely early twenties. We did not find parturition scars on the pelvis, but as you know some of that science has been questioned. Path said she’s fairly confident saying female, early twenties, no parturition.”
“Any cause of death?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Skull trauma?” It’s one of the only things they’d be able to find this quickly. Strangulation, maybe, but not always. Drug overdose, or suffocation, you’re not going to see it.
I can hear him hesitating. “Examination revealed two points of blunt impact on the right temporal bone. That part won’t be public.”
“Of course,” I say. “And dental comparison says it’s not Erin.”
“That’s right. They’ve excavated in a radius around the remains and there don’t seem to be anymore. But of course we’ll continue looking.”
“Anything else?”
“Not at the moment.” There’s something else, but he won’t tell me.
“So who is it?” I demand. “If it’s not Erin, who is it?”
I can hear him hesitating. “We don’t have an ID. Path dates the burial to 1992 or a few years later.”
“Based on what?”
“Can’t tell you.”
I go to the window, look out over College Green. The city’s waking up and I watch a young woman wearing a red jacket make her way along the sidewalk and through the Trinity gates. “Roly, if Erin’s scarf was in the grave with her, then the victim must have died around the time Erin was there, right? How did the scarf end up with the body? Whose blood is it? Was there any evidence to suggest that someone else was with this woman, whoever she was?”
“We don’t know.” I can feel it again, whatever it is he’s not telling me.
“Do you think Erin was there?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” There’s an ugly little bubble of silence that almost makes me gasp.
I force myself to breathe. “I should call my uncle.”
“Yeah. You do that. I’ll be in touch. Okay?” He puts a soft little spin on it, reaching out, trying to soothe me. “I’m heading down to Wicklow so I may be out of touch. We’ve got some stuff going on in another case, too, so I’m going to be out straight. I’ll let you know if anything comes up. Hopefully we’ll know something soon, D’arcy.”
He’s gone before I can ask any more questions.
I tell Uncle Danny the news. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Danny. I’m having a hard time with this, too.”
“Oh God, Mags, I didn’t want it to be her, but I wanted to know, you know?”
“Yeah, it’s totally normal.”
“But why was her scarf with the … why was it there?” I can hear glasses clinking. He’s unloading the dishwasher, keeping himself busy, trying to cope. “Is it this girl who’s missing?”
“No. The remains have been there too long for that. We just don’t know. There may have been some connection between Erin and whoever is there.” I say it again: “We just don’t know. I’ll tell you as soon as I hear something. Are you okay? You know you can go over to the house and hang out with Lilly and Brian any time you want, right? They’d be happy to have you.”
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. I got stuff to do around here.” He sounds awful. “What are you gonna do, baby? You gonna come home now we know it’s not Erin?”
“No, I’ll stay a bit, Uncle Danny. Her scarf was there, her I.D. She must have had something to do with this woman, whoever she was.”
I hear a clink as he drops a glass in the dishwasher. “What do you mean? Like she had something to do with a murder? But don’t they think she went back to Dublin after she was down there? Didn’t they find that piece of paper?”
“No, no. But maybe she knew this woman. Maybe she gave her the scarf. I don’t know. Look, I’m going to try to do whatever I can to help them figure this out, Uncle Danny, okay? Don’t worry.”
I can hear the emotion in his voice. “Okay, baby. Take care now, right?”
Brian answers on the first ring and when he hears my voice he asks, “Are you okay? Did they find her?”
“No, it’s not her, Bri.” I give him the update. “Uncle Danny is a mess. Can you check on him?”
“Yeah, we’ll go over tonight. Take him some dinner.”
“Thanks. Give Lil a hug.”
A low-slung but rising sun hides behind the buildings surrounding the Trinity forecourt. Dr. Conor Kearney, Associate Professor of History, Room 4000, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin 2. I walk slowly across campus to the Nassau Street entrance, and then up Nassau Street toward St. Stephen’s Green, where I find a coffee shop that has Wi-Fi. It’s busy but I get a table at the back and start working the missing persons angle. The Irish Times has an online archive—I’ve already subscribed—and I start searching for stories about missing persons between 1992 and 1994. I come up with twenty-three involving women of the right age. Most have updated stories indicating the women were found safe, but there are eight that I save to my desktop.
There are four stories about Erin’s disappearance from 1993. I vaguely remember reading the first two, which have a panicked tone. It’s clear that the reporter covering the story, as well as the guards working the case, started out thinking that she would be found in the mountains. But the third story, which appeared after they found the piece of paper at the bed-and-breakfast, is a shift. The reporter writes that “the Gardaí are asking the public if they saw the American student, Miss Erin Flaherty, on or around September 17 or 18, either in Dublin or in any other location around Ireland.” For some reason, the press referred to her as a student, as though that was the only reason an American would have moved to Dublin. Another story announced that the search in the Wicklow Mountains had been called off, “given new information.” The fourth story appeared six months after Erin’s initial disappearance and quotes Garda Sergeant Ruarí Wilcox as saying, “The Gardaí are still actively following up on leads. We are doing everything we can to find out where Miss Flaherty went after leaving Wicklow.” Where she went.
When I expand the search perimeters over the years, I find more follow-up stories and then, after Teresa McKenny and June Talbot disappeared, a story about the formation of the task force. Roly’s name starts appearing in the stories. I’ve read all these, but not for a while. There are a few things that jump out at me. The first is that even after the formation of the task force, the investigating officers—even Roly—talk about Erin in a slightly different way than they talk about the other victims. In 2009, a reporter asked Wilcox about the fact that Erin Flaherty’s body was never found, and he made it clear that he also thought that was suspicious.