“So you went back to Dublin.”
“Yeah. I took the ferry over. There were so many people, all these long lines. They didn’t even stamp my passport, just looked at it. I thought about that later, what if they had? It sucked. I got so sick on the way over, just like puking the whole time. I got there and I … I wasn’t sure what to do. I took the bus to the city, you know, I was … I was sick still and so tired. I remembered where she lived.”
I force myself to say, “You must have been really confused about what to do.”
“Yeah, it was like, if she was going to tell people, it would … Frank couldn’t have that happen. And it was my fault. If I’d just talked to her. I thought I could talk to her.” He looks at the boxes, the piles of his stuff, Erin’s stuff, my stuff. “She was my friend.”
“What about Father Anthony?”
He looks at me. Something flickers in his eyes. I think maybe I’ve overplayed my hand, but he waits a minute and his shoulders slump and he says, “Yeah. There was that. I told him in confession one time. Then I regretted it, but I couldn’t take it back. When he died, I was sort of relieved, but then something Erin said that night she took off … I wondered if she had a statement or something.” He looks up at me, his eyes stricken.
“So what did you do?”
“I called her house from a pay phone I found on the way. She answered and when she heard it was me, I could tell she hadn’t changed her mind. She was sort of calm, like she’d already decided. That was what freaked me out. Erin was always such a lunatic. Well, you know. But that calmness. It was like she was a different person.”
I wait. He rubs a hand over his face, keeps the other one behind him.
“I thought it would freak her out if I told her that I was already in Dublin, so I . . I didn’t know what to do. I looked up and there was a bus getting in at eleven thirty and I just said, ‘I’m getting into the bus station tomorrow, the seventeenth, and can you meet me and we can talk and figure this out, Erin. Write down the bus time. Come on. We’ve been friends for a long time.’ He’s looking right at me now, talking directly to me. The basement feels cold, as though someone just opened a window.
The piece of paper. I picture Erin jotting it down, tearing it off, sticking it in her pocket. She wasn’t writing it down so she could meet him—she was writing it down so she could be sure not to be in Dublin when he arrived.
Oh, Erin.
“But she said she wouldn’t meet me. She said she was writing me a letter and I should just wait for it.”
“What did you do?” I know, most of it at least, but I need him to tell me.
“I went to her house. I remembered where it was. I was almost there when I saw her come out with her backpack. She was wearing her leather jacket. I hung back and I followed her. She went to an apartment somewhere but she didn’t stay long. When she came out, she walked for a bit and then she stopped and got her fleece out of her backpack. She almost saw me then. I had to jump behind a wall.”
We hear the floorboards creaking again and he stops and gets up to go to the bottom of the stairs.
“Cat,” he says finally.
“Keep going,” I say. He almost looks relieved. I know that look. Once suspects have told you enough of their story that they know you’ve got them, they start to find relief in the telling. They start to enjoy the release.
“She walked up to that big park, near Grafton Street.”
“St. Stephen’s Green?” I say.
“Yeah, there were all these buses on the far side. She walked up to one of them and I saw her talking to the driver. Then I saw her get off and head toward another one. I was worried she was going to get on and I’d lose her, so I ran up and I said, ‘Erin!’ and she turned around and she looked shocked to see me. Like, really shocked. I told her I just wanted to talk, about what we’d talked about before, about Frank, and how he hadn’t meant anything by what he did. She just looked at me and she said, ‘Leave me alone, Brian,’ and I heard her ask the bus driver if he could drop her in Glenmalure, after he took everyone to Glendalough. I guess he said yes, because she got on and the doors closed.”
He hesitates. What he’s about to say holds some kind of power for him. He’s gearing up for it. “I came so close to going back to London, Mags. I did. I went to a pub and had a drink and I figured I’d go back and call Frank and warn him. I drank too much that night. I kept meeting people and finally I fell asleep in some park somewhere and when I woke up the sky was, it was, it was just getting light. And I thought, for some reason, I went back to the buses and there was one leaving and I said, ‘Can you drop me in Glenmalure?’ and the driver said sure, he was going to stop there anyway because someone had arranged for it ahead of time. So I got on.”
I know why he’s stuttering now, struggling with it. This is the hinge. It’s where the whole thing could have turned out differently.
“We pulled up in front of this hotel and, I couldn’t believe it, I saw her. She was walking down the road. I don’t think she saw me. I got off the bus and I saw her walking up the road and I just, I followed her. Into the woods.”
He takes a deep breath. He’s staring at the ground. He barely knows I’m in the room. I almost tell him to stop, but I know I need to hear him say it. Without the next part I’ve got nothing.
“She realized you’d followed her all the way down there,” I say quietly. “She was scared.”
“Yeah, she freaked out. When she saw me, she accused me of following her to try to convince her not to tell and she started running away and I was chasing her and I grabbed her by the leg and I just … She wouldn’t stop screaming and I needed to make her be quiet. That was all I wanted, to quiet her down so we could talk and I could explain to her about Frank and about how she couldn’t say anything but maybe he could apologize, maybe I could get him to apologize.” He’s crying hard now, tears running down his cheeks.
“Her fleece, her, her jacket came up over her face. We were on the ground and I was … I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just pressed it against her, her mouth, so she’d be quiet, but then she…” He takes a huge, shuddering breath. “Then she was quiet.”
We’re both silent for a long time. I don’t want to keep going but I need what’s next. “Where was the shovel?” I prompt him.
“I’d seen it along the trail. I think that was a lot later. I waited … all day, I guess. It all kind of blurs together. At one point, I heard people talking and I lay down next to her in the, like, the bushes, hiding. When it was almost dark, I went back and got the shovel and I took her far away from the trail, really far away, like a mile or more, way down into some trees. She wasn’t heavy. I dug a … you know. I was trying to roll her in it when I heard something and I looked up to find this … girl. She was staring at me, watching the whole thing. There was something wrong with her, Mags. She was crazy. She was singing to herself, in another language, like German or something, weird stuff. I don’t know. But she’d seen me. There was no way to explain what she’d seen. I took the shovel and I … You know. It wasn’t very hard. It was … fast. And I waited until it was light again and I put her far away, up toward the trail more. I thought maybe … I don’t know, that it would make it less likely they’d be found. Time was … it was weird, Mags. I must have been there for a whole night. It made sense at the time. I didn’t mean it, Mags, it was an awful accident. If she’d just talked to me, if the other girl hadn’t acted so weird.”