False Mermaid

Harry Shaughnessy’s clothing was laid out on the table at the center of the crime lab. Frank Cordova stared at the bloodstains on the sweat-shirt—that’s what they seemed to be, here under the bright lights of the lab—heavy, fresh stains around the neckline, and several large, lighter areas under the white letters spelling out “Galliard.” What was Harry Shaughnessy doing with a sweatshirt from Peter Hallett’s alma mater? Frank reminded himself that the shirt hadn’t necessarily belonged to Hallett—he could think of several other people in the Twin Cities who might belong to the same alumni association, including Marc Staunton. Harry might have picked the shirt up at the Goodwill, or the St. Vincent de Paul shop on West Seventh Street.

Jackie Smart, the forensic scientist, was going over the sweatshirt inch by inch with magnifier, tweezers, tape, and swabs, on the hunt for DNA. “Somebody said you knew this guy,” she said.

“Everybody knew him.” It was true. Generations of Saint Paul cops knew Harry Shaughnessy. He’d haunted Rice Park ever since he got back from Korea in 1953. Never the same after. And there were plenty like him—more after every war—sleeping under bridges, unable to cope with “normal” life, men who took to raving on street corners or quietly drinking themselves to death. Probably plenty of others, too—playing golf, puttering around in garages and basement wood shops—who were never the same either. Most of them just managed to hide it better than Harry Shaughnessy had. “Have you tested these spots that look like bloodstains?”

“The police lab did the presumptive—it’s definitely blood. There wasn’t much from the accident, the ME said. The vic’s heart stopped pretty much on impact. To me, those stains under the letters look quite a bit older than the accident anyway. See how the surface here is all cracked, and completely flaked off in places? What do you make of that?” She pointed to a small scrap of paper next to the sweatshirt—a handwritten note, gray with grime, and worn tissue-thin. “I found it in the pocket.”

Frank studied the faint block letters, written in blue ballpoint: I know what you did. Hidden Falls 11 pm tonite. It sounded like a threat. Hidden Falls tonight, or else. Or else what? I’ll tell where you buried Natalie Russo? The note made nailing down the DNA evidence even more crucial.

He said: “Jackie, can you get wearer DNA on all these things?”

“Sure, I can try—we usually get pretty good samples under the arms, around the collar.”

Frank picked up the nearly new pair of black running shoes, examined their slightly muddy soles. “What about these?”

“Again, the presumptive for blood comes up positive; we have to do more tests to see if it matches the blood on the shirt. It’s kinda funny—the vic was wearing all these clothes, but not those shoes; they were stuffed in his backpack. He had on these lovely size twelves.” She held up a battered pair of high-top sneakers. “The running shoes would have been way too small for him. But somebody wore them—I found white cotton threads inside when I was swabbing for DNA. There was quite a bit of dirt in the treads, too. When I’m done here, I’ll send all this over to trace. You can have a look—”

She waved a thumb over her shoulder, and Frank leaned down to peer through the eyepiece of a microscope at varicolored crystals of soil particles, dull fragments of decaying leaves, and dozens of small, wrinkled spheres. They looked exactly like the seeds from Holly Blume’s poster, the one with a picture of that rare plant she’d identified from Tríona Hallett’s hair. Plants are clever stowaways, Holly had said. They’re all about survival. All at once, he felt a thousand flashbulbs going off in his brain, and the usual sour feeling in his stomach was suddenly swallowed up in a surge of hope.

“Listen, Jackie, can you do me a favor, and run a DNA comparison on samples from these clothes against these two cases?” He scribbled names and case file numbers in his notebook, then tore out the sheet and handed it to her. “I promise, I’ll fill out all the proper forms as soon as I can. And one more thing, too—can you take a sample of that dirt from the shoe treads and send it over to Holly Blume, the forensic botanist at the University?”

“And how soon do you need this done?”

“Yesterday. No, the day before—thanks, Jackie. I’ll owe you one.”

5

Garda Detective Garrett Devaney had just packed the last item in the boot of the car, his daughter Róisín’s fiddle case, resting lightly on top of their other luggage. He was always amazed at the apparent weightlessness of an instrument that could bring forth so much. “You’re sure that’s everything now?” he asked Róisín.