False Mermaid

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.”

9

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.