The Mountains Wild

by Sarah Stewart Taylor

  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?”

  He grinned. “Ah, yeah. I’ve to stop the war with my important papers, like.”

  “Well then, I won’t keep you. Go save the world.”

  He leaned forward. “I can reveal that it’s actually a petition related to Temple Bar rubbish removal, but if it makes me seem more exciting, I’ll go with top-secret papers.”

  “Good choice.” I smiled back at him. “Good luck.” He started to go, but I blurted out, “I … I’m sorry about … when I came into the café. I was tired and I thought Erin had just gone somewhere … It isn’t the first time I’ve had to go looking for her like this and I kind of took it out on you.”

  “No worries,” he said. We stared at each other. “Well then, stop by sometime.” I nodded. “See ya.” I didn’t turn to watch him go, even though I wanted to.

  I found a phone booth and called my dad at his office. He sounded tired and sad and when I told him about the bed-and-breakfast, he said, “Oh, sweetheart. I should have gone. What a mess for you to deal with.” I told him I was fine and to take care of himself and when I hung up I leaned my face against the cold metal of the phone as the scent of his shaving cream rose in my sinuses and I missed him so much for a moment, it actually hurt. Then I wandered Dublin some more in a cold, gray mist that hovered just above the rooftops, taking the wide O’Connell Bridge across the Liffey. This was ground zero of the Easter Rebellion, I remembered from my Irish history seminar, where a small group of men and a few women holed up and tried to direct an assault on the British in the streets of Dublin. It didn’t work, but the execution of sixteen Irishmen turned once ambivalent Dubliners against the British.

  A terrible beauty was born.

  But it was that song about being too sexy for your shirt that was blaring out of a shop on O’Connell Street, and Yeats faded away as I walked the streets north of the river. They seemed smaller, tighter, leading to an outdoor market not far from the bridge, and I wandered for a bit, listening to old ladies shouting over their produce, browsing the vegetable sellers and used book stalls. I walked under a big clock hanging out over the sidewalk in front of a department store, then crossed the street and strolled past the gray columns of the General Post Office.

  The day had run away from me. It was nearly dinnertime now.

  A little fish-and-chips shop on O’Connell Street beckoned and I got mine to go, taking the greasy newspaper down to the quays. The fish was crispy and hot, the chips tender and with just the right amount of bite. The sky was full of gulls. They called across the river, flew back and forth from north to south. I was halfway through my dinner and full when a thin, wobbling old man stopped to look at the river.

  “It’s lovely this evening, isn’t it?” he slurred.

  “It really is.” The sky was pale blue, washed with blurry gray clouds. A hint of pink crept in, crisping the edges of the clouds. A gull landed on the quay, looking up expectantly at me.

  “Cheeky little bugger,” the old man said. “He’d like your chips, so he would.”

  “Well, he can’t have them.”

  “You tell him,” the man said, stumbling. I looked at him again. His clothes were shabbier than I saw at first, his shirt yellowed and frayed. He was drunk, but only for maintenance. His eyes were yellow, too, his nose red with broken capillaries. We watched the sky for a few moments.

  “You ’merican?” he asked. “Or Canadian?”

  “American.”

  “I lived in New York for fifteen years. Worked as a crane operator. It was grand, New York, but it never felt like home. Never home.” He was off somewhere in his head, thinking about New York and home. I could see that he had been handsome once.

  “I’m all done,” I told him. “There’s a piece of fish I haven’t touched and a lot of chips left. They’ll go to waste otherwise. Or to the gulls. Sit down.”

  “Ah, now, I think I just might take you up on that.” He sat down next to me on the bench and took the bag from me. When he bit into the fish, he sighed with pleasure. “That’s lovely, so it is.”

  “I know.”

  He smiled at me. “Life’s little pleasures, isn’t that right.”

  I left him to the pleasure of the fish and chips.

  Erin in her red bathing suit, her arms and legs tan, her nose burnt and peeling, her little body rushing into the waves. Her hair is hard at the ends where it touched her Popsicle. Her hands and arms are covered with a fine layer of sand that glitters in the sun. A summer Sunday at Jones Beach. The constant crashing of the waves. People shouting across the beach. Suntan lotion runs in my eyes and I cry. Erin and I play on the sand where the waves are breaking, digging holes, building walls. First the holes fill in and then the walls get swept away. Erin has her back to the ocean and when a wave creeps up and washes over her, she screeches and jumps up, running away into the sea of people on the beach. I look up. She was there and now she’s gone. I squint into the sun. Everyone looks the same on the beach. Their faces stare at me. I get up and walk straight back, find my mom, who’s lying on her towel and reading a magazine.

  “Where’s Erin?” she asks me. I point to where she was. My mom jumps up, runs to the sand, looks up and down the beach. Her bikini slips away from her skin. I can see a white line over her breasts. “Erin!” she shouts. “Erin, honey!”

  Another mom hears her and comes to help us look. The two moms ask people if they’ve seen a little girl in a red bathing suit. People get up, help us look. Someone says we should find a policeman.

  My mom’s eyes are scared and wide. She ignores me when I try to take her hand.

  And then someone’s shouting. My mom is running toward the sound. I follow and I see her kneeling, holding Erin. Erin’s crying. A man is gesturing with his hands to my mom. I wait there, watching them. My mom brushes Erin’s hair out of her eyes, holds her against her body.

  A seagull calls overhead. The sun seems to drop as we walk to the car. Little pools of water appear in the parking lot, between the shiny cars, then disappear as we get close. The asphalt burns my feet. My mom gets us strapped into the back and Erin reaches over and takes my hand, clinging tightly to it as we pull out and head for the North Shore and home, as though the waves that threatened to carry us away on the beach are coming for her now, even though we’ve left the beach behind.

  15

  SUN
DAY, MAY 29,

  2016

  Niamh Horrigan’s parents have great faith in the Garda Síochána.

  That’s what they say on the news when the anchorwoman asks them if they believe the Gardaí are doing everything they can.

  I’ve barely slept, waiting for Roly to call, and now I’m out of bed, showered, room-service oatmeal and coffee half-finished on a tray at the end of the bed. It’s 7:10 a.m. and he still hasn’t called, and my mind is going a thousand miles an hour trying to imagine what that means. Maybe there was a mistake and it is Erin up there. Maybe Roly doesn’t know how to tell me. Maybe it’s like he said, it wasn’t Erin, but in the meantime, they’ve found her, buried nearby.

  “We just want her home,” Niamh’s father says, looking into the camera in a way that I know means someone has coached him. He’s a tall, good-looking older man, with graying hair and a beige outfit that was probably a recommendation of the coach, too. If the guy who has Niamh is watching, they don’t want the dad to push any buttons for him. He needs to be neutral, loving, concerned, but not angry or challenging or possessive. The mom is pretty, blond, subdued, but I don’t like the royal blue blazer they chose for her. It’s too masculine, too businesslike, the color too strong. Her voice rises as she says, “Please contact the Gardaí if you know anything that could help bring our daughter home.” I feel like swearing. They should have had her say “Niamh” to humanize the victim. I give them a five out of ten.

  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.

  I go back to the other women who went missing in Ireland in 1993. There was a forty-year-old mother of six who disappeared from her home in Donegal, a couple of young girls who were reported missing but then found in County Cork. There’s a German backpacker who may have visited the monastery at Glendalough and a twenty-three-year-old woman who took a bus to Galway from her home in Wexford and never contacted her family. The Wexford woman and the German backpacker are the ones that have my attention. I write the names down—Louise Dooley and Katerina Greiner—and finish my coffee.

  I’ve spent hours at home Googling the list of persons of interest in the original investigation, checking Facebook and LinkedIn, with nothing much to report. I let myself search for Conor and come up with all the same pages I’ve seen before, department information on Trinity’s website, announcements for his latest book about Ireland after World War II, a picture of him from the book jacket. The first time I saw it, late at night, a few Novembers ago, while Lilly slept inside and the water moved against the beach outside the windows, I almost gasped, seeing him after all these years, an older Conor, but recognizable.

  I let myself stare at the photos from the launch party for the book at Trinity a couple of years ago. There’s a picture of a beautiful blond woman, dressed in a flowing yellow dress, a huge smile on her face as she poses next to older Conor. Dr. Kearney and Ms. Arpin, the caption reads. I let the little knife edge of pain slide underneath my skin for a moment and then I slam the laptop closed and get up to go.