by Lisa Alber
Copyright Information
Path Into Darkness: A County Clare Mystery © 2017 by Lisa Alber.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First e-book edition © 2017
E-book ISBN: 9780738751801
Book format by Cassie Kanzenbach
Cover design by Ellen Lawson
Editing by Nicole Nugent
Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alber, Lisa, author.
Title: Path into darkness / Lisa Alber.
Description: First edition. | Midnight Ink : Woodbury, Minnesota, [2017] |
Series: A County Clare mystery ; 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2017004418 (print) | LCCN 2017010863 (ebook) | ISBN
9780738750576 (softcover) | ISBN 9780738751801
Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Family secrets—Fiction. |
Ireland—Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. |
Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3601.L3342 P38 2017 (print) | LCC PS3601.L3342 (ebook)
| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004418
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Acknowledgments
So many people to thank—seems like the list grows with each book!
The Irish are so helpful and so easy to talk to. I’d like to thank former Detective Sergeant David Sheedy and Detective Sergeant Brian Howard for their excellent counsel; Hazel Gaynor for introducing me to the Quays Pub; my first Irish friend, Teresa Donnellan; fantastic hosts Ireen and Kris of Slieve Elva B&B; Eilish Neylon, A.D. of Nursing; Enda Elynn and Michael Healey, Lahinch historians; Mary Lucas, who helped solve a mystery; Lou of Ginger Lou’s for being hilarious and letting me hang out writing for hours; and last but definitely not least, Willie Daly, matchmaker and all-around raconteur.
All mistakes are mine, that’s for sure, especially when I decide to use creative license for the sake of the story—this is especially true for the liberties I took with all things psychiatric and medical, and for naming an obstacle at Lahinch Golf Course “Devil’s Pit.”
And how could I not thank my writer pals who provide feedback, sympathetic ears, endless support, and bright ideas? I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone: Cindy Brown, Debbie Dodds, Warren Easley, Holly Frank, Alison Jakel, Kassandra Kelly, Janice Maxson, LeeAnn McLennan, Angela Sanders, and Kate Scott. Plus a special crew of “eight mystery writers you should be reading now”: Michael Guillebeau, Kathleen Cosgrove, Chris Knopf, Jessie Bishop Powell, Larissa Reinhart, Jaden Terrell, and Lisa Wysocky.
Special shout-outs to Jennifer Goodrick for her crème brûlée French toast; Crystal Elverud of Oak & Olive Ristorante for her good cheer and endless glasses of red wine while I wrote like a fiend; and Nancy Boutin for her medical expertise.
And thanks to the people who make good books happen in the real world, not just inside my computer: Terri Bischoff, Sharon Eldridge, Jill Marsal, Katie Mickschl, and Nicole Nugent.
From “the creative one” to
“the numbers one” and “the computer one,”
my sisters Nicole Sidlauskas and Kara Alber.
There are resurrection themes in every society
that has ever been studied, and it is because
not just only do we fantasize about the possibility of
resurrection and recovery, but it actually happens.
And it happens a lot.
Sherwin B. Nuland
Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens
to all of us when we die. We decompose.
Accounts of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension
are about as well-documented as
Jack and the Beanstalk.
Richard Dawkins
one
Saturday, early morning, 13-Mar-2010
22 days before Easter
Nathan Tate’s recurring dreams were so vivid, so frequent, and so familiar they’d become memories, as real to him as his wedding day to Susannah, as the pot he’d lifted out of the kiln yesterday, as the dead fly on the windowsill.
He flicked the fly away and pressed his forehead against the cool window pane. Moonlight filtered into his bedroom, highlighting sweat-soaked sheets and the water glass he’d knocked over. He couldn’t get the goldfinches out of his head, always memories of goldfinches.
No, they were dream figments. Weren’t they?
Memory was a slippery mistress, indeed.
At least he hadn’t screamed this time. He knew this because Zoe wasn’t in the room with him, hovering, comforting, insisting that it was just a dream.
He backed away from the window and its peaceful view of the pastures beyond his cluttered backyard, taking care not to step on the floorboard that liked to squeal underfoot. He pulled off his damp t-shirt and knelt to sop up the water. The water glass hadn’t broken, and he set it back on the night table.
Behind him, the door creaked as it swung open. Nathan kept wiping, holding his hand steady.
“Dad? Are you all right?” Zoe hurried to his side and knelt. “Here, let me help you.”
“I’m fine. Woke up thirsty, that’s all.”
She plucked the shirt from his hand and swiped at the floorboards he’d already dried. He climbed back into bed and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe evenly. He congratulated himself for not tensing when Zoe kissed him on the forehead as if she were the adult and he the child returned to the nest. Child, no. She was twenty now, but still young in so many ways. She didn’t realize, or maybe she didn’t care, that she’d brought the memories back with her when she’d shown up on his doorstep two weeks previously.
I’ll be fine, he reassured himself as Zoe padded across the room and clicked the bedroom door shut behind her.
two
Danny Ahern hesitated at the threshold of a farmhouse with faded red gingerbread trim and an overgrown hedge border, remembering the last time he’d stepped into a house with a collapsed body inside it. His own home. As ever, his thoughts returned to Ellen in the hospital, still in a comatose state six months later.
This house, unlike his own, stood outside Lisfenora, on the other sid
e of Kilmoon parish near Corkscrew Hill with its panoramic view of limestone hills and coastline. Clouds in every color of grey whipped by on their way to the Atlantic. Hopefully they’d let loose their rain over the ocean, but Danny already felt a drop or two. He knocked on the front door and Detective Officer Simon O’Neil met him at the door to sign him in to the crime scene. As usual, his overlong hair flopped across his forehead and he’d forgotten to button up his collar over an entwined leather braid he wore as a man necklace.
O’Neil called back into the house, “Detective Sergeant on premises, wipe your arses!”
A few groans and greetings followed.
“What have we got?” Danny said as he suited up in coverall, booties, and gloves.
O’Neil stepped ahead of Danny from area rug to area rug like colorful stepping stones. A giant sectional couch in brown leather faced a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. Lots of primary—
colored pillows and prints of Irish wildflowers rounded out the decor.
“Prepare yourself,” O’Neil said.
“You’ve never worried about my sensitive feelings before.”
Danny stepped around O’Neil toward a pair of feet peeping out from behind the sectional. The victim wore house slippers that looked oddly threadbare against the jaunty yellow and green rugs. Danny steeled himself against what he was about to see, thrusting aside an image of Ellen crumpled on the kitchen floor.
“—and nothing appears to have been stolen,” O’Neil was saying.
Danny didn’t catch what he’d said, his attention riveted on purple dots dappling the victim’s signature little blue bow tie where blood had soaked into the fabric.
“Ah Christ, Elder Joe?” he said. “Who hates an old fella like him that much?”
Everyone knew Elder Joe, one of Danny’s fellow regulars at the Plough and Trough Pub. Unlike Ellen, his injuries didn’t appear to be head trauma, but it didn’t matter; the sight of pooled blood caused Danny to step back involuntarily.
O’Neil pointed at spatter arcing across the walls. An abstract painting in blood. “Quite the goring, I’d say.”
Elder Joe’s undershirt was weighty with the red stuff. The material sagged over his flaccid chest and stomach, and light from the windows caught the blood in a cheery crimson hue. Danny counted six holes in the shirt—six spots where a sharp implement had jabbed through tender tissue and organs.
“His name was Joseph Macy,” Danny said. “He goes by Elder Joe, or EJ.”
“Oh, I know his name, all right.” O’Neil’s voice turned sour. “An ex-girlfriend’s father.”
Now this was interesting. Danny redirected his gaze from the blood-soaked holes in Elder Joe’s undershirt to O’Neil, who always appeared too nonchalant and easygoing for life’s complications.
“Benjy the Bagger’s supposed to be here within an hour,” O’Neil said. “I’ve got it handled if you want to get on.”
“And why would I do that?”
O’Neil paused. “Today’s Saturday.”
Right. And Saturdays were reserved for visiting Ellen with their children, Mandy and Petey. Danny checked his watch. He might still have time later this afternoon.
“Tell me what you know about EJ in two sentences,” he said.
“He has one daughter, Róisín, who detested him. No clue why, only that they fell out and she moved away. She said he was nothing but a sniffer dog after the money.”
Danny gazed at the giant flat-screen television and tried—and failed—to reconcile this picture of the man with the one who liked to buy rounds at the pub. But then, crime tended to occur because of or within people’s hidden worlds. Half the battle of investigating crimes was cracking the mirrors that reflected back people’s polite façades.
“Tell me about his daughter, your ex-girlfriend.”
“She owns a tourist shop in Galway now. I met her when she worked at the Grand Arms as a concierge. I wandered in one day to ask her if she knew the name of a local seamstress.”
“Seamstress?”
“Bloody hell, man, even a bloke like me needs bedroom curtains.” O’Neil grinned. “I’m no heathen.”
“As long as they weren’t lace curtains.”
“Feckin’ hell, no. A nice sage green linen, I’ll have you know. Róisín owned a sewing machine, so one thing led to another. Guess you’ll be wanting me to travel up to Galway to talk to her? Wouldn’t put a bother on me.”
“I’ll bet.” Danny stepped out of the way of the scenes of crime photographer. “Who found EJ?”
“Ah.” A disturbed expression flitted across O’Neil’s face. He pointed toward an open doorway. In the corner of the kitchen a uniformed officer stood with a petite woman encoiled by a scarf the size of a boa constrictor. She patted her chest in a way that Danny recognized.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered.
Merrit Chase, Lisfenora’s leading Californian-in-residence. Danny habitually looked for “tells,” and her chest patting signaled that she was struggling to remain calm. Other than that, she looked like her usual self as she turned to face him: hazel-eyed, enigmatic, just this side of neurotic. Today she wore one of her flippy summer skirts over black leggings. A leaking carton of eggs sat at her feet.
“Have her wait outside,” Danny said. “She’s not to leave yet.”
His mobile rang. He accepted the call from Marcus, his father-in-law, who now lived with Danny and acted as child-minder while Danny worked.
“On your way then?” Marcus said. “The children are ready to visit Ellen.”
“There’s been a death,” Danny said. “I’ll be here for a while.” He continued when Marcus didn’t respond. “It’ll have to be tomorrow instead.”
“What about during this evening’s visiting hours?” Marcus said.
Danny’s chronic sense of guilt lived as a congealed mass lodged at the base of his throat, sometimes softening, sometimes hardening. Right now it was hard as a golf ball. “This is a bad one. You’ll be putting the kids to bed tonight, I expect.”
“Ay, right. I understand.” Marcus’s tone said he didn’t quite, though. “Tomorrow, then.”
He rang off without asking Danny who’d died, which wasn’t his usual behavior, that’s for bloody sure.
“Okay?” O’Neil said.
“I’ll manage.”
A uniformed officer named Clark approached. “Excuse me, sir, we’ve got something else. Back there.”
He led the way down a gloomy hallway with disintegrating fleur-de-lis wallpaper and water stains. A gust of wind flung raindrops against the roof, a sound the children called goblin footsteps. Sounded like pricks of remorse to Danny.
Several doors hung ajar, revealing bare mattresses and shabby dressers.
“His own B and B,” O’Neil said. “Let the rooms during the Matchmaker’s Festival, eh?”
Possibly, but to Danny the place felt haunted by people who were more for the grave than a boisterous festival. A moment later, Danny’s instinct started to resemble reality when Officer Clark pointed into the last room along the corridor. “Overhead light is burned out,” he said.
Danny grabbed O’Neil’s torch as he pushed through the men and into the room. The light beam bounced off another old dresser and landed on a crucifix. The place reeked of decrepitude and loneliness, of an unwashed human enclosed for too long.
From the corner of the room, a rustle of fabric and a groan caused Danny to swing the torch around. A wash of urine and feces greeted him when he approached the bed. An elderly man blinked against the torch light. “About time,” he rasped.
Danny passed Clark an empty glass from the many that sat on a side table. “Call for an ambulance. Get blankets and water. Not cold, the water. Tepid, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. Ambulance already called.”
“You gave us a fright.” Danny sat on the edge of the bed. “You have a name?”
The man’s words got caught around his swollen tongue, making it hard to understand him. “Of
course I bloody well have a name.”
Clark returned and passed along a thick woolen blanket that Danny tucked around the poor man. Next, Danny held a glass of water toward his mouth. “Sip. See how it goes down first.”
The man swallowed twice and let his head drop back onto the pillow.
“Do you remember your name?” Danny said.
The man frowned. “I may be half into the ground, but I’m no halfwit. Cecil Wallace.”
“How are you related to Joseph Macy, Cecil?”
“This is his place, innit?”
“That’s the point,” Danny said. “You. Here.”
“Where else would I be?” Despite his feisty responses, Cecil’s eyes darted around the room as if he wasn’t sure about it anymore. “Where’s Joe?”
“Ay, there’s the rub. Was Joe caring for you?”
A nod.
“Joe is paid to care for you?”
Another nod.
One of the men called out that the ambulance had arrived, and a moment later a fresh batch of voices echoed through the house. The paramedics shooed Danny and O’Neil away as they entered the room. Upon seeing them, Cecil raised his arms like a toddler begging to be held, reminding Danny of his children, Mandy and Petey, at home, waiting for him. And of Ellen, his wife, not at home waiting for him. Not that she had been in the months before the attack, but marital difficulties didn’t lessen his remorse.
This life. It was like to squash him flat as roadkill. “Right, let’s see about Merrit,” he said.
three
Merrit huddled on Elder Joe’s front stoop, out of the path of the scenes of crimes men who bustled in and out of the house. She rewrapped her scarf around her neck and head and tried not to think about Danny’s reaction to her presence at the crime scene. It may have been her imagination, but the way his head had sagged on his neck stank of the most profound resignation and annoyance.
Doesn’t matter, she told herself, and shifted her gaze away from the doorway through which Danny would soon appear. Beyond the ambulance, Garda cars, and other vehicles crowded in front of Elder Joe’s house, there stood an abandoned gravel quarry. The earth’s interior excavated and reshaped into rock hills like sand dunes. The decimated grey wasteland had to be one of the loneliest views Merrit had ever seen.