Splintered Silence

by Susan Furlong

  “And they’re thinking that killer must be one of us.” I held up my hand. I didn’t want to know any more about the press. “You said Dub was at the trailer?”

  “He came by to pay his respects. That’s what he said anyway. I think he was really there to see you.”

  A chill clutched me. I handed the rest of my burger under the table to Wilco. I’d lost my appetite. “Why do you say that?”

  “He was asking about you. Old flames die hard and all that.” She winked. I shivered.

  “Seems he should be worried about his wife. Not me.” I’d never told Meg what Dub had done to me. But I didn’t want to think about that now. I tossed my crumpled napkin on the table and grabbed the end of Wilco’s leash. “I’d better get back home.” I’d told Doogan that I’d start the search today. Guilt shot through me. I hadn’t planned on starting a new job the same day I applied, and now it was almost dark.

  I reached into my pocket for some money. Meg stopped me. “It’s on me, cuz. Wait up, I’m going to grab my jacket from the back office, and then I’ll walk out with you.”

  I stood by the cash register, absently studying the pies rotating in a nearby display case. A couple of ladies came up to pay their bill. “Wish their type would stay up on the mountain,” I heard one of them whisper to the other. I tugged at Wilco’s leash and headed outside.

  As soon as I reached my car, I noticed the scratch. A deep groove ran from the driver’s-side door all the way to the back bumper. Someone had keyed me. No doubt one of the guys from earlier. I felt my fist clench.

  Meg caught up with me. “You didn’t wait . . . what is it?”

  I opened my hand and slammed it down on the roof of my car. Wilco saw my anger and flattened his ears. “This.” I pointed down at the scratch.

  Meg ran her hand along the side of my car. “Who would . . . ?”

  I clenched my teeth and glanced around the lot. Meg’s mouth turned downward. We both knew. The two guys from the diner. I rolled my neck, calming the anger boiling inside me. Meg was looking off in the distance now. Once again, the tide of hatred against us had swelled, frothing beyond suspicion into self-righteous acts of violence. A keyed car one day. But what next?

  CHAPTER 7

  It was late by the time Wilco and I made it back home. Gran and Gramps must have turned in early; the place was completely dark. I hesitated on the way to the front door, glancing over at Doogan’s place. He wasn’t home. Good. I knew he’d be ticked that I was a no-show earlier, and I dreaded trying to explain it to him.

  “You said we’d start searching today.” I half jumped out of my skin. Doogan emerged from the shadows next to our front steps, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low over his face. Wilco’s tail wagged with excitement. I grabbed his collar and held him by my side.

  Doogan’s voice was tight with anger. “I waited half the day. You never showed.”

  “We’ll head out at daybreak. I promise. I have a new job and—”

  He cut me off. “Forget it. I can’t count on you.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and lumbered toward his own trailer.

  “What do you mean?” I hustled and caught up with him. “I told you, I got a job today.”

  He stopped and turned my way, his posture stiff and his jaw set hard. “It’s fine. I did some of my own searching.”

  “You searched the woods today? Did you find anything?”

  “Not the woods. Costello’s place.”

  “What?” I lowered my voice. “You broke into his mobile home?” I already knew that Doogan had done time, God knew what for. I wondered about the status of his parole. “That’s a felony, Doogan. You shouldn’t—”

  “I’m sick of waiting around for people to help me find my sister.” He leaned in, and even in the dim light from his porch, I could see his eyes flashing. His voice was thick with brogue. “Get out of here, Brynn. Go home and let me be.”

  He was close enough that I had to crane my neck upward to see his face. Against the chill of the night air, I felt the heat of his anger radiate from his torso, invading my space. And another emotion too. Something urgent and visceral and distinctively unnerving. Protective, or maybe it was possessive, I couldn’t be sure. I’d sensed it earlier that day when he stepped in to disperse the situation between Deputy Harris and Wilco. His demeanor toward me had shifted from insolence to something else. Something I’d ignored then. I was trying to ignore it now. I wouldn’t let myself go there. Not with this man. Not with any Pavee man. Ever.

  I took a step backward, but there was no need. He had already turned and now hurried off. Again, I took off after him, this time not so much to apologize but because there was no way I was going to let him get away without hearing what he’d found. “We can go out first thing in the morning. I don’t have to be in at work until noon.” He ignored me, but I persisted. “Did you find anything?”

  Doogan hesitated only a second, then stormed into his trailer, leaving his door open. Wilco and I followed him inside and to his kitchen, where he pulled a long-neck beer from the fridge. He didn’t bother to offer me one.

  “What’d you find, Doogan?” I asked again.

  He took a crumpled photograph out of his pocket. “This.”

  I smoothed it over the kitchen counter. In it a red-headed girl’s face had been gouged out with some sort of sharp tool. I glanced up at Doogan, saw his eyes fixed on the refrigerator door, where a photo of his sister hung by a magnet. Her wedding photo. She looked like a princess: veil flowing in the breeze, her wedding ring sparkling as she clutched her bouquet. It was the same red hair as the one in the crumpled photo under my hand. I squinted. “Is this Sheila?” I handed back the damaged photo.

  “Yeah. That’s her.”

  “Looks like she’s leaving a room at the Sleep Easy. Who’s that?” I indicated a masculine figure obscured by the shadows of the partially open doorway.

  He didn’t answer. He was tracing his finger over the gouged-out face of his sister, his muscles trembling with anger. “Costello has this room . . .”

  “A room? At the Sleep Easy?”

  “No. At his place. There’s a stash of DVDs . . . and other things.”

  “DVDs? You mean—”

  “Porn flicks.” He was still looking at the photo. “Pumpkin Pounder, Ginger and the—”

  “He has a redhead fetish.” A sourness roiled in my stomach. Both Sheila and my mother had red hair. “You said there were other things. What type of things?”

  He kept his gaze focused on the photo. “Sex things. Sick stuff.” His jaw hardened. “Why would Sheila marry a guy like that?”

  I half choked, half laughed and his head snapped up, eyes flashing. “Don’t you remember, Doogan? Sheila was a good girl. She married whoever her family told her to. She was obligated to marry that sick bastard.” I met his pointed stare with my own until he blinked, his lips tight against the truth of my words. My shoulders fell. He didn’t deserve my anger now—he had enough of his own. “Just tell me what else you found.”

  He pulled something else from his pocket and threw it up on the counter. “This.”

  I leaned in and peered at a clump of curly threads.

  Doogan jabbed at the counter. “I cut this out of his carpet. It looks like blood.”

  I looked closer. “It could be, I guess.”

  “What if it is blood?” His body tensed. “Sheila’s blood.”

  I backtracked and softened my words. “It could be anything. And even if it is Sheila’s blood, she could have had a bloody nose. Or cut herself.”

  “Or been cut. Stabbed. Killed. Right there in that room.” He stepped back from the counter, folded his arms across his chest, and set his jaw firmly. He was trying to be stoic, but I sensed his pain. “You need to take it to the sheriff,” he said. “Have him run tests on it.”

  “And tell him what? That you broke into Costello’s place and cut out a piece of his carpeting?”

  His features twisted with confusion.

  “W
hat you did was stupid, Doogan. What if it does turn out that Dub’s the killer? We can’t use any of this. And when he realizes someone was in his place, he’ll start covering his tracks. He’ll destroy anything that points to his involvement in your sister’s death. And what if someone saw you? You could get into serious trouble.”

  “Nobody saw me. The only trailer back there is old man Nevin’s. He’s hard of hearing and probably half scuttered by now. Likes his whiskey.” He stopped pacing and met my gaze. His lips twitched nervously.

  Or was that a sneer? I fumed inside. What was he implying? Yeah, so I drank. God knew I’d earned the right. The things I’d seen, my scars, the suffocating nightmares . . . all of it out of my control. Let your training take over, go on autopilot. That’s how they trained us Marines to handle dire combat. If we didn’t learn to disassociate under stress, then we’d bury our heads in the sand, get our asses blown off. Go numb, ignore the fear, and you’ll live through it. No, I wasn’t anything like old man Nevin. He was just another drunk Pavee. They came a dime a dozen around here. I’d survived combat and left the war; it’s just that the war hadn’t left me. Not yet. The booze and other stuff? It helped me go numb, just for a while. Just until I could get through the pain, get my head screwed on straight. That’s all it was for me.

  “Costello killed my sister.” Doogan was pacing again. “I know he did. Her stuff’s still there, in her closet, folded in her drawers. Even her toothbrush. Sheila didn’t just up and run away. Costello murdered her. And I’m going to make him pay.”

  “Easy, Doogan. We need to get more evidence first.” Things weren’t always what they seemed, and assumptions could lead to a quick death. Or a slow burn. I tugged at the fringe of my scarf.

  He pointed down at the photo. “That picture. The blood. What more do you need?” His expression tightened. “You’re acting like them. Saying these things because you’re a cop. You’ve been on the other side too long. We Pavees take care of things our own way. Or have you forgotten?”

  Clan justice: an eye for an eye. Literally. Some Travellers, the yonks, or criminals or wayward among us, had no trouble committing sins against our settled neighbors. But no Pavee would cross the line of harming or stealing from a fellow clan member. The consequence was too high. All the more reason to make sure we were on the right track. I didn’t want Doogan going off half-cocked without substantial evidence. “We don’t even have a body,” I said. “We can’t be sure until we find a body. We’ll start in the morning.” I swallowed hard. The implication was clear, and so was my fate: Sheila was likely dead. And I had one more body to find. “I promise.”

  I motioned to Wilco, and we left, but the pain and anguish written on Doogan’s face revisited me as I lay in bed that night. Between Dub’s belligerence and Doogan’s intensity, one or the other would end up dead for sure if they met up like this. I couldn’t let Doogan lose his life too at the hands of Dub. Nor could I let Doogan land in jail for murder. As much as I suspected Dub had killed Sheila, there was no proof—not yet. And there it was: I did suspect Dub of murdering Sheila. And . . . I squeezed my eyes shut . . . maybe my mother too. The facts of the case raced through my mind: Dub’s temper, a temper I knew all too well; the blood; the DVDs, which suggested a fixation on red-haired women . . . red hair, the same color as my mother’s hair . . .

  My inner monster awoke inside me and breathed fire. An angry heat took over my body. Next to me, Wilco whimpered and burrowed his head in the crook of my arm.

  Doogan’s right. I’ve been on the other side too long. Since coming back, I’d felt suspended between two cultures, my loyalties torn, my sense of belonging, here or there, eaten away like grub-infested roots. Rootless. That’s what I was. Like a tree that, for all purposes, appeared steady and strong but would easily topple in the next heavy wind. I’ve always felt that way. An orphaned half-breed, sired by an unidentified settled man, abandoned by my Pavee mother . . . all these years, so many unanswered questions. And now . . . now, if what Doogan thought was right, if Dub was the killer . . .

  The irony of it shocked me to the core . . . Dub—the reason I’d left the clan, my grandparents, my way of life—may have also taken away my one chance of ever knowing my mother, of ever knowing the whole truth.

  Clan justice. An eye for an eye, a life for a life.

  Dublin Costello deserves whatever he gets.

  CHAPTER 8

  The morning breeze ran through the treetops like a silent serpent. I inhaled deeply, sucking in and savoring the familiar scent of mossy peat and decaying leaves. Wilco was by my side, wearing a tactical vest and tethered to a lead, his head held high and proud, awaiting my command. He was glad to be back working. It surprised me to admit it, but I was too.

  We’d set out before daybreak and had already walked a few miles into the woods. I wanted to start at the previous scene and work our way outward, my theory being that if the crimes were connected, the perp may have dumped the bodies in close proximity.

  From the start, I laid down the ground rules with Doogan: Keep any talking to a minimum, follow my lead, and don’t for any reason make eye contact or any other contact with my dog. You see, the hunt is just as much about the handler as it is the dog. The reason Wilco performs his task so well, why he’s a decorated war hero, isn’t because he’s brilliant—although in my eyes he is—or because of the hours and hours of grueling training we’ve invested in developing his skills. No, Wilco works as hard as he does out of loyalty and devotion to me. Most people don’t get it. Hell, most of my friends in uniform, including my superiors, didn’t get it. They want to believe that it’s the breed, or the training, or the inherited instinct that makes a dog so good. Of course, all of those things contribute to the making of a good human remains detection (HRD) dog. But it’s the human/canine relationship that makes a great HRD dog. Unless you’ve truly loved a dog and that dog has loved you, it’s hard to understand. In short, Wilco performs out of devotion and a strong desire to make me happy.

  For that reason, if I’m not careful, he’ll lie just to please me.

  In handler lingo, we call it a false alert—when, for one reason or another, a dog reacts to a nonexistent scent. In the early stages of our training, Wilco and I had struggled with false alerts. Despite six weeks of grueling training at Lackland Joint Base K9 School and having it pounded into my head over and over by my superiors, I still screwed up. Especially those first few weeks after Wilco and I were matched. I found myself constantly enamored with my dog’s capabilities and often made the mistake of stopping to admire his technique. But if I met his gaze or gave even the slightest hint of approval, he’d stop and go down on alert, thinking that if I was pleased, then he must have met his goal. My response spurred his actions. Left unchecked, that sort of thing could have become chronic and ruin his career. It’s one of the most elusive aspects of our training, an emotional paradox: bond, love one another, yet learn to work independently of those emotions.

  Rather than try to explain all this to Doogan, I just told him to keep his mouth shut and stay ten paces back.

  About a half mile from the outcrop of rocks where we’d discovered my mother’s body, Wilco lifted his nose for a deep sniff. His head twisted this way and that, his nostrils working first the air, then the ground. Some of Wilco’s over 200 olfactory cells—or smellers, as I called them—had picked up my mother’s scent. I had expected this. The last few days had been cool but dry, and her scent could easily still linger. So I allowed Wilco to press forward to the highest concentration of smell, the rock fissure where her body had been discovered. I kept him on the lead, though, not wanting him to incur a repeat injury. When we reached the fissure, he sat down and looked expectantly my way.

  I unhooked his leash and signaled for him to continue. Behind me, Doogan paced impatiently. “We should have begun at Dub’s place and worked our way from there. That would have made more sense.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “If he killed her at his
place, he wouldn’t have been able to carry her out this far. He would have dumped her closer.”

  “He’s got an ATV.” As does half the population in the area.

  “And a truck.” Doogan swiped at his hair and scanned the woods. “She could be anywhere. He could have driven up north and dumped her off the Chestoa Bridge.”

  “I doubt it. The cab of Dub’s truck is small, so he would have had to use the bed to transport her. Maybe at night. But still, he would have had to drive through the trailer park and out on the main road with a body in the back of his truck. His place backs up to the edge of the woods. It makes more sense that he would have chosen to hide her out here. Less risk.” My theory was thin, at best, but it was the only thing I had. I did know that there was no way my mother’s body just appeared this far out from any civilization. Someone had to have hauled her in by ATV, or maybe even horseback.

  I’d kept one eye on Wilco. Off lead, he wandered back and forth aimlessly and became distracted by a fleeting squirrel before racing back and pawing at my leg. He was trying to engage me. “Playtime?” he seemed to say. My heart, which had soared seconds ago when he’d successfully hit upon the previous scene, now plummeted. Wilco, once focused and driven, was looking soft in the field. But what did I expect? When was the last time he’d trained?

  When was the last time I’d trained?

  Overhead, the morning light gave way to rolling gray skies. A thunderhead was building, and so was my disgust with myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I thought about my lapse of judgment in waiting this long to conduct my own investigation of the scene. I should have been out here earlier, looking for tracks. And what had I been doing instead? Drowning my sorrows in a bottle. I’d thought about it the day I found my mother’s body. I’d wondered at the time if the sheriff had set the boundaries of the scene wide enough to encompass possible ATV tracks leading into the area. Only, at the time, I didn’t know it was my mother. I felt no connection to the case. No reason to insert myself in the investigation. Then, with everything else going on, I’d let it slip through the cracks. My dog wasn’t the only one who’d become soft.