by Tom Bouman
Carrianne didn’t move or give any sign that she’d heard me.
DeCosta spoke. “What Shelly knew, I knew, pretty much. She’d been FOIA-ing information from state agencies. The AG, state police, PDE, Department of Public Welfare. FBI. Except that last one, all those agencies are currently in a joint investigation and audit of the commonwealth’s juvenile adjudications.”
This had to have been a response to the Kids for Cash scandal down in Luzerne County, where a judge got together with a few businessmen to populate a for-profit detention center, sending relative innocents down and taking kickbacks. It got some national attention. It turned out I was right.
“Pure cover-your-ass, after Luzerne,” DeCosta said. “What are best practices from a justice standpoint. Shelly had been asking about her ex, who had been placed at one point. She never knew what for. And because of this ongoing statewide thing, she was provided some documents, but not enough. She wasn’t going to quit. We spoke a bit on the phone, and I could see her point of view. Of course, with so many agencies in play, I couldn’t let her know much, so I gave her a name of someone who could keep her busy. Let her believe work was being done, but keep her out of our hair.”
“She told me she was the one who hired Carl,” I said.
“But the question is,” DeCosta said, “where did that lead Carl?”
At this, Carrianne Ceallaigh burst into great, harsh sobs.
“Come on in the kitchen,” said DeCosta. Away from Carrianne, DeCosta told me the story of a girl named Lily. That’s not her real name. Age ten, Lily lost her father and uncle to an alcohol-involved wreck late one night, and then her mother to heroin soon after. Age twelve, she was able to get out of foster care and live with her older half-sister, Danielle—also not her real name—who was merely twenty-two. Lily grew up fast in Danielle’s house. And in a few years, she was tagging along with Danielle to the bars, country music shows, keggers, and races.
She lowered her voice. “Lily died before she turned seventeen. Heroin. They found her on the edge of some campsite near Doublin Park. There’d been an all-day, all-night party and an MDRA race. She had too much too fast. Someone, maybe several individuals, had been with her, and just … left her. Going back through PDE files that I knew had stayed on Carl’s mind, Lily’s was one. A year before she died, she’d made statements to friends about sexual contact with adult men. One was a teacher, and that turned out to be a lie, so our job was done at that point. But in the course of that whole deal, she’d mentioned a friend of her sister’s, a Ty Kelly. Ty Kelly swore up and down he’d never known her. That always bothered Carl, because how did this kid get his name, but he’s saying he doesn’t even know her a little bit?
“A year later, she turns up dead at Doublin. One of the men questioned by PSP was Ty Kelly. Again, he doesn’t know her. Now, that was Ty Kelly out of Hazleton. When I start looking into Carl’s death, who do I see but Terry Ceallaigh out of Wild Thyme on one of the investigation reports? I run his name like I do everyone’s and come up with ‘Ty Kelly,’ and there it is. Turns out, the Brays and Ceallaighs have a connection.”
“So Carl, what, ran into Terry somewhere as he’s shadowing Bray, recognizes him, maybe Bray recognizes Carl …” DeCosta gestured for me to lower my voice. I did. “You here waiting for him alone?”
“He’s not coming back. He left a note for Carrianne and the kids, had Carrianne burn it, unfortunately. He doesn’t make any admissions, but his meaning was clear. I’ve been trying to figure out where he might have gone, who he runs around with.”
The pieces still were not fitting in my mind. “So what does this have to do with Shelly? Why would he kill her?”
DeCosta gave me a long, questioning look. “I don’t know that he did. Let me give you some names, see what they mean to you. There’s Joseph Jonathan Blaine. Alan Stiobhard. Nathan Hancock.”
John Blaine I’d never expected to see again—a petty trafficker with dreams who got burned and had to run. “What’s the connection?”
“All those guys were at Tiernan’s Gap together as boys. So was Bray.”
Carrianne spoke from the doorway. “Terry used to work for Nate Hancock a few years back. Nate had money and a boat and that, more than he should have. Terry liked working for him. Nate stopped by a couple times this month. It wasn’t a social call. They talked; I didn’t hear anything. Terry said it was business. I thought he might’ve been selling Nate something?”
“Thank you, hon,” DeCosta said.
“But was Terry ever in the system?” I said.
“No,” said Carrianne.
I looked at DeCosta for an answer. “No.”
“If you find him,” Carrianne said, “tell him his family wants him around. Tell him we’ll try to understand.”
I heard gravel popping on the driveway.
“Don’t run,” said DeCosta. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I’ve been here too long,” I said. “I need a car.”
“Don’t.” DeCosta’s right arm tensed and her hand hovered.
I ran out the back door—no kids this time—and halfway around the house. There was the black Crown Vic, with Collyer just getting out of the passenger side. I turned back around and sprinted for the garage. It had been some years since I rode a dirt bike. The Ceallaighs kept theirs in good condition and I got one to start right away. As I tore through the yard, I caught a flash of Collyer and Garcia standing at the back door, drawing their weapons, and then I was around the house and down the driveway.
The Crown Vic was turned onto Red Pine Road behind me. I opened the bike up but the PSP vehicle kept on. I rounded a bend and saw a county patrol car turning diagonal across the road. The bike wobbled as I braked, I pivoted on a foot and stood a moment as the unmarked Crown Vic lurched to a halt, blocking the way I’d come. I bounced up into a gap in the trees, the bike bucking and my legs seizing. Half on the bike, half on my legs, I scrambled up the slope. Ahead, a trail opened and I spilled onto the Moores’ lawn, getting thrown off the bike in the process. Below, the state detectives’ car had turned onto the driveway. I wrestled the bike up and tore across the lawn to the trees.
Not many men knew the trails like I did. I breathed a bit easier and my vision widened out as I picked my way down a series of switchbacks that led to a meadow full of blueberries, pinks, and the last wild thyme of summer. From there, I had three different directions I could take. I sped across the field to a trail ribbed with tree roots; it took me south to a small house, a plot of land, and a half-mile stretch of Route 189. I stopped at the edge of the road, shut off the engine, and listened; hearing nothing, I blazed over to a power line cut and climbed the ridge in sunlight. At the top, I laid the bike down, then myself, and watched as the unmarked car cruised past. Some time later, a county patrol car came from the other direction. I had time to think.
Carl Dentry hadn’t been killed in a rage; he’d been killed in desperation, and his body had been torn apart to make him disappear. It was not that Terry Ceallaigh had killed that poor underage kid. But he’d used her, and abandoned her, and Carl Dentry had caught up with him about it. It wasn’t what he was in Wild Thyme to do, and he hadn’t expected it. I pictured Carl spending his nights at the High-Thyme, not much else going on, and one night, in walks the man he knew as Ty Kelly. Or following the Brays over to the Ceallaighs’ place, looking into backgrounds, and there it is.
I had stayed in one place too long. I heard a careful, too-loud footstep on dry leaves. There at a trailhead not thirty feet from me stood County Deputy Jackson, his face swollen and angry.
“Time to come in,” he said.
I stood. “My nephew home?” I looked closer. “How are your eyes?”
He blinked, then sprinted across the clearing at me, faltering over a group of sapling stumps. I tried to get the bike up and started, couldn’t, left it, and only just slipped out of his grasp. We were in the woods again. He chased me to the edge of an outcropping, thirty feet down. As I slowed,
I pushed moss and leaves over the edge with my feet. Then I leapt out and down for a tree branch, caught it, dropped into briar patch, and ran until I was sure he’d given up.
The day was disappearing. I ran and hid the few miles over to the woods surrounding Aunt Medbh’s place. My clothesline was empty; some clothes hanging there would have signaled that Ryan had been found and was home. I saw Ed Brennan’s truck in the driveway. There were voices coming from the next hill, so I followed the trail in the direction of where Ryan’s tent had been found, and nearly ran in to County Deputy Hanluain and Shaun Loughlin coming down from the clearing. I headed back the way I came until I got to where a narrow stream passed through a shintag. I went down the stream from stone to stone as silently and far as I could get, and ducked down until the men had passed. I watched my house until the daylight began to fail. Nobody ever hung out the wash.
I made myself be still. At one point I saw Miss Julie walk out to the middle of the field and turn around in a circle, looking. I had one last hope of understanding things, but I could not get where I needed to get until nightfall. As the sun fell, I crept away again, walking the edge of the roads and disappearing into the shadows when headlights passed.
Where I was going in the end, the place I’d told Julie to tell the Stiobhards about, I’d once taken her to pick apples: a little abandoned farmstead off a little abandoned road that the beavers of the township had sunk and claimed as their territory. The road itself was swamp. Because the township couldn’t allow the road to be used, they had recently planted lines of trees in the intersection to leave no doubt: the way was closed to automobiles. Once onto it, I risked stepping out of the trees, and then onto a deer path that ran parallel to where the road had been. As I got close, I could smell the apples I crushed underfoot.
There was enough of a clearing to where anyone watching the perimeter would see me coming. I raised my hands and stepped slowly into the moonlight. Nobody stopped me. Porch steps wasting away like cardboard. Fiddleheads grew in pale sprays out of holes in the wood, dying back for fall. The pink paint on the front door had long since flaked away, leaving only seams blended with the grain of the wood. A hint of light came from somewhere inside. The door rattled as I knocked and announced.
A moment. Footsteps, and then a boy’s voice trying to sound manful: “It’s me opening the door.”
My nephew Ryan Conkins stood in the gloom, my .270 on his shoulder and pointed at the ceiling. I pulled him to me and onto the porch, and wrapped him in a hug, searched him and his eyes for hurts and wounds, and I have to say I did cry a bit and thanked God for his safety. There was a thin red mark all the way around his neck. The kid cried too, trying not to. But when I put my hand on the stock of the .270 to take it, he clamped a hand to it, refusing me with hard eyes.
A soft voice drifted out of the ruined house. “Tell him.”
Ryan tipped his head in the direction of the voice. “You know him, right? He helped me.”
Inside, pools of light from candles and oil lamps pulsed against the darkness. There was not a window left, and we were indoors and outdoors at once, the sound of rattling leaves and the Morse code of crickets and the smell of wild animals filling the house. I kept Ryan behind me. The floors had been swept clean, and empties had been removed, and at a kitchen table surrounded by mismatched chairs sat Alan Stiobhard, looking comfortable and at home. Sitting on a countertop with dangling legs was a woman not twenty, with greasy hair, wearing a long parka with a hood fringed with coyote fur. With chewed fingers she held an old flip phone.
“I hope you weren’t followed,” Alan said, soft as moths’ wings.
“You helped him,” I said.
“I can be helpful when I want. He’s a good boy. Cautious. We’ve been at a stalemate.” Moving only his eyes, Alan gestured to the tabletop, where an automatic handgun lay. “He won’t put down the rifle.”
I tilted my head down, showing him where my hand was in my jacket pocket, holding the handgun.
“Let’s not get carried away, now,” Alan said. “I’m with you.”
I looked over to Ryan. He took a breath and began to speak.
IN THE DARK of the night before, Ryan had found his backpack still sitting at the far edge of the woods near Aunt Medbh’s house. Nobody’d seen or heard him. With his tent, the .270, and some money, he was invincible and free. The cold quiet seemed to sing a long note that pulled him into it. No mosquitoes in this chill. He moved to a different part of the woods and a trail that led beyond. Anyone coming, he’d hear it. He sat for a while, looking into the world and into his own mind.
He felt trouble coming, but before he’d take any punishment, he’d make them see. They’d have to put him back at the center of things, and maybe he’d find some way to stay there. If not, he’d hike his way down to Dad and Brit.
From the middle of the big field, between him and the house, a shape moved and made a sharp snuff. Ryan was halfway down the trail and into the woods before he knew what he was doing. Because I’d shown him, he knew the place I liked to camp—a flat, dry hilltop with second-growth maples coming in, where the moss carpeted shale slabs and made natural mattresses. From the hilltop he could look down onto two deer trails—one leading back to the ravine the way he’d come, the other off to the east, where overgrown logging trails went in all directions. It was quiet. He didn’t go far; he wanted to be found.
The tent smelled wet as he shook it out and bent the poles through the sleeves. The rifle lay nearby. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until a man’s arm closed around his neck. Henry or Grandfather? By smell, no. He fought, turned his head to the side, and pulled free. He ran and almost made it to the woods, where he’d have a chance to dodge and hide, but another man, unmasked, stepped into his path. He’d seen the man the day before. Ryan stopped and was knocked down. A rope went over his head and was pulled tight around his neck. Terror, then darkness.
The boy awoke in a different darkness, with a fuzzy, sick feeling that told him not to move. It was this feeling that convinced him he was alive. There was little to see, and what there was clicked along in his vision like freeze-frames. His neck felt raw and wet but was not bleeding. Someone had laid him out on his sleeping bag.
When he awoke again, he was stronger. He propped himself up on his elbows and focused on the narrow lines of light at the far end of the room, and the faint smears of light along one edge of the ceiling where it looked like rust had eaten through. He sat up, and his head swam. Taking his time, he drew his legs under him, raised himself to his knees, and then his feet. The noises he made echoed too loud, too long. Standing felt better. His things were gone. At the far end of the room, the light drew him, but he feared it, too. Fear, regret: this was it. Guilt at the pain it would cause his mother and sister. That was the worst thing, and in the end it was not fear of his own pain and death that got him moving and searching for a weapon, but thoughts of his family.
He crept the length of the room to the dark at the back. The floor was slightly slanted in some way he didn’t understand, and the walls were metal. Turning the corner, he took just three steps before hitting the next wall. This space, he knew. A freight trailer. He walked halfway to the light at the front, then turned back again, scanning for a blade or a club. Then, again. Each time, he forced himself a little closer to the light.
On the ten thousandth turn, there was a knock on the door. Ryan froze, then crept back to the darkness at the far end. He waited what felt like a few minutes, and there was no second knock. In the darkness, he started to hear voices. Then, a second knock on the outside of the trailer.
A man’s voice: “Come on, kid. Time to go home.” Then, “Come on, bud. How long have you been in there?” Then, “I’m going to open the door.”
One door swung open, letting light in, not quite enough to reach him where he crouched in the dark. He heard whispering.
I can only guess how he felt. He stood and walked the length of the trailer to the door. His eyes adjusted t
o the light. In a quick glance he counted three men standing in a line. Between him and them was a silver tarp laid out on the ground. Forest surrounded them.
“Come out, now,” said a new voice, soft and high for a man’s. “It won’t hurt.”
Ryan lowered himself from the trailer and looked from one man to the next. All were unmasked. The middle one had glasses and a very long beard, and held his uncle’s .270. Ryan stepped left, and the left man moved with him. He stepped right, and the right man moved. Ryan said, “Leave me where they can find me.”
A change came over the center man’s face. He pulled out a handgun, lightning-quick, and pointed it at the left man’s head, and held the right man in place with the .270.
“Can you use the rifle?” the bearded man said to Ryan.
“Yes.”
“Stand up straight, come here, and take it.”
Ryan’s eyes flickered left and right, looking for escape.
The voice turned hard. “Don’t you run, or I can’t help. I know your uncle. Come here!”
Nobody spoke or moved, and then the stronger, shorter, left-hand man looked straight at Ryan and said, “If you go with him, I will make it hurt. And they will never, never find you.”
“Come here,” said the man holding the guns. Then the boy stepped forward, across the tarp. “Take this,” said the man, handing Ryan the .270 while keeping the taller, right-hand man pinned with it. “My name is Mr. Alan. If he moves, shoot him until he stops,” nodding toward the taller one, who, though strong, had long braids and showed weakness. He wouldn’t meet Ryan’s eyes.
Ryan pressed the rifle to his shoulder. He was once again aware of the world beyond the four of them there. The freight trailer was old, very old, to where trees had grown up around it and there was no way to get it out. Its wheels were hidden by brambles. A large firepit was off to the side. There was no road or trail he could see. Like everywhere up here, they were on a hill among other hills.