Chapter Eight #4
“Ah, you’re grand,” Garda Dennis says, waving that off, a little embarrassed. “We can’t have this spoiling the run-up to your wedding. Ye’ll need all your wits about you just for the guest list, sure.”
He settles back down behind the counter and starts going through the file, licking his thumb to turn each page. The file looks too thin to hold something that’s shadowed a whole townland. The rain hammering the roof makes the building feel even smaller, a tiny bubble of calm.
“Now,” Garda Dennis says, planting one stubby finger firmly on the paper.
“I knew ’twas in here somewhere. Here we go: ‘The ethylene glycol’—that’s the antifreeze, amn’t I right?
—‘the ethylene glycol was ingested less than an hour before death.’ And she died at”—he runs his finger down the page—“between eight and midnight—I’d say your man had an awful time working that out, ’cause of her being in the water, but that’s what he said. So that’d mean…”
His lips move while he does the math. “Seven o’clock,” he says. “That’s the earliest she coulda drunk it. What time did she leave your missus’s house?”
“Like quarter of six,” Cal says.
“No way had she taken it by then, so,” Garda Dennis says triumphantly. “And there’s nothing your missus coulda done.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Cal says, taking a deep breath of relief. “That’s gonna be a big weight off Lena’s mind. And off mine. You know how it is: you see your woman worrying, you’ll go a long way to fix it.”
Garda Dennis nods hard enough that his cheeks bounce.
“That’s love, sure,” he says. “Last week there, my missus thought she heard a rat up in our attic. I knew fine well there was nothing there—the dog woulda been going mental—but she couldn’t sleep; she does be petrified of the rats.
So up I climbed. In with the dust and the spiders.
I sat in that attic the rest of the night, with the torch in one hand and the poker in the other, watching for a rat that was never even there. ”
He’s gone a becoming pink. “I might be an awful eejit,” he confesses. “The lads all say she’s got me by the bollocks. But you shoulda seen how delighted she was, when I came down in the morning and said there wasn’t a scratch all night. ’Twas worth it.”
“That’s love,” Cal agrees. “Nothing dumb about that; I’d’ve done the same. And I guess there’s nothing weird about Lena worrying, what with her being the last person to see Rachel.”
He leaves a pause there, in case Garda Dennis wants to correct him on that, but Garda Dennis is still nodding understandingly.
“She’s racking her brain,” Cal explains, “in case Rachel said something that could’ve tipped her off.
She says Rachel mostly just talked about her cat, it had got scratched up, but Lena’s afraid she missed something. ”
“She wouldn’ta done it ’cause her cat wasn’t well,” Garda Dennis reassures him. “The poor girl was a bit flighty-like, from what I hear, but she wasn’t straight-up mental.”
“I didn’t know her myself,” Cal says, “but that matches what I heard.” He wonders who told the Guards that Rachel was flighty-like. “You guys ever find out why she did it?”
Garda Dennis shakes his head. “Not a clue. None of the mental health, everything grand at home, everything grand at college, everything grand in the love life. She went out with Tommy Moynihan’s young lad,” he adds, impressively, like he’s saying She went out with JFK Jr.’s kid.
Right about here is where Cal would love to amble off down a tangent about the Moynihans and their doings, but he knows better.
When Tommy comes calling to warn the Guards against Cal, he doesn’t need to hear that Cal has been in digging for dirt on his family.
“I knew that part, yeah,” he says. “They seemed like a pretty happy couple to me.”
“Ah, God, yeah. Young Eugene had the ring bought and all. A few people thought they mighta been having some hassle, one way or another, but that’s only gossip; all her friends said no, the two of them were happy out.
Earlier this year they had a bitta trouble over where they’d live once they were married—he works in the finance up in Dublin, d’you see, and she was a home bird, she had all her friends and family round here, didn’t wanta leave the place.
But that was all sorted. They’d been looking at buying a bitta land round your way, for to build a house.
I’d say Eugene was going to work remote,” Garda Dennis adds knowledgeably.
That fits with Mart’s guess about Eugene running for the council; he can’t do that from the big city. Cal has always got the impression that Ardnakelty doesn’t meet Eugene’s high standards. He wonders how Eugene felt about his daddy and his girlfriend teaming up to keep him there.
“Eugene seems pretty cut up about it,” he says.
“In tatters,” Garda Dennis says, with a mixture of solemnity and relish.
“That’s what he is: in tatters.” He rubs his bald spot, trying to come up with something that’ll help.
“Maybe she just imagined he was going off her,” he suggests.
“And she got herself in a state over that.” He looks hopefully at Cal.
“Well, that’s a thought,” Cal says, with an impressed lift of the eyebrows that makes Garda Dennis sit up a little straighter. “Anything like that on her social media, or her texts? She call Eugene a coupla dozen times that evening?”
“Not a thing,” Garda Dennis says promptly, proud of knowing this one right off the bat.
“He rang her a few times, but she didn’t answer.
And there was a buncha texts from her pals—about someone’s twenty-first the next weekend, like, and who was going to wear what dress, so’s they wouldn’t match.
But she never tried to get in touch with anyone. ”
“Well,” Cal says, troubled again. “Maybe, maybe not. Lena, she went to bed early that night, and she thinks maybe she might’ve heard a knock at the door, sometime in her sleep.
I figure she was dreaming, but she’s got it in her head that was Rachel coming back again, looking for help.
Did you guys pull the location history off her phone, maybe I can reassure Lena she never came back that way? ”
“Oh, God, I wouldn’t say so,” Garda Dennis says, startled.
He gives it a shot anyway, paging methodically through the file, but he comes up shaking his head.
“Sure, round here we haven’t got the resources you’d be used to in Chicago,” he explains, a little abashed.
“We wouldn’t go around getting location histories unless ’twas on a suspect, say, who’s done something a bit serious, or on a missing person.
We couldn’t do it for something like this. ”
Cal doesn’t disillusion him on the resources of Chicago PD. “You gotta prioritize,” he agrees.
“But if you’ll take a bitta advice off a married man…
” Garda Dennis leans forward conspiratorially across the counter, his round blue eyes earnest. “If I was you, I’d tell your missus we have that location history and Rachel was miles away all night long.
Sure, what harm? That’s my number one tip for marriage: if you can make the other half happy, and no harm done to anyone, don’t miss the chance. ”
“Sounds like good advice,” Cal says, grinning at him. “I’ll take it, and hope she does the same.” He stoops to pick up his can of varnish. “I won’t keep you from the job any longer. Those shoes oughta be ready by now. Thanks again for taking the time.”
“Ah, not at all,” Garda Dennis says, from the heart. “Sure, you’da done the same for me back when you were on the job, amn’t I right?”
Cal feels a small, sharp pinch of sadness.
He doesn’t miss his old job even a little bit, but there’s a warmth in having this one place where his past self still exists in Garda Dennis’s mind, a ghost with a badge and a caseload and a mouth full of cop slang in cop rhythms. Soon, as soon as Tommy Moynihan can fit it into his busy schedule, that’ll be gone.
“That’s right,” he says. “Any time.”
“Don’t have the reception in the Kilcarrow Arms,” Garda Dennis advises him, picking up his keyboard and paper towel again as Cal turns to go. “I was at one there this summer, and God almighty, I was never that sick in my life. I thought I was turning inside out. Get the Breggan Court.”
The nearest café is a depressed little side-street joint with a lot of worn Formica and a strong smell of fried eggs.
Cal shelters there, in spite of the fact that their coffee tastes like its main ingredient is burnt hair.
By now he understands the weather around here well enough to know that the rain is what Mart would call “down for the day” and there’s no point in trying to wait it out, but he wants to think, while Garda Dennis’s info is still fresh in his mind.
This place is, for obvious reasons, always empty; he’s not going to run into anyone else up from Ardnakelty and wanting company.
He gets out the notebook where he keeps shopping lists and woodwork measurements, and finds a clean page.
4 p.m.: Outside store with Tommy and Eugene
4:30 p.m.: Leaves Eugene
5:30 p.m.–5:45 p.m.: At Lena’s
+/? 6 p.m.–6:30 p.m.: At Sheila’s—last known sighting
Between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Goes home, leaves car
? evening: Possible plan to meet Eugene—family thinks yes, Eugene says no
8:30 p.m.: Family gets home, house is empty
Between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.: Antifreeze
Between 8 p.m. and 12 a.m.: Time of death
At six-thirty, Rachel was upset and worried, but not on the edge as far as anyone could see. Within a few hours, she was drinking antifreeze. Something, or someone, happened in those hours.