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.
“What 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.