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CHAPTER SEVEN
Later I would look back on the next few days as the last normal ones of my life, though at the time they seemed anything but. Normal was peach pie and green beans, bartending and coaxing my car to the garage for the latest two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Band-Aid, not investigating my sister's murder in Dublin.
I spent all day Wednesday on campus at Trinity College. I spoke with the last professor on my list, but she had nothing new to add. I talked with dozens of Alina's classmates when their sessions let out. The story they told was so identical from one to the next that they were all either part of a vast X-Files conspiracy—I always hated that show, it was too vague and open-ended and I like my tidy denouements—or this was really who my sister had been while she was here.
They said for the first two or three months she was friendly, outgoing, smart, someone others wanted to hang out with. That was the Alina I knew.
Then suddenly she changed. She began missing classes. When she did show up, if someone asked her where she'd been, she behaved strangely, secretively. She seemed excited and deeply preoccupied, as if she'd discovered something far more interesting to immerse herself in than her studies. Then, during her last months there, she lost weight and looked exhausted all the time, like she was going out drinking and partying all night, every night, and it was taking its toll. "Edgy" and "nervous" were two words I'd never associated with my sister, but her classmates used them liberally in describing her.
Did she have a boyfriend? I asked. Two of the people I spoke with said yes, two girls who seemed to have known Alina better than the others. She definitely had a boyfriend, they said. They thought he was older. Rich. Sophisticated and handsome, but no, they'd never seen him. No one had. She never brought him around.
Toward the end, on those rare days she showed up for class at all, it seemed she was making a last-ditch effort to try to get her life back, but she looked weary and defeated, as if she knew it was a battle she'd already lost.
Later that night I stopped in an Internet cafe and downloaded new tunes for my iPod. ITunes loves my Visa. I should be more frugal, but my weaknesses are books and music and I figure there are worse ones to have. I'd been hankering for the Green Day Greatest Hits CD (the song that goes "sometimes I give myself the creeps, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me" had been majorly on my mind lately) and got it for the bargain price of $9.99, which was less than I would have paid in the store. Now you know how I justify my addictions—if I can pay less for it than I would at Wal-Mart, I get to have it.
I sent a long, determinedly upbeat e-mail to my folks and a few shorter ones to several of my friends back home. Georgia had never seemed so far away.
It was dark by the time I headed back to the inn. I didn't like to spend much time in my room. There was nothing comfortable or homey about it, so I tried to keep myself busy until I was ready to sleep. Twice, while walking home, I got the weirdest feeling I was being followed, but both times I turned around the scene behind me was a perfectly normal Dublin evening in the Temple Bar District. Brilliantly lit, warm and inviting, thick with throngs of pub-goers and tourists. Not a thing back there that should have sent a chill of foreboding up my spine.
Around three o'clock in the morning, I woke up strangely on edge. I pulled the drape aside and looked out. Jericho Barrons was on the sidewalk in front of The Clarin House, leaning back against a lamppost, his arms folded over his chest, staring up at the inn. He wore a long dark coat that went nearly to his ankles, a shirt of shimmering blood-red, and dark pants. He dripped casual European elegance and arrogance. His hair fell forward to just below his jaw. I hadn't realized it was so long because he usually wore it slicked back from his face. He had the kind of face you could do that with; chiseled, symmetrical bone structure. In the morning, I decided I'd dreamt it.
Thursday I met with Inspector O'Duffy, who was overweight, balding, and red-faced, with pants belted low beneath a stomach that strained his shirt buttons. He was British, not Irish, for which I was grateful because it meant I didn't have to struggle with his accent.
Unfortunately, the interview turned out to be more depressing than quizzing Alina's classmates had been. At first, things seemed to go well. Though he told me personal notes on the case were not a matter of public record, he made me (yet another) copy of the official report, and patiently recounted everything he'd told my father. Yes, they'd interviewed her professors and classmates. No, no one had any idea what had happened to her. Yes, a few had mentioned a boyfriend, but they'd never been able to find out anything about him. Rich, older, sophisticated, not Irish, was all they'd been able to find out.
I played him her frantic phone message. He listened to it twice, then sat back and knitted his fingers together beneath his chin. "Had your sister been using drugs long, Ms. Lane
?"
I blinked. "Drugs? No, sir, Alina didn't use drugs."
He gave me that look adults get when they think they're telling you something for you own good and trying to be gentle about it. That look pisses me off to no end when the adult is so obviously wrong. But you can't tell grownups a thing when they've got their minds made up. "The decline her classmates described follows the classic downward spiral of drug use." He picked up his file and read from it. "Subject became increasingly agitated, edgy, nervous, almost paranoid. Subject lost weight, looked exhausted all the time." He gave me that irritating brow-raised, expectant can't-you-see-what's-right-in-front-of-you look some people use, like they think they can cue the right response from you with it.
I stared at him stonily, resenting the word "subject" clear to my toes. "That doesn't mean she was doing drugs. That means she was in danger."
"Yet she never told you or your parents a thing about this danger? For months? You said yourself what a close family you have. Wouldn't your sister have told you if her life was in jeopardy? I'm sorry, Ms. Lane
, but it's far more likely she was concealing drug use than her life was in danger and she never said a word to anyone. We see this kind of behavior in inner-city youth all the time."
"She said she was trying to protect me," I reminded him stiffly. "That's why she couldn't say anything."
"Protect you from what?"
"I don't know! That's what we need to find out. Can't you just reopen her case and try to find out who this boyfriend was? Surely someone somewhere saw the man! In her message, it sounded like she was hiding from someone. She said he was coming. She said she didn't think he'd let her out of the country. Obviously someone was threatening her!"
He studied me a moment, then sighed heavily. "Ms. Lane
, your sister's arms had holes in them. The kind of holes that needles make."
I flew to my feet, instantly livid. "My sister's whole body had holes in it, Inspector! Not just her arms! The coroner said they looked like teeth marks!" Not of any person or animal he'd been able to identify, though. "And parts of her were just fora!" I was shaking. I hated the memory. It made me sick to my stomach. I hoped she'd been dead when it had happened. I was pretty sure she hadn't been. The sight of her had pushed Mom and Dad right over the edge. It did the same to me, but I came back from that hellish place because somebody had to.
"We examined her ourselves, Ms. Lane
. Neither animal nor human teeth made those marks."
"Needles didn't either," I said furiously.
"If you'll sit back d—"
"Are you going to reopen her case or not?" I demanded.
He raised his hands, palms upturned. "Look, I can't afford to send men out on cases that have no leads when we're up to our ears in ones that do. There's been a recent spike in homicides and missing persons like we've never seen before." He looked disgusted. "It's as if half the damn city's gone crazy. We're short-staffed as it is. I can't justify putting men on your sister's case when there's nothing to go on. I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Lane
. I know what it's like to lose a loved one. But there's nothing else that I can do for you. I suggest you go home and help your family get through it." And that concluded our interview.