Barney removed Karl’s belongings from the cabin and collected him when he was released from custody. Selina was discharged from hospital and moved back to her parents. They tried to remain friends, believing they owed that much to each other. Their bruises and cuts healed. Hers had been visible and his, so skilfully delivered, were hidden. But the internal wounds were too deep to allow room for friendship. Instead, they became a reflection of each other’s terror.
Two weeks later, Karl’s mother died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage. Justin rang to break the news and the shock Karl felt over what had happened to Selina was subsumed into this new grief. Returning for his mother’s funeral offered them a dignified way to say goodbye.
His father was stooped and grieving. A month later, his death certificate would claim he had died from an aneurism, but his sons knew his heart had broken. Karl never told him about Selina Lee. Nor did he tell Justin. Too much history from the early years between them. Unable to cast off the roles they played, they remained the perfect son and the problematic son, who always brought trouble in his wake.
The late news was on television, the volume down. The newsreader’s mouth moved, her expression more nuanced without the distraction of words. Karl turned up the volume when Constance’s face appeared on the screen. The same photograph that had been used for the poster campaign.
‘We’re going live to the scene of the search where journalist Amanda Bowe is ready to bring us the latest developments in the search for the missing schoolgirl.’ The newscaster swivelled sideways and smiled at the reporter, who stood in front of Isaac Cronin’s house. She touched her teeth with her tongue a few times but apart from this minor sign of nervousness, she seemed perfectly at ease as she described the ongoing search. The scene moved to the orchard, where the search dog was moving between trees. He would have sniffed Constance’s clothes, breathed in the scents her young, delicate skin had exuded.
Amanda was back on camera. The search was being called off for the night but would resume at first light tomorrow. Karl pressed the remote and banished her.
He thought about a tree that grew in the garden he had shared with Selina. Leafy and broad, the palo verde gave them shade in the evenings when the heat of the day cooled and the enveloping darkness chased the wine-red sunset from the hills. But those rustling leaves could fall from the branches without warning. No slow fluttering, no russet flaunting. At the first hint of a drought, they dropped and allowed the tree’s energy to survive in the parched earth.
Everything that had sheltered him since he left Arizona had been stripped from him with that same suddenness. The years in between, those safe six years of rebuilding his life, had just been an interlude. An interlude that fooled him into believing nightmares could be left behind in the searing Sonoran Desert.
The urge to sit there in the darkness and let them come for him overwhelmed him. The police with their book of evidence. The media with their sources and suppositions. His family with their broken lives. His chin was swollen, throbbing. He wondered if his neck was dislocated. Brother Attacks Brother over Daughter’s Disappearance. Would that be her headline tomorrow.
No, too staid. It would probably read Connie’s Distraught Dad Attacks Sex Fiend Brother.
Chapter Thirteen
Day Seven
They found Constance’s body on the afternoon of the seventh day. Nicole rang to tell him. He knew the search was over before he answered his phone. She broke down when she heard his voice, unable to utter the dreaded truth.
‘Tell me,’ he shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, tell me.’
The liaison officer had arrived at Cherrywood House with the news. The search dog had located human remains, but as yet, the body found on Isaac Cronin’s land had not been publicly identified.
‘Let me talk to Justin,’ he gasped. ‘I need to talk to him, Nicole.’
‘He’s not taking calls from anyone right now.’ She coughed, or perhaps she sobbed; the sound was too muffled to decipher.
‘I’m not anyone, Nicole. I’m his brother. I’m coming over right now.’
‘No!’
‘Nicole—’
‘I said no. They’ve just heard the news. They need time—’
‘I have to see them. How can they believe I had anything to do with this? Nicole, you don’t believe it… you can’t…’
Unable to listen to her protests any more, he ended the call. He was about to open the hall door when he remembered the media. He could see them through the stained-glass panels, their presence swelling the pavement outside his house, and keeping watch on the back lane. He leaned his back against the wall and slid to the floor. Dead… gone forever. The last fragment of hope shattered. Where had she been found? Cronin’s land, Nicole had said, not inside the house. His hunch had been right but only half-realised. Had Constance been watching him from some distant, ethereal sphere when he had shone his torch on her graffiti? He must talk to Justin. Make him understand that the wedge Amanda Bowe had driven between them was built on words. Carefully constructed words that warped the truth and replaced it with a treacherous perception. Once they came face-to-face, Justin would understand how his suspicions had been manipulated. Together, leaning on each other, they would mourn Constance.
The doorbell rang constantly, as did his phone until he switched it off. He listened to each news bulletin to hear if Constance’s name had been released. The longing to storm through the media, force his way through the high black gates of Cherrywood House, gave way to despair. Trapped in a cocoon of suspicion, he switched on his laptop and read the latest online edition of Capital Eye.
Body of Missing Schoolgirl Identified
Amanda Bowe
For seven days the community of Glenmoore, and far beyond, have been tireless in their search for missing schoolgirl, Connie Lawson, 13. Now, tragically, this close-knit community must come to terms with the horrendous truth that one of their young shining stars is dead. The frantic search for Connie ended this afternoon when a crack team of investigators, aided by search and rescue dog, Midas, discovered her body in an underground location and broke the catastrophic news to her parents, Justin Lawson, 37, and his wife, Jenna, 35.
They had lived in hope that their beloved daughter was alive. That hope was cruelly dashed when her remains were located in a buried water tank on land that had belonged to the late Isaac Cronin.
The tank had been drained and closed off after Cronin, a colourful eccentric, died. It remained buried on his land, unseen and forgotten until someone with local knowledge dug through the shallow earth covering it. This person is alleged to have removed the cover, hidden the schoolgirl’s body in this cement chamber and concealed the recently dug soil with scrub. If not for the valiant efforts of Midas, who burrowed under the dead undergrowth and drew the attention of the searchers to the location, Connie Lawson’s young body would never have been recovered.
A Blasted Glass CD was found in the pocket of her leather jacket. The album, which has not yet been released, had been autographed by the band members. A local man had been seen by gardaí in the early hours of Friday morning in the vicinity of Orchard Road and had been questioned at Glenmoore Garda Station. An arrest is expected shortly.