False Mermaid (4 page)

Elizabeth stared out at the rain, filled with a slowly expanding anxiety about all the things she didn’t understand. She had always felt as if other people saw and understood more than she did. They expected her to grasp things she hadn’t quite figured out. And at that moment, a notion—vague and indistinct at first—began to open up and spread out inside her. What if everyone had been lying? What if there had been no car crash, and her mother had just gone away? That happened sometimes. Her mother might even have another family by now, a new family she liked better than the old one. Elizabeth lifted the edge of a scab on her knee and watched as a few bright drops of blood began to ooze from the exposed wound. It hurt a bit, but she couldn’t seem to stop until she had removed the whole scab, exposing a patch of brand-new, bright pink skin beneath.

The violent cloudburst was over. She stood up and scanned the expanse of gray water in the bay, hoping for one last glimpse of her friend, but there was no sign of the dark, familiar shape. It was time to go.

It was late afternoon when Nora’s rental car pulled up in front of an Edwardian foursquare on a crooked side street off Summit Avenue in Saint Paul. Before leaving Ireland, she’d found a furnished apartment to rent here, a former chauffeur’s quarters tucked above a carriage house. The neighborhood was a maze of tree-lined boulevards atop the river bluffs, where nineteenth-century lumber barons and steamship magnates had spent their fortunes on extravagant homes. The carriage house happened to be only a few blocks from where her parents lived on Crocus Hill—easy walking distance. If only the breach between them could be bridged as easily as that.

Nora found the key hidden under a window box beside the carriage house door—exactly where the owner had said it would be. She unlocked the apartment door, venturing upstairs to look around before lugging in her bags. Standing on tiptoe, she could just glimpse the Mississippi river bluffs from the kitchen window. Wherever she went today, the river seemed to follow, lurking at the edge of her vision, never letting her forget its presence. Somewhere along that river was the place her sister had been murdered.

Tríona’s body had been found in the trunk of her car in an underground parking garage downtown, but seeds and leaves combed from her hair at the postmortem said she’d most likely been attacked and killed in an area of black ash seepage swamp. The trouble was, there were hundreds of miles of black ash swamps along the Mississippi corridor. They’d never found the primary crime scene.

Sweat was trickling down Nora’s back by the time she’d hauled everything up the winding stairs to the second-floor apartment. She flipped the switch on the ancient window air conditioner and heard it hum to life as she changed out of her travel clothes into a pair of shorts and a tank top. Three years in Ireland, and she’d forgotten how the Midwest summer felt against bare skin. She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror that stood in the corner and ventured closer to
make an assessment. Although she was usually oblivious to her many flaws, they were now all she could see: the short, dark hair flattened from sleeping on the plane, eyes too large in the pale face scattered with freckles, mouth set in grim determination. She’d lost weight in the past few weeks. The pallor of her limbs was suited to the Irish climate but looked positively unhealthy here. Nora examined her face in the mirror.
I wasn’t always like this.
Where was the person she had been before, the one who could think straight, who could laugh and feel joy—could feel something, anything, besides this terrible hollowness? She spoke silently to the strange, melancholy creature who stared out at her from the mirror.
Where is she? What the hell have you done with her?
She had to fight a sudden urge to smash the glass. Not a mirror’s fault what it reflected.

She turned away and started to survey her new surroundings: windows on three sides of the sitting room, including a deep window seat on either side and an arched triptych of leaded glass at the gable. The sitting-room furniture was a hodgepodge of different styles, definitely secondhand, but comfortable enough: there was a full-sized spindle bed covered in a handmade quilt, a cane rocking chair and upholstered love seat, a small oak desk. The sloping walls were covered in ornately patterned wallpaper, the kind that might play tricks on you in the dark. The place was certainly sufficient; she wasn’t here for luxury. But it was time to rearrange. If she was going to act the detective, she might as well let this space play its corresponding role as incident room. She pulled the bed away from the center wall, repositioning it under the eaves. Then she returned to the wall and ran a hand over the smooth, papered surface. It would do as a bulletin board—any damage could be dealt with later.

Her second suitcase still stood in the middle of the floor. Inside were the files and papers she’d collected for the past five years, all the evidence and leads in the case, all the abandoned theories and blind alleys she had traveled down. The contents of the suitcase must have shifted in transit; as she began to unzip it, an avalanche of paper spilled across the floor. Sifting through the mixed-up files—autopsy reports, notes on physical evidence, search inventories, photographs, interview notes—she thought about the wasted effort these files represented. For two years after the murder, she’d spent nearly every waking hour trying to find enough evidence to put Tríona’s killer away. And she had failed. Seeing all the familiar, dog-eared corners, feeling the well-worn softness of every file, she was nearly overcome with despair, knowing there was
nothing new inside them, nothing to tip the scales one way or the other. Every index card, every photograph, every scrap of paper had a dozen or more holes in it from being tacked up to walls, first here, and then in Ireland. It occurred to her, and not for the first time, that she had just been rearranging the pieces, trying different configurations, hoping that a recognizable pattern might begin to emerge. But if some major piece of the puzzle was missing, she could rearrange these things all she liked and the picture would never come clear. From the edge of the pile, she unearthed the ragged, taped-together city map she had carried to Ireland and back, tacking it up on the wall and once again marking important locations with red pushpins: Peter and Tríona’s house along the River Road, her parents’ place on Crocus Hill, the house she had shared with Marc Staunton across the river in Mendota, the sites she had scoured for evidence along the river, the library where Tríona had been spotted in the hours before the murder, and finally, the parking garage in Lowertown, where her sister’s body had been discovered.

She fished out and unrolled the timeline she’d begun five years ago, marking out the days and hours between the established facts, the documented events in the final week of Tríona’s life. Some of the handwriting was hardly recognizable as her own. As she glanced at the place where the solid red line representing her sister’s earthly existence came to an abrupt end, Nora realized she could never look at this piece of paper again without being reminded that her own life, similarly represented, would reach the edge of the paper and beyond. What exactly did she have to show for her continued survival? Since Tríona’s death, so much in her life had spiraled downward and ended in failure: her once-bright teaching career, her relationship with Marc Staunton, even the closeness she’d always had with her parents—all gone. She’d been away from Ireland less than twenty-four hours, and already her whole life there seemed like a distant dream. How had she let herself believe that time with Cormac had been real? It seemed such a long time ago now, though it had been barely three days since she’d awakened beside him. She stooped to pick up a bundle of photographs that had fallen on the floor. Ireland had been a temporary respite, and now it was over. Time to wake up, get back to reality.

She took apart the bundle of photos and began tacking images of Tríona to the wall: first, the close-up of a toddler with red corkscrew curls, dressed in overalls and a pair of homemade fairy wings, then a gawky ten-year-old straddling a bike and squinting into the sun—and, finally, the
grown-up Tríona, in profile against the rocks and trees of Lake Superior’s North Shore. She kept these pictures together because they came the closest to capturing that rare quality her sister always had—she remembered looking into those eyes, even before Tríona could speak, and grasping the fact that there was a fully developed consciousness in there.

That Tríona had actually loved Peter Hallett, Nora had no doubt. He’d probably never deserved it. But what would the world be if people loved only those who were deserving? She often wondered what had been set in motion the first time Peter Hallett laid eyes on her sister. People talked about chemistry, and some of what people considered chemistry was actually measurable—pheromone levels, synaptic activity, pupil size. But those were just the observable responses surrounding the original glimmer of attraction, just as the songs and poems that tried to delimit love were not the thing itself. And what of the end of love? Sometimes it seemed to reverse itself in an instant. Perhaps it was not chemistry after all, but more akin to a magnetic charge, a force of nature that could bring people together and just as strongly repel them. Was that what had happened with Peter and Tríona?

The very next picture in Nora’s bundle was of Peter Hallett himself. Every detail of his appearance was exquisite: the thick, wavy black hair, full lips so prominent in the lean face, the eyes that could vary from deep aquamarine to cobalt, depending on the light. For some reason, it was always the word “beautiful” rather than “handsome” that sprang to mind when she looked at him. Always something subtly ambiguous about his sexuality, which somehow seemed to magnify its power. His gaze conveyed a blend of sensuality and self-assurance, tempered perhaps with a touch of wariness, a hint of vulnerability. There was something restless and impulsive about him, something dangerous and mysterious and mercurial—all qualities not unlike those of the theater directors and other creative types to whom Tríona had ever been drawn. One glance from those blue eyes could make you feel extraordinary, adored. Without warning, Nora was jolted back to the day she’d met Peter Hallett.

It was only about six months after she’d started seeing Marc Staunton, a fellow med student. Marc had been in excellent spirits that evening, pouring them each a glass of wine before they were off to dinner and then to the opening night of
The Winter’s Tale
. Tríona was starting to show real promise as a professional actress. She’d caught some critical attention for roles at smaller theater companies, and had just been cast as Hermione,
her first major Shakespearean lead at the flagship regional house. It was a very big deal. Nora remembered feeling jittery with anticipation. Marc said: “You’ll never guess who called me today, out of the blue—my old college roommate. He’s just back from living in Europe, thinking of setting up shop here as an architect. I told him we might be able to swing an extra ticket tonight, introduce him around a bit. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Why should I mind? I’m sure we can finagle something. What’s he like?”

“All right, I suppose—if you go in for charming, talented, unbelievably good-looking people. He’s always been like that—a little
too
extraordinary. You want to hate him, but it’s not possible.” Marc hesitated. “You know, on second thought, maybe I should call the whole thing off, tell him I couldn’t score the extra ticket.”

“Relax—he’s probably fat and bald by now.”

Marc shook his head. “Nora, Nora, Nora. You don’t seem to comprehend the sort of person we’re talking about. It’s all right—you’ll understand when you meet him.”

Even with that forewarning, she was not prepared for the dazzling, dark-haired stranger who approached her in the theater lobby. He took her hand with a flourish, and pressed it to his lips.

“Nora—Marc’s description didn’t do you justice.” He must have seen them come in together.

She was genuinely flustered, not only by the suddenness of Peter Hallett’s approach and the oddly antiquated gesture, but also by the intense blue eyes that locked onto hers with a mixture of curiosity, playfulness, and frank sexual appraisal. The memory of that first encounter made her blush, even now.

“Unhand her, you rotten bastard,” Marc said, approaching from behind and clapping his friend on the back. “God, you haven’t changed a bit. I turn my head for half a second, and there you are, worming your way into my place—” In that fraction of a second, Nora wondered what the little exchange revealed about their relationship as roommates. Despite the mock jealousy, it was clear that Marc was enjoying himself.

But as soon as the curtain rose and Peter Hallett set eyes on her sister, all idle flirtation with Nora and anyone else abruptly ceased. How perfectly still Tríona had stood in that shaft of light at the play’s closing scene. How strange and magical she had seemed—the wronged wife turned by her grief into stone. Nora had often found herself wondering
whether Peter Hallett had been attracted to the flesh-and-blood Tríona that night or to her character, Hermione. Whatever the answer to that question, his pursuit of Tríona had been relentless, full press from the beginning, and he had not stopped until he possessed her. His campaign had begun at the opening-night party after the show, when he stole a bottle of champagne from the servers and followed Tríona around all night, ready whenever her glass was low.

Later, as they stood at the mirror in the ladies’ room, Nora had ventured an aside: “I think Marc’s friend likes you.”

Tríona stared absently at her own reflection. “Who are you talking about?”

“The guy who’s been following you around all night—Marc’s friend, Peter Hallett.”

“Oh—right.” Tríona concentrated on something in the corner of her eye. “The stalker.”

“Something wrong with him?”

“I really can’t say, Nora. I only just met the man. He’s a little
too
good-looking, don’t you think?”