Novel - Half Moon Investigations (18 page)

No, I decided. Not possible. The town of Lock was simply not big enough to support two conspiracies. There must be connections running weblike between the victims. I would have to be patient. All would be clear in the morning, as the weather forecaster said to the public. Except for, those weather forecasters were always getting it wrong.

My body fell asleep because it was so utterly physically exhausted, but I swear my brain stayed awake all night worrying. What if we were wrong? What if our giant was still out there lurking in the bushes? Looking for the next victim on his list.

By 8:30 AM I was up and dressed, pacing the hall outside Red’s room.

“Are you awake?” I shouted, rapping on the door.

Genie’s voice wafted through the adjacent wall. “Shut up, Half Moon. It’s the middle of the night.”

Red appeared at the door, his red hair standing in pyramid spikes.

“I need your phone,” I said, flapping my fingers. “Quick.”

Red threw his cell at me. “You’re calling home, right? To tell them you’re on the way?”

“No. I need to talk to Murt.”

Red snatched the phone away from me in mid-dial. “Are you mental? Never call a policeman in the morning. Don’t you know anything?”

“I need to know if we’re clear.”

“Of course we’re clear, Half Moon. April and her weirdo friends were behind everything.”

“Maybe. But maybe not.”

Red sighed. “You are so paranoid, Half Moon.” He handed the phone back. “Go on, put yourself out of your misery.”

I tapped in the number. Murt answered on the eighth ring.

“Sergeant Hourihan. Don’t you know better than to ring a policeman in the morning, whoever you are?”

“Murt, it’s Fletcher.”

I could hear Murt breathing loudly through the earpiece. It sounded as though he were trying to calm himself.

“Fletcher Moon,” he said at last. “You made a right monkey out of me, Fletcher, or should I say, Watson.”

Murt had put two and two together, and a lot quicker than I thought he would.

“Cassidy told me about the new Sharkey. And April just confirmed my suspicions. I’m on my way over. Do yourself a favor: be there.”

I had no time for this. “Am I clear for the arson?”

“Listen to me, Fletcher. Forget this tomfoolery. You’re in enough trouble.”

“Am I clear?” I shouted into the phone. “Did the clipboard clear Red and me?”

Silence for a moment, probably while Murt waited for the ringing in his ear to stop. “I think it’s a crime to aurally assault a police officer. And in answer to your shouted question, no, the clipboard didn’t mention you or your partner in crime. You still have a lot of questions to answer. I can’t help you if you won’t stay still to be helped.”

My heart dropped to the seat of my pants. We weren’t clear. Our giant was still at large.

“Sorry, Murt. I have to go. Give me twelve hours.”

Murt laughed. “Twelve hours. You’re funny, Fletcher. Really. We’ll have a laugh about this when we meet. Of course, there’ll be a sheet of Plexiglas between us.”

“Sorry, Murt.”

“Don’t do it, Fletcher.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Flet—”

I cut him off.

Red had picked up the gist of the conversation. “The police are still after us.”

“Yes. Murt is on the way.”

Red tried to smooth his hair. With mixed results. “Okay. We’re really under pressure here, Half Moon. What have you got?”

The question hit me like a whack of a shovel.

“Nothing. I have nothing. I need more information.”

Red pulled on a sweatshirt. “What kind of information?”

“Facts about the victims. I need to find another link.”

Red checked up and down the corridor. “What if I knew somebody who could give you that information?”

“Let’s go. Murt is on his way.”

“What about breakfast?” moaned Red. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

I zipped up my garish tracksuit top. “Well, either we skip it, or we have it in the cells.”

“WHERE ARE WE GOING, Red?” I asked, wind ballooning my cheeks. We were freewheeling down a road pockmarked with potholes.

“To kick-start this investigation,” Red called over his shoulder. “If you want to know what’s going on in this town, there’s only one place to go.”

“The police station?” I guessed.

Red laughed so much he missed a gear change. “The police station! Are you serious? No one tells the police anything. No, this is the opposite of the police station. This is where Papa gets all his facts. This place is off limits to civilians. Papa warned me not to bring you here. But, you know, we’re partners.”

Partners? This was news to me. But good news.

Red steered past Healy Hill toward the suburbs. Not the fashionable suburbs—the other ones.

Red parked outside a semidetached end house with a cctv camera mounted in a mesh box over the porch.

We were no sooner off the bike when three track-suited kids congregated around us.

“Hey, Red,” one called, a skinny specimen with Celtic spirals shaved into his hair, and half a dozen rings dangling from one ear. “I’ll look after the bike for a euro.”

Red rounded on the boy. “If anything happens to my bike, I’m going to hold you responsible, Rasher.”

Rasher. There’s one in every town in Ireland.

“Hold me responsible all you like, your bike will still be in bits.”

Red gripped Rasher’s tracksuit by the waistband and jerked down sharply. The entire pull-away bottoms came off in his hands, exposing the unfortunate kid’s knobby knees.

“You get these back when I come out. And if there’s so much as a bird poop on the handlebars, I’ll be wiping it off with your pants.”

Rasher nodded, dragging his T-shirt down to his knees.

“No problem, Red, and no charge.”

“There had better not be, Rasher, or you’ll be feeling the breeze.”

Effective tactics. If every young vandal was forced to do his rounds without pants on, the world would be a safer place.

Red pressed the intercom buzzer.

“Step onto the frame, please,” said a voice through the speaker. There was a white square painted on the doorstep. I squeezed on beside Red.

“Oh, look who it is,” said a female voice. “The fugitive himself.”

Obviously the resident had penetrated my cunning disguise. Who was this person, and what did she know that we didn’t?

We proceeded down an ordinary enough hallway into an extended sitting room. Inside this room, an elderly woman sat in the center of what could only be described as an information empire. Her steel-gray hair was drawn back into a tight bun. She wore a tweed trouser suit, and a there was a Bluetooth headset clipped over one ear.

“My God,” I breathed.

The old lady had converted her lounge into a Situation room. Three plasma TVs were mounted on one wall, running CNN, Sky News, and the BBC. Another wall was lined with filing cabinets, these were divided into categories, including THIEVING, VANDALIZING, and EXTRA M.

“What’s extra M?” I asked.

The lady swiveled on her chair to face me.

“Extramarital affairs, obviously. No one gets hugged or kissed in this town without me knowing about it. You’ll be glad to know, young Moon, that your own parents are kissing nobody but each other. They’re in the minority, I can tell you.”

I was amazed. “How do you know about me? Who are you?”

The lady tapped a brass nameplate on her desk. It read DOMINIQUE KEHOE. “I know all about you, Fletcher Moon. We are two of a kind. I am Lock’s only other accredited private detective.”

“I’ve never heard about you.”

Dominique smiled. “That is because I didn’t want you to, but I have been looking forward to this meeting for some time, even though we don’t work for the same side.”

Another wall was covered with thumbtack-spiked maps. I recognized many of the crime scenes. Dominique had spotted many patterns that I could never have worked out, even with my computer.

“Very impressive,” I said finally. “But these can’t all be cases of yours, so why do you do it?”

Dominique stood. “Because information is power, Fletcher. Everyone needs information at some point in their lives, and generally I can supply what they need—for a price.”

“Do you get this from a source in the police?”

The old woman laughed. “Who tells the police anything?”

I was skeptical. “How detailed can your reports be, without police input?”

Dominique did not answer immediately; instead she crossed to a cabinet and selected a rather hefty file. “December, five years ago. Fletcher Moon buys a crochet pattern book.”

I grew suddenly nervous. “Wait a minute, Mrs. Kehoe. No need for an exposé.”

She flicked over the page. “Fletcher Moon enters and wins the county crocheting prize under an assumed name. The prize is never collected. Video evidence is available on request.”

My windpipe almost seized up. “Video evidence?”

“Always reconnoiter your surroundings, Fletcher. There are cameras everywhere. Your package arrived in a garish blue envelope. You were filmed posting this package in the town center.”

I smiled weakly at Red. “It was a fad. I’m over it now.”

Red laughed. “Crocheting? You know something, I’m not a bit surprised.”

Dominique selected another file. “Fletcher is not the only one with secrets.”

She flicked through the file. “Last September. Red Sharkey joins the local library.”

“It’s a lie!” blurted Red.

“Oh, really. I have your records right here. In December you checked out
Black Beauty
five times.”

Red coughed to cover his blushes. “I like horses, big deal. Now let’s get down to business, Dominique.”

“That’s more like it.” Mrs. Kehoe smiled. “First we get the formalities out of the way.”

“Formalities?” I asked.

Dominique opened an invoice template on her computer. “I’m only helping you at all because I know you’re innocent. But I still want payment, young man.”

“How do you know I’m innocent?”

“Red told me.”

“You trust Red more than the police’s mountain of evidence?”

“Of course. Red has been a reliable source of information for years,” said Dominique. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to help out of the goodness of my heart.”

Red pulled out a battered Gore-Tex wallet.

“Usual rates, Dominique?”

Dominique filled in the date and client sections. “Oh, no. This is a special case. Premium rates. Two hundred euros, and no guarantees.”

Red started. “Two hundred? Our futures are on the line here.”

Dominique shrugged. “My heart bleeds, Red. Two hundred. And don’t bother with your Sharkey bartering. I’m too long in the tooth.”

“All I have is eighty, and we cleaned out both of our bank accounts for that.”

“I’ve got something for you, Mrs. Kehoe,” I said. “Something in the way of a trade.”

“Not interested,” declared Dominique, tearing off an incoming fax. “I deal in cash only.”

“You know the Lock police have a Web site.”

Dominique’s ears twitched. “What about it?”

“If a person had the password, that person would have a lot of information at his or her fingertips.”

Dominique tried to play it cagey, but her interest leaked out through twitching fingers.

“And you have this password?”

“I do. It’s valid for the moment, but it could change any second.”

“I have broadband,” said Dominique. “You can download a lot of information in a second.”

“So you’ll help us, then?”

Dominique returned to her desk and opened an Internet browser on the computer screen.

“Not so fast, Fletcher. I need to verify the information. What is the password?”

I gave it to her, along with the name, rank, and number. I prayed that Murt hadn’t changed his password.

Dominique keyed it all in, and an entire police force’s worth of information opened up before her. She instantly looked ten years younger.

“You have yourself a deal, Fletcher. I see years of fruitful cooperation ahead of us.”

I didn’t know about that. We were poles apart as detectives. Dominique wanted power; I only wanted answers.

I took my pad from my pocket. “I have a list of names here,” I said, tearing off a page. “I need a connection.”

Dominique studied the names briefly. “School?”

“That was my first thought, but it only links Red, May, Mercedes, and myself. We’re in the same school. But not the rest.”

Dominique sat at her desktop, typing in the names one by one. “I’m working on a database for the entire town. People are connected by family, occupation, and residence. Let’s see what these names bring out.”

Moments later the computer retrieved every occurrence of the eight names. Dominique switched on a DAT projector, casting the computer screen’s contents onto a whiteboard.

She tossed me a whiteboard marker. “Show me what you’re made of.”

I stood before the board, staring at the names, willing something to jump out at me. There were twenty index cards displayed on the screen. Most names featured in two cards, some in three. Family, occupation, and residence. In no instance did the eight names all feature on the same card.

“This is it,” I muttered to myself. “The answer is here somewhere.”

I circled the victims, then joined them with ragged lines. That didn’t teach me anything except how high I could reach on the board.

“Four in the school. What about you other people. Where did you meet? Is this a wild goose chase?”

I tapped Maura Murnane. The chocoholic.

Behind me, Dominique sighed. “Her mother is a holy terror, but Maura is a lovely girl.”

I turned sharply. “You know her?”

“She babysits my grandson. He dotes on her.”

A piece of the jigsaw thunked into place. Something white flashed behind my eyes. This is the moment investigators live for. I took several deep breaths before talking.

“Does she babysit for many families?”

“Yes. Parents love her. I have her client list on file.”

I didn’t need to ask. Dominique was digging in a cabinet, caught up in the excitement.

“What is it?” asked Red.

I ignored him. I had to keep going.

Dominique handed me the list. I flattened it on the wall, scanning the names. “There,” I shouted triumphantly. “James and Izzy Bannon. Their daughter Gretel is in third grade. Saint Jerome’s.”

The connection. It was the school after all. We just had to cast our net wider.

I scanned the remaining names with fresh, enthused eyes. “Isobel French.”

The young dance teacher’s name appeared on three cards. There were two entries under name. One current and one from when she went by her birth father’s name.

I ran my finger across to Isobel’s family card. The name on the card was Halpin.

I thumped the board. “French is her stepfather’s name. She’s a Halpin.”

Red snapped his fingers. “SeeSaw Halpin is in fifth grade. She must be his sister.”

“We just need one more.”

One more. So close.

Dominique switched on a laser pointer on her key ring, highlighting Adrian’s name.

“Is that Adrian McCoy? The DJ?”

I could hear something in her voice. Excitement. Maybe we weren’t so different.

“Yes. What is it, Mrs. Kehoe?”

“Adrian does some volunteering at the community center.”

I knew what was coming. I felt it with total certainty. The same certainty experienced by people who suddenly remember where they left a lost item.

“Two boys in his group, Johnny Riordan and Pierce Bent, are from . . .”

“Saint Jerome’s,” blurted Red. “I know them. They borrow Adrian’s decks sometimes.”

My forehead felt hot. It buzzed like a space heater. “That’s everyone. We got them all.”

“No. Not everyone,” said Dominique. “Most people don’t report nuisance crime. But I hear about it.”

“Well?”

Dominique pointed to a pile of files in her in-tray. “Take your pick.”

“Come on, Dominique. Does anything stand out?”

Dominique thought about it for a moment. “Just one. A strange case. Martina Lacey. Someone sent her a paint bomb, in a bunch of roses. Miss Lacey moved back to Dublin after the event. She was too shaken up to stay in Lock.”

I found the relevant file on the table. There was a cell number listed.

I handed Dominique the file. “Would you?”

“Of course.”

Dominique dialed the number on her desk phone, placing the call on speaker.

Martina Lacey’s phone was switched on. She answered on the third ring.

“Yes?” Her tone was wary. Scared, almost.

“Martina, this is Detective Byrne here, from the Lock station. We heard about the flowers you received from a friend of yours. We’d like to take a look at your case and I wonder if you could help us out?”

Martina’s breathing rasped over the speakers. “I’m finished with Lock. I’ve put all this behind me. I won’t press charges even if you do find someone.”

“Just one question,” said Dominique soothingly, a professional. “Then we’re out of your hair. We’re just trying to tie a few cases together; we won’t even need your testimony if it comes to that.”