Buried in a Bog (22 page)

She checked him out: about her age, dressed like every other twenty-something guy she knew, in jeans, a hoodie, and that stupid cap. He looked slightly grimy, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. A sneer was plastered on his face. So much for a warm Irish welcome.

He was watching her too. What was he thinking? She’d faced off against tougher guys than him—her neighborhood, school, and the places she’d worked all had had their share of bullies. If Brown Car was expecting a meek tourist, he was in for a surprise.

Maura looked around her: still no other people in sight, although she thought she could hear a tractor now, several fields away. Yeah, that would be a lot of help to her. Maybe Brown Car Guy wanted to apologize. And maybe pigs could fly.

But she wasn’t looking for trouble, and her business here was done. Might as well leave. She could be wrong and he really
was
here to honor his dead mother or something. Maura started walking toward the gate, and he straightened up from his slouch, but he didn’t move out of the way. When she was about five feet away, she said, “Mind letting me by?”

“Mebbe I do,” he said. To Maura’s ears his accent didn’t match the others she’d heard around here, but she didn’t know enough to place it.

“You want something?” she asked. Not the smartest move in the world to challenge him, but she hadn’t survived Southie by being timid.

“Yer not from around here. Go home where yeh belong.”

Was this some punk kid who liked to throw his weight around? Someone who hated Americans on sight? What was his problem?

“What if I like it here?”

“That can change fast.”

This standoff was getting them nowhere, although Maura’s gut was telling her that this guy had more on his mind than picking on a tourist. What should she do? She had the cell phone in her pocket: she could call 999 and say…what? That a man was annoying her? Still, maybe the threat of a call would be enough to discourage him. She pulled the phone out of her jacket pocket.

He laughed. “Think the guards’ll be any help? It’ll take ’em
forever to find this place. Besides, I’ve a message to give yeh: Yer pokin’ yer nose where it don’t belong. Leave it go.”

What on earth was he talking about? “Oh yeah? Says who?” Maura retorted. To her own ears she sounded like a twelve-year-old on a playground.

Maura was relieved when he didn’t push back. “I’ve said my piece. Back off or yeh won’t be happy.” The punk turned and strolled back toward his car, ignoring her questions. Instead of using the gate, he vaulted over the low wall—showing off? But at least he did nothing more threatening than get into his car and back out of the lane too fast, spraying gravel as he sped down the hill. Maura had time to notice part of a license plate this time. Would that help?

She gawped at the phone in her hand. She didn’t need 999 now, but she thought she ought to tell the gardaí that she’d seen the car that had run her off the road again, and now she’d gotten a good look at the driver as well as part of a license plate. She didn’t have Sean Murphy’s mobile number, but she could go to the station at Skibbereen and tell him face-to-face, so he could add one more piece of information to their skinny file on her. And she even knew how to get back to the main road from here: the Drinagh road led to the main road, which led to Skibbereen.

As Maura drove to Skibbereen, following the Drinagh road to the main highway, she had time to think about what Brown Car Punk had said. Stay out of what? She’d been minding her own business, talking to a few elderly people, and pulling pints at the pub. The guy had apparently wanted to warn her off—but from what? Why was he picking on her when he didn’t even know her? She pulled abruptly into
the small lot in front of the garda station, nearly empty on a Sunday. She got out and headed for the front door.

The same ridiculously young officer was stationed at a desk in the front, and he looked up and smiled politely at her. “Hello, miss, can I help you?”

“Is Officer Murphy in?”

The young officer stood up. “I’ll see if he’s free,” he said, and darted across the room. He didn’t have far to go, and reemerged quickly with Sean Murphy in tow.

“Ah, Maura Donovan. How’s the car running?” Sean asked with a smile.

“Fine, thanks. But, uh, look, can I talk to you about that?” Maura said.

He looked around, finally locating an empty desk in the corner and nodding toward it. They walked over, and he gestured Maura toward a chair while he went around and sat on the other side. “What is it you wanted to tell me?” he asked.

“I saw the guy in the brown car again. And this time he got in my face.”

Suddenly Sean Murphy was all business. “Just now?”

Maura nodded. “Yes. I came straight here. I was visiting my grandfather’s grave—he’s buried in the old cemetery at Drinagh. Do you know it?”

“Up the hill, by the old tower?”

Maura nodded. “That’s the one. I drove from Leap directly there, and when I got there I was alone. I spent some time in the cemetery, and I found my grandfather’s gravestone. But then this other car showed up, and the guy got out and came into the cemetery. He had to have followed me.”

“And he threatened you?” Sean asked. “What do you mean by ‘got in your face’?”

“Well, not exactly threatened—at least, not physically. He watched me for a while, and when I tried to leave, he told me I wasn’t welcome and I should just go home. He didn’t say why, except that he didn’t want me ‘poking my nose’ into something. He didn’t get close enough to touch me.”

“Did you respond to him?”

“I asked him what he wanted, and he just laughed at me. I pulled out my phone to call you guys, and he said you’d never get there in time. But then he left.”

“You were lucky. Did you happen to—”

“—get the license plate? Part of one. He took off pretty fast, so by the time I got to the gate he was making the turn. All I got was 99-C-8 something.”

“That at least tells us it was a Cork plate, then. Can you describe the man?”

“He looked…ordinary. About my age, no taller than I am. He had on jeans, a hoodie, running shoes—none of it was new. A baseball cap, no logo on it, so I couldn’t see the color of his hair. I didn’t get close enough to see his eyes.” Sean was writing all this down, and Maura waited until he had finished. “Does that help?”

He sat back in his chair and looked at her. “You’re sure now the car was brown, and we have a partial license. That’s good. The way you describe him, he could be about anyone. But what matters is that he’s come back after you a second time. He seems to want you to go away. Why would that be?”

“I can’t tell you. You think he’s hanging around, like, stalking me?”

“I can’t say. I’m sorry—I don’t know what we can do to keep you safe from him. Of course I’ll check the car registration, but we’re out flat with these murders and all, and we can’t put anyone on it right away.” At Maura’s puzzled look, he added, “We’ve few violent deaths in Skibbereen. Or in all of Cork, for that matter, even in Cork City. Few of us have ever worked on a homicide at all. And the people in town are on edge, looking over their shoulders all the time, if you know what I mean. So we’re doing our best to figure this out, and that leaves little time for complaints like yours. I’m sorry.”

“You mean, he’ll have to kill me to get your attention?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Maura regretted them. Of course the small police force here was stretched thin. Of course the fresh murder of one of their own people took precedence. She kept having to remind herself that this was small-town Ireland, not Boston. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That didn’t come out right. I’m glad you’re willing to talk to me now, at least. Have you made any progress on Bart Hayes’s death? Were there cameras on the cash machine, or anything like that?”

“The machine has cameras, but the attacker knew enough to wait until Bart Hayes had moved away before he struck. It may be that he’s done this before, or he’d planned it.”

“It was just supposed to be a robbery, wasn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t like somebody wanted the guy dead.” She flashed on a memory of Hayes at the pub; he’d seemed so happy.

“We’ve no reason to think anyone held anything against Bart Hayes. The shopkeepers are hoping it was someone passing through who saw his chance and took it. Which would make it nearly hopeless for us to solve, of course.”
He shook his head. “The blow probably wasn’t meant to kill, but nobody saw the body until the next morning, and by then it was too late.” Sean sighed. “Nobody saw the attack. Shopkeepers hadn’t seen anyone suspicious loitering about. Wasn’t even very much money.”

“Happens all the time back home,” Maura said. “And it seems like everybody has guns these days. Kids, even. They get into some argument with another kid and blam, they shoot him. It’s stupid.”

Sean smiled at her. “You won’t be finding that kind of violence around here. Maybe in Dublin, or Cork City. I won’t say we’re all angels, but we do draw the line at gun violence.”

“Still, what a waste that Bart Hayes is dead.” Maura shook her head and stood up. “I’ll let you get back to work. I’m due at Sullivan’s anyway.”

To her surprise, Sean stood as well and said, “I’ll see you to your car.”

“What, you think Brown Car Guy is waiting for me outside a garda station?”

He smiled. “Criminals aren’t known to be smart.” He walked her to the front door, but he seemed to be in no hurry. “You’ve been having quite the time of it since you arrived.”

Maura nodded. “I guess. I never had this kind of trouble back home, and nobody ever claimed that our neighborhood was a good one, at least when I was growing up, although it’s cleaned up its act in the past few years. Is this normal, or is there something weird going on?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the first day I’m here you drag a body out of the bog, and I happen to be driving by. Then Jimmy at the pub
falls down the stairs and breaks his arm, and when I take him to the hospital you’re there and tell me there’s been a murder in Skibbereen. Then there’s this jerk who tries to run me off the road, and follows me to a cemetery. Am I attracting this crazy stuff?”

Sean shook his head. “That I can’t say, but I will tell you it’s not the usual order of things.”

“Do you know yet who the guy in the bog was?”

“That we do not. We’ve had the people from the National Museum down, and they said he was modern, been dead no more than a century, which is much too young for them. No documents on him, no wallet, no keys, but that’s not necessarily unusual. We’d guess he died sometime after 1925, based on the few coins in his pocket. We’ve yet to find any record of the man’s disappearance. We may never put a name to him.”

“Poor guy—you want to think that somebody missed him. What do you do now?”

“We’ve been handling it like any other crime scene—the detective inspector thought it would be a good idea for us to get some training in how to handle one. Good thing too, what with the second murder hard on the heels of the first. Anyways, we performed a thorough search of the crime scene, collected the poor man’s few possessions and inventoried them, had the official autopsy done. But clearly we’ve no witnesses to his death and no likely suspects in our sights.”

“But he was murdered, right? No way that was an accident?” Maura asked.

“That’s what the autopsy tells us,” he said.

“Maybe he just fell and hit his head on a rock or
something?” She found she wanted it to be an accident, not a murder.

“I’m afraid not. The marks on his head were unmistakable—a strong blow to the back of the head with a long, narrow object, a cane or a stick. That much we know. And then this other killing comes along, so who knows when we’ll get back to our man in the bog.”

“Will he be buried? Or I guess, reburied?”

“Most likely, although it’s still an open investigation right now. It would be good to have a name for the stone, though.” He leaned up against her car. “So, will you be staying around much longer?” he asked.

Maura wondered briefly why he wanted to know. “It looks like it—I’ll be helping out at Sullivan’s until they figure out what’s going to happen with it.” She could have sworn he looked pleased. “Well, it was nice talking to you, Officer Sean Murphy, but I need to get back to Leap.” Maura fished in the depths of her bag for her car key and felt the crackle of paper—the letter addressed to Old Mick, that she’d picked up in the pub. She’d forgotten she was still carrying it. “Oh, shoot.”

“You’ve lost your key?”

“No, I’ve found that letter. So much has been going on that I forgot all about it.” She pulled the letter out of her bag and looked at Murphy. “I think we’d better talk to that detective of yours. I may have something about your Bog Man that he should hear.”

M
aura had to give Officer Sean Murphy credit: after a first startled glance, he said simply, “Follow me,” no questions asked. Good for him—at least by now he seemed to trust her judgment. Although Maura worried that when she presented his boss with her small bit of information, they’d both look foolish.

Inside, Sean said, “Wait here, will you?” and headed for the corner office. The door was open, and after a brief rap on the door frame, he went in. The man seated behind the desk looked up, then listened. Sean nodded toward Maura out in the common area, and after another word with the higher-up, he beckoned her forward.