Erin Hart - False Mermaid

“I heard someone sing it at a competition once,” Nora said. She could still see the face of the young woman, whose name she couldn’t recall, standing alone before a restless crowd in a drafty school gymnasium. Little by little the crowd hushed as each person was drawn in. When the song finished, the girl calmly returned to her chair while the silence in the room gave way to shouts and crushing waves of applause.

“You know it’s a famous Donegal song.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“What made you sing it tonight?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because Tríona and I used to sing it together. That was a long time ago—I don’t think Elizabeth ever heard us.”

“You think it was the song that upset her?”

Nora crossed her arms and sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to know anything.”

Cormac set down the door chain and came closer. “Nora, what’s wrong? What did Elizabeth say?”

“It’s everything that’s happened—yesterday, and this morning while you were away. We went over to Port na Rón to check out the caves, like you suggested. We never made it that far. We got as far as the beach. I got distracted for a moment, and when I turned around, Elizabeth was walking straight out into the water, like she was headed somewhere. I had to go in after her—”

“You don’t think she was trying to harm herself?”

“I don’t know, Cormac. I’m baffled. I just can’t seem to get through to her. I feel so unprepared for this, so inadequate.”

“You’re doing your best.”

“Elizabeth is having second thoughts about running away. Do you know what she told me upstairs? That it wasn’t her father she was running from—it was Miranda.” Cormac tried to step closer, but she put up a hand to keep him away. “What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here.” She began to pace.

“Nora, what are you talking about?”

“All this time I’ve spent over here, these last three years, digging in bogs—it wasn’t what I should have been doing at all. I should have been at home. All the things we stumbled upon this week back in Saint Paul, they were there all along—”

“Nora, what’s got into you? This isn’t like you—”

“How do you know? Maybe this is the real me. And now—” She held up the door chain. “Now I’ve brought it all down on you, on Frank. His brother died, Cormac, but he’s still over there, working the case, because he doesn’t want to let me down. I’m the one who let everyone down. I keep thinking, ‘This time, we’ll get the evidence, we’re finally going to get down to the truth. This time, it’s going to work. It’s got to work.’ Well, what if it doesn’t? What if Peter gets Elizabeth back, and he manages to make everyone believe that I took her? It could happen—and if it does, it won’t just be a restraining order for me this time—I could actually go to jail for kidnapping.”

“Nora, let me help—”

“How? How can you help me? There are so many things I haven’t told you—”

“Tell me now.”

Nora had the feeling she was standing at the edge of a precipice. She was about to close her eyes and fall forward, and there was no parachute. She let Cormac settle her in a chair, and let out a long breath. “Nobody had any idea what was really going on. After Tríona was killed, all kinds of strange details started to surface, bit by bit. Most of it still doesn’t make any sense.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts. “The first bizarre piece of evidence was a bottle of eyedrops found in Tríona’s purse. When the police analyzed the stuff in the bottle, they found it wasn’t eyedrops at all. It was a drug called GHB—”

Cormac shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

“It has all sorts of names—Grievous Bodily Harm, liquid ecstasy. One of the club drugs. I don’t know what they call it here. It was developed years ago as a presurgery anesthetic, until someone discovered how it could affect a person’s sexual appetite. Lots of people started to use it recreationally. When the police searched Tríona’s house, they found a dozen similar bottles stashed all over the place—all with her fingerprints on them.”

“You think she was using the stuff?”

“That’s what everyone assumed, but Tríona didn’t do drugs, Cormac. She wouldn’t. The thing is, GHB also induces amnesia—one capful, and you don’t remember a thing. It’s easy to slip into drinks, and gets metabolized very quickly—the cops will tell you, that’s what makes it the trickiest of the date rape drugs. I think Peter was giving it to her. I found a tape when I was home, a message Tríona left for me, about what to do if something happened to her. She says on the tape that there were hours, whole days, that she couldn’t remember. She didn’t know what was happening to her.”

“If she was being drugged, there must be some way to prove it.”

“The effects of GHB wear off as soon as it’s out of your system. There’s no way to prove she wasn’t taking it on her own. And the more I find out about what he did, the worse it gets.” Nora struggled to maintain control. “At first, Peter seemed horrified about the drugs. He told the police he was mystified, that their marriage was rock solid. He couldn’t imagine who had a motive to kill Tríona. But when they kept questioning him—”

“Let me try to help you, Nora. Please.”

“After several interviews, Peter broke down, and started telling stories about coming home from work and finding Tríona asleep, Elizabeth still in her pajamas. He told them that since the prior summer, Tríona had been going out at all hours, coming home with leaves in her hair, strange bruises, and no memory of where she’d been or what happened. He said for months he’d been at his wit’s end, wondering every night whether she’d come home at all. It was lies, Cormac, it had to be. That wasn’t Tríona—it just wasn’t. But he was so convincing—and there was no way to prove it hadn’t happened just as he described. When the police searched the house, they found not just the GHB, but the clothes as well—” She shut her eyes, trying to keep it together. “Tríona’s clothes, all torn and stained with dirt and—”

“What? Nora, tell me.”

She couldn’t speak above a whisper. “Biological substances—blood and semen. From multiple unknown donors, as the crime lab so delicately put it. Peter managed to make it look as if my sister had been neglecting her child, that she’d been going out and getting high, and screwing everything in sight—”

“So a murder could be down to her own risky behavior, and he looks perfectly innocent—”

“Not just innocent—saintly. You have no idea how devious he is. Destroying Tríona’s reputation wasn’t enough. He stole everything from her. She began to doubt who she was. She didn’t even know herself anymore. In her message on the tape, Tríona pointed me to some things she’d hidden away—a datebook, with certain days marked. I thought maybe those were the days she knew she’d been drugged. There were also some bloody clothes, and a whole raft of newspaper articles about a woman who’d gone missing a few weeks before. I think Peter murdered the other woman, and tried to make Tríona believe that she had done it. I think she woke up one morning covered in blood, with no idea what had happened. I think he set it all up, to make her believe she’d done something terrible. And some part of her believed it. She must have felt like she was losing her mind. But she didn’t get rid of the bloody clothes. She hung onto them, hid them away, told me where to find them. She’d been working, saving up money, and she sent Elizabeth away that weekend she was killed. I know she was walking out, Cormac, she was this close—”