Banshee Cries

Somehow I was able to understand every word he said. I usually couldn’t understand most of what I said when my mouth was full. I twisted around to look at the computer screen. “Interpol?”

“Thought of it this morning. I remembered reading about some kind of ritual murders about thirty years ago—”

“You read them thirty years ago?” Billy wasn’t more than ten years older than I was. He gave me a look that suggested I shut up. I pressed my lips together and widened my eyes, all innocence.

“The murders were about thirty years ago. I read about them a few years ago. Pedant.”

“Because you what, read about ritual murders for fun?”

“Joanie,” Billy said, annoyed. I lifted my hands in apology and tried to keep quiet. Billy glared at me until he was sure I wasn’t going to interrupt again, then continued. “These women all had their intestines stretched out, connecting them with one another.”

I suddenly wished I hadn’t drunk a lot of acidic coffee for breakfast, and looked around for something neutral to eat. There was nothing handy except Billy’s muffin, the second half of which he stuffed in his mouth, clearly suspecting that I was about to raid it. A burp rose up through the soured coffee in my stomach and I clamped my hand over my mouth, tasting coffee-flavored bile. Yuck.

“You’ve got a soft heart, Joanie.” Billy gave me a very tiny smile that did a lot to make me feel better.

“I’m not a homicide detective.”

“Mmm. Yeah. Anyway, so I remembered this morning reading about a murder like that over in Europe. It’s not the kind of thing the authorities like to noise around.”

“No kidding.” My stomach was still bubbling with ook. “So we’ve got a copycat?”

“Either that or somebody’s changed his hunting grounds. Anyway, the only case there was an eyewitness for was, like I said, about thirty years ago. A woman who was presumably supposed to be the last victim—there’s never more than four—fought back and managed to escape. The Garda Síochána—”

“This was in Ireland?” I didn’t mean to interrupt. It just popped out. Billy’s ears moved back with surprise.

“Yeah. What, you had some run-ins with the cops while you were there?”

“No, I just remember my mother talking about the Garda. She didn’t call them the Síochána.” I said the word carefully, SHE-a-CAWN-a. “I had to ask her what it meant.”

“It means police,” Billy said helpfully, then waved off my exasperated raspberry. “Yeah, you know that, right. Anyway, they weren’t able to find the guy, and for a while the woman was under suspicion, but she got off when the marks on the victims’ bodies had obviously been made by somebody a lot bigger than she was. They’re usually strangled into semiconsciousness before the horrible stuff begins.”

“Like being half-strangled isn’t horrible.” It had nothing on having your innards ripped out while you were still alive, and I lifted a hand to stop Billy’s protestation. “I know. So what was her name? Maybe we can talk to her, get some kind of information about this psycho that might help us.”

Billy leaned forward, chair shrieking protest again, to pull up a minimized screen. “That was my thought. She was from Mayo. I’ve got some people there looking to see if they can find her. Her name was—oops, wrong window.” He pulled up another one, scrolling down. “Her name was—”

“Sheila MacNamarra,” I finished, feeling light-headed.

The woman on the computer screen looked more like me than the one I’d known had. There was a ranginess to her that I shared, and our eyes were shaped more alike than I’d realized. I’d never seen a picture of my mother when she was young, and young she was: the photo showed her from the thighs up. She was obviously several months pregnant.

With me.

I closed my eyes, unable to think while looking at the photograph on the computer screen. “You won’t—” I cleared my throat, trying to wash away the break I’d heard in my voice. “You won’t find her. She’s dead.”

“Joanie?” Billy sounded bewildered. “You know this woman?”

“Yeah.” I wished I was wearing my glasses so I could pull them off. Instead my hand wandered around my face like a bird looking for a resting space: my fingers pressed against my mouth, then spread out to cover the lower half of my face before curling in again. I couldn’t stop the little actions, even when I tried. “She’s my mother.”

I wanted the next half hour or so to disappear into a jumble of confusion, but it adamantly refused to. It was all horribly clear, with an overwhelming babble of questions that I caught every syllable of and a host of concerned, confused, angry expressions that wouldn’t let me back up and take stock of the situation. No one had known my mother’s name, not any more than I knew Billy’s mom’s name. Everyone had known I’d gone to Ireland to meet her, and that she’d died, but nobody’d pried beyond that, which I’d been perfectly happy about.

Now, though, Morrison was standing over me—well, trying to. I was on my feet, too, unable to stay sitting while he demanded to know how it was I coincidentally had connections to this woman who’d been a suspect, albeit briefly, in a murder case that was nearly thirty years old. He went on for quite a while, during which Billy tried to be the voice of reason and I watched them both with growing incredulity. Finally I edged between them and said, “Captain,” which brought Morrison up short. I rarely resorted to using his actual title.

“Look.” This was my reasonable voice. I didn’t have a lot of hope for it working on Morrison, but I’d never tried it before, and anything was worth trying once. “My mother obviously didn’t kill those women. She wasn’t big enough. The police reports cover all that. I guess I am big enough.” I lifted one of my hands, with its long fingers, and shrugged. “And we have no idea when our women died, so—”

“Actually,” Billy said. I winced and looked at him. He grimaced back apologetically and shrugged. “The first body has a fair amount of degradation. They figured she died about three weeks before it started getting cold enough to snow so much, probably around Christmas.”

Morrison’s cheeks went a dangerous dark florid purple. “You’re telling me we had a body lying around Woodland Park for three weeks before it snowed and nobody noticed?”

“The good news,” I said under his outrage, “is that I was in Ireland at a funeral on Christmas. Good alibi.”

“How the hell,” Morrison shouted, ignoring me, “did a body lie around in a public park for three weeks without anyone noticing?”

“I don’t—” Billy began.

Morrison roared, “Find out!” and stalked into his office, slamming the door behind him. Everyone within forty feet flinched. I sucked my lower lip into my mouth and watched the venetian blinds inside the captain’s office swing from the force of the door crashing shut.

“Do you think he does that for dramatic effect?” I didn’t realize that was my outside voice until nervous laughter broke around me, then rolled over into outright good humor. Someone smacked me on the shoulder and the audience that had gathered for the drama broke up. It never failed to astonish me how there were always people around to watch tense moments unfold. You’d think none of us had jobs to do.

I followed Billy back to his desk, since I still wasn’t on shift for another forty minutes. “I really hate to say this.”

He eyed me, wary. “But?”

“But I’m pretty sure nobody was supposed to see that body. I don’t think it was cosmic coincidence. I think there was…” My tongue seemed to be swelling up and choking my throat in order to prevent me from continuing my sentence. Part of me wished it would succeed. “Power.” Power was easier to say than that other word, the five-letter one that began with m and ended with agic. “Involved.”