In the Woods

"That little mammy's boy?" he said, eyebrows shooting up. "Well, fuck me sideways. I didn't think he'd the bollocks for it. My money was on Hanly. He's after leaving, just now; told O'Neill to shove his questions up his hole and stormed out. Good thing Donnelly didn't do the same. I'll start on the file for the prosecutors."

"We'll need his phone records and financials," I said, "and background interviews with the other archaeologists, college classmates, school friends, anyone close to him. He's being coy about the motive."

"Who gives a fuck about the motive?" O'Kelly demanded, but the irritation didn't carry conviction: he was delighted. I knew I should be delighted myself, but somehow I wasn't. When I had dreamed of solving this case, my mental picture had never been anything like this. The scene in the interview room, which should have been the greatest triumph of my career, simply felt like too little too late.

"In this case," I said, "I do." O'Kelly was right, technically-as long as you can prove that your boy committed the crime, you have absolutely no obligation to explain why-but juries, trained by TV, want a motive; and, this time, so did I. "A brutal crime like this, from a sweet kid with absolutely no history; the defense is bound to try for mental illness. If we find a motive, then that's out."

O'Kelly snorted. "Fair enough. I'll put the lads onto the interviews. Get back in there and get me a cast-iron case. And, Ryan"-grudgingly, as I turned to leave-"well done. The pair of ye."

* * *

Cassie had got Damien calmed down; he was still a little shaky and he kept blowing his nose, but he was no longer sobbing. "Are you all right to keep going?" she asked, squeezing his hand. "We're nearly there, OK? You're doing great." For a second, a pathetic shadow of a smile slipped across Damien's face.

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry about…sorry. I'm fine."

"Fair play. You just let me know if you need another break."

"OK," I said, "we'd got to the point where you went home. Let's talk about the next day."

"Oh-yeah. The next day." Damien caught a long, resigned, shuddering breath. "The whole day was a total nightmare. I was so tired I couldn't even see, and every time anyone went into the tools shed I thought I was gonna faint or something-and having to act all normal, you know, laughing at people's jokes and acting like nothing had happened, and I kept thinking about-about her… And then I had to do the whole same thing that night, wait till my mother went to sleep and sneak out and walk back to the dig. If that light had been there in the wood again, I don't know what I'd've done. But it wasn't."

"So you went back to the tools shed," I said.

"Yeah. I put on gloves again and I got her-I got her out. She was…I thought she'd be stiff, I thought dead bodies were stiff, but she…" He bit down on his lip. "She wasn't, not really. But she was cold. It was-I didn't want to touch her…" He shuddered.

"But you had to."

Damien nodded and blew his nose again. "I took her out to the site and I put her on the altar stone. Where she'd be, be safe, from rats and stuff. Where someone would find her before she…I tried to make her look like she was sleeping, or something. I don't know why. I threw the rock away, and I rinsed off the plastic bag and put it back where it was, but I couldn't find her torch, it was somewhere down behind the tarps, and I-I just wanted to go home…"

"Why didn't you bury her?" I asked. "On the site, or in the wood?" It would have been the intelligent thing to do; not that this had anything to do with anything.

Damien looked at me, his mouth hanging a little open. "I never thought of that," he said. "I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. And, anyway-I mean, just bury her? Like rubbish?"

And it had taken us a full month to catch up with this gem. "The day after that," I said, "you made sure you were one of the people who discovered the body. Why?"

"Oh. Yeah. That." He made a convulsive little movement, something like a shrug. "I heard-see, I had the gloves on, so no fingerprints, but I heard somewhere that if I'd got one of my hairs on her, or fluff from my clothes or something, you guys could figure out it was from me. So I knew I had to find her-I didn't want to, Jesus, I didn't want to see her, but…All day I kept trying to figure out an excuse to go up there, but I was scared it would look suspicious. I was…I couldn't think. I just wanted it to be over. But then Mark told Mel to go work on the altar stone."

He sighed, a tired little sound. "And after that…it was actually easier, you know? At least I didn't have to pretend everything was fine."

No wonder he had been spacey during that first interview. Not spacey enough to ring our alarm bells, though. For a novice, he had done pretty well. "And when we talked to you," I said, and then I stopped.