In the Woods

Katy, they said, had been a good child, bright but not outstanding in school, passionate about ballet. She had a temper, they said, but she hadn't had any arguments with family or friends recently; they gave us the names of her best friends, so we could check. She had never run away from home, nothing like that. She had been happy lately, excited about going away to ballet school. She wasn't into boys yet, Jonathan said, she was only twelve, for God's sake; but I saw Rosalind dart a sudden glance at him and then at me, and I made a mental note to talk to her without her parents.

"Mr. Devlin," I said, "what was your relationship with Katy like?"

Jonathan stared. "What the fuck are you accusing me of?" he said heavily. Jessica let out a high, hysterical yelp of laughter, and I jumped. Rosalind pursed her lips and shook her head at her, frowning, then gave her a pat and a tiny reassuring smile. Jessica bowed her head and put her hair back in her mouth.

"Nobody's accusing you of anything," Cassie said firmly, "but we have to be able to say we've explored and eliminated every possibility. If we leave anything out, then when we catch this person-and we will-the defense can make that into reasonable doubt. I know answering these questions will be painful, but I promise you, Mr. Devlin, it would be even more painful to see this person acquitted because we didn't ask them."

Jonathan took a breath through his nose, relaxed a fraction. "My relationship with Katy was great," he said. "She talked to me. We were close. I…maybe I made a pet of her." A twitch from Jessica, a swift up-glance from Rosalind. "We argued, the way any father and daughter do, but she was a wonderful daughter and a wonderful girl, and I loved her." For the first time his voice cracked; he jerked his head up angrily.

"And you, Mrs. Devlin?" Cassie said.

Margaret was shredding a tissue in her lap; she looked up, obedient as a child. "Sure, they're all great," she said. Her voice was thick and wobbly. "Katy was…a little angel. She was always an easy child. I don't know what we'll do without her." Her mouth convulsed.

Neither of us asked Rosalind or Jessica. Kids are unlikely to be frank about their siblings when their parents are around, and once a kid lies, especially a kid as young and as confused as Jessica, the lie becomes fixed in his mind and the truth recedes into the background. Later, we would try to get the Devlins' permission to speak to Jessica-and, if she was under eighteen, Rosalind-on her own. I didn't get the sense this would be easy.

"Can any of you think of anyone who might want to harm Katy for any reason?" I asked.

For a moment nobody said anything. Then Jonathan shoved his chair back and stood up. "Jesus," he said. His head swung back and forth, like a baited bull's. "Those phone calls."

"Phone calls?" I said.

"Christ. I'll kill him. You said she was found on the dig?"

"Mr. Devlin!" Cassie said. "You need to sit down and tell us about the phone calls."

Slowly he focused on her. He sat down, but I could still see an abstracted quality in his eyes, and I would have been willing to bet he was privately considering the best way to hunt down whoever had made these calls. "You know about the motorway going over the archaeological site, right?" he said. "Most people around here are against it. A few are more interested in how much the value of their houses would go up, with it going right past the estate, but most of us…That should be a Heritage Site. It's unique and it's ours, the government has no right to destroy it without even asking us. There's a campaign here in Knocknaree, Move the Motorway. I'm the chairman; I set it up. We picket government buildings, write letters to politicians-for all the good it does."

"Not much response?" I said. Talking about his cause was steadying him. And it intrigued me: he had seemed at first like a downtrodden little man, not the type to lead a crusade, but there was clearly more to him than met the eye.

"I thought it was just bureaucracy, they never want to make changes. But the phone calls made me wonder… The first one was late at night; the guy said something like, 'You thick bastard, you have no idea what you're messing with.' I thought he had a wrong number, I hung up on him and went back to bed. It was only after the second one that I remembered and connected it up."

"When was this first call?" I said. Cassie was writing.