In the Woods

By the time we had the incident room organized, the floaters were starting to arrive. O'Kelly had got us about three dozen of them, and they were the cream of the crop: up-and-comers, alert and smooth-shaven and dressed for success, tipped to make good squads as soon as the openings arose. They pulled out chairs and notebooks, slapped backs and resurrected old in-jokes and chose their seats like kids on the first day of school. Cassie and Sam and I smiled and shook hands and thanked them for joining us. I recognized a couple of them-an uncommunicative dark guy from Mayo called Sweeney, and a well-fed Corkman with no neck, O'Connor or O'Gorman or something, who compensated for having to take orders from two non-Corkonians by making some incomprehensible but clearly triumphalistic comment about Gaelic football. A lot of the others looked familiar, but the names went straight out of my head the moment their hands slid away from mine, and the faces merged into one big, eager, intimidating blur.

I've always loved this moment in an investigation, the moment before the first briefing begins. It reminds me of the focused, private buzz before a curtain goes up: orchestra tuning, dancers backstage doing last-minute stretches, ears pricked for the signal to throw off their wraps and leg warmers and explode into action. I had never been in charge of an investigation anything like this size before, though, and this time the sense of anticipation just made me edgy. The incident room felt too full, all that primed and cocked energy, all those curious eyes on us. I remembered the way I used to look at Murder detectives, back when I was a floater praying to be borrowed for cases like this one: the awe, the bursting, almost unbearable aspiration. These guys-a lot of them were older than I was-seemed to me to have a different air about them, a cool, unconcealed assessment. I've never liked being the center of attention.

O'Kelly slammed the door behind him, slicing off the noise instantaneously. "Right, lads," he said, into the silence. "Welcome to Operation Vestal. What's a vestal when it's at home?"

Headquarters picks the names for operations. They range from the obvious through the cryptic to the downright weird. Apparently the image of the little dead girl on the ancient altar had piqued someone's cultural tendencies. "A sacrificial virgin," I said.

"A votary," said Cassie.

"Jesus fuck," said O'Kelly. "Are they trying to make everyone think this was some cult thing? What the fuck are they reading up there?"

* * *

Cassie gave them a rundown on the case, skipping lightly over the 1984 connection-just an off-chance, something she could check out in her spare time-and we handed out jobs: go door-to-door through the estate, set up a tip line and a roster for manning it, get a list of all the sex offenders living near Knocknaree, check with the British cops and with the ports and airports to see if anyone suspicious had come over to Ireland in the last few days, pull Katy's medical records, her school records, run full background checks on the Devlins. The floaters snapped smartly into action, and Sam and Cassie and I left them to it and went to see how Cooper was getting on.

We don't normally watch the autopsies. Someone who was at the crime scene has to go, to confirm that this is in fact the same body (it's happened, toe tags getting mixed up, the pathologist ringing a startled detective to report his finding of death from liver cancer), but mostly we palm this off on uniforms or techs and just go through the notes and photos with Cooper afterwards. By squad tradition you attend the post-mortem in your first murder case, and although supposedly the purpose is to impress you with the full solemnity of your new job, nobody is fooled: this is an initiation rite, as harshly judged as any primitive tribe's. I know an excellent detective who, after fifteen years on the squad, is still known as Secretariat because of the speed with which he left the morgue when the pathologist removed the victim's brain. I made it through mine (a teenage prostitute, thin arms layered with bruises and track marks) without flinching, but I was left with no desire to repeat the experience. I go only in those few cases-ironically, the most harrowing ones-that seem to demand this small, sacrificial act of devotion. I don't think anyone ever quite gets over that first time, really, the mind's violent revolt when the pathologist slices the scalp and the victim's face folds away from the skull, malleable and meaningless as a Halloween mask.

Our timing was a little off: Cooper was just coming out of the autopsy room in his green scrubs, a waterproof gown held away from him between finger and thumb. "Detectives," he said, raising his eyebrows. "What a surprise. If only you'd let me know you were planning to come, I would of course have waited until you managed to fit us in."