Authors: Tana French
The guy who had suggested the trap website was impressed.
Jesus! Holes in the walls? Your old lady is out of this world. If I told my girl I wanted to bust up the walls, my sh!t would be out on the street.
Pat was pleased—a row of grinning green faces.
Yeah man, she’s a total gem all right. One in a million. Shes not too pleased, specially since she STILL hasn’t heard any of the really serious noises, just the odd bit of scraping that could be a mouse or a magpie or anything. But she’s like OK, if thats what you need to do then go for it. Now you see why I HAVE to catch this thing yeah? She deserves it. Actually she deserves a mink coat not a half dead mink/whatever, but if thats the best I can get her then shes bloody well getting it!
“
Look at the times,” Richie said quietly. His fingertip hovered by the screen, moved down the time stamps beside the posts. “Pat’s up awful late, isn’t he?” The board was set to American West Coast time. I did the maths: Pat was posting at four in the morning.
The skeptic wanted to know,
What’s all this shit with baby monitors? Believe me I’m not some expert on those but they don’t record right? So the animal could like dance a polka in your attic but if you’ve gone to take a leak and your not actually there to see it then tough shit. Why don’t you get video cameras and get some actual footage??
Pat didn’t like that.
Because I don;t WANT “actual footage.” OK? I want to actually catch the actual animal actually in my actual house. I want to actually show it to my actual wife. Anyone can get footage of some animal, YouTube is full of it. I need THE ANIMAL. Anyway I didnt ask you for advice on my technology OK? Just on what to do about this thing being in the walls. If you dont feel like helping me out thwn fine that’s your perogative, I’m sure there are plenty of other threads that could use your genius.
The trap guy tried to soothe him down.
Hey man, don’t worry about it getting into the walls. Just fix up the holes and forget the whole thing till you get your trap. Till then anything you can do is just pissing into the wind. Just chill and wait.
Pat didn’t sound convinced.
Yeah maybe. I’ll keep you updated. Thanks.
Richie said, “He didn’t fix up the holes, though, did he? If he’d had chicken wire or something over them, we’d have seen the marks. He left them open.” He left the rest unsaid: somewhere along the way, Pat’s priorities had shifted.
I said, “Maybe he moved furniture in front of them.” Richie didn’t answer.
On the last of August, Pat’s trap finally arrived.
Got it today!!!! Its a beauty. I actually went for one of the old-style ones with the teeth—hey, what’s the point of getting a trap if you can’t get the kind you saw in movies when you were a kid? I want to just sit here stroking it like some James Bond baddy—
more laughing faces—
but I better get it set up before my wife gets home. She’s a bit dodgy about the idea already + it looks pretty lethal which I think is a good thing but she might not feel the same way! Any advice?
A couple of people told him not to get caught with that thing: apparently they were illegal in most of the civilized world. I wondered how it had made it through Customs. Probably the seller had marked it “antique ornament” and kept his fingers crossed.
Pat didn’t seem worried.
Yeah well, I’ll take my chances—its still my house (up until the bank comes and takes it back) and Im protecting it, I can put out any trap I want. I’ll let you know how it goes down. Can’t WAIT for this.
I was so tired that my senses were getting their wires crossed. The words leapt off the screen like a voice in my ears, young, intent, overexcited. I caught myself leaning closer, listening.
He came back a week later, but this time he was sounding a lot more subdued.
OK tried raw mince for bait, no dice. Even tried raw steak cos its bloodier so I thought maybe that might help but no. Left it there for three days so it would smell good + rank, nothing. Kind of starting to get worried—not sure what the hell Im going to do if this doesnt pan out. Going to try live bait next. Seriously guys please keep your fingers crossed that it works OK?
OK heres the other weird thing. This morn when I went up to take the steak away (before it could get rank enough that my wife smelled it, that wouldn’t go down well) there was this little pile of stuff in a corner of the attic. Six pebbles, smooth ones like they came off the beach, and three seashells, old white dried out ones. I’m 110% sure they were never there before. What the fuck?!
Nobody on the board seemed to care. Their general opinion was that Pat was putting way too much time and thought into this and who cared how a few rocks had got into his attic? The skeptic wanted to know why the whole saga was still going on:
Seriously dude why are you making this into some big soap opera? You need to put down some damn poison go for a couple beers and forget the whole thing. You could have done that like months ago. Is there some huge secret reason why you don’t just
do
it?
At two the next morning, Pat came back and blew his top.
OK you want to know why I wont use poison, heres why. My wife thinks Im insane. OK? She keeps saying Oh no I dont you’re just stressed you’ll be fine, but I know her + I can tell. She doesnt get it, she tries but she thinks I’m inagining this whole thing. I need to show her this animal, just hearing the noises isn]t going to be good enough at this stage, she has to SEE it in the actual flesh so she knows I’m not a) hallucinating the whole thing or b) exagerating something stupid like mice or whatever. Otherwise shes goign to leave me and take the kids with her. NO WAY AM I LETTING THAT AHPPEN. Her + those kids are everything Ive got. If I put down poison then the animal could go off somewhere to die + my wife will never know it actually existed, she’ll just think I was crazy + then I got better + she]ll always be watching for the next time I go off the rails. Before you say anything YES Ive thought of boarding up the hole before I put down poison, but then what if I shut it out instead of in and it fucks off for good???? So since you ask I’m not using poison because I love my family. Now FUCK OFF.
A tiny hiss of breath from Richie, leaning in close beside me, but neither of us looked up. The skeptic posted a smiley rolling its eyes; someone else posted one tapping its temple; someone else told Pat to take the blue ones before the red ones. Trap Guy told them all to back off:
You guys, quit it. I want to know what he’s got. If you piss him off so bad he never comes back then what? Pat-the-lad, ignore these dumb shits. Their mamas never taught them manners. You get yourself some live bait and give that a try. Mink like killing. If it’s a mink it won’t be able to pass that up. Then come back and tell us what you got.
Pat was gone. Over the next few days there was some banter about Trap Guy going over to Ireland to catch this thing himself, some semi-sympathetic speculation about the state of Pat’s mind and his marriage (
This type shit is why I stay single
), and then everyone moved on. The exhaustion was making things sideslip inside my mind: for a jumbled split second I worried about Pat not posting, wondered if we should go out to Broken Harbor and check on him. I found my water bottle and pressed its cold side against my neck.
Two weeks later, on the twenty-second of September, Pat was back and he was in much worse shape.
PLEASE READ!!! Had some trouble getting live bait—finally got to a pet shop + got a mouse. Stuck it down on one of those glue baords + put it in the trap. Poor little bastard was squeaking like crazy, felt like shit about it but hey a guy’s gotta do what a guys gotta do right?? I watched the monitor practically EVERY SINGLE SECOND ALL BLOODY NIGHT—swear on my mothers grave I only closed my eyes for like twnety minutes around 5 am, didn’t mean to but I was shattered + just nodded off. When I woke up IT WAS GONE. Mouse + glue trap GONE. Foothold trap WAS NOT TRIGGGERED it was STILL WIDE OPEN. Soon as my wqife took the kids out this morning for school I went up there to chekc + yeah trap is open + mouse/glue board are NOWHERE IN THE ATTIC. Like what the fuck??!!? How the hell could ANYTHING do that??? And what thje fuck do I do now??? I cant tell my wife this, she doesnt understnad—if I tell her shes gonna think I’m a lunatic. WHAT DO I DO????
I had a sudden wild flood of nostalgia for just three days earlier, that first walk-through of the house, when I had thought Pat was some loser stashing drugs in his walls and Dina was safely making sandwiches for suits. If you’re good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.
Dr. Dolittle and Kieran the techie were having a wonderful time—insanity always seems like a great big adventure when all you have to do is dabble a fingertip here and there, gawk at the mess, wash off the residue in your nice safe sane home and then go to the pub and tell your friends the cool story. I was having a lot less fun than they were. It slid into my mind, with a quick pinch of unease, that Dina might have had something almost like a point about this case, even if it wasn’t in the way she thought.
Most of the hunters had given up on Pat and his saga—more head-tapping smileys, someone wanting to know whether it was a full moon over in Ireland. A few of them started taking the piss:
Oh shit man I think u have 1 of these!!!! Whatever u do don’t let it near water!!!
The link went to a picture of a snarling gremlin.
Trap Guy was still trying to be reassuring.
Hang in there, Pat-the-lad. You just think about the upside. At least now you know what kind of bait it goes for. Next time just stick it down harder. You’re getting there.
One more thing to think about. I’m not accusing anyone of anything, just thinking here—how old are your kids? Are they old enough to think that messing with their daddy could be a funny joke?
At 4:45 the next morning Pat said,
Never mind. Thanks man I know youre’ trying to help but this trap thing isnt working. Got no clue what to try next. Basically I’m fucked.
And that was the end of that. The regulars played “What’s in Pat-the-lad’s attic?” for a while—pictures of Sasquatch, leprechauns, Ashton Kutcher, the inevitable Rickroll. When they got bored, the thread sank.
Richie leaned back from the computer, rubbing a crick out of his neck, and glanced at me sideways. I said, “So.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you make of that?”
He chewed his knuckle and stared at the screen, but he wasn’t reading; he was thinking hard. After a moment he took a long breath. “What I make of that,” he said, “is that Pat had lost it. Doesn’t even matter any more whether there actually was something in his gaff or not. Either way, he was well off the rails.”
His voice was simple and grave, almost sad. I said, “He was under a lot of stress. That’s not necessarily the same thing.”
I was playing devil’s advocate; underneath, I knew. Richie shook his head. “No, man. No. That there”—he flicked the edge of my monitor with a fingernail—“that’s not the same guy from this summer. Back in July, on that home-and-garden board, Pat’s all about protecting Jenny and the kids. By the time he gets to this stuff here, he doesn’t give a damn if Jenny’s scared, doesn’t give a damn if this yoke can get at the kids, as long as he gets his hands on it. And then he’s going to leave it in a trap—a trap he picked specifically to hurt it as much as possible—and he’s going to watch it take its time dying. I don’t know what the doctors would call it, but he’s not OK, man. He’s not.”
The words rang like an echo in my head. It took me a moment to remember why: I had said them to Richie, just two nights before, about Conor Brennan. My eyes wouldn’t focus; the monitor looked off-kilter, like a dense lump of dead weight sending the case rocking at dangerous angles. “No,” I said. “I know.” I took a swig of water; the cold helped, but it left a foul, rusty aftertaste on my tongue. “You need to bear in mind, though, that that doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer. There’s nothing in there about hurting his wife or children, and plenty about how much he loves them. That’s why he’s so set on getting his hands on the animal: he thinks that’s the only way to save his family.”
Richie said, “‘It’s my job to take care of her.’ That’s what he said, on that home-and-garden board. If he felt like he couldn’t do that any more . . .”
“‘What the fuck do I do now?’” I knew what came next. The thought rolled through my stomach with a dull heave, as if the water had been tainted. I closed my browser and watched the screen flash to a bland, innocuous blue. “Finish your phone calls later. We need to talk to Jenny Spain.”
* * *
She was alone. The room felt almost summery: the day was bright, and someone had opened the window a crack, so that a breeze toyed with the blinds and the fug of disinfectant had dissipated to a faint clean tang. Jenny was propped up on pillows, staring at the shifting pattern of sun and shadow on the wall, hands loose and unmoving on the blue blanket. With no makeup she looked younger and plainer than she had in the wedding photos, and somehow less nondescript, now that the little quirks showed—a beauty spot on the unbandaged cheek, an irregular top lip that made her look ready to smile. It wasn’t a remarkable face in any way, but it had a clean-lined sweetness that brought up summer barbecues, golden retrievers, soccer games on new-mown grass, and I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.
“Mrs. Spain,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember us: Detective Michael Kennedy and Detective Richard Curran. Would it be all right if we came in for a few minutes?”