The Burning Soul by John Connolly

occur that might require serious action, and it wasn’t time for that, not yet.
    Mrs. Napier’s mouth folded down, and she began to tremble.
    ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all that you’ve asked.’
    She looked to Ryan for help, but Ryan wasn’t going to help her. He wanted to, he really did, but he couldn’t.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
    ‘No,’ said Mrs. Napier. ‘No, no, no . . .’
    Dempsey stood. He reached down and stroked Mrs. Napier’s hair.
    ‘Close the door behind you, Frankie,’ he said, and the last thing that Ryan saw was Dempsey taking Mrs. Napier by the hand and leading her to the couch, her feet dragging behind her as she tried to resist, her face turned away from him, her eyes still pleading with Ryan for help that would never come.
    Ryan closed the door and walked to the car, his hands in his pockets and his head low.
    It couldn’t last. Everything was falling apart.
    Soon, he believed that he might have to kill Martin Dempsey.

8
    I t was not yet nine. I sat in my office at home, listening to the rain fall on the roof, a strangely comforting sound. The clouds had smothered the moon, and from my window I saw no artificial light break the darkness. There were only variations of shadow: trees against grass, land bordering black water, and the sea waiting beyond. Beside me I had a cup of coffee, and the list of names connected with his trial that Randall Haight had provided. I found myself thinking about Selina Day. I wanted to see a picture of her, because in this she had been all but forgotten. For Haight, she was a ghost from his past inconveniently summoned to the present by the taunts of another. The story of her life had been written, and given its conclusion. If she mattered at all it was simply because she shared an age with Anna Kore, and it could only be hoped that they did not already share a similar fate.
    So I began trawling the Internet for details about the killing of Selina Day. There was less information than I might have wished, mainly because her death occurred in the glorious days before anything and everything ended up on the Internet, either as fact or speculation. Eventually I had amassed a small pile of printed pages, most of them from the archives of the local Beacon & Explainer , detailing the discovery of Selina Day’s body, the beginning of the investigation, and the eventual questioning, indictment, and sentencing of two unnamed juveniles in connection with the crime. The reports never failed to mention the race of the murdered girl, and the story gravitated toward the front of the paper only when the ages of the boys involved became an issue.
    But I found that for which I had been searching: a picture of the murdered girl. In it, she was younger than she was when she died, probably by three or four years. Her hair was worn in pigtails, and she had a pronounced gap between her upper front teeth that might eventually have been corrected by braces. She was wearing a checked dress with a lace collar. The photograph had been taken side-on, so that Selina had turned her head slightly to face the camera. It was not a formal pose, and she appeared happy and relaxed. She looked like what she was: a pretty little girl on her way to becoming a young woman. I wondered why a more recent photo had not been used, then figured that this was the picture her mother had chosen to represent her. This was how she had wanted her daughter to be remembered, as her little girl but with a whole life ahead of her. One could not look at such an image and not feel grief for those left behind, and anger at the end Selina had met.
    The accompanying articles did not include the kind of hand-wringing features usually inspired by such cases, typically represented by the twin poles of ‘What Is Happening to Our Children and What Can We Do to Make Them Better People Less Inclined to Kill Teenage Girls?’ and ‘What Is Happening to Our Children and Can We Make Them Better People by