The Searcher

It is a fine day and Cal counts on being able to catch Brendan’s friends outdoors. He visits Fergal O’Connor the farmer first and tries to guilt-trip him into giving all the information he can on Brendan because his mother Sheila is worried. Fergal offers the same story that he does not know where Brendan has gone to and that he assumes he will be coming back. He confesses that Brendan borrowed one hundred quid from him. He insists that he does not know where Brendan went.

Cal then catches up with Brendan’s rich, college-attending friend Eugene Moynihan. Eugene grows impatient with Cal’s questioning, and as a result, spills that although he does not know what has caused Brendan to leave, he ended “up in hassle” because he overestimated his intelligence and his ability to execute an over-ambitious money-making scheme (143). Eugene recounts how Brendan became nervous when he was out with him, and the police approached. Eugene is uncaring and selfish, judging Brendan for using his intelligence to come up with grand schemes rather than getting the grades for college. He doubts that Brendan will come home soon.

Cal thinks that if Eugene is right about Brendan being on the run from the police, then drugs or stolen cars may have been involved. Cal realizes that this is the first case he has chosen to take on and hopes that he is making the right decision.

Cal learns from Mart that the start of the sheep killings coincided with Brendan’s disappearance. Mart also informs him that the village rumor mill knows that he visited Fergal and Eugene.

Trey arrives at Cal’s by late afternoon. He also knows about Cal’s visits to Brendan’s friends. Although Trey is disappointed to learn that nothing concrete was established during these visits, he is relieved that Brendan’s friends think he is alive. Cal then asks Trey about drugs in town. Trey insists that Brendan is not a dealer, but that he could have been kidnapped by the dealers from Dublin. When Trey asks him, Cal confesses that he briefly experimented with drugs.

Cal teaches Trey how to use his shotgun. Trey is excited but will not take back the beer can with a hole in it as a souvenir, as his mother has been going through his things ever since Brendan’s disappearance. Cal tells Trey that his grandfather taught him to shoot, as his mother was working two jobs and his father was of unsteady temperament. He also confesses that his siblings are half-siblings who his father sired with different women.

Later, when Cal calls Alyssa she does not pick up. Cal has designs on going to Seán Óg’s pub.

When Cal arrives at the pub, a man called Malachy Dwyer has brought his highly intoxicating homemade poteen. Cal gets very drunk. Mart, who is aware that Cal has been asking for help with his electrical rewiring, enlists a fellow called Locky to do it for him. This, in addition to the fact that he encourages Cal to get a hobby like geology, indicate to Cal that Mart does not want him meddling in Brendan’s disappearance.

The drunken camaraderie with the men reminds Cal of his four best friends in Chicago. However, something happened to turn the relationship sour, as “the depth and detail with which they knew him had come to feel unsafe, something to be kept at as much distance as possible” (173). As Cal is coming home drunk from the pub in Mart’s car, he gets a missed call from Alyssa.

Cal looks back on the scene at the pub and realizes that the locals were trying to warn him from looking too much into Brendan’s disappearance. The locals’ collaborative effort to put him off makes his job more difficult. He can no longer rely on technology and narcotic departments to help him with his work as he did when he was a cop in Chicago.

Cal decides to visit Caroline Horan, Brendan’s ex-girlfriend at her weekend job at a souvenir shop in town. She is sensible and intelligent, making conversation with Cal when he pretends that he is there to buy a gift for his niece. However, she becomes visibly upset when Brendan is mentioned. She says that Brendan “gets ideas, and he gets carried away by them. He forgets to take other people into account” (192). A misunderstanding over a Christmas present ended in a breakup, as Brendan accused Caroline of thinking he was inferior because she was in college, and he was not. She claims that she does not know where Brendan is and thinks that it is unlikely that he was depressed. She also confirms that he kept all his promises and did not get on anyone’s wrong side by promising them something he could not deliver. Overall, she confirms that Brendan was a good guy, standing in as a parental figure to his siblings when his parents could not provide nurture.

She confesses that after Brendan went away, people spread terrible rumors about him, saying that he raped Caroline and beat up his mother. She says that people in Ardnakelty judged Brendan for his family and “always believed the worst about him, whether there was any reason to or not” (197). While Cal believes that Caroline is his best witness, he judges that it is also possible that someone warned her about asking too much about Brendan’s disappearance, as they did with him.

At the police station, Cal tracks down Garda O’ Malley and encounters the possibility that Brendan tried to sell stolen farm equipment. He goes to the Reddys house to return the socks to Sheila. Sheila tells Cal that she thinks he is a nice man, but she cannot have him hanging around because it would add to the terrible things that the locals say about her. When Cal asks her if she has heard from Brendan, her frightened look alerts Cal to the fact that Sheila has also been warned off talking about her son.

As Cal approaches his home, he gives Mart cookies to throw him off scent and tells him he will not be going to the pub. Once inside, he puzzles over the case, finding it difficult to understand why the whole town would be afraid of the police. The last person to be interviewed will be Donie McGrath, the troublemaker from an earlier night at the pub. Cal will do it under the auspices of wanting to protect Mart.

Cal goes over to Lena’s to visit the puppy. Lena tells him that all the young people moved away and that she would have done the same if she had not fallen in love with Sean. She tells him that the local women are continually trying to get her involved in the town, whereas she prefers to keep to herself. She also has her thoughts on what happened to Brendan, but she will not share them with Cal.

When Trey comes over and asks about Cal’s progress, Cal reveals that people thought Brendan had a giant scheme that he was saving money for and that he was nervous about running into the police. When Trey insists that someone may have kidnapped his brother, Cal asks whether there was any place Brendan would go to for a private meeting. Trey mentions an old empty cottage in the mountains. Cal insists on visiting the college alone, without Trey, although the latter is eager to help. Meanwhile, he and Trey go rabbit-hunting. Trey shoots a rabbit and disembowels it expertly with Cal’s help. They prepare and cook the rabbit in the style of Cal’s grandfather. Trey confesses that his friends are not allowed to hang around with him anymore because he is a bad influence. He gets Trey to draw him a map of where Brendan’s cottage is and tries to make sure he goes home and does his homework. Cal feels strangely protective of Brendan.

Cal is woken during the night by a strange sound. He gets out of bed and finds Mart outside. Mart claims he saw the sheep assassin and attacked it with a hurley. Mart is vague about the nature of the creature he saw, describing it as being like a cat. Cal is suspicious, thinking that the only reason Mart would leave his shotgun at home is if he was expecting to meet a creature that could not shoot back. Cal worries that Trey may be involved in the sheep killing, given that he witnessed his ability to kill and disembowel a rabbit smoothly.

Cal goes to meet Trey by the mountainside to be taken to the cottage that is Brendan’s hideout. He is surprised to find that it is very clean, with a propane camping stove. From this, Cal realizes that he misjudged Brendan. Instead of the wild child he expected, he sees that Brendan goes about things “methodically, systematically, taking his time and setting all his pieces in place” (240). To Cal, this increases the probability that Brendan got into serious trouble. He searches the cottage for blood but finds none.

Trey reveals that he spent the night in the cottage after Brendan left, thinking he might be staying there, but that he was bitterly disappointed to find that he was wrong. Trey spins the hypothesis that Brendan could have meant to rent out the cottage for extra cash and when the owners found out, they kidnapped him. Cal says he will look at the property registers to find out who lived there last.

When Cal says that he intends to interview Donie McGrath and ask for his address, Trey reveals that Donie and his brother used to bully Brendan and the school would do nothing because Donie’s family was considered more decent than Brendan’s. Trey gets defensive when Cal asks him to stay away from Donie, thinking that Cal is treating him like a baby.

Cal hypothesizes that Brendan siphoned off a bit of farmer P.J. Fallon’s anhydrous ammonia and then got busted by the cops. Cal imagines that P.J. went to Dublin cops, who would have considered Brendan a danger for his prowess in chemistry and engineering. Cal worries that if he investigates further, he “would be lighting the fuse on something whose blast would reverberate through Ardnakelty in ways he can’t predict” (246). He cannot see this case ending happily.