Adam Robert Ryan is a detective; he works for Murder for the Dublin police. He loves to lie and craves the truth. When Adam was a kid he had two best friends, Peter Savage and Jamie Rowan. He lived in Knocknaree, Ireland, on the outskirts of Dublin. One day the three decided to go on a little adventure into the woods behind their neighborhood, something they did a lot. Soon it started to get late but their parents did not worry because they probably thought the children had just lost track of time. After a few more hours they the adults to worry and eventually phoned to police.
They devised a search party and went into the woods where they found something they were not expecting. What they found was Adam Ryan, with his nails dug into a tree and his shoes filled with blood that was not his. Peter and Jamie were never found. Adam never remembered what happened in the woods that night, maybe he refused to or maybe he just didn’t. He did eventually move on with his life. After the event him and his family moved out of town and Adam went to boarding school and did everything he could to try to separate himself from his dark past, even changing his name to Rob because it was more common than Adam.
When Rob grew up he became a detective hoping to some day make it to Murder and he eventually did. Even as a detective Rob stayed away from his past. He read the case file once, on his first day and then never looked at it again. Rob heard about Cassie Maddox days before she started and a lot of people had a problem with her. First of all, she was a woman, only the fourth that Murder had taken (one almost had her partner killed because she freaked out and threw her gun at the suspect). Secondly, she was only 28 no one under 30 ever got into Murder and even then most people had to spend a few years as a floater, but Cassie did not.
Rob, unlike most, had no problem with this. Cassie actually turned out to be pretty cool; her aunt and uncle raised her after her parents were killed. She went to Trinity for three years; no one knew why she dropped out. She drove a Vespa or “The Golf Cart” as Cassie and Rob called it. She got promoted to Murder because she was stabbed after she went undercover trying to infiltrate a drug circle. The two detectives eventually became friends and soon enough became partners, and the two were then inseparable. In fact, Cassie was one the few people Rob had told about his past; no one else in the department knew.
One day they were sitting at their desks playing Worms on the computer when O’ Kelly, their boss, came in with a case while everyone else was out for coffee. A bunch of archeologists had found the body of a young girl and without thinking Cassie said that they would take the case. However, Cassie accepted too soon, the body was found in Knocknaree. When she tried to decline O’ Kelly just yelled at her (O’ Kelly did not like Cassie for multiple reasons her sex, her age, and her clothes, to name a few. ) At the time Rob thought this would be fine though, but it was not. When they got to the site they met up with Dr.
Hunt the leader of the archeological dig. He had Mark, a worker; give them a tour of the site. A kid named Damien usually gave the tours but he could not because he was having some trouble, it was Damien that found the body. Operation Vestal is under way. After the tour they examined the body. The victim was a young girl, ten to thirteen-years-old, dead only a day or so, where they found the body was not the primary scene, and the cause of death was either strangulation or blunt trauma to the head. They got an I. D. on the victim almost immediately. Her name was Katy Devlin. After this discovery they started questioning the rcheologist. Dr. Hunt was not to happy at this, they only had a little bit of time left before developer ripped up the historically rich land and put in a motorway. He eventually agreed though, after they threatened to take him downtown and waste more of his time. They used the finds shed as an interview room and started with Damien Donnelly-the kid who found the body. They almost immediately ruled him out as a kiss up and he did tell him that he saw a man in a track suit go into the site one night (Cassie and Rob figured that he was just telling them was they wanted to hear).
After they finished up they headed to the Devlin house and told them the bad news. Katy was a very talented at ballet and was the feel good story of the town because in a few weeks she was going to leave for the Royal Ballet School. The Devlins told Cassie and Rob that Katy was a bright kid; she had a little bit of a temper but hadn’t had any recent arguments with the family. She had been happy, and had never run away from home. When they asked if they knew of anyone who might want to hurt Katy, Mr. Devlin shoved his chair back and stood up and said, “Jesus.
Those phone calls. ” Apparently, Mr. Devlin was the head of the “Move the Motorway” campaign and had recently been receiving phone calls late at night threatening him. One time Katy answered the phone and the caller told her that he knew where they lived and when she gave the phone to her dad the voice said, “Nice little girl you got there, Devlin. ” However, Mr. Devlin was not worried about the phone call and figured that that just meant the campaign was working. After they left, Rob could have sworn that he knew Mr.
Devlin’s name from somewhere, and he found something odd about the family. He was relived when he found out that Cassie did too. They had a few ideas of who the killer could be: it could be someone in the family; the dad could have abused her, the mom could have suffered from Munchausen by proxy (Katie was sick a lot, but once she got into ballet school she just stopped), it could have been a cult crime (she was found on a sacrificial altar), a sex-crime, maybe the person behind the disappearance of Jamie and Peter, or the voice.
When they got back to the station they met with O’ Kelly to tell him about the leads and asked him for a third man. They wanted Sam O’Neil, “a stocky, cheerful, unflappable guy”, he got assigned to Murder when he was 27 because his uncle was a mid-level politician. They had a few plausible leads early, but they didn’t work out. They thought Mark Hunt might have done it, but he had an alibi. The case was going pretty slow. On they bright side, the three detectives were getting along great. Sam was very much the third wheel, but he did not mind at all.
They spent the evenings at each other’s houses and took turns making dinner. They would shoot ideas back and forth between each other about the case until they were too drunk, then they would just talk. They began to rule out a few leads. Mrs. Devlin was probably not the killer and probably did not have Munchausen; half the time Katy went to the hospital it was not even the mom that took her in. They did however find out that the killer was local. On Tuesday that week Rosalind, Jessica’s sister, came in. She wanted to talk to Rob, alone. So they went out to coffee and she acted kind of weird.
She asked exactly how Katy died, and after Rob told her, she asked him if Katy was not raped, sounding kind of disappointed. Then she got really sad and blamed herself for Katy’s death saying that she should have protected her more. She told Rob that Katy was into girls, something Mr. Devlin denied. She also told him that Mr. Devlin worshipped Katy and that Katy took advantage of this and didn’t always tell the truth. Rob thanked her for her time and left. A few days later he met up with Rosalind again, and this time Jessica was there too.
It took awhile for Jessica to start talking, but eventually after she warmed up, she told Rob that she and Katy were walking home one day when a bald man in a track suit came up to them and started talking to Katy, telling her that she was very pretty and that his daughter liked dancing too. The description matched Damien’s of the mysterious tracksuit so they had a new suspect to deal with. This lead soon failed though, all tracksuit guys in Knocknaree had alibis. Sam was going after a different lead. He was following the mysterious phone calls.
After a lot of hard work, he discovered just who bought up all the land. He found out that it was bought up by a bunch of small companies owned by bigger companies an so on. He eventually traced back the land to 4 big companies and the head of one, Terence Andrews of Futura, matches the voice described by Mr. Devlin perfectly. This whole time Rob is realizing that he may have gotten in over his head. The case is driving him mad. He’s drinking a lot, forgetting everything he is suppose to be doing, and the whole time having little flash acks of his past, just anticipating the big one. He even forgot a court case he was supposed to testify in and screwed the whole thing up. That night, after he gets home from work he remembers something. He remembers he, Jamie and Peter hiding behind a bush watching Jonathan Devlin and his friends’ gang rape this girl, Sandy. (When Rob was little Jonathan lived in Knocknaree too and was a little older and had a few friends, Cathal Mills, and Shane Walters, Metallica, Shades, and Anthrax, as Rob and his friends called them.
They were a very bad influence on the kids, drinking and having sex. Rob was told to stay away from them. ) The next morning Rob and Cassie go and talk to Sandra. She told them that Jonathan saw the kids and chased after them, scared they would go and tell the police. This was only a few weeks before Jamie and Peter went missing and it opened up a whole different possibility for the old case. Maybe Jonathan killed Peter and Jamie. Next they went to the Devlin house and Rob went in and talked to Mr. Devlin. He asked him if he knew Cathal and Shane and told him he knew about the rape.
Devlin told Rob that he, Shane and Cathal were very close and then told him his story. He said he didn’t remember anything about the kids being there, but after the rape he heard someone laughing, someone old-30 or 40’s. It freaked them out. They never saw who or what it was though. Finally it stopped and they got out of the wood as fast as they could. Then Jonathan said he went home and got drunk. After he finished talking to Mr. Devlin, Rob and Cassie went and talked to Shane and Cathal. This did not lead them too much. Cathal told them that Jonathan would never have the guts to kill Katy.
Cassie didn’t like Cathal, he was the leader the one with the idea to rape Sandra, and Cassie actually got really mad at him and hurt his ego. Rob was scared for her, scared Cathal might do something about it but Cassie wasn’t worried, Cathal would never sue. Then Cassie told Rob about Trinity and how she quit because some psychopath made up this story about her because she turned him down for a date. He went and told everyone that they had been going out for a while and he wanted to break if off but she threatened that if he did she would tell everyone he raped her.
He did this because he was bored that’s what psychopaths do. Cassie lost all her friends because of this, everyone believed him; everyone hated her for that point on. A hundred psychology students and no one realized that there was a psychopath going to their school. One day he went up to her and told her loudly to stop calling him then quietly warned her that if he did rape her one-day that the charges would not stick. Then he smiled and went back to his friends. That’s why she left Trinity. Sam’s lead, Andrews, had an alibi for the night of Katy’s murder, but he could have hired a guy.
So they get enough evidence to tap his phone line and find out something surprising. While Sam was interviewing Andrews, Rob and Cassie interviewed Mr. Devlin. It was pretty harsh. They basically accused him of murdering Jamie and Peter trying to guilt trip him into confessing. They tell him how the Savages and Ms. Rowan are scared to move, in hopes that one day Peter or Jamie will walk through their door. Cassie tells him how the Savages and Ms. Rowan envy him, he gets to bury his daughter they will never be that lucky. Then Cassie tells him how she bets he killed them.
This whole time Rob is having a hard time, he can’t take it. Things got intense Rob started yelling at Jonathan he wanted so bad to catch his friend’s killers. Cassie had to stop him from hurting Jonathan, and Rob accidentally ends up hurting Cassie. Rob drives to Knocknaree on a Saturday night and camps out in the woods, hoping to remember what happened. He remembered how Jamie’s mom wanted her to go to boarding school so the three went on strike, not talking to any adults until Ms Rowan said that she would think about the school issue.
Then one day Jamie was being really quite until she finally told Rob and Peter that her mom fitted her for her uniform. After this news she ran into the wood. Peter and Rob went and told Mrs. Savage that they were going in too. They knew where Jamie would be, she would be in the castle, and they always met there when something was wrong. Then they started talking and decided to run away, to Dublin where they will be safe and Jamie wont have to go to boarding school. They start planning it all out what they would bring and everything, until Peter tells them to stop, he heard something.
Jamie decided that they should follow the voice so Peter and Jamie jump out of the castle Rob, who was bigger and slower than them needed to tie his shoe and asked them to stop. He remember them telling him to hurry up then… he woke up. He was not in shape to drive so he called Cassie and she brought him home. One thing led to another and they ended up sleeping together, which turned out to be a mistake. Rob could not talk about it, even when Cassie wanted to and they after this they just started to drift apart. That day at work they reviewed Andrews phone calls.
One night after Andrews got drunk he rings this guy with a deep voice and immediately after the voice speak Sam tries to turn its off, he is astonished. It’s his uncle. His honest politician of an uncle, who was supposedly good, just and right doing shady business with a supposed murderer. Sam had no idea what to do. His uncle did everything for him, he even bought Sam his house. If Sam followed this lead then he would be kicked out of his family, and may even be in trouble for his life. If he didn’t they might loose their killer.
He came over to Rob’s and asked for his help but Rob did not know what to do so then he went to O’ Kelly who told him not to follow through because that would be a big mistake. On Friday Rob goes out to Knocknaree to pick up his car from the archeology site. He starts talking to Sean, one of the archeologists, who was troweling nearby and asks him he had ever found his trowel (the first day they went to the site Sean was complaining about someone stealing his trowel. ) Sean told him that he did not, he had to buy a new one. Rob remembers that a blunt object just like a trowel killed Katy.
Sean tells him that after he found a very rare coin he had to take it to the finds shed and he accidentally left his trowel in there when he left. This means that if Rob is right, the killer had a key to the finds shed which meant Hunt, Damien, or Mark. Hunt had a solid alibi so they brought Mark and Damien in for questioning. Rob and Cassie took Damien. Cassie sweet talked him and acted really nice towards him until he began to warm up to her and starts to talk. He admitted to everything. Cassie told him that he was doing very well and that the worst was over, and then he told them what happened.
He told them how he was a member of the Move the Motorway campaign and that’s where he met Rosalind. They started going out and she told him everything. How evil little Katy was. How her father sexually abused all three and physically abused Jessica and Rosalind. How he worshipped Katy. How Katy could get away with anything. How she told him it would be better if she were dead. So then he came up with the idea of killing Katy, Rosalind was against at first but warmed up to it so one day Rosalind told he that Damien found a rare ballerina artifact so she went and met him.
He took her to the finds shed and killed her with the trowel hiding her body there until he was able to take it out. They bought Rosalind in for questioning, so while Rob continued to question Damien, Cassie went and questioned Rosalind. Earlier during one of Robs meeting with Rosalind he told he knew how she was feeling because when he was a kid his two best friends were killed. Rosalind put two and two together. While Cassie was questioning Rosalind she started talking about how close she and Rob are, and that he was the kid whose two friends went missing, he was and is Adam Ryan.
She even takes a stab in the dark and accuses Cassie of sleeping with Ryan. So the next day O’ Kelly called him into his office and ripped him a new one. He was not off the case though. Rosalind was a psychopath. Cassie always suspected it, but didn’t find it relevant to the case until now. They needed her to admit to it though, but she would never do it at the police station however she was probably dying to tell somebody about her ingenious plan. So, Cassie goes and talks to her they, don’t need parental supervision she over eighteen. Cassie pretends as though Rosalind has the advantage and tells her she’s so smart.
She asks her how she figured out that her and Rob slept together and all of that. So Rosalind, feeling very high and mighty starts to admit to everything, but when they try to arrest her they discover something she’s seventeen almost eighteen but not an adult everything they had they can’t use. That’s the end of the case. After Operation Vestal Rob leaves, Cassie eventually quits and moves to Domestic Violence and the two lose contact. That is life. Cassie becomes engaged to Sam. Rob never quite remembers what happened in the woods and he moves on.
