It lay on those gathered around the grave, a wet, heavy shroud muting the sounds of grieving as the priest spoke his final words and mourners moved toward the immediate family. Cathal didn’t cross to offer his condolences though his mother did, resplendent in designer black and tasteful jewelry. He remained in place even as his father and uncle departed without a word. They glided through the fog like a pair of ravens, black coats shiny with moisture. Harbingers of death, he thought, knowing that scattered among the mourners were police as well as FBI and ATF agents. He lingered, trying to recall the dead girl’s face, to dredge up personal memories of Caitlyn, something beyond the smiling photographs present in the funeral home. He failed. All that came to him were thoughts of his cousin, Brianna, and with it, guilt over how seldom their lives intersected. In the span of a year Brianna had lost her mother and brother. And now this. Drugs and gang rape and the death of a friend. Insanity and murder, if not by intention, then by end result.
