Witnesses

Character Analysis

There are a few more witnesses and suspects to round out our line-up. Simone Cameron, who runs the Cameron Dance Academy, is Katy's biggest character witness. She says that Katy was a very serious dancer and that Rosalind "lacked application and wanted instant results" (4.24). She also leads the detectives down the Munchausen path, when she talks about Katy's frequent illnesses. That path seems like a dead end, but it ends up being a valuable clue that Rosalind has been drugging Katy.

Michael Kiely is a journalist who would get along well with Fox Mulder since dude thinks the Knocknaree woods have a mind of their own. However, he's not a complete crackpot (only mostly): He gives Sam info on the development companies who own the land, which gives them a lead in the highway aspect of the case.

Kiernan and McCabe are the two detectives from Rob's 1984 case. McCabe is dead by the time this book begins, but Kiernan is still alive, so Cassie chats with him, and finds out that Kiernan and McCabe disagreed on what happened in the 1984 case. (Maybe that's why it was never solved.) Kiernan thought it was someone with a fake alibi, while McCabe thought it was someone just driving by who decided to kidnap some kids like you might decide to order a cheeseburger from the drive-thru at Wendy's.

There's also Terence Andrews, the head of Futura who leaves threatening messages on Jonathan Devlin's answering machine. But aside from this, and being a total turd, he has no bearing on the case.

Finally, there are some people more related to the cold case than the present one. Mrs. Pamela Fitzgerald lives in Knocknaree and bakes scones (yes, please). She leads Rob and Cassie to the trail of Sandra Scully, who was gang-raped by Jonathan Devlin and his friends in 1984. Unfortunately, Rob and Cassie aren't in the Irish SVU, so they can't do anything about this old case, and it's pretty much a dead-end when it comes to their investigation, too.

Sandra's rape, which was witnessed by Rob and pals back in 1984, was committed by Jonathan, Cathal Mills, and Shane Waters. Shane is now in jail, and Jonathan says, "he was a casualty of the eighties" (13.72). Cathal doesn't seem to have grown up at all, and he still thinks women are sex objects and nothing more. It's too bad Cassie can't arrest him for being a slimeball.