Beneath Devil's Bridge(22)
As with the rain, there’s a sense of urgency about Luke. I understand. In the early days of a homicide investigation, time is of the essence, and we’ve already lost plenty.
“There’s also something off with the father,” he says. “We need to check into his background.”
Surprise surges through me. “Jaswinder? Off?”
“Hmm.”
I turn into the Chan driveway. “Jaswinder might come across as authoritarian and a bit gruff, but he’s a good man, Luke. And he’s hurting. Hell, I don’t know what I’d do if someone did that to my kid. He works for the local transit company. Drives a regular bus route. Everyone on that route will tell you he’s a nice man. An honorable man.” I bring the vehicle to a stop, and I remember Leena’s bruises. “You can’t think he had something to do with his child’s death?”
He watches my face. Quietly he says, “You know them all, Rachel. Personally. All the players. They’re part of your community. It’s why Chief Doyle wanted me on the team, as an outside eye. It’s tough to be objective when you’ve lived in a town a long time. It’s the reason the RCMP transfers members to new communities every five years—so they don’t become too invested and lose objectivity. And while I’m not thinking Jaswinder Rai is in any way responsible, anything is always possible. Statistically most violence done to women is done by someone they know well. That includes male family members. And something is off there. I can feel it.”
TRINITY
NOW
Thursday, November 11. Present day.
Gio and I sit side by side at the small dining table in the motel room we’ve rented for the duration of our project. The motel stands near where the old Twin Falls police station used to be in 1997, in a more industrial part of town with a view of the granite walls of Chief Mountain. The Chief reminds me of El Capitan in Yosemite, and it’s well known among the international climbing fraternity. Chief Mountain is also the one constant in this story—it looms like an omniscient sentinel over the town. It’s seen everything over the years. But it stands silent. Watchful. Forbidding in the cold light.
The first time I ever saw a picture of the Chief was when I came across an old news photo of Clayton Jay Pelley, smiling in front of the thundering falls.
Gio and I are listening to—and mixing—audio we obtained with police diver Tom Tanaka. Tom now works with the Ontario Provincial Police. He moved east when he married a woman from Toronto.
TOM: After we floated Leena to the shore, Sergeant Rachel Walczak instructed us to go back underwater to see if we could find anything else.
TRINITY: Like what?
TOM: Like the military surplus jacket the victim had last been seen wearing. Or a weapon that could have been used to bludgeon the victim. The trauma to her face was extensive. When we rolled her body over . . . it . . . We were all shocked silent for a few moments.
TRINITY: Can you take us back and describe in detail what you saw underwater that November morning?
I smile to myself as I reach for a slice of pizza. I like the tension in Tom Tanaka’s voice. To be fair, I know it’s ghoulish to ask for a blow-by-blow description of finding a week-old corpse floating under murky water, but this is true crime. The spectacle—the theater of murder—is what listeners come for. And I am still beside myself with excitement that Clayton Pelley claims he is innocent of the crime. I chew on my mouthful of pizza, listening to Tom, thinking about how I felt seeing Clayton in person for the first time, how it changed something inside me as the story shifted focus.
TOM: The water was icy. The visibility was almost nil. At times I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face. The two of us were basically diving blind, just carefully inching our way forward and feeling with our hands through the thick murk, touching things—slimy reeds, silt, rocks, bits of metal, old tins, broken bottles, shopping carts, a bicycle—hoping all the while that we wouldn’t cut ourselves on something sharp. We desperately wanted to find the girl, but at the same time you don’t want to find her under there. The whole time while I was looking, there was this fear that her face would suddenly come up against mine—that I’d swim into it before I realized it. That her eyes would be right there, in front of mine. Open. Looking at me. Her skin pale, luminous like a ghost in the dark water . . . You never quite get rid of that anxiety, that edge of tension . . . And then I did touch her. With my fingertips. Her hair was floating out around her head. Long. And it got in my face, across my goggles. I thought it was weeds before I realized it was her long hair. She had nothing on, apart from her bra and the camisole tangled around her neck.
SILENCE
TRINITY: How did you decide where to begin the underwater search?
TOM: We figured if she went into the river below the bridge, where her belongings had been found, she couldn’t have gone far. Leena was heavier than an average female drowning victim, so with the river depth at around twenty-five feet, and the slowness of the current, we figured she’d be heavy enough to resist much movement. Basically, if a diver can swim easily against a current, it’s unlikely that a drowning victim will be moved far. So you generally begin at the point last seen. And then you adjust your buoyancy so you are negatively buoyant, and you let yourself sink to almost the bottom, and you hang there, prone, just above the bottom, and then work your way forward. We found her not too far from the bridge trestles. She’d gotten caught up in the eelgrass.