Beneath Devil's Bridge(26)
“You didn’t tell anyone you saw Leena?”
“No, why would I?”
“Why indeed,” I say with distaste. “She was just an outsider. Irrelevant. Stumbling alone along the bridge in the dark. Is that right, Amy?”
Amy starts to sob.
“That’s enough,” snaps Sarah. “Amy has said she’s sorry—she made a mistake.” The mother rises to her feet. “This interview is over.”
Tight-mouthed, Sarah shows us to the door. As we exit, she calls behind me, “What about your daughter, Rachel? Did she come home that night?”
I stop, turn. Stare at her.
“Did Maddy tell you there was a big bonfire planned? Or did she lie to you, too?”
I hold her gaze.
“Right. I didn’t think so. People in glass houses and all that.” Sarah closes the door in our faces.
Once we’re back inside the car, I say to Luke, “She makes me sound like I’m a bad mother, but I’m a cop—I’m the last person in town anyone would tell about an illegal gathering in the woods. My daughter already gets flak for being the cop’s kid. She would have been under more pressure than the others not to spill the beans.” I start the engine and reverse out of the driveway.
“I can imagine,” he says. He’s quiet the rest of the way back to town. Then, as we enter the downtown area, wipers squeaking, heater blasting, he says, “I’ll handle the interviews with the kids when we go to the school tomorrow.”
I shoot him a glance. “Because my daughter will be among them?”
“Yes.”
Worry snakes through me. Something is stirring beneath the surface. Changing. I feel it in my bones.
RACHEL
NOW
Thursday, November 18. Present day.
It’s late morning as I load my mountain bike into the back of my truck. Granger has still not returned or called. There’s a break in the weather, and I need to get out, think, burn off some pent-up anxiety. I also want to warn those close to me who are linked to the old case. Maddy is not answering her phone, so I intend to stop by her house before meeting up with my friend Eileen. As I navigate the twisting valley road, I listen again to parts of the second episode of the Leena Rai podcast.
TRINITY: When Leena Rai’s mother reported her daughter missing, the rumors began instantly. One of Leena’s classmates, Seema Patel, who spoke to me on the phone from where she now works as a sales manager in Calgary, said each story grew wilder than the last as their young minds sought to fill the gaps.
SEEMA: Perhaps it was to placate fears, because not knowing can be scarier than knowing something, even if it’s bad. Part of it was also just the excitement of sensationalism. Our town was boring for us teens back then. It’s like we created crazy stories about the Leena mystery as a strange sort of entertainment, each story topping the last. It started with rumors of a bear attack, because Leena at first seemed to have disappeared into the woods, and no one recalled seeing her after the rocket in the sky. Someone said she’d been dragged off by a bear when she’d gone to the bathroom down a trail. Others claimed it was a cougar, or wolves. Some believed she’d fallen into a ravine nearby and was hidden by vegetation near the bottom or being eaten by wildlife. Then some smart-asses said it was a UFO thing, tied to the rocket event, and that aliens had snatched Leena for research. Some claimed she’d run away with a man who’d been lurking around the bonfire. Or perhaps she was hiding and doing a Leena thing . . . Leena had not come home before, and she often lied. She was needy. She was like a stalker. Jealous. And . . . well, she was always talking about leaving Twin Falls anyway, getting out of town. I actually thought she’d finally done it. I was kinda impressed, because God knows, I sure wanted to leave myself. I hated the place, hated school. Then, when the days stretched into a week, I heard at school that she’d taken her own life. And I figured that was possible, too.
TRINITY: So when did the rumor about Leena floating in the river emerge?
SEEMA: About two days before they found her, I think.
TRINITY: Who started that particular rumor?
SEEMA: We never found out. Cops didn’t, either.
TRINITY: But someone had to have known she was in the river, and dead. Because it was true. She was.
SEEMA: At first I thought it was just another wild story. But yeah . . . it was true. Someone knew something.
TRINITY: How well did you know Leena?
SEEMA: I . . . Not well.
TRINITY: I hear your parents knew hers?
SEEMA: Only because they came from the same part of India. But that didn’t make our family friends of theirs.
TRINITY: You sound defensive about this.
SEEMA: Just because you come from the same place doesn’t mean you are the same. People try to paint you all with the same brush. It’s called prejudging. Based on skin color or cultural background.
TRINITY: So you’re saying you were different from Leena, better?
SEEMA: I resent that. I was different from her, that’s all. We had nothing in common. Leena didn’t fit in. She didn’t know how to.
TRINITY: But you did.
SEEMA: I had friends.
I hit STOP. I’m entering the outskirts of Twin Falls, which has grown tenfold in the last twenty-four years, segueing from a mill and logging resource community into a recreation mecca for hip young families with a passion for the environment and a penchant for telecommuting. My thoughts go to Pratima and what she said to me in Leena’s bedroom.