Beneath Devil's Bridge(35)

“Will you talk to her, when she calls? Because it’s just a matter of when, not if.”

Maddy regards Darren. “I . . . Will you?”

He smooths his hand over his hair. “Maybe cooperating will be better than not talking. Look at how your mother is going to come across if she refuses to be interviewed. It’s going to appear as though she has something to hide. It might be better if she did tell her side, explain how the investigation unfolded. At least if we all give our sides of the story, it’ll set Trinity straight. The fewer people who talk, the more it’s going to fuel a person like her. And the more listeners will buy into the idea there was some conspiracy.”

Maddy holds her husband’s gaze. Tension is thick in the room. It feels as though a paradigm has shifted, and the world they were once comfortable in—or complacent about—no longer offers the same guardrails.



Across town, Johnny Forbes listens to the Leena Rai podcast as he runs errands en route to the brewery where he works. His mind turns to the military surplus jacket the divers couldn’t find. He wonders if what he always thought to be true is maybe not true at all. Perhaps he’s been comfortably hiding from the real questions all these years. Perhaps it’s because it was just easier to bury his head in the sand. Perhaps they all have. He pulls into the parking lot of the Raven’s Roost pub to check how much beer the establishment needs to order. The building is just up the street from the brewery, and he can see his father’s Harley parked outside.

Inside the pub, Johnny finds Rex Galloway, his father-in-law, talking quietly across the bar counter with Johnny’s dad, Granger. They’re drinking coffees.

“Johnny?” Granger says as both he and Rex look up. “What are you doing here?”

Johnny nods to their mugs. “Checking in on your order. Seems I’m just in time to join you guys for a coffee.”

As Rex pours him one, Johnny seats himself on a stool beside his father. “You guys hear about the podcast?” he says, taking a sip from his mug.

“We were just talking about it,” Rex says.

Granger adds, “Rachel is pretty pissed about it. And at me, for trying to keep it from her.”

“You did?” asks Johnny.

“That case led her down a bad path all those years ago. Even she will admit that. I didn’t want her to start reliving it all blow by blow.” Granger finishes his coffee, sets the mug down. “It was misguided of me. Of course she was going to find out. And now I’ve made it worse.” He gives a rueful smile. “So I’m giving her space to cool off.”

“Do you believe what Clay Pelley says?” Johnny asks.

“He’s a liar,” says Granger. “And he’s a sick man. Always has been.”

“No kidding,” adds Rex. But he looks uneasy. Johnny feels disquiet, too.



Two blocks over, in the industrial part of town near the old log sorting yard, Darsh Rai listens to the podcast on a speaker as he tinkers under a vehicle in the auto shop he now owns. Ganesh appears in the garage doorway. Ganesh now works for him. He’s a younger, even more handsome echo of both Darsh and his father, Jaswinder. Ganesh’s eyes burn hot and angry beneath his thick black hair.

“Why in the hell is she doing this, putting us all through this again? There should be a law against this. Does she not know what this did to our family? To my mother, my father?” Ganesh asks.

Darsh rolls out from under the car, comes to his feet, and wipes oil from his hands. He reaches for his phone on the workbench and hits the STOP button. “Maybe Clayton Pelley didn’t do it. Wouldn’t you want to know for sure? I mean, there wasn’t even a trial. Why was that?”

Ganesh’s gaze locks on his cousin’s. He steps closer. “You can’t be serious.”

Darsh tosses the oil rag onto the workbench. “I don’t know what to think. But part of me is glad she’s opening this all up again. I’ve always believed those cops dropped the ball. Trinity Scott is right. There were too many loose ends just left hanging in the wind when that bastard confessed and pleaded guilty. There’s more to this. I’ve always known there’s more to this.”



In a different part of town, Liam Parks, who runs Parks Photography and Design, climbs the ladder to his attic after listening to the podcast episodes. Up inside the attic space, he dusts off a storage box and opens it. Out of it he takes some old prints that he developed in the school lab. He sifts through them. Images of faces locked in time. Classmates. Girls. Boys. Laughing, smiling, partying. Playing sports. At school dances. In the hallways. He comes across the pile he was looking for. Images he shot on that night they all saw a rocket fall in pieces through the sky. He finds the one he’s after. A group of girls, laughing, arms around each other. He shot them in front of the bonfire that night. He stares at the youthful faces, the pretty smiles. Memories shimmer to life—memories that make him uncomfortable.

He wonders what he should do with these images now.



Jaswinder Rai sits alone in his heavily silent living room. It’s dusty. He should clean it. Pratima always took care of things like that. He’s so lost without her. He stares at the photos on the mantel. Pratima died two years ago. She choked on food in a restaurant. Perhaps it was because nothing was easy for her to swallow after their baby girl was brutally assaulted and killed. He’s relieved Pratima doesn’t have to hear this podcast. It would have been too cruel. But a part of Jaswinder is edgy. Clayton Pelley’s raspy voice crawls through his head, as if echoing and bouncing off other thoughts in there, getting louder and louder.