Beneath Devil's Bridge(44)
The noise of kids increases outside the door. Time stretches.
“I don’t believe this,” he says quietly. “What student said this?”
“Is it true?”
“Of course not. Whoever said that—she’s lying.”
“What makes you think it was a she?”
His eyes shine. “She. He. Whoever said it is a liar. And it’s their word against mine. And if you claim otherwise, I’ll have your asses sued from here to high heaven for defamation.”
“What size boots do you wear, Pelley?” Luke asks.
“I’m a size eleven. What’s this got to do with—”
“We need you to come down to the station,” Luke says. “We should do this officially, on the record. Are you good with that?”
“What, now?”
“Yes. Now.”
Clay glares at Luke, then me. He surges suddenly to his feet. I come to my own feet.
“This is ludicrous,” he says in a hiss of a whisper. “Are you arresting me?”
Luke remains seated. “We’d like to clear some things up in a formal setting, get an official statement on the record.”
“If I’m not under arrest, I’m not going anywhere with you. And I’m not saying another goddamn word to either of you without my lawyer present. Now get out. Get the hell out of my office.”
TRINITY
NOW
Thursday, November 18. Present day.
I find Dusty Peters at the Last Door Addictions and Wellness Centre, where she works as a counselor. It’s a residential facility on rural land just outside of Twin Falls. Dusty is one of the first of Leena’s old classmates who responded to my outreach. She was not interviewed at Twin Falls Secondary along with the other kids because she was absent that day. Dusty was, however, questioned later, and her statements in the transcript match what the other students said about the bonfire night.
“We treat both adults and teens,” Dusty says as she shows me into an office with a view of the forest. We sit on comfortable chairs in front of a flickering gas fire as rain falls on the brooding conifers outside. “It’s a refuge, and it’s not only for addictions. It’s about rebalancing.”
“From group home to wellness center,” I say. “That in itself has a nice full-circle balance about it, Dusty.”
She smiles. Dusty is strong, stocky-looking. Her hands are those of a farmer or laborer. She has a scar across her cheek. Her eyes are kind. I sense that life has dealt Dusty more challenges than most, and that she’s found a way to overcome and give back. I’m here to learn more about who Leena Rai was.
“Do you mind if I record our conversation?” I ask.
“Go right ahead.” As I click my digital recorder on, she says, “I honestly never got to know Leena that well. And it’s one of my regrets. She had a tough time, was an outcast. And I of all people should have understood, because my own life was a mess. My father was deceased. I had an alcoholic mother and an abusive uncle. There was violence in my family. We had no money, and I was in and out of the group home, where Nina and Natalia Petrov also stayed for a while. All of that made me insecure. Angry. It made me need to belong somewhere, and I tried everything to belong to a group of girls at school. That group, in a sense, became my family. We were tight. And in order to belong, it felt like . . . like I had to be loyal in picking on someone like Leena, who’d become our target. It was, I suppose, a way of validating ourselves. Something that united us.”
“What was Leena like?”
Dusty heaves out a sigh. “Socially awkward. Did dumb things to get attention, and it usually backfired.”
“And Clayton Pelley’s relationship with her?”
“Well, that’s the thing—he seemed to care for her. Like a good teacher would. He . . . seemed protective. He admonished us from time to time for our bullying behavior. Which is why I was so shocked to hear what had happened.”
“Did you see Clayton Pelley on the night of the bonfire?”
“Yes, with Leena on the log. I never saw them having sex, but I heard about it. Which totally shocked me. Horrified me. Ironically, not the fact that he’d had intimate relations with a student, but that it was Leena.”
“Because she wasn’t what you’d have thought of as sexually attractive?”
“That’s what I thought at the time, I’m afraid. But the murder, the violence . . . we couldn’t see that. That was really hard to believe, or understand.”
“Do you think it’s possible Clayton could be telling the truth now? That maybe he didn’t do it?”
Dusty falls silent and considers this. She rubs her brow.
“I don’t know. Honestly, I just don’t. When I listened to the first episode, the question I kept circling back to, if he didn’t do it, is, Why did he confess and plead guilty?”
“For argument’s sake, if he didn’t do it, was there anyone around town that you girls thought was . . . weird, perhaps? Any guy who ever gave any of you trouble? Anyone who ever followed any of you, or stalked, or watched you in ways that made you uncomfortable?”
Dusty casts her mind back. Rain streams down the windowpanes behind her, and the wind picks up, bending and swirling the trees in the dense forest.