Beneath Devil's Bridge(53)

“She’s with a woman from the church. It’s about Clay,” she whispers. “I think . . . He did it. My husband killed Leena Rai. He . . . he killed his student.”





RACHEL


THEN


Wednesday, November 26, 1997.

“Come, come this way, Lacey.” I usher her behind the counter and lead her quickly down a corridor toward an interview room. I open the door. “We can talk in here. Please, take a seat. I’ll be right back.”

Lacey sits gingerly on the edge of a plastic chair, still clutching the gym bag to her belly as though her life depends on it. I shut the door. Adrenaline courses through my system as I stride back to the bullpen.

“It’s Lacey,” I say. “She has something to show me. She says her husband did it. Killed Leena. I think I should talk to her alone.”

Luke gets to his feet, glances at the chief.

“We’ll observe,” says Ray.

I head back into the interview room with my notebook and take a seat opposite Lacey.

“Are you sure your baby is okay, Lacey?” I’m concerned for the woman’s mental health.

“Janie’s with Marcia McLain from the Catholic Church women’s group. I . . . I don’t have long. My husband, Clay . . . he . . . called into work sick, and he went to see his doctor. He’ll be home soon. And if he finds I’m gone. I . . . I . . .” She abruptly upends the bag on the table.

A jacket tumbles out.

Khaki. Ironed. It has creases where it was neatly folded. Numbers and letters on the pocket.

I stare at the jacket. Jaswinder’s words surface in my brain.

It was a big khaki-colored jacket. They call them military surplus jackets. Lots of zips and pockets, and some kind of numbering on the front pocket . . . She’d borrowed it.

My gaze shoots to Lacey.

“It’s Clay’s.” Her voice is thin, tight. “I know Leena went missing in a jacket of this description. I heard it on the news, when she first vanished. I remember thinking, Clay has a jacket like that. But then right after she’d been reported missing, he brought it home from school. It was inside this gym bag. And it was all laundered and ironed and folded. Like this.”

Slowly, quietly, I say, “What day did he bring it home, Lacey, do you remember?”

“It was Tuesday evening. The eighteenth. When he returned from school. It was the day after I heard on the radio that Leena Rai was missing. I didn’t think much of the fact that Clay had a jacket that matched the description, because there must be plenty of jackets like that, and there was talk that Leena would show up. But when I hung the clean jacket in the hall closet, I noticed these dark stains.” With trembling hands Lacey spreads the jacket out on the table for me to see. She points at the dark areas on the fabric. I’m conscious of being observed through the one-way mirror. I can almost feel the tension in the others behind the glass.

“These marks did not come out in the laundering process,” she says. “I thought it was weird, and I asked Clay about them, and I also asked why he’d had the jacket laundered instead of bringing it home to put in the machine. I mean, we don’t have money for a Laundromat.”

“What did Clay say?”

“He said it was mud, and blood. He slipped and fell on a trail near the school, and he cut his hands on something sharp in the mud. He said he dropped the jacket off at the Laundromat because it was big and bulky, and our machine isn’t an industrial one, but I’ve washed his jackets in our machine before. It was strange, but I forgot about it until . . .” She swallows, and emotion pools in her eyes. “Until Leena’s body was found, and you guys came around asking those questions about Clay and his boots. That’s when I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That the blood could be Leena’s.” She smears a tear across her cheek with a bony hand. “Everything . . . adds up. Him coming home at that time. Drunk like that. The jacket. The boots . . . The fact that Leena used to come around to be tutored in the shed . . .” Her words die, and she stares blankly at the jacket on the table.

My heart accelerates. I don’t touch the jacket. Not without gloves.

“Why did you wait until now to tell us? Why didn’t you mention it yesterday?”

“He’s my husband. I . . . For better or worse. I . . . I didn’t want to believe it was possible. I couldn’t. But then . . .” Her voice fades.

I think of the crucifix on her child’s bedroom wall, above the crib. This young woman, barely out of her teens herself, is a wife, and a mother, and deeply religious. Her belief in the wedding vows made in church, in front of her God, are powerful. Till death do us part. She’s fighting a cognitive dissonance, turning in the father of her baby, even believing he could be evil.

“But then what, Lacey?” I prompt gently.

“Then I went into his shed. After you left. I took the bolt cutters. I broke in, and . . . and what I saw . . . it’s a sin. Evil. God will punish him. He will burn in hell.”

“What did you see, Lacey?”

“It’s in the bottom of the bag. It’s one . . . just one of them. I . . . couldn’t bring the others. I . . .” She falls silent and sits like a woman awaiting a guillotine. Dead still. Resigned. Head bent forward. She arrived coiled like a spring, and now that she’s delivered her message, she’s spent.