Beneath Devil's Bridge(58)

Clay regards Luke intently. Silence fills the room. I can smell him—his scent is stronger, sweat permeating the stale alcohol stink with an acrid stench of fear.

“Clayton?” Luke prods.

He swallows and glances at his lawyer.

Marge nods.

“I gave her a ride back into Twin Falls.”

Adrenaline spikes in my blood. I feel the waves of silent energy rolling off Luke, but he remains outwardly calm.

“You gave Leena Rai a ride? In your vehicle—the Subaru?”

He nods and inhales heavily. “She was very inebriated. I was worried about Leena. I feared for her judgment and safety. And that is the truth. She . . . I liked Leena. I was fond of her.”

“I’m sure you were,” I say.

Luke fires a hot glance at me. I hold my tongue. But I remain wound like a spring. I want to tear his throat out. He has a struggling wife, a tiny child. This bastard with boxes of child porn in his shed, where he tutored Leena and others.

“So you drove Leena back to town, after you had sex with her.”

“I never had sex with Leena. We sat on the log and talked. Like I said, she was very drunk. I told her I was going home, and I offered her a ride. I . . . I told her she’d be safer if she came home with me, rather than hang around alone in that group.”

The irony hangs in the close atmosphere of the padded room.

“I’ll play along,” Luke says. “You drove her back into Twin Falls. Where did you drop her off?”

He rubs his face hard with both hands. “I was going to drive her to her home, but when we reached the intersection on the north side of Devil’s Bridge, she wanted to get out of the car. I said no, I was taking her to her house, and she started getting belligerent and opening the door while I was driving.”

“Why was she getting belligerent?” asks Luke.

“I told you, she was very drunk. Obstreperous. She wanted to go to Ari’s Greek Takeout, which is across the river. I wanted to go the other way, to her house and then my home. But she insisted, so I let her out.”

“You let a very drunk student—a fourteen-year-old girl—out into the dark, alone?”

He nods.

“Could you speak your answer out loud for the recording, Clay?”

“Yes. I did.”

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight—you were worried about Leena’s judgment and safety at the bonfire, and then when you get back into Twin Falls, right near Devil’s Bridge, you are suddenly no longer concerned about those things?”

Silence.

“What changed, Clayton? Did Leena say something that made you mad? Did she threaten to reveal that you had sex with her, maybe?”

“That’s enough, Detectives. My client has—”

“I did not have sex with Leena. Maddy is a liar.”

I tighten my fists in my lap.

“Did you ever talk to Leena about a shadow, Clay? A Jungian-type shadow?”

He looks worried. Confused. Unsure where Luke is going with this.

“Uh . . . yes. Part of a literature study of global mythologies.”

“Did she ever profess her love for you?”

His eyes flicker. He looks cornered. He fiddles with the edge of the table. “She . . . Leena had infatuations. She misread things.”

Luke takes a page out of his folder. He begins to read from it.

“‘We spend most of our lives afraid of our own Shadow. He told me that. He said a Shadow lives deep inside every one of us. So deep we don’t even know it’s there. Sometimes, with a quick sideways glance, we catch a glimpse of it. But it frightens us, and we quickly look away . . . I don’t know why He tells me these things. Maybe it’s a way of obliquely bringing out and addressing his own Shadow. But I do think our Shadows are bad—his and mine. Big and dark and very dangerous. I don’t think our Shadows should ever be allowed out.’”

Clay looks down at the table.

“Is this what you tutored Leena about?”

“It’s possible this is how she interpreted it.”

“Are you the ‘He’ that Leena refers to in her journal text?”

“It’s possible.”

“Did you know what was in her journal, Clay? Did you and Leena fight over it? Did the fight get physical under Devil’s Bridge?”

“No. None of that. I dropped her at the bridge. I never saw her journal. I didn’t know she’d written those things.”

“Why did she write that you both have very dangerous shadows?”

“I have no idea what was in her head when she wrote those words.”

“What about her backpack? Did you drop that off with her, too?”

“It was on the back seat of my car. I handed it to her when she got out. And then I drove through the intersection, and went home.”

“What time was that?”

“I’m . . . not sure.”

“If you left the bonfire around nine p.m., did you go elsewhere? Because Lacey said you only returned home at 3:42 a.m.”

“I told you, that’s untrue. I went home. I started drinking, and I could have gone into my shed, then stumbled into bed at 3:42 a.m. But I was home.”

“So where did Leena go, between when you dropped her off and when she was seen staggering along the bridge around two a.m.?”