Beneath Devil's Bridge(59)

“I have no idea.”

Luke sits back. He assesses the suspect. “Clay, why did you not tell us this when she was first reported missing?”

“I . . . knew how it would look.”

“We could have searched in the Devil’s Bridge area right away,” I say. “Instead, we had to wait a week before Amy Chan came forward.”

Luke casts me another warning glare. I fall silent. My heart is thudding. My rage is building.

“Did anyone else know that you drove Leena to the intersection, Clay?” Luke asks.

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you recognize this jacket?” Luke slides toward Clay a photo of the jacket that Lacey brought in earlier.

“That’s mine. I loaned it to Leena a couple of weeks before the bonfire. It started raining while she was with me for a tutoring session. She didn’t have a coat with her. My jacket was hanging on the back of my shed door, and she asked if she could borrow it, and she just sort of kept it.”

“How did you get it back?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“It was just there, in my office on Tuesday morning after the bonfire weekend. Laundered. Just left there in a plastic bag. I actually thought it was Leena who had returned it, until it became clear that she was truly missing.”

“Right. And these dark stains?”

Silence.

“Tell me again how you cut and bruised your hands.”

Silence.

“Look, the RCMP crime lab has your jacket now, Clay. If these stains here”—Luke taps the photo—“are from Leena’s blood, the lab will find the match. If that blood on the backpack is either yours or Leena’s, they will find that out, too. If there is any fiber evidence in your car—”

Clay goes white and makes a strange noise. He’s almost hyperventilating. His pupils are dilating. He looks confused, drugged.

“Something you want to say, Clay?” Luke asks.

He makes the noise again, and he shakes his head rapidly, as if trying to banish an image, or a memory that is suddenly surfacing and that he can no longer fight.

“Clay?”

“It’s my blood. On her backpack. It’s my blood.”

Luke goes rigid. “Why is it your blood?”

“I told you . . . I cut my hands while stacking a woodpile. And I bumped the wounds in the forest while at the bonfire, and my hands started to bleed again. And when I reached into the back of my car to grab Leena’s pack, I could have gotten my blood on the straps.”

Clay still doesn’t look right. He appears dazed. My gaze ticks to Luke.

He takes another photo from his file, and slides it toward Clay.

“This is a photograph of the title page from a book of poems found with Leena’s things alongside the river. It’s titled Whispers of the Trees. Your wife identified it as your book, Clay, and the initials A. C., your wife says, are the initials of a woman named Abbigail Chester. Who’s Abbigail?”

“A friend. From university days. She’s dead.”

“What happened to Abbigail?”

He looks worried. His eyes dart to his lawyer. She looks confused, troubled.

“They . . . they say it was a home invasion that went bad.”

“See? Here’s what we’ve now learned from my RCMP counterparts, Clay. Abbigail Chester did in fact die in what appeared to be a home invasion. But she was also sexually assaulted. Violently. Then bludgeoned to death.” Luke pauses, regards Clay steadily for a few moments. “Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? Finding a book that Abbigail Chester gifted you near the body of a young woman who died under remarkably similar circumstances?”

“My client has no knowledge of the Abbigail Chester crime,” Marge says. “You’re on a fishing expedition.”

Luke pushes another photo toward Clay. It glares up at us. Hairy male body. Aged hands. The soft skin of a young girl. Erect penis.

We all watch Clay. He seems to swell with an invisible electricity. It crackles around him. It changes his face. His eyes take on a dark and strange look as he studies the image.

Softly Luke says, “This is one of hundreds found in your shed, Clay. Do you know who brought this photo in to show us?”

He swallows, but refuses to meet Luke’s eyes.

“Lacey brought it in. Your wife. She found the photos in your shed.”

His gaze flares up. It locks on to Luke’s. Clay’s entire body seems to be vibrating. Like bottled rocket fuel ready to blow. His lawyer looks increasingly nervous, out of her depth. Her attention darts between the horrific pornographic image and her client.

“Lacey found a babysitter, Clay. And she brought this jacket and that photo into the station. She told us what was inside your shed. She asked us to keep her safe. From you. Your own wife. She turned you in. She saw what you kept under bolt and key inside that shed where you tutored girls.”

A tear leaks from Clay’s eye. It dribbles down his cheek. He casts his eyes down, looks at his hands in his lap.

Luke slams his hand on the table.

Clay jerks, but still doesn’t look up.

“Clay, I’m going to ask you again, did you have sex with a minor? Did you have intercourse with Leena Rai in the grove on the night of the Ullr bonfire?”