Beneath Devil's Bridge(6)

“Panties,” the tender calls out to me as Tanaka brings up an item of clothing. The panties are covered in dark-gray silt. They are bagged. “And cargo pants,” he calls out as Tanaka brings more clothing up.

Leena was last seen wearing camouflage cargo pants with pockets on the sides.

My mouth goes dry. Sexual assault is now a horrible possibility. I think of how I am going to break this to Pratima and Jaswinder Rai.

“Tide’s coming in,” says a voice at my side.

I start. It’s Tucker. He’s returned. He’s still holding my coffee.

“I think they’re close,” I reply quietly.

Another yell from the boat.

Everything then seems to fall silent apart from the pattering of rain on water. Another Pelican marker is floated out. Both divers surface. They’ve got something big. They’re coming toward the bank, bringing it through the eelgrass. Slowly.

“Is everyone off the bridge?” I ask quietly, my gaze fixed on the divers.

“Yeah. Cordoned off.”

I swallow. It’s her. A body. The men are floating her toward where I stand. Emotion blurs my vision. I move closer, crouch down.

Between the divers is Leena Rai. Bobbing on the tide, facedown, arms out at her sides. The divers are standing now as they carefully walk and float Leena in through the reeds. Her body is mostly covered by the rise of the cold water. Her black hair fans out around her head like velvet. Her naked buttocks barely break the surface. A camisole is tangled up around her neck.

My body feels numb. The men turn her over.

An invisible current shocks through us all as we stare in horror.





RACHEL


NOW


Wednesday, November 17. Present day.

Cold leaches through my chest as I watch the podcaster and her assistant struggling through the mud as they make their way up to a red van parked on the road. I deleted Trinity Scott’s voice mails. All five of them, over the course of a month. I thought she’d gotten the message. A movement in the attic window catches my eye, and I glance up at the house. Granger, watching from his office. He obviously saw the visitors.

Your partner, Granger, told us when we drove out last week that you wouldn’t want to speak to me, and I can understand your resistance.

Anger sparks through me. I know he’s looking out for me. I know how the case messed me up, and how he was the one who helped heal me. But he should have told me that Trinity and her sidekick had come all the way out to Green Acres.

Detective O’Leary is in hospice care. He’s lucid only some of the time.

For a moment I can’t breathe. I count backward from five. Four. Three. Two. One. I suck in a deep breath of cold air, exhale slowly, and shake the memories. Still, as I make my way back to the farmhouse, my gum boots squelching in the mud, Scout following in my wake, I feel the presence of the hidden mountains around my slice of land in the valley. And I feel as though they are pressing in, along with the dense cloud, the rain. The looming winter. And I can’t quite shake the feeling that something has been awakened, and is being churned up from where it has been lying dormant in the black soils of memory and time.

Inside the mudroom I tug off my boots and shuck off my rain gear. I grab a towel and rub Scout. He squirms with glee, but where I usually find my dog’s delight infectious, now it just sharpens my agitation.

Granger has come downstairs. He’s sitting in his leather recliner by the fire, reading glasses perched atop his nose, a manuscript in his lap. He critiques papers for a psychology journal. His area of expertise is treating post-traumatic stress disorder and addictions with hypnotherapy. How trauma lodges in both body and mind, and the mechanisms people use to cope with PTSD, remain his fields of interest.

“You didn’t tell me,” I say as I make for the kitchen.

He peers over his half-moon glasses. “Tell you what?” He’s wearing the nubby sweater I stress-knit for him years ago, before I bought Green Acres, before he partially retired and moved in with me. His hair is messy. Chestnut brown and streaked with silver. Granger has a handsome face lined by weather, time, and the emotions of life. On the shelves behind him books on psychology fight for space with tomes on philosophy and an eclectic mix of fiction and narrative nonfiction, mostly tales of solo adventures, man against nature. He was my therapist before we were lovers. And I know I am lucky to have found him. Granger in many ways is my savior. Which is why I am battling with my anger at his not having told me about Trinity Scott’s visit.

“You know what,” I snap as I grab the coffeepot. “Why didn’t you tell me that podcaster had already driven all the way out here once before already?”

“Do you want to speak to her?”

“Of course not.” I fill the pot with water, my movements clipped. “Why on earth would I want to help her sensationalize, monetize, a family’s—a community’s—pain after so many years?” I fill the coffee machine, splashing water onto the counter. “Entertainment at the expense of others who never asked to be visited by violent crime in the first place? No way.”

“So I didn’t mention it. Why would I want to upset you unnecessarily?” A pause. I glance at him.

He gets up and comes into the kitchen. “Look, we both know what that case did to you, Rache.” He moves a strand of rain-dampened hair behind my ear. “We know what it did to your family—to everyone.”