Beneath Devil's Bridge(69)

I kill the call and slump into my chair. Perhaps I’ve done a terrible, terrible thing. A wrong thing. But how far should a mother go to protect a child? When should she stop?

What if protecting a daughter ends up hurting everyone around her? What if it leads to the wrong man ending up behind bars for almost a quarter of a century? Even if he’s a disgusting, evil man?

I rub my brow. Clay confessed. I have to remind myself of how it went down. I bought it. We all bought his words. Why should we not have? The forensic evidence matched.

I surge to my feet. Pace. Clay had no way of knowing exactly how Leena had died unless he’d been there and done it.

I pace up and down, and then stall dead in my tracks as something I heard on the podcast strikes me. I grab my phone and find the episode I’m looking for. I fast-forward, searching for the words. I click PLAY.

CLAYTON: —the good part of logical me that knew my desires were bad, wrong. The good part of me sought medical help from a professional to kick the addictions. But it was to no avail.

I fast-forward some more, then click PLAY again.

CLAYTON: I wanted to die. But I also didn’t want to die, because that was too easy. I . . . That part of me that sought help?

I swear out loud, then replay, just to be sure. I set down my phone and scrabble through the case binders. I find the copy of the transcript of our interview with Clay. I read through it carefully.

Nowhere in the transcript did Clay mention seeking medical help for his addictions. It’s not that we ignored it. He never told us. I sit back.

My heart thumps hard against my rib cage. I feel blood pounding through my body. If Clay was getting medical—professional—treatment for addiction in Twin Falls, a tiny town, there were very few professionals at the time who handled that kind of thing.

We had loose ends with that case, Rache.

I read through the transcript again, and the scene comes alive in my mind. I can smell the room again. I can feel the tension. I recall the strange look on Clay’s face. The odd monotone delivery. It sounded like the same tone when he reread his confession for Trinity on the air, except that time there was that strange rasp in his voice.

I reach for my phone again and find another section of the podcast. I hit PLAY.

TRINITY: How could you have known all those details if what you said wasn’t true, if you didn’t do it?

CLAYTON: It . . . just came to me like that. Came into my head. And I wanted to say it. All of it.

I write on the board: Who was treating Clay for addiction to child porn?

I check my watch again. Perhaps if I can find Lacey Pelley, she will talk to me after all these years. She might tell me who was treating Clay in 1997.

I sit down at my laptop and start googling. But all I find are some old newspaper articles that have been digitized. It appears from the articles that Lacey Pelley moved back to Terrace with their baby. I imagine Lacey would certainly not be using the Pelley name any longer. I find an article that mentions the last name of Lacey’s parents. Willoughby. Jocelyn and Harrison Willoughby. There’s also an old photo embedded in one of the articles that made national news—Lacey carrying baby Janie. Some paparazzi-style photographer snapped her hurrying from her car toward a supermarket entrance, holding her hand up to shield her face. And something else strikes me. What about Janie Pelley? Where is she now? Do Lacey and Janie know about this podcast? What about Lacey’s parents—the Willoughbys? Are they still alive? Do they know about the podcast? It must be bad enough for Jaswinder and Ganesh and Darsh to be hearing all this now, but what about them?

I reach for my phone and call an old friend who was once a cop like me.

He answers almost immediately. “Joe Mancini here. Pacific Investigations and Skip Tracing.”

“Joe, it’s Rachel Hart, well, Rachel Walczak, ex–Twin Falls PD.”

“Holy Mother, Rache? How in the hell are you?”

We exchange pleasantries, then I get straight to the reason for my call. I tell him about the podcast.

“I’d like to use your services, Joe. I’d like to locate and talk to Lacey Pelley, and possibly her daughter, Janie Pelley. I can’t find anything via simple googling, and I know you have access to all the good tools, and I’m looking for fast results. My bet is they’re not going by the Pelley surname.” Like I am no longer using Walczak.

“Yeah. I bet.”

“Her maiden name was Willoughby, so possibly she used that.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something. Shouldn’t take long if any name changes were legal.”

I hang up, and I try once more to call Maddy.

She doesn’t pick up.

Neither does Darren.

I chew the back of my pen, wondering if they’ve listened to the three podcast episodes by now. Wondering where Clay is going to lead Trinity next. I hear the growl of Granger’s bike coming along the farm road, growing louder as he turns into the driveway.

A few moments later he knocks on my study door and enters. Scout rises from his basket, wiggling his tail.

“Sorry about last night, Rache.” Granger crouches down to hug and ruffle Scout. He looks up, then goes still as his eye catches my crime board. Slowly he comes to his feet. He goes toward the board.

He reads my questions.

His shoulders go rigid. He’s silent. I watch him. He turns his head, and his gaze locks with mine.