Beneath Devil's Bridge(71)
“Rache, it’s Joe.”
“You got something already?”
“Easy as pie. Just need to know where to look with the right tools. Lacey Ann Willoughby Pelley legally changed her name in 1998. Which coincided with Jocelyn and Harrison Willoughby’s move from Terrace to a small town in Northern Ontario called Shackleton. Lacey and her daughter moved with them.”
“So Lacey changed her name back to Willoughby?”
“No. Fresh new start, it seems.”
Energy sparks through me. I slow for a car to feed into my lane, my wipers squeaking. “What name?”
“Lacey Ann Scott.”
I go ice cold. Then my heart kicks and jackhammers. I allow another car to pass into my lane. My throat is dry. “Her . . . daughter’s name is . . . Janie Scott?”
“Actually Trinity Jane Scott. It was always Trinity Jane. I guess they just liked to call her Janie. I have a mate whose parents call him by his middle name, too. It’s a thing.”
I suck in a long, slow, steadying breath, then put my indicator on and take an off-ramp. “Hang on, I’m going to pull over.” Up ahead I see a turnout leading into an industrial area. I pull into a parking lot outside a flooring store and come to a stop.
“Trinity Scott is Clay Pelley’s daughter?” Then I swear and hit the wheel as the scope of it dawns on me. “It’s not Clay who’s screwing with us all. It’s not Clay who’s playing Trinity like a fiddle. It’s her. She’s playing him. She’s playing us.
“So that’s going to be her big reveal,” I say quietly. “That Clay is her daddy. That’s her bloody game.”
REVERB
THE RIPPLE EFFECT
NOW
Sunday, November 21. Present day.
Most of the men are watching the television mounted on the wall. The news is on. Clay watches only half-heartedly. He sits at one of the bolted-down tables, and he’s trying to reread Nabokov’s Lolita. He gets away with it under the pretext of furthering his literature studies. Or perhaps the guy managing the library just doesn’t know what it’s about. Clay is in medium security because he’s been a model prisoner. He’s even taught others through a special program—English as a second language, literature studies, and classes in basic business writing skills and grammar. He’s also furthered his own psychology degree. After a few very early missteps that got him cut across the neck, which damaged his vocal cords, he learned quickly where his bread was buttered and which factions to align himself with. He rubs his neck, where the spiderweb tattoo now forms a network of inked lines over the neck scar. The tat marks him as a member of a particular gang. He does favors for the gang leader. He gets little favors in return—they watch his back. That’s the biggest thing. Survival. Being part of a herd ensures his safety. Even some of the guards are in on the game. The power dynamic on the inside is intricate. And it can be deadly.
Guards observe the convicts from behind a window in an observation booth. Cameras watch from all angles. Clay is having trouble focusing on the words in the novel. His thoughts are on Trinity Scott, who is coming to see him again later today. He’s considering what he should tell her in the next twenty-minute session, how much to reveal so he can hook her, keep her coming back hungry. He cannot even begin to articulate what it means to have her coming to him, to watch her pretty face, those big eyes. To smell her. To be near her. It’s awakened something wild and a little dangerous in him. He will need to be careful.
He thinks back to when he told her about Maddy Walczak. About why Maddy lied. Clay knew a lot about teenage girls. They liked him. They used to flock to him. Like flies to honey. He understood enough about the psychology of the young female mind to know that their inner lives were complex and sometimes feral places. Unpredictable passions. Needy. Demanding. Intoxicating. Powerful. Sweet. Mean. Balanced on the razor’s edge between childhood and adulthood, they craved experiences. Sexual mostly. But they were not always ready for what came.
“Pelley! Hey, you’re on the news!”
He startles. His focus zips back to the television. Everyone else in the room has suddenly turned full attention toward the TV, too. A strange hush falls over the men. Out of the corner of his eye, Clay sees the two guards in their station also watching the news through their windows. Clay feels a charge going through the room, and it makes him uneasy. Living among caged men requires an animal awareness. No man ever feels truly safe at any given moment. No man is ever certain who is predator, who is prey, and who is circling. But Clay’s wilderness senses are suddenly alive and prickling.
On the screen is Trinity Scott. The camera zooms in on her. Pinked cheeks, her short, dark hair blowing in the wind. She’s talking to a reporter right outside their prison. It’s a rare look at their cage from the outside, and to the men it’s a sudden and shocking reminder of a landscape right beyond these walls that lock them in. Clay swallows at the close-up of young Trinity.
The reporter says, “Some of those children in the pornographic photographs that Clay Pelley had in his shed were as young as five years old. They were being sexually abused in those photos.”
“I know,” says Trinity. “By his own admission, Clayton Jay Pelley is a sick man.”
An inmate abruptly rises from the bench in front of the TV and comes to sit at Clay’s table. He begins clenching and unclenching his fist, which makes the spiderweb tat on his bulging forearm appear to be expanding, then shrinking. Like it’s breathing. Alive. A web of lungs inhaling, exhaling. The man’s name is Ovid, and Clay realizes Ovid is watching not the television, but him. Intently. One of the guards has also now turned his attention to Clay.