Beneath Devil's Bridge(74)

My heart kicks a double beat. “He escaped?”

“He’s dead. Someone killed him. Shanked.”

My jaw drops. I feel slammed into a wall. “What do you mean, ‘He’s dead’?”

“He was murdered this morning. Found in a pool of blood near a utilities room. He’d been stabbed twice with a homemade blade of some sort. Someone knew what they were doing. Got his liver. He bled out fast. Too fast for anyone to save him.”

“Who did it?”

Her eyes water, or perhaps it’s the tears.

“They . . . they don’t know who did it. They haven’t located the weapon. The security cameras in that part of the corridor had been smeared over with toothpaste. So the CCTV was out. They think it’s gang related, and they cautioned me that there tends to be a code of silence around these kinds of killings inside. They’re hard to solve.”

Clay’s voice from the podcast echoes through my skull.

Her killer is still out there.

A sinister thought leaches through me. He’s been silenced. Someone got to him. On the inside.





RACHEL


NOW


Sunday, November 21. Present day.

“I know who you are, Trinity.”

Her eyes lock with mine. Her face is pale, her features tight. I see her pulse beating rapidly at her neck.

We’re sitting in a booth in a diner not far from the Mission correctional institution. Outside the diner windows, people scurry, hunched into their coats against the wind. It’s late afternoon.

Trinity is rattled, and emotional. I offered to take her for a coffee, but we both sip hot chocolates.

Outside, Gio is in the van in the parking lot. I told him we needed to talk. Alone. And he’s giving us space. Or rather, keeping watch. I can see him behind the misted van window. His attention does not leave us.

“So tell me, what is the real purpose of the Leena Rai podcast? Revenge? Or purely mercenary—using your own situation to craft some narrative arc on the backs of other people’s pain?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course you do.” I pause. “Trinity Janie Pelley Scott.”

She swallows, inhales deeply. “How did you find out?”

I sidestep her question. “I’ve met you before, you know? When you were about seven or eight months old. I changed your diaper when your mother was battling in a home with little money, dirty dishes, and piles of empty liquor bottles in a recycling bin, and you, crying with colic, stopping her from getting healthy sleep. You did fall quiet, though, when Detective O’Leary bounced you on his knee.” A bolt of grief sideswipes me. I waver for a moment, my words stolen by the realization that Luke, so big and vibrant, is gone. And time is short on this earth. The small moments precious. I clear my throat. “I think it was in that moment, Trinity, when Sergeant O’Leary and I knocked on your mother’s door, that she formulated the intention to lie about what time your father came home.”

Trinity’s big violet eyes gleam. Her hands tremble slightly as she lifts her mug and sips. I can see she’s doing this to think. Her brain is racing as she figures out how to deal with this. With me.

“So is it revenge?” I ask. “Did you start this to get back at your father? Or are you just cashing in on some sensationalist reality TV, Darth Vader is my father–style reveal? Forcing the victim’s family to relive hell for your own personal gain?”

She takes another sip, her eyes still holding mine. But they’re narrowing slightly. I’m angering her. Good.

“Was it a surprise when he denied that he killed Leena?” I ask. “A nice plot twist that presented itself for you?”

Silence.

I lean forward, my arms folded on the table. “You got him killed, you know?”

She sets her cocoa mug down abruptly. Her eyes turn to flint. “How dare you?” she whispers.

I make a scoffing sound. “It’s true.”

She hesitates, then says, very quietly, “Maybe it’s the truth that got him killed. Maybe someone on the outside is worried that my father was going to expose them.”

“Or maybe his participation in your podcast revealed to his fellow inmates just what a sick kind of pedophile he was. That doesn’t tend to go down well inside.”

Her mouth flattens and she breaks my gaze, stares out the window. After a few moments she asks, “How did you find out who I am—what made you look?”

“The fact that Clay Pelley decided to talk to you. And no one else,” I say, which isn’t exactly truthful. But it explains a lot about how the podcast came to fruition. And I’m not prepared to reveal to her my worries about my partner having been her father’s therapist. “It was easy enough. Your mother changed her name legally. It’s part of the record. Your grandmother’s phone number is listed. She told my PI that Lacey was in a care home.” I pause.

“So is that why he agreed to do the podcast? You told him you were his daughter? And you were saving this fact for a ‘big reveal’”—I make air quotes—“in a later episode? Manipulating your audience? A cheap narrative trick in what is supposed to be true crime, and an alleged hunt for the truth?”

She reaches into a bag at her side and takes out a brown envelope. She slides the envelope onto the table and places her hand on it, palm down. “I didn’t tell him who I was. I wrote him several times over a period of eighteen months, asking for an interview. And one day he answered. I don’t know what triggered him to reply. It’s something I planned to ask him.” Her voice hitches. She takes a moment to compose herself. “He—my father—gave this envelope to one of the prison guards last night. He asked the guard, in case something happened to him, to give me this.” She moistens her lips. “He must have . . . suspected, had a premonition, or known something was coming down.”