Beneath Devil's Bridge(76)

“So you confronted your gran?”

“Yes. This was maybe three years ago. My gramps had passed two years prior. My mom was already sick, and losing her memory. And that’s when my gran told me. She said she couldn’t in good conscience keep the secret any longer, not from me. And now the truth could no longer hurt my mom, or my gramps. She told me my mom had lied because she wanted to protect me. From a sick man. So yes, I learned my dad was a kiddie porn addict, a sexual deviant. So how do you think that sat with me?”

“Did you think he might not have been Leena’s killer?”

“Other than my mom allegedly lying about being his alibi, I had no reason not to believe he’d done it. He’d confessed. And when I got the transcripts, there was even less doubt.”

“Then in episode one—at your first interview—he said he didn’t do it.”

“That’s right.” She sips her hot chocolate.

I can understand. Trinity couldn’t possibly let this history of her family go. I can see why she’s done what she has. With the podcast.

Trinity sets down her mug, but she keeps her hands wrapped around the warmth of it. “And then, the more I listened to him, and the more I spoke to people, I began to think that yes, maybe he did confess to something he didn’t do to protect me and my mom. I wanted to believe my father, that some part of him loved me, us. But if he didn’t do it, his confession had to have allowed someone else to go free.”

She pauses. Something hardens in her face. Her eyes drill into mine. “And you let it happen, Rachel. You and Luke O’Leary.” Another pause as the look in her eyes sharpens. “See? I think you were aware something was not right. That there were loose ends. But you allowed it, his confession, and now I want to know why. My other question, Rachel, is: What are you doing here? Right now? Just appearing outside the prison on the very day that my father is shanked, killed?” A beat of silence. “Just how badly do you want my father to stay silent? How badly did you want to put him behind bars in the first place, and why? Did you know something? Were you protecting someone? Are you still trying to protect them now?”

“That’s ridiculous. I—”

“Is it?” Trinity leans forward. “I know how these prison gangs work, Rachel. My father had a tattoo on his neck that marked him as an affiliate of a gang on the inside. A spiderweb. I looked it up, and I did my research. It’s a mark of the Devil Riders. A biker gang. Notorious drug trade connections. Affiliations to the Red Scorpions, and the Snakeheads, too. If a Devil Rider member, or a boss, wants someone targeted either on the inside or the outside, they can make it happen. That barbed wire keeps no one safe.”

My heart starts to hammer. I can’t breathe.

“My father was going to expose someone. Quite simply, someone didn’t want that to happen, and stopped him. Dead.”

“I just came to ask your father questions, Trinity. Because I now have as much interest as you in finding the truth.”

She gives a false little laugh. “I haven’t aired everything that I recorded with him. There’s more.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s one more audio.” She holds my gaze. “In it, my father tells us all exactly why Maddy lied.”





TRINITY


NOW


Sunday, November 21. Present day.

Rachel’s features harden as she assesses me, and my words hang tangibly in the air between us.

My father tells us all exactly why Maddy lied.

I regard the shape of her face, the fine lines around the ex-detective’s eyes and mouth. The streaks of silver in her thick, dark, wavy hair. She looks older today than when I first saw her at her farm. Perhaps it’s the stark, wintery light that floods in from the window. But she seems tired, and angry. Edgy. Maybe even afraid now. This mother. Who was a cop. Who put my dad behind bars. Who changed my diaper. This woman I watched plowing her land in her green tractor with her dog at her side.

She’s coiled in a way that scares me. I don’t know if she could be dangerous to me. Or what she might have already done in the past. I’m unsure how far to push her, and whether pushing will unravel and reveal more things that I need to know or shut them down totally. But I’m wounded, too. My shock is morphing into a thumping fury. A rage that fires through my veins. I believe with my whole heart that someone on the outside—someone with connections to the twenty-four-year-old Leena Rai murder case—arranged to have my dad killed on the inside.

And it could’ve been this woman sitting in front of me.

The reason I believe this is what my father told me during our last session.

“You’re bluffing,” Rachel says quietly.

“Am I?”

“Or fishing, more likely.”

She’s poking me, trying to get a read on me. I’m aware of Gio watching us from the driver’s seat in the van. He’s ready to call 911 if things suddenly turn bad and I give him the signal. Slowly, my gaze holding hers, I set my phone on the table between us and hit PLAY.

My father’s voice rises, distant and almost tinny, from the phone speaker. Rachel’s eyes narrow sharply at the sound of him. She flicks her glance around the diner. But it’s empty, save for an old couple in the far booth near the counter and the server up front.