Beneath Devil's Bridge(8)

RACHEL


NOW


Thursday, November 18. Present day.

I did it. Okay? I fucking did it. All of it.

Clay’s voice from the distant past reverberates inside my skull as I toss and turn in my bed.

I sexually assaulted and then killed Leena Rai . . . I couldn’t stand her, what she represented.

I hear Luke’s voice echoing through the chambers of time.

Tell us, what did you do? How did you do it?

Then Clay’s monotone fills my brain again.

I beat her out of existence. I bashed her away. Killing it, hating it, murdering it. I wanted her gone. Out of my life.

I give up trying to sleep and lie listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof as memories of the interrogation room rise to vivid life in my mind. Clay’s gray face. His hollowed-out cheeks. The deep-purple rings beneath his eyes. The sheen of sweat on his skin. The smell of him—old alcohol. My tension. Luke’s tight jaw as he leans forward, his gaze lasering into Clay’s. The others watching from behind the one-way mirror.

The rain stops. Outside, the clouds clear, and a puddle of silver moonlight pools over our tangled sheets. I can hear Scout snoring and twitching in his doggy bed beneath the window.

I turn my head on the pillow and watch Granger. His breathing is deep and regular as his chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm. The sound has always calmed me. It makes me feel safe. It gives me a sense of home and rightness. He remains a steadying force in my life. A clutch of love tightens around my heart. Yet beneath my love there lies a whisper of unarticulated disquiet, a silently mounting anxiety, something heaving and writhing below in my unconscious. I toss again and punch my pillow into a better shape. I lie back. Trinity’s face and words surface in my mind.

He spoke to me.

Quietly, so as not to disturb Granger, I push back the covers. I find my slippers at the base of my bed and reach for my thick robe. Belting the tie around my waist, I go to the window and fold my arms across my chest. I watch the landscape. My farm. Haunting in the silver moonlight. The branches of the hemlocks twist in the wind—hula dancers to a tune I cannot hear. The bare fingers of a birch tick at a windowpane, like a fingernail scratching on glass, trying to get in. I think of the moon that hung over the ghostly peaks twenty-four years ago, that night Leena vanished into the forest and wound up floating under Devil’s Bridge. Trinity’s voice curls back through my brain.

Our first episode went live last week. The second went on air yesterday. My website address is on there.

I glance over my shoulder. Granger snores and turns onto his side. I sneak quietly out. Floorboards creak as I go downstairs, into my study, where I do the bookkeeping for my farm. I click on a lamp, turn up the thermostat, and fire up my desktop. I hear the click of doggy nails on the wooden floor as Scout enters my office and settles into the dog bed I keep in here. I find the business card Trinity gave me, and I type in the website address for It’s Criminal.

The podcast is run by a small team. Trinity Scott is the host. Sophia Larsen is the creative director and producer. Gio Rossi is listed as the assistant producer. The rest of the crew includes a writer/researcher, a composer/audio mixer, and an illustrator/media designer.

I click on Trinity Scott’s bio, and I study the photo of the young woman. She’s striking in an unconventional way. Pale complexion. Pointed chin. Glossy black hair in a pixie cut. Large violet eyes. A doe-eyed look that belies the ferocity, or tenacity, I sensed in person. That was one thing about working as a detective—I learned to read things in people that weren’t always immediately apparent. It’s a trait that has lingered.

I scan the bio.

“Trinity Scott is a self-described autodidact with a passion for true crime, criminal psychology, and forensic science. She hails from a small town in northern Ontario, and she relocated to the Toronto area after high school, where she joined It’s Criminal.”

Following the bio is a quote from Trinity that appeared in a newspaper article.

“The world has always been filled with very ordinary people, all of whom are capable of extraordinary crimes. These are the stories that fascinate me . . . Truth is my only guide . . . To paraphrase the great Ben Bradlee, as long as I tell the truth, in conscience and in fairness, I feel I can do a story justice. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets us free.”

My neck tenses. My mind turns back to Clay Pelley. To how nice and “ordinary” he once seemed. To how the students and community trusted him.

To how he abused that trust.

To how keeping secrets allowed that to happen.

The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run.

I’m not so sure about that.

I click on the podcast menu. The most recent addition is:

The Killing of Leena Rai—Beneath Devil’s Bridge

If it takes a village to raise a child, does it also take a village to kill one?

I bristle. My pulse quickens. I reach for my headphones, put them on, then hesitate, hearing Granger’s warning in my mind.

Whatever his plan is, I don’t see that you should fall victim to his sick game, too.

If Clayton Jay Pelley is going to play someone, I want to know why. I hit the link for the first episode. Music comes through my headphones, and as it fades, I hear Trinity’s voice.

Twin Falls was a tiny mill town in the Pacific Northwest when fourteen-year-old Leena Rai went missing in the fall of 1997. When Leena didn’t come home after a bonfire, no one wanted to believe the worst. Girls might be sexually assaulted and murdered in the big city of Vancouver, just over an hour’s drive south, or across the Canada-US border in places like Bellingham or Seattle, but not in the closely knit community of Twin Falls, where everyone knew each other.