Beneath Devil's Bridge(80)

NOW


Sunday, November 21. Present day.

I drive fast. It’s dark already. And there’s bad weather coming in. I want to reach Twin Falls before it starts snowing. As I negotiate the Highway 99 twists and turns along the cliffs above the ocean, I listen to Clay Pelley’s words again.

CLAYTON: Leena bolted. Maddy scrambled out from under me and yelled for Leena to stop as she pulled up her pants. Then Maddy chased down the trail after Leena. She brought Leena back to me, and I saw how drunk and upset she was. Maddy told Leena that she had to promise not to tell anyone. Leena was crying. I told Maddy to go back to the fire. To act normal. That I would take care of Leena, take her home, talk some sense into her on the way. Leena was malleable. She . . . she loved me. I knew this. I used this. I put my arm around her, and I helped a sobbing Leena to my car, which was parked on the logging road.

My knuckles are white as I take a hairpin bend too fast, high above the water. I hit ice, slide. My tires squeal as I right myself and get back onto the road. My heart thumps.

TRINITY: Did the detectives ask you about your therapy? Did they pursue this angle at all?

CLAYTON: They didn’t ask me. It never came up. Perhaps they pursued it later.

TRINITY: What was the name of the therapist?

CLAYTON: Dr. Granger Forbes. He was Johnny Forbes’s father.

I call Maddy. Again. She’s still not picking up. This time I leave a message.

“Do not listen to the recently uploaded episode, Maddy. Please. Just don’t. Call me. We need to talk first. About . . . about the locket. About the photo that Liam shot. I need to know. Call me.”

I navigate another hairpin bend, both hands on the wheel. My headlights cut tunnels through the mist that rolls down the mountainside. Mouth dry, I make another call. This time I try Granger.

No answer.

I curse.

I try again. Same. So I try phoning the farmhouse landline. The call kicks to voice mail.

I swear again. Another sharp bend appears in my lights. I slow slightly as a semi barrels toward me in the oncoming lane. The truck’s massive wheel hurls a wave of blinding spray at my windshield. I engage the wipers at speed. They clack, clack, clack as I round the bend.

Granger lied to me. I asked him directly whether he’d treated Clay, and he flat-out lied by evasion. What does that mean? For the case? For us—our relationship? Suddenly our whole life together feels built upon falsehoods. But why hadn’t Granger told me? What had he been hiding? Clayton’s words flood back into my brain.

He was Johnny Forbes’s father.

I navigate another bend. I don’t want to go where my mind is going. But Granger is the link. He has to be. I know how his hypnotherapy sessions used to unfold. More than once he inducted me into a hypnotic trance for treatment of my stress-related PTSD. Before putting me into a hypnotic state, he gave me instructions, saying that when I woke up, I would not recall what had transpired during the session. He explained beforehand that hypnotherapy was a powerful tool for activating an autogenic type of healing process in the body. The intent was to break negative thought loops that fed addictions or other destructive behaviors.

Once awakened from the trance, he said, if I was faced with a trigger, I would automatically default to a new way of dealing with that trigger.

I hear his voice again in my head from all those years ago.

Once you’re in the hypnotic state, I will be able to talk directly to your unconscious mind. The cortex gets out of the way—sometimes so far out of the way that my subject cannot remember anything that happened during the hypnotic session. But I will be able to seed thoughts directly into your unconscious. When you are awake again, and are faced with a particularly upsetting set of circumstances, this new way of thinking will just come to you. From where I seeded it.

Another sharp bend looms along the Sea to Sky highway. I take it as fast as I dare.

Just come to you.

My mind goes back to that day Luke and I faced Clay in the interrogation room with the others watching from behind the one-way mirror. I recall the strange, vacant look that overcame Clay’s face right before he confessed in that strange monotone. I think of the podcast again.

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.

It can’t be. Granger couldn’t have. Why would he?

He was Johnny Forbes’s father.

But how? Granger had nothing to do with the 1997 investigation . . . It suddenly hits me. Something Dirk Rigg said when he set that plate of Nanaimo bars on the table in the Twin Falls PD conference room.

Merle is trying to quit smoking again . . . She’s trying hypnosis to quit the habit this time.

I find a lookout, and pull into it. My breathing is so fast and so shallow that I’m getting dizzy. I fear I might hyperventilate. I bring my truck to a stop.

Calm, Rachel. Big breath in. Slow out. Again. I open the window. The cool air shocks me back into clarity.

I scroll quickly through my phone to find Dirk Rigg’s number. His wife, Merle, is long dead, and Dirk retired years ago. He lives in a retirement home, and I have coffee with him once or twice a year when I’m in town.

I find his number and call. I tap my steering wheel in agitation as I wait for him to answer. He picks up.

“Rachel?”