Beneath Devil's Bridge(87)
“Beth?” I can’t seem to process what he’s saying.
“Darren wanted me to know what my wife was. He wanted me to know the truth. He said he wasn’t going down alone, and—”
The cop’s radio crackles. Johnny turns. Suddenly people start talking excitedly and moving around me. Someone starts running.
I spin around. “What’s going on?”
Granger says, “It sounds like they’ve got someone. From the house. Out the back. Two of the neighbors pulled one or two of the occupants from the house before the gas line blew. They took the occupants down into the ravine at the back of the house. They’re activating a rescue team to reach them, through the forest.”
I start to run.
TRINITY
NOW
Monday, November 22. Present day.
It’s just past midnight. Gio and I are sitting in the rental van. Rain comes down. We can see the glow of the fire in the low clouds, and we can hear sirens. There are police vehicles everywhere. Cops stop us at a police barricade at the bottom of the boulevard that leads up into the subdivision. They’re not allowing any traffic in or out due to a “police incident.” Which tells me this is more than just a fire. Something big is going on.
“You think it’s arson?” says Gio. “Do you think it’s tied to the podcast somehow?”
“I don’t know,” I say softly. But I fear it is. “Maybe we’ve unleashed something terrible. I . . . I feel sick about those two little girls.” I face Gio. “What if it’s my fault? What if they’re dead because of me?”
“If anything is anyone’s fault, Trin, this is on those people who kept secrets. Who lied. Who tried to bury this whole case down deep, because that’s what this looks like to me—collateral damage being caused by an explosion of truth. And the damage is bad, because the longer the truth remained buried, the more lives that became impacted. Now it’s innocent kids. Being hurt by something that happened twenty-four years ago, long before they were even alive. The people involved are all going to have to accept blame for that.” He holds my gaze. “Just like the actions your mother took to protect you. Because of that lie, because you needed the truth in order to live like a normal person, it drove you back here in search of answers. What your mother did, what your father did, what all those students at school lied or did not lie about . . . that’s what’s caused this. That’s who’s to blame. Even those detectives are to blame.”
I feel a buzz on my wrist. I glance at my smartwatch, see I have a voice mail via the It’s Criminal website. I take out my phone, dial in, and click 1 for the lone message.
The voice is male and gravelly.
“I saw her. I think I saw Leena Rai crossing Devil’s Bridge that night. I was driving a log haul, and I crossed the bridge with my rig probably around two a.m. I remember because of the rocket. I saw a girl stumbling north along the bridge. And farther behind her, back in the shadows . . . I saw what appeared to be following her.”
“Listen—listen to this,” I say to Gio as I put my phone on speaker. The gravelly voice fills the inside of the van.
“Behind the drunk girl, staying far back, was a guy with a black toque pulled low. Tall guy. Big jacket. With him was a girl. She stuck out. The moon was full, and my headlights lit briefly on them. It was her hair that caught my attention, the way it glimmered in the light. Long. White blonde. Almost silvery in that moonlight. Blowing in that cold wind. It was waist length.”
I swallow.
“Beth?” asks Gio. His voice grows excited. “It had to be Beth Galloway.”
“Anyway—I was listening to the podcast, and the bit about the rocket, it reminded me. I can recall exactly where I was that night I saw the girl on Devil’s Bridge. My name is Daniel Barringer. This is my number where I can be reached.”
I stare at Gio. My brain races. But I still can’t quite fit the pieces together.
“If it was Beth on the bridge, what was she doing following Leena? And who was the guy with her?”
RACHEL
NOW
Monday, November 22. Present day.
It’s after midnight, and I’m at the Twin Falls hospital. Maddy was brought in unconscious. ER physicians are working on her now. The girls are with other doctors. They’re alive, but I don’t know yet how severe their injuries are. I am scared. I’m pacing, rubbing my arms. Granger is with me, but I cannot look at him. Cannot bear to see his face.
One of the neighbors who helped save Maddy and the girls is in the waiting area. He’s the father I saw putting up Christmas lights while his baby watched from the porch when I went to visit. A dad with a young child of his own. He risked his life to assist my daughter and her girls. His wife could have been left a widow and his child without a father. It’s weighing heavily on me—these ripples that seem to have fanned out over the years from Leena’s murder. When does a story begin? I know it doesn’t end.
“Are you okay?” the neighbor asks me.
I bite my lip and nod. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Maddy did most of the work. And that they’re alive is thanks enough.”
The neighbor and a friend who was visiting him last night smelled smoke. They went outside, saw the fire, and ran around the back of Maddy’s house. She’d managed to break a window at the rear of the house, and she’d pushed both her girls out through the broken glass. The men got the girls away from the back of the house while the fire raged at the front. But Maddy was still inside. While she’d been fighting to save her children’s lives, a beam had come down, hit her head, and rendered her unconscious. The men broke a sliding glass door, got inside, fought smoke, and managed to find her. They carried her and the girls down into the wet ravine behind the house just before the big explosion. They had to hunker down there while the fire raged until rescue teams could get in to extract Maddy and her kids.