Beneath Devil's Bridge(9)
The resource town was named for the twin waterfalls that plunge from dizzying heights down the granite cliffs of Chief Mountain into Howe Sound, where orcas and whales and dolphins swim. The town itself nestles at the top of the sound and is famed as a gateway to the rugged Coast Mountains, and to wild backcountry. It’s now a place of skiing and mountain biking, of soaring eagles, bears, wolves, and salmon that come up the Wuyakan each autumn to spawn. And like every autumn before, in the latter days of the season, the dead fish lay rotting and stinking along the banks of the river on that bleak and misty November day in 1997 when a police diver, feeling his way through murky water, touched his fingertips to the cold, dead body of Leena Rai . . .
THEME MUSIC BEGINS TO PLAY
This is Trinity Scott with It’s Criminal. Tune in each week as we take you back in time twenty-four years, and right into a penitentiary, and into the mind and soul of self-confessed killer Clayton Jay Pelley, who has not spoken a word about his violent crime in almost a quarter century. But now he’s agreed to explain to us why he brutally raped, beat, and ended the life of one of his students. Out of the blue. Or . . . was it? Because that’s another question I will put to Clayton Pelley—were there other young women, girls, who he’d hurt and killed? And we will ask the question: If it takes a village to raise a child, does it also take a village to kill one? Was everyone in Twin Falls complicit, even in some tiny way, in the tragic death of Leena Rai?
Heat prickles over my skin. I glance at the door, then bump up the volume.
TRINITY
NOW
Wednesday, November 10. Present day.
I focus on keeping my hands motionless in my lap, but nerves bite. I’m sitting at a bolted-down table in an otherwise empty interview room at the correctional institution located up the Fraser River, two hours’ drive from Vancouver. It’s my first meeting with Leena’s killer, and I’m off-kilter.
The red-eye flight from Toronto Pearson Airport drained me. Gio and I grabbed coffees and collected the rental van right after landing. We loaded our equipment and drove straight out to the prison.
I have yet to make contact with Rachel Walczak—I called her several times before flying out west, but she has not returned my messages. Gio and I plan on driving out to her farm and cornering her there in person. The idea of this journalistic format excites me. Releasing information in real time, as it’s being uncovered, testing hypotheses in full view of the public, is part of the thrill. It makes the podcast a living, vital thing.
In front of me on the table is my notebook. It contains my first set of written questions for Clayton Jay Pelley. Next to the notebook lie a small digital recorder and a pencil.
I wear black jeans. A simple, loose sweatshirt. Sneakers. No makeup. I removed my smartwatch, earrings, and bracelets before entering the building. Gio waits for me in the van in the parking lot. I was screened, checked in, and brought into this room, where I now await the inmate. Windows with reinforced glass look into the room on two sides. Like a fish tank. A guard stands outside the door. Visiting allotments are only twenty minutes long, but Clayton Pelley has agreed to a series of visits. I worry that if things do not go to his liking, he will renege on his agreement with me. I will need to tread carefully, read him well from the outset. Pace my questions.
What Clayton Jay Pelley did to Leena Rai was bestial. He’s a monster. But he’s also been a model prisoner from day one, I’ve been told. There’s so much about him that doesn’t add up—things I want to know. Like, what made him snap that night? Why pick Leena Rai? Why did he plead guilty instead of fighting for a better sentence and letting the Rai family have their day in court? Who is Clayton Jay Pelley when he’s alone inside his head? Did he hurt girls before Leena?
I grow edgier. I check my wrist before remembering I removed my watch. There’s no clock in the room. It feels hot. Airless. Time is stretching. I begin to jiggle my leg. I’ll need the bathroom soon. It’s the nerves. Or the coffee I consumed on the way. Or the fact that Pelley hasn’t been brought in yet, and it’s making me anxious.
Meeting face-to-face with Clayton Jay Pelley will be my big break. I know it in my bones. I wrote to him several times, requesting an interview. Just as I did to a handful of other incarcerated convicts—all killers—whose crimes I felt might make worthy subjects for It’s Criminal. Pelley finally replied. It shocked me, then fired me up in ways I can’t quite articulate yet. I filled in the requisite application forms, navigated through all the right channels. Made the plans to come out west. Did my research.
The day is finally here.
Perhaps he’s going to bail. Is that his game? To bring me all the way out and turn me away? Will he then expect me to beg? What will I do if this happens? I check my wrist again and curse—force of habit. The fact that I cannot tell the time is pressuring me. Along with the smell of this place. The sounds. I run through a mental checklist in order to calm myself.
The door opens.
I stiffen. My heart begins to thud.
He enters and stops just inside the doorway, with the guard behind him. He studies me. Predatory. Assessing. He looks nothing like the old photos I found of him, taken from before he went into prison. Before he murdered Leena Rai. His complexion is pale, where in the photos he’s tanned. Reportedly once a keen outdoorsman, he had a sun-bleached mop of unruly brown curls. He was almost boyish in his handsomeness. But he was only twenty-seven when he was incarcerated. Now he’s fifty-one. Leaner. Harder. Meaner. His eyes are sharp. Dark blue. His hair, what’s left of it, has been shorn close to his scalp in a tight buzz. A tattoo of a spiderweb wraps around the left side of his neck, which is thick and muscled. I notice a puckered scar across his throat. His prison shirtsleeves are rolled up. Ink covers his forearms and the backs of his hands.