“She was drowned,” I say. “Someone straddled her, knelt on her shoulders, holding her head underwater, until she inhaled pebbles.”
“Death by drowning will be my conclusion on my report,” says the doctor. “But if the decedent had not gone into the water, it’s likely that the assault trauma, the brain swelling, would have killed her anyway. But she was definitely alive when she was forced underwater, and held there.” She hesitates, and her demeanor cracks. “Whoever did this . . . is a monster.”
RACHEL
NOW
Thursday, November 18. Present day.
I close Dr. Hannah Backmann’s autopsy report, but the morning in the morgue is alive in my mind. Leena’s body was released later that day, but the full analysis and final report took another two weeks. I set the report on the table and glance at the clock on the wall. Granger is not back yet. Nor has he called to say when he will return. I’ve disappointed him. But he has also irked me. He should have known better than to try to hide things from me, especially in relation to this case. And after listening to the first episode of the podcast, there is no way in hell I can stuff this genie back into the bottle.
Clay’s raspy voice snakes through my mind.
I did not kill her . . . Whoever did, her killer is still out there.
I have little doubt that Clay is dabbling in some perverted game with Trinity, but I cannot suppress a darker, more subterranean worry worming into me. What if he is telling the truth? What if we did make a mistake, miss something?
From the box I remove binders full of three-hole plastic page protectors that hold transcripts of the interviews we did with students, friends, parents, teachers, family members, other witnesses. The binders also contain transcripts of our interrogations of Pelley, the transcript of his confession, photos of the evidence, copies of lab reports, copies of the few pages torn from Leena’s journal, plus pages from my own notebooks and Luke’s notes.
I start spreading these out over the table, organizing them, then stop as I catch sight of the photograph that Leena’s parents provided the Twin Falls PD when they first reported their daughter missing.
I lift it up and stare at the face of the dead girl. My mind spirals back to the day when Luke and I exited the morgue into a fine drizzle and drove back to Twin Falls to inform Leena’s parents exactly how their daughter had died.
This same image of Leena was in a frame on the mantel above the fireplace in the Rais’ modest home.
I put the photo down and pick up another. A group of six schoolgirls aged fourteen and fifteen, arms wrapped around each other, heads together, all laughter and smiles. It’s a professional-looking shot, and it was not part of the police evidence, but I added it to this box. The girls were captured beside a bonfire. I can see skis burning, flames shooting orange sparks into a velvet sky. The light on their faces is gold from the fire. The forest behind them forms a black backdrop of silhouettes and shadows.
I stare at the image captured in time. Their laughing, bright eyes. The promise of youth literally shimmering and glowing around them. It was the night Leena vanished, not long after this image was shot. The night everything changed. A cool thread curls through my chest as I look more closely. Then, carefully, I set the image aside.
I empty out the rest of the box’s contents and find what I am looking for. The locket. Still in the evidence bag, which has found its way to the bottom. I pick up the bag, open it, and slide the locket into the palm of my hand. It’s cool. Oddly heavy. The broken chain dangles through my fingers. The purple crystal winks in the light.
The stone is an amethyst, a violet variety of quartz. It’s supposed to offer spiritual protection. It’s said to cleanse the wearer’s energy of negative or dark forces by creating a protective shield of light around the body.
It did not protect Leena.
And the locket is the one item that Leena’s parents did not want returned to them.
TRINITY
NOW
Wednesday, November 10. Present day.
I exit the prison with excitement zipping through my veins. Gio is waiting in the van. He sees me hurrying over to the parking lot toward the vehicle, and he gets out. He looks worried.
“Everything go okay?” he asks.
“Fuck me, we’ve got a scoop! We’ve freaking got a scoop.” My whole body is pumped, my brain ablaze.
“What happened?” Confusion chases through his features.
“Get in. You drive. I’ll tell you on the way up to Twin Falls.” I reach for the door handle on the passenger side.
Gio hesitates, then climbs into the driver’s seat. He starts the van engine. I buckle up, then put my head back and laugh.
“Jesus, Trin, spill.”
I meet his gaze. I can see Gio thinks I’ve lost it. But he doesn’t get just how much this means to me. I haven’t even begun to explain it to myself. “Clayton Jay Pelley said he did not sexually assault, or bludgeon, or drown Leena Rai.”
“What?”
“He said the killer is still out there somewhere.”
He stares. Blinks. “Pelley said that?”
“Yeah.”
“On tape?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shit.” He pauses. “Do you believe him?”
“It doesn’t matter, Gio! Don’t you see? It gives us exactly the hook we need. It hands us this whole series on a plate. It’s no longer just a true crime story about why the seemingly normal and nice schoolteacher did this to his student. It becomes an unsolved cold case.”
“But if he’s lying—”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter. That’s the premise we start from. I can pose the question: Is he lying now, or did he lie then, when he confessed? If he’s telling the truth now, what did the cops get wrong all those years ago? Why did he confess to them? Did they coerce him somehow? Was it a true confession? And why did he plead guilty to a judge? Why has he remained silent for so long? And why is he speaking now, after all these years?”
“But if he’s lying now—”
“That’s exactly what people will tune in for: Is Clayton Jay Pelley lying now, or did the two lead cops on his case screw him over? Or plain screw up?” I grin. “We get to play the detective in real time, and our listeners come along. Like them, we don’t know the ending, either. Releasing information as we uncover it—it’s the new realm of true crime storytelling.”
“And Pelley pulls the puppet strings.”
I laugh. “It doesn’t matter, does it? If he’s playing us, that’s part of the entertainment. We have a breakout here, Gio. Pure and simple.”
He smiles slowly, and his eyes turn bright. He looks alive. Sexy. Beautiful. It’s like I’ve touched him with my own electrical wire of excitement, and now my energy is crackling into his eyes and over his body. Mirroring my emotions back at me. For a nanosecond I feel attraction. But I quickly kick it away into the cold place where I keep most of my true feelings. Gio is an empath. When I feel blue, he’ll echo that back at me, too. It’s too much work. Too much responsibility. As much as I know that he loves me, I can’t offer him anything in return because that sort of relationship will not be good for me. This is something I understand on a gut level. And I’ve learned the hard way. But Gio is also the best damn producer I could hope to work with, and he’ll do anything for me, which is why I keep him close.