Early this morning, when the search resumed, the K9 team discovered a Nike sneaker containing a bloodied sock. The shoe and sock were found on the north bank beneath the bridge. Leena’s parents confirmed the Nike shoe was their daughter’s, as were the backpack and scarf. The scarf had been knit by her grandmother. The key was for the front door of the Rai home.
Fearing the worst, I called in a police dive team. Two hours ago, after a briefing, the team began the grim search below water.
Rain begins to fall. I shiver inside my coat. I can smell the dead salmon rotting along the banks. Bald eagles watch us from high on leafless branches, waiting for the police to leave so they can resume plucking at the fish carcasses. It’s an annual ritual that typifies this time of year, when the salmon swim into the Wuyakan to spawn, then die. Later, under cover of darkness, the bears and maybe wolves will come for their share.
My thoughts go to Leena’s mother and father and her little brother, waiting in their modest home for news. Their only daughter and sister did not return home after attending a “secret” bonfire festival in the mountains north of town. The kids had gathered up in the forest, in a place known as “the grove,” to burn old skis and snowboards in sacrifice to Ullr, the Norse god of snow. The Ullr bonfire used to be an annual celebration held in town, complete with Viking regalia, but the Twin Falls mayor and council banned it last year because of safety concerns. The raucous ritual had begun to draw a negative element from the city, and wild partying had resulted in drunken fire jumping and a few serious burn incidents. Everyone was worried there’d be a death on their watch.
Now it appears there was one anyway.
Leena was seen at the bonfire by at least twenty kids. All claimed she’d been drinking heavily. Some saw Leena with a male, but couldn’t say who he was. There was a big full moon that night, the sky clear as glass, and at 9:12 p.m. an old Russian rocket reentered the earth’s atmosphere and exploded into flaring comets with long, burning tails that streaked across the sky.
Everyone looked up. They all remembered that precise moment. Everyone could recall exactly where they were, their memories anchored by the bright-orange streaks flaming through the cold November night sky.
The rocket debris fell safely into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington State. This much was on record.
But after that moment, no one recalled seeing Leena again.
“Party had gotten kinda wild.”
“Smoking weed . . .”
“Lots of drinking.”
“Maybe . . . I think I saw her go into the forest with a guy . . . He was tall. Dark jacket. Jeans. Hat on.”
“No, I didn’t see his face.”
“She was with some guy, I think.”
“Big guy. Dark coat. Hat.”
“She was sitting on a log near the fire with a guy in a hat and big coat . . . No, I don’t know who he was.”
Their comments spiral through my mind as I watch the two dive tenders in the Zodiac inflatable. The officers hold firmly on to lines attached to two divers underwater, constables Tom Tanaka and Bob Gordon. Below the surface the constables, in dry suits, grope blindly forward in water that is murky, visibility near zero. The water below the bridge is filled with hazardous detritus—shopping carts, rusted metal, broken glass, old nails, and worse.
I check my watch. They’re almost due for another break. Frustration bites into me.
“Hey, Rache?”
I spin around at the sound of the voice. It’s Bart Tucker, a uniformed Twin Falls PD constable. He navigates carefully down over the slick gray boulders to where I stand near the edge of the water.
He holds a cup of coffee toward me. “Black, one sugar.”
Tucker’s broad, earnest, and ordinarily pale-complexioned face is ruddy in the cold. His eyes water in the salt wind, and his nose is pink. I think of Leena’s mother’s red eyes, and behind Tucker I catch sight of a group of people gathering up on the old trestle bridge. Anger sparks through me.
“What in the hell? Get them off, Tucker, get them the hell off that bridge!” Anger is easier than all the other emotions that threaten to overwhelm me.
Tucker stumbles back over the boulders, up to the road, taking the coffees with him.
“Tucker, wait!” I yell after him. “Get eyes on them first—video the group.” I want to know who’s there, who has come down to see firsthand what the police find. I should’ve asked for video at the outset. I’m a small-town cop, never worked a homicide—if that’s what this is. What I still want is to find Leena safe. With a friend maybe. Sleeping somewhere. In another town. Anywhere.
Just not here.
Not at the bottom of the dark inlet in the eelgrass.
There’s movement in one of the inflatables. A yell. The tender’s arm shoots up. The hooded head of a diver breaks the surface. Constable Tanaka. His goggles glint in the bleak light.
My jaw tightens. My heart beats faster as I scramble along the boulders, trying to get closer. A gull cries. Rain beats down harder. The horn from the pulp mill ferry sounds mournfully in the mist.
“Camera!” calls the diver to the tender. A camera is floated out to Tanaka, along with a Pelican marker. Tanaka uses the marker to indicate where he found something. He goes down again. Bubbles rise to the surface. Ripples fan out. He’s going back down to photograph in situ whatever he discovered, before bringing it up. I know that the divers approach a scene below water as a detective would on ground. The police diver’s initial observations can become key in a case. A postmortem investigation begins the instant a diver locates a body, and the diver needs to understand the intricacies of submergence, drowning, and death investigation.
“Panties,” the tender calls out to me as Tanaka brings up an item of clothing. The panties are covered in dark-gray silt. They are bagged. “And cargo pants,” he calls out as Tanaka brings more clothing up.
Leena was last seen wearing camouflage cargo pants with pockets on the sides.
My mouth goes dry. Sexual assault is now a horrible possibility. I think of how I am going to break this to Pratima and Jaswinder Rai.
“Tide’s coming in,” says a voice at my side.
I start. It’s Tucker. He’s returned. He’s still holding my coffee.
“I think they’re close,” I reply quietly.
Another yell from the boat.
Everything then seems to fall silent apart from the pattering of rain on water. Another Pelican marker is floated out. Both divers surface. They’ve got something big. They’re coming toward the bank, bringing it through the eelgrass. Slowly.
“Is everyone off the bridge?” I ask quietly, my gaze fixed on the divers.
“Yeah. Cordoned off.”
I swallow. It’s her. A body. The men are floating her toward where I stand. Emotion blurs my vision. I move closer, crouch down.
Between the divers is Leena Rai. Bobbing on the tide, facedown, arms out at her sides. The divers are standing now as they carefully walk and float Leena in through the reeds. Her body is mostly covered by the rise of the cold water. Her black hair fans out around her head like velvet. Her naked buttocks barely break the surface. A camisole is tangled up around her neck.
My body feels numb. The men turn her over.
An invisible current shocks through us all as we stare in horror.