RACHEL
NOW
Wednesday, November 17. Present day.
Cold leaches through my chest as I watch the podcaster and her assistant struggling through the mud as they make their way up to a red van parked on the road. I deleted Trinity Scott’s voice mails. All five of them, over the course of a month. I thought she’d gotten the message. A movement in the attic window catches my eye, and I glance up at the house. Granger, watching from his office. He obviously saw the visitors.
Your partner, Granger, told us when we drove out last week that you wouldn’t want to speak to me, and I can understand your resistance.
Anger sparks through me. I know he’s looking out for me. I know how the case messed me up, and how he was the one who helped heal me. But he should have told me that Trinity and her sidekick had come all the way out to Green Acres.
Detective O’Leary is in hospice care. He’s lucid only some of the time.
For a moment I can’t breathe. I count backward from five. Four. Three. Two. One. I suck in a deep breath of cold air, exhale slowly, and shake the memories. Still, as I make my way back to the farmhouse, my gum boots squelching in the mud, Scout following in my wake, I feel the presence of the hidden mountains around my slice of land in the valley. And I feel as though they are pressing in, along with the dense cloud, the rain. The looming winter. And I can’t quite shake the feeling that something has been awakened, and is being churned up from where it has been lying dormant in the black soils of memory and time.
Inside the mudroom I tug off my boots and shuck off my rain gear. I grab a towel and rub Scout. He squirms with glee, but where I usually find my dog’s delight infectious, now it just sharpens my agitation.
Granger has come downstairs. He’s sitting in his leather recliner by the fire, reading glasses perched atop his nose, a manuscript in his lap. He critiques papers for a psychology journal. His area of expertise is treating post-traumatic stress disorder and addictions with hypnotherapy. How trauma lodges in both body and mind, and the mechanisms people use to cope with PTSD, remain his fields of interest.
“You didn’t tell me,” I say as I make for the kitchen.
He peers over his half-moon glasses. “Tell you what?” He’s wearing the nubby sweater I stress-knit for him years ago, before I bought Green Acres, before he partially retired and moved in with me. His hair is messy. Chestnut brown and streaked with silver. Granger has a handsome face lined by weather, time, and the emotions of life. On the shelves behind him books on psychology fight for space with tomes on philosophy and an eclectic mix of fiction and narrative nonfiction, mostly tales of solo adventures, man against nature. He was my therapist before we were lovers. And I know I am lucky to have found him. Granger in many ways is my savior. Which is why I am battling with my anger at his not having told me about Trinity Scott’s visit.
“You know what,” I snap as I grab the coffeepot. “Why didn’t you tell me that podcaster had already driven all the way out here once before already?”
“Do you want to speak to her?”
“Of course not.” I fill the pot with water, my movements clipped. “Why on earth would I want to help her sensationalize, monetize, a family’s—a community’s—pain after so many years?” I fill the coffee machine, splashing water onto the counter. “Entertainment at the expense of others who never asked to be visited by violent crime in the first place? No way.”
“So I didn’t mention it. Why would I want to upset you unnecessarily?” A pause. I glance at him.
He gets up and comes into the kitchen. “Look, we both know what that case did to you, Rache.” He moves a strand of rain-dampened hair behind my ear. “We know what it did to your family—to everyone.”
I step out of his reach and grab the coffee tin from the cupboard. I scoop ground coffee into the filter as my thoughts turn to my ex and then to my estranged daughter, Maddy, and my two beautiful little grandkids, whom Maddy will barely allow me to see. I bump the spoon, and coffee scatters across the counter. Tears fill my eyes. Leena Rai’s murder changed everything. It changed me. My marriage. My relationship with my kid. It changed the town. Twin Falls lost its innocence the night Leena was sexually assaulted and killed. It was also the beginning of the end of my career as a cop. I never did get to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become police chief, as everyone expected I would. I can’t even pinpoint the one thing that toppled me.
Maybe it was Luke.
“You need to tell me things like this, Granger.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I love you, and I knew this would bring up bad things. And I honestly didn’t think the woman—”
“Trinity Scott.”
“I didn’t think Trinity would be so stubborn as to return, let alone go around the back of the house and hunt you down in the field. Come to think of it”—he smiles—“she reminds me of someone I know.”
I half smile. But disquiet lingers.
“Clay Pelley spoke to her.” I watch his face closely. “Trinity claims he’s agreed to a series of on-tape interviews, and he’s promised to explain why he did it.” The change in Granger’s eyes tells me. I curse. “You’ve listened to it. You’ve gone and listened to her podcast, and you didn’t have the guts to tell me?”
“Rache—” He reaches for me. I shove his hand away.
“Damn you. How? How could you listen and not tell me?”
“I was your therapist. I was there firsthand. A person can think they’re fine. They can believe they’ve overcome or effectively compartmentalized negative events, but traumatic memory—it can become locked into the body. And you hearing Pelley’s voice, exposing yourself to all this . . . it’s unnecessary, for God’s sakes, Rache. Just let it go. Leave it alone.”
I glower at him as blood drains from my head.
“So . . . you heard him speak—you heard his voice?”
Granger remains silent.
“What did he say?”
A small vein swells on his temple. His jaw is tight. “Please, Rachel,” he says quietly. “It’s not worth it.”
I grab the coffeepot and slosh hot liquid into my mug. “What the fuck did Pelley say? Has everyone out there, including Leena’s father and her little brother, heard her rapist and killer’s voice now?”
He touches my arm. I jerk. Coffee splashes onto my hand and burns. I set the cup down and brace my palms on the counter. I stare out the window above the sink, my heart thumping. Granger is right. Listening to the podcast will not be good for me. Look at what it’s doing to me already. I’m being triggered.
“Do you really want my opinion on the first episodes?” Granger asks softly.
I nod, not looking at him.
“In my view, Clay Pelley is messing with the head of a pretty, young pseudojournalist who is hungry to make a sensation and a name for herself in the field of true crime. Trinity Scott is gullible. Or just plain opportunistic. The fact that he’s chosen her—it’s gone straight to her head, bought her instant notoriety. People are tuning in because Pelley has until now remained silent, and for some reason, Clayton Jay Pelley has started a game.”
“Why?” I ask quietly. “Why now?”