“I’m a bad person, Trinity.”
My gaze holds his. I sense something has changed. The atmosphere in the room presses in. It’s hotter. Airless.
“Is that what you want to hear? That I am sick? Because I am. I’m a sick, sick man. And I belong in here.”
I regard him. Slowly, quietly, I say, “At what point did you formulate the idea to sexually assault and kill Leena? Or did you initially just want to rape her? But then, as you confessed to the detectives, you hated what you’d done, so you bashed her away, out of your life? A form of projection?”
Silence.
The guard taps on the window and holds up two fingers. Two more minutes.
“Not pretty, is it, Trinity?” he rasps.
I need a sound bite. I need a cracking hook. Time is leaking through my fingers. Quickly I say, “What do you want the world out there to know about your crime? What should listeners take away after the first episode of the podcast on killer Clayton Jay Pelley?”
The door opens.
“What I want the world to know, Trinity Scott, is yes, we all have our darkness. That shadow. Even you. But I did not sexually assault Leena Rai.” He watches me. My pulse quickens. My mind races.
He lowers his voice.
“And I did not kill her.”
Excitement knifes through me. I have my sound bite, my hook. I can play this like an unsolved cold case, pose the question: Did the wrong man go to prison? I force myself to remain calm, to not break his gaze, to not even blink. I don’t even want to begin to acknowledge what this means to me personally. My eyes water.
“If . . . if you didn’t, who did?”
“Time’s up, Pelley,” says the guard. He takes hold of Clayton’s arm and brings the inmate to his feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
Clayton resists. Quietly, with a glint in his eyes, he says, “Whoever did, her killer is still out there.”
The guard ushers him out. The door swings shut.
I sit stunned. Outside the window, as he’s being led away, Clayton glances back over his shoulder and laughs. I hear his laughter as he disappears down the corridor. And I hear the echo of his words.
Her killer is still out there.
RACHEL
NOW
Thursday, November 18. Present day.
Silence rings in my ears. I sit back, shocked, my headphones still on. What in the bloody hell? I rewind the final clip of the podcast episode and play it again.
CLAYTON: I did not sexually assault Leena Rai. And I did not kill her.
TRINITY: If . . . if you didn’t, who did?
GUARD: Time’s up, Pelley. Come on, let’s go.
CLAYTON: Whoever did, her killer is still out there.
THEME MUSIC STARTS SOFTLY
TRINITY: You have been listening to the voice of convicted killer Clayton Jay Pelley. Did the Twin Falls PD homicide investigation team put away the wrong man? Did Clayton lie when he confessed in 1997? Or is he lying now? Could it be true that Leena Rai’s killer is out there? Free? Living and working among the residents of Twin Falls, or perhaps he went on to hunt young girls elsewhere? Did detectives Rachel Walczak and Luke O’Leary allow a dangerous monster to slide through their fingers?
THEME MUSIC INCREASES IN VOLUME
TRINITY: Tune in again next week when we take you back to 1997 and we ask, Who was Leena Rai? And how did a community fail her? How did a monster manage to move undetected among the citizens of the small Pacific Northwest town? We also hope to bring you a firsthand, blow-by-blow account of the investigation from Detective Rachel Walczak, who is now retired and living the life of a recluse on her organic farm in the mountains, not far from the town where she hunted a killer.
Numb, I stare out the window above my desk. Through my reflection, dawn bleeds a lambent grayness into the sky. Wind stirs the trees. It looks as though it might snow.
“Rachel?”
I jump and turn in my chair.
Granger. He stands in the doorway to my office, his hand on the doorknob. I yank off my headphones.
“Why on earth didn’t you knock? What do you want?”
“I did knock.” His gaze goes to my computer. The web page is clear to see on the monitor. The words It’s Criminal are emblazoned across the top. White letters against a black background are underscored with yellow crime scene tape.
“I had to,” I say quietly. “How could I not?”
He inhales, his features tight, disappointment in his eyes.
“Clay claims he didn’t do it,” I say.
Granger curses softly. “I told you, Rachel, he’s playing a game. He—”
“You didn’t tell me this.” I point to the screen. “I asked if he’d said anything relevant. You said—”
“Relevant? That’s not relevant, Rachel. That’s a lie. A blatant lie.” He swears again and rakes his hand through his shower-dampened hair. “Do you honestly think that if Clay Pelley was innocent of the crime, he’d have sat silent in prison for twenty-five—”
“Four. Twenty-four years.”
“Right. Twenty-four years. The evidence against him was irrefutable, and copious. Plus he confessed, giving intimate, firsthand knowledge of exactly how Leena Rai died—information that no one else but the investigative team had. Not only that, but he pleaded guilty. He’s messing with Trinity Scott. He’s messing with Leena’s family. He’s messing with you. With all of us. And it pisses me off, okay?”
“Trinity mentioned my name, Granger. She put it out there, reminding everyone that I was the lead detective on the case. And now she’s raised the question, Did we put the wrong guy in prison? And she’s made it clear that she’s inviting me to be a part of this thing. It’s going to raise questions when she announces that I have refused to comment.”
He regards me as if bracing, anticipating what I’m going to say next. And I say it.
“Trinity told me that Luke is dying. He’s in a hospice.” My voice betrays me.
He pales and his features tighten.
“Did you know?” I ask.
“She . . . mentions it in the next episode.”
“So you know Luke O’Leary is dying. And you never said a word to me.”
Granger stares at me.
“I guess that’s not relevant, then, either?”
He remains silent.
I swear, get up, and push past him, aiming for the kitchen to make some coffee. Instead of following me, he calls out behind me, “I’m going into town. Going for breakfast at the Moose.”
His tone sends a chill through me. The Moose Diner is at least a forty-minute drive away. The front door bangs shut. The sound echoes through the wood house. A few moments later I hear the growl of Granger’s Harley starting up, then the rumble of his bike as it roars down the gravel driveway and then fades into the distance along the wet and twisting valley road.
I brace my hands on the kitchen counter and hang my head down, trying to breathe calmly. But I have a migraine starting. In my heart I know why he never told me about Luke. Of course I know why. Because now that I’ve been made aware of the fact that Luke O’Leary is dying, I will go and see him. How can I not?
Stories do not end. Anaïs Nin wrote that.
Clearly the story of Leena Rai is not done yet. I was fooled into thinking we’d all found some kind of closure. But we haven’t. All we did was bury the whole episode under the earth of time, and there it lay dormant and silent over the seasons, and now Trinity is digging it up, exposing it to air, and shoots are beginning to awaken, unfurl, and reach up toward the light.