“But youknewshe’d slept with your husband?”
“Yes. Like I said, Iwantedall those elements at play in subtle fashion within the subtext of the documentary. I wanted the divorcée, the adulteress, the lesbians, the single women—”
“The betrayed wife?”
“I was the observer, the recorder. I already had Kathi as the wife whose husband was betraying her sexually.”
Angie wasn’t buying it, but she played along, casting about for more information. “It must have pleased you greatly when Jasmine slept with your guide on the first night.”
Silence.
“That’s why you did nothing to interrupt her verbal assault on those locals in the pub, isn’t it—you wanted it all to happen? This documentary was, in some ways, going to be your revenge against Jasmine Gulati, wasn’t it? You were going to assassinate her in the editing.”
Rachel pushed back her chair. “If you’re done now—”
“I’m not.” Angie leaned forward. “You lied about those final hours of footage. You filmed Jasmine down in the bay where she was angling. You had that tape running when she went into the water. Not only did you see exactly what happened to Jasmine Gulati that evening, you also got it on tape. Didn’t you, Rachel?”
All color drained from the woman’s face. In the blink of eye, she appeared far older than her seventy-two years.
Angie tapped the table with her finger. “I have a witness who places you on a rock ledge above the bay where Jasmine’s rod was found. That witness saw you in your pink toque with your tripod, filming. I visited that ledge, Rachel. From it a person has a clear line of sight down to the bay. But you told me quite clearly that when you left the campsite, you went upriver, in the opposite direction, to film the campsite from a promontory of land. Thing is, I walked upriver east of the camp. There is no promontory. There is no way to get a line of sight to the camp.” She paused. “You lied.”
Rachel swallowed, shifting slightly in her chair. “Who is this witness?”
“It doesn’t matter who it is.”
“Look, the only reason I misdirected you was because of this very thing happening now. I was afraid that if you learned Jasmine had slept with my husband and had held fantasies about marrying him, it would’ve given me motive to hurt her. The fact I was the last person to see her alive would not help my cause. I destroyed those tapes for that same reason.”
“What did you see? What did you capture on film? What exactly happened to Jasmine that evening?”
She got to her feet. “That’s it. You’re done here.” She held her arm out toward the hallway. “Please leave. Now.”
Angie remained seated. “You watched her struggle,” she said quietly. “Did she sweep with that current into the next little bay right above the falls? I visited that bay, too, and that’s where all the debris swirls in. A lot of it gets trapped there behind a big fallen tree. Couldn’t you have screamed for help, Rachel? Long before Garrison saw her finally going over the falls? Couldn’t you have run down the trail to that little bay and tried to pull her out, to save her? Or did you quietly stand back and do nothing and watch her die?”
Doug lurched to his feet so fast his chair slammed back against the glass door. “My wife asked you to leave. We’re under no obligation to answer these ridiculous insinuations. You’re not a cop. You’re a failed ex-cop. A miserable, muckraking disgrace of a detective, and the shit that happened in our lives has gotnothingto do with Jasmine Gulati’s slipping and drowning. Like my wife said, this ispreciselywhy she said nothing, becausethiswould happen, people would make these horrific assumptions.” He reached for the journal, but Angie quickly moved it out of his range and tucked it into her bag.
She hooked her bag over her shoulder and came to her feet.
“We can trace the ring, Doug. You do know that? We can find out if it was you who bought it and where it was bought. We can trace where the diamonds were sourced from and what jeweler made the ring, what store it went to, how it was paid for.” Angie knew this was a stretch, especially after all these years, but Doug might not.
“The door is that way,” he said, stepping between his wife and Angie, his eyes blazing, his face red.
Angie moved toward the front door. Doug followed at her shoulder, Rachel close behind him. But Angie stopped suddenly and faced them both.
“One other thing. I have witness evidence that Eden read this journal.”
Both Rachel and Doug froze. Doug’s gaze briefly went to his wife’s. Angie waited in silence. The cuckoo exploded from its ornate house and blasted a noise that made them all jump.
Angie said, “This also makes a lie of your claim, Rachel, that you hid everything in part because it would hurt Eden. Because if Eden did read that journal, she already knew of her father’s affair with Jasmine Gulati. She knew about Doug’s baby that Jasmine aborted, because that’s in there, too. Eden knew back on the river, twenty-four-years ago, that her father—whom she adored—was going to leave her and her mother for an obnoxious slut.”
Angie was winging it, pushing them as far as she could before they tossed her out because she couldn’t be certain Eden had read those parts of the journal. She took a step toward them, getting back into their personal bubbles. “Eden had—still has—quite a thing for her father. This father-daughter relationship is very special to her. How might the news of a looming divorce and the possibility of new children in her father’s life have affected a young teenager like Eden?” As Angie said the words, something else struck her. Hard. Her pulse quickened.
“Eden left the camp after you that evening, Rachel,” she said quickly, her mind whirling, her body heating. “Allegedly to relieve herself in the woods. Couldshehave perhaps followed Jasmine? What did youreallysee from up on your ledge? Is there a much darker reason that you kept silent and destroyed those tapes?”
Tiny pearls of sweat beaded along Rachel’s upper lip, and her skin turned gray. She made a small noise and reached for the wall to brace herself. Doug’s gaze shot to Rachel. Shock flared into his features as something dawned on him, too. His attention pinged to a photograph on the wall. Angie turned to see what he was looking at.
A black-and-white photo of four-year-old Jimmy Hart with his tricycle. A photo taken the summer he drowned. The summer Eden had been left alone with little Jimmy at the dock.
Angie’s heart began to thump against her ribs as the puzzle pieces clicked into place, Eden’s words tumbling through her memory.
