The Night Swim Page 16

  “Have I caught you at a bad time, Rach?”

  “Nope. I’m still at Neapolis General, waiting to interview Tracey Rice about Kelly’s rape kit,” Rachel said, pressing the phone closer to her ear as a toddler started screaming.

  After going through a few podcast issues, she asked Pete if he’d managed to get a copy of Jenny Stills’s autopsy report. Rachel wanted to see if the cause of death was listed as drowning, as Kitty insisted was the case.

  “The state medical examiner’s office said there’s no record of an autopsy on their database. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t done. Just that it was a long time ago and they’ll need to do a manual search in their files to find records. If there are any records,” said Pete.

  “How long will that take?” Rachel groaned.

  “That’s the problem. They have a staffing crunch right now. Won’t be able to look for the report for a few days. But even if they find it, they won’t give you a copy without permission from Jenny’s next of kin.”

  “That would be Hannah,” said Rachel. “That’s just terrific. Another reason to find her.”

  “Does it really matter, Rach?” Pete asked. “You don’t have time to follow up right now, with the Blair trial in full swing. By the time the verdict comes in, the ME’s office will have found the autopsy report and you’ll have hopefully met Hannah and have her permission to get a copy.”

  It all sounded very reasonable, but Rachel was consumed by curiosity. She didn’t want to wait that long. When Rachel returned to her seat, the waiting room was quiet. The screaming toddler had gone through the doors into the ER to have his suspected broken finger x-rayed. Most of the other people who’d been waiting either had gone home or were being treated. Nurse Rice stopped by to reassure Rachel that she was almost ready for the interview.

  “Is it always this busy?” Rachel asked.

  “Sometimes. We’re down a doctor and two nurses right now. Summer flu,” she sighed. “That’s why I’m doing the night shift. I won’t be much longer. It’s always quiet around dinnertime.”

  Within half an hour, as she predicted, the waiting room was virtually empty. Rachel was taken by an orderly to a treatment room where Nurse Rice was finishing off her dinner of homemade lasagna in a Tupperware container. Rachel explained that she wanted to find out what Kelly Moore would have gone through when she came in to be examined after the rape.

  “I can’t talk about her specific case,” said Nurse Rice, “but I can tell you about the rape kit process. I’m one of three nurses who’ve been trained to do them at this hospital.”

  She took out a sample rape kit and removed its contents: evidence bags, swab collection kits, and piles of forms. All with the same bar code. Everything collected had to be carefully logged and tracked, in case it was presented as evidence in court just as Kelly Moore’s rape kit was being presented by Mitch Alkins as part of the prosecution’s case.

  “The body of a sexual-assault victim is a crime scene,” said Nurse Rice. “It’s my job to comfort the victim and treat her injuries, while at the same time methodically collecting evidence in a way that preserves the chain of custody and reduces cross-contamination. I think of it as half CSI investigator and half nurse. As you can imagine, it’s schizophrenic; the two jobs are polar opposites.”

  She told Rachel that she was often the first person to question the victim about the rape and it was her job to document accurately every aspect of the sexual assault. If she made a mistake collecting evidence or taking down testimony, it could damage a potential prosecution. A defense attorney would look for any hole in the prosecution’s case, including perceived inconsistencies in a rape victim’s statements to the nurse and to police, to make the victim look like a liar.

  “It’s not enough that the victim says where and how the perpetrator penetrated her. We need to know a whole range of quite graphic details, which we document as precisely as possible in these forms. After that, we move on to a physical examination.”

  Nurse Rice explained how the victim’s clothes were put into evidence bags, much like the clear plastic evidence bags containing Kelly Moore’s clothes that Alkins had presented in court earlier that day. After that, a sterile paper sheet was put under the victim to capture trace evidence such as hairs, fibers, and body fluid.

  “When that’s all logged and bagged, we examine every inch of the victim, from the tip of her head to her toes. We document each bruise, scratch, and abrasion. We remove any foreign pubic hairs, semen, fibers. Anything we find. And we take swabs and samples of the victim’s own pubic hairs for comparison purposes.”

  “Do you photograph the victim as well?” Rachel asked.

  “If the victim agrees, we photograph all scratches, scrapes, bruises. We use a camera called a colposcope to photograph internal injuries. Lacerations on the genitals. Anything that might be evidence of a sexual assault.”

  She explained that once the evidence was collected, medical issues were treated. The victim was offered the morning-after pill if there was a risk of pregnancy, or medications for HIV, syphilis, and other STDs if needed. After answering a few more questions, Nurse Rice checked her watch.

  “I have to get going. I hope you have what you need,” she said to Rachel, packing up the sample rape kit and putting it back on the top shelf of the examination room cupboard.

  She walked Rachel out through the swinging doors of a back entrance to the ER, which led to the ambulance bay and then the car park. There were two ambulances parked in the ambulance bay. A paramedic was wiping down a stretcher alongside the ambulances. He greeted Nurse Rice and they chatted for a moment.

  The sight of the ambulances reminded Rachel of the newspaper article on Jenny Stills’s death. It said that Jenny was brought to the hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. She wondered if the original ambulance crew was still around. Maybe they’d be able to shed light on what happened that night.

  “Do you know the paramedics well?” Rachel asked Nurse Rice. “I’d like to speak to someone who was on the job in the early nineties? It’s about another case that I’m investigating.”

  “I don’t think any of the paramedics go back that far,” answered Nurse Rice. “They’re all young. In their twenties, or thirties. The burnout rate in that job is high so they generally quit after a few years and do something else. What do you want to ask them about?”

  “A teenage girl who drowned when she was sixteen. Back in ’92. She was brought by ambulance to this hospital. Already dead from what I can gather,” said Rachel. “I was hoping someone might remember bringing her in.”

  “DOAs go to the hospital morgue. You could go down and speak to Stuart. Pretty sure he’s on night shift this week. Stuart’s worked here for decades. He might remember. What was the girl’s name?”

  “Jenny Stills,” said Rachel. She could tell from the shocked expression that immediately appeared on Nurse Rice’s face that she recognized the name. “You’ve heard of her?” Rachel asked.

  “Sure, I’ve heard of her. Everyone who went to Neapolis High knows that name,” the nurse said with a catch in her voice.

  “How come?” Rachel asked in surprise.

  Nurse Rice sighed audibly as she tried to find the words to formulate a response. “The name ‘Jenny Stills’ was like a cautionary tale about what happens when a girl sleeps around,” she said. “There used to be songs and jokes about her. Graffiti in the bathrooms. At school her name became slang for being a slut. Always felt awful for that girl, having her name dragged through the mud like that.”

  Nurse Rice’s pager beeped and she paused to check it. “The waiting room’s filling up again. I have to get back,” she said. She quickly gave Rachel directions to the hospital morgue and rushed through the swinging doors of the ER.

  Rachel followed the sign to the morgue, taking the elevator to the lower basement. The morgue was down a long white corridor lit by a row of bright fluorescent lights. Rachel reached the closed door and turned the handle. It was locked. N
ext to it was an intercom. She pressed the button. Nobody answered.

  Rachel was about to turn to leave when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She waited until a barrel-chested man with thick arms, a ruddy complexion, and a reddish gray beard emerged from the stairwell. A hospital badge pinned to his blue scrubs identified him as “Stuart.”

  “Tracey Rice from the ER said you might be able to help me with a question about a DOA,” Rachel said.

  “Come inside,” Stuart replied.

  He scanned his hospital key card and pushed open the door to the hospital morgue. Rachel followed him as he led her into an office with a couple of upholstered chairs and a tired framed print of flowers on the wall. At the back were rows of filing cabinets and a desk with an oversized computer screen.

  “If you’re here about the DOA from this afternoon then he’s already been transferred,” Stuart said. “The ME decided there will be no autopsy. Apparently, he had a long-standing heart condition.”

  “Actually,” said Rachel, “I want to know if you remember a case from the summer of ’92. A teenage girl drowned. I was told that she was brought here and pronounced dead on arrival. Her name was Jenny Stills.”

  Stuart stared at her, unblinking. When he saw that she was serious, he pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his hospital scrubs.

  “Can we go outside? I’m not allowed to smoke here,” he said.

  He took her through the morgue itself. It was a white-tiled room that smelled of antiseptic, with a wall of stainless-steel refrigerators for bodies. There was an empty metal stretcher pressed against the wall, blocking access to an external door. He rolled it out of the way and opened the door. They came out into a basement loading area. He lit a cigarette as he leaned back against a raw concrete wall.

  “That was a long time ago. Why’re you asking about Jenny Stills now?” he asked.

  “Her sister asked me to look into her death. I’m an investigator,” said Rachel, choosing not to mention the podcast. “Her sister was very young at the time, but she believes that her older sister was murdered. Not drowned, which was apparently the official cause of death.”

  He nodded and exhaled. “She did drown. Lungs were full of water,” Stuart said.

  “But?” Rachel prompted, half-shocked and half-excited that he remembered the case.

  “There were bruises. All over her body,” he said. “Not from hitting rocks, like they said afterward. She’d been hit and kicked. Physically beaten. One bruise was in the pattern of the sole of a shoe. I still remember that. Looked to me as if she’d been badly hurt before she drowned.”

  “Did you tell anyone?” Rachel asked.

  “Did I tell anyone?” he repeated. “Of course I did. I told the medical examiner. Usually he’ll discuss a case like that with me. When I asked afterward what had come out of the autopsy and whether the police were investigating, he was evasive. I asked a friend on the force who confirmed there was no police investigation under way. So, I did the only thing that I could do.”

  “Which was?”

  “Went to see the girl’s mother. She was in bed. Could barely sit up. Told her that I thought there was more to it than a drowning. That there had been bruises and cuts on her daughter’s body that looked suspicious. Told her that if she wrote a letter requesting an inquest then the authorities would have to look into it properly. I told her to ask for them to investigate it as a potential homicide. I waited while she wrote the letter and then I mailed it for her.”

  “Why did you think it was a homicide?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t know if it was a homicide, but it sure was suspicious. Those fresh injuries on her body should have been enough for a homicide investigation. I said as much to the medical examiner at the time. He wouldn’t hear a word of it.”

  “The newspaper said there was no investigation. Why?”

  “Town was burying those two boys. They died the same night. Drove into a tree. By the time everyone was done grieving, the girl’s mother was dead and there was nobody pushing for an investigation. I’d done everything I could do,” he said. “Couldn’t do any more without risking my job. I had a young family. Needed the income.”

  “Is the medical examiner still in town?” Rachel asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Stuart, dropping his cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of his shoe. “He’s in town, all right, but six foot under. Dropped dead of a heart attack a good fifteen years ago. Maybe more. We’ve been through three MEs since then.”

  He walked back inside, Rachel following behind. “Come with me,” he said with the whispered urgency of someone about to share a secret.

  He went through the morgue to his office, where he unlocked the bottom corner filing cabinet. From the back, he retrieved a repurposed rectangular cookie tin. He took off the lid and handed it to Rachel. Inside were faded photographs of a young girl lying on a stretcher. Her hair was wet and her eyes were closed. Her skin was a bluish hue of death.

  Rachel went through the photos of Jenny Stills’s body. There were close-ups of ugly bruises on her legs, shoulders, and stomach. Rachel couldn’t imagine how such bruises could have been caused from hitting rocks. More surprising, the photos of Jenny’s head didn’t seem to show any cuts or abrasions. Surely, if Jenny had died from hitting rocks, there would have been injuries to her head. It made no sense.

  “Who took the photos?” Rachel asked.

  “The medical examiner took these on the morgue camera immediately after she was brought in here and before she was transferred to the county morgue. A week later, he stopped by and asked me for the camera film. He was in a panic. I smelled a rat,” Stuart said.

  “In what way?” Rachel asked.

  “Can’t say exactly. He was very political. Always brownnosing. The way he asked made me suspicious.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Told him I’d thrown out the camera film undeveloped, said there was no point wasting money developing film of an accidental drowning victim. We had big budget cuts around that time, so it wasn’t unusual to do that sort of thing. He never asked me again.”

  “Why did you keep the photos all these years?” Rachel asked.

  “I suppose it was in case someone like you came calling one day. Never expected it would take this long,” he said, sorting through the photos and giving Rachel a handful.

  “Why do you think nobody followed up?” Rachel asked.

  “Because it was more convenient for people if that girl’s death was put down as an accident.”

  30

  Guilty or Not Guilty

  Season 3, Episode 7: Victim

  I’ve never been raped. Until recently, if you’d asked me, I would have told you that I’ve never been a victim of a sexual assault. In my mind, that involved being dragged into an alley and forcibly raped by a stranger.

  Things are changing. We’re starting to admit that rape and sexual assault can happen in a multitude of ways. We’re starting to acknowledge that it permeates our lives as women. I guess you could say that society was in denial for, well, really, forever.

  If you asked me today, and you said, “Rachel, have you ever been a victim of a sexual assault?” I would have to say yes.

  Yes, I have been a victim of a sexual assault. Well, probably several really. Funny how we were conditioned to accept these situations as unpleasant instead of outrageous.

  Most of the “several” were the types of things many women encounter. We considered them to be nuisances, part and parcel of being women in a misogynist world. I’m talking about things like groping. Guys squeezing a girl’s butt at a college football game. Or a nightclub. One time, when I was in high school, I was sitting on a crowded train and a man with a mustache rubbed his crotch against my arm. Kind of accidentally on purpose. I didn’t know whether it was an accident or not until I saw him move forward and do the same thing to another girl farther down the car.

  Another time, at a party in colle
ge, a guy pushed past me. Rubbed against my breasts. It was all so innocent until his friends burst out laughing. Hilarious.

  I’m sure that every one of my female listeners knows exactly what I’m talking about. There were no scars from those incidents, except that ever since I’m really careful about my personal space. I hate being in crowds.

  So, yes. I’ve been groped. But that’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me. When I was seventeen, my parents divorced and I moved to a new city with my mom. It was kind of traumatic. You know, new town, new high school, new friends.

  I was chosen for the track team. I was a pretty good distance runner in those days. A few days after I made the track team, the team’s champion sprinter asked me on a date. He had it all in spades. The guy looked like a movie star. All the girls swooned over him. I was flattered and thrilled.

  Of course, I accepted. I counted the days in my diary until the date. I did that stupid schoolgirl thing of scribbling out our intertwined initials in my notebook.

  We went to a movie for this date that I’d been so excited about. It was a forgettable rom-com, the type of film that’s supposed to leave you floating on air. In fact, if I’m going to be really cynical about it, it’s the type of movie that a guy chooses to soften up a girl before trying to move from, I don’t know, first base to third base. In the space of an hour.

  After the movie we went out for ice creams and then he drove me home. I had a curfew. Instead of turning into my street, he “forgot” to take the turn.

  He drove into this parking lot that faced a park with a pretty view of the skyline. Your classic make-out location. What can I say, this guy truly lacked imagination. He kissed me. It was a beautiful kiss. Everything a girl could have wanted.

  But instead of stopping at that one kiss, he kissed me again. This time deeper. More aggressive. He forced his tongue into my mouth. Put his hands on my breasts. I’d never done any of that before. I was trying to push his hands off me so he’d know he was going too fast when the whole weight of his body was suddenly right on top of me. He was crushing me and pawing me.