The Night Swim Read online

  “I’ve been told that the Women’s Rape Network’s philosophy is that women who say they are the victims of a sexual assault should be believed no matter what. Is that accurate?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Isn’t it true that your testimony today is based on that same view, that your role is to support Kelly and not question whether she is telling the truth?”

  “I have no reason to doubt Kelly.”

  “You weren’t there that night, were you?” Dale Quinn asked.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “And you didn’t see any of it happen. Did you?”

  “No.”

  When Dr. Lawrence left the stand, Judge Shaw announced they’d take a lunch break. It was already running late enough for Rachel’s stomach to rumble.

  Rachel hung back until most of the court had cleared out, except for the lawyers. Mitch Alkins and a young female lawyer on his team were talking and packing files into their briefcases.

  “Mr. Alkins,” Rachel called out. He paused from packing his briefcase and gave Rachel a hard stare that told her to back off. “Mr. Alkins, I’m a reporter. My name is Rachel Krall; I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

  “She’s the one from the podcast I was telling you about,” the other attorney whispered to Alkins in a voice loud enough for Rachel to hear.

  “Ah, the reporter who believes in crowdsourcing justice. Why not get rid of the jury system altogether and decide on innocence and guilt with an online poll,” he muttered.

  “Mr. Alkins, I need to ask you something. In private,” Rachel said, ignoring his comments. She had more important things to discuss than the ethics of crime podcasts.

  “We’re not allowed to talk to reporters until after the case. Judge’s orders,” he said.

  “It’s not about the trial,” said Rachel. “It’s about something else. Mr. Alkins, did you once know a girl by the name of Jenny Stills?”

  Alkins froze for the briefest moment. It was so quick that Rachel wondered if she’d imagined it. He put another file in his briefcase, pulled the lid down tightly, and snapped the latches shut. When he was done, he walked right past her without a word and left the courtroom.

  35

  Rachel

  Rachel shielded her eyes with her hand as she moved from the courthouse into the bright sunshine of the afternoon. The roar of passing traffic was deafening after hours spent in the hushed confines of the courtroom.

  Dan Moore was heading down the stairs in front of her. He looked as if he’d aged a decade since the trial began. Being in court every day listening to deeply upsetting testimony about his daughter’s sexual assault was taking a heavy toll on him.

  “How’s Kelly doing?” Rachel asked when she caught up to him in the plaza.

  “She’s understandably nervous about testifying, but she absolutely insists that she wants to do it,” he said. “Her therapist says it will give her closure and help her move on with her life.”

  Once they parted ways, Rachel headed over to a pretty street of cafes and specialty stores a few blocks from the courthouse. In Rachel’s computer bag was the faded bouquet ribbon she’d found at Jenny Stills’s grave. Rachel had shown the ribbon to two florists at downtown stores. They both said they’d never used that type of ribbon. It was a high-quality two-toned ribbon made from real fabric. One of the florists suggested that Rachel check at a shop called Antique Flowers, a high-end florist store that specialized in expensive, classical arrangements.

  The store had been closed every time Rachel drove past, but that morning while driving to court she’d seen the “Closed” sign had been removed from the door. She’d been running late and didn’t have time to go into the store. But now, since court was done for the day, Rachel rushed over to the florist shop so she could ask about the ribbon before the store shut for the day.

  Antique Flowers was a corner shop in a heritage building with large bay windows. The store exterior was painted a crisp shade of white. Its name was written in delicate matching white calligraphy on the windows. The brass bell tinkled as Rachel opened the door. She was immediately hit by the unusual combination of furniture polish mixed with a delicate scent of fresh flowers.

  “Can I be of assistance?” A diminutive woman walked in from a back room with an armful of pale roses, which she placed on floristry paper laid out on an antique table. “Are you looking for furniture, or flowers? Or both?” the woman asked. She wore a natural linen apron with the store logo and a matching badge with her name, “Renata.”

  “I’m just doing the tourist thing and window-shopping,” answered Rachel. “I’ve never seen a store that sells flowers and antiques together, and such beautiful ones at that!”

  “The antique store is my dad’s business. My mom is a florist. A few years ago they combined the businesses. That way Mom could run the store while Dad went on antique-buying trips,” said the woman, as she clipped the stems of the roses.

  Rachel was about to introduce herself when the store phone rang. Renata smiled apologetically as she took the call. Rachel used the time to wander around the store. The antiques for sale ranged from the elaborate to the simple. Rachel admired an old farmhouse table with knife marks indented into the timber and a distressed oak pantry cupboard with old-fashioned blue ceramic jars on its shelves.

  “Are you enjoying your time here?” Renata asked conversationally when she’d finished the call, and began selecting a combination of cream and light pink roses from the florist’s table.

  “I am. It’s a lovely town,” Rachel responded. “You’re very lucky to live here.”

  “Oh, I don’t live here anymore. I only come back to see my parents or help run the store when they’re on vacation. To tell you the truth, I stay for as short a time as possible and I’m extremely relieved when I go home. But that’s just me. Most people love it here.”

  “Why don’t you like it here?” Rachel asked.

  “When I grew up, it was an insular town. People got stuck with labels. It was hard for them to, I guess, reinvent themselves,” Renata said as she arranged the roses and wrapped it all in floristry paper. She took out a spool and cut a long piece of ribbon, which she expertly tied around the bouquet. Rachel was disappointed to see that the ribbon didn’t at all match the ribbon that she’d found at Jenny’s grave. She sighed to herself. It was another dead end.

  Rachel was about to leave when she decided that she’d show Renata the ribbon anyway in case she knew other stores where Rachel could ask. She was removing the ribbon from her purse when the brass doorbell chimed. A man stepped inside to collect the bouquet that Renata had just finished. Rachel waited as Renata packaged the order in a paper bag with the store’s logo and swiped the man’s credit card.

  “His wife is one lucky lady. That is a stunning bouquet,” Rachel said, as the door shut after the man left carrying his wife’s anniversary present.

  “I was worried that I might be out of practice. The lady who was supposed to have run the store while my parents are on their cruise broke her leg. I couldn’t get here until last night, so the store has been closed for the past week,” Renata said. “I’m still catching up on orders.”

  “I’ll leave you to your work then. Just one quick question before I go,” said Rachel, holding up a plastic bag with the ribbon from the cemetery. “Do you know which florist uses this particular ribbon?”

  Renata took one look and immediately opened a drawer under the flower-wrapping table from which she removed an oversized spool containing an expensive two-toned ribbon that was almost an exact match to the ribbon Rachel was holding.

  “Dad brings it back from Europe when he visits on antique-buying trips. The ribbon is very expensive, so Mom saves it only for her premium bouquets,” Renata explained, leaning forward to examine the one Rachel held. “It’s badly faded. Where did you find it?”

  “At a grave at the cemetery,” said Rachel. “I’m trying to find out who might have left it. Given that it’s your
ribbon, the flower arrangement must have been from here. Do you keep records for all your orders?”

  “Only for delivery orders,” said Renata. She clicked open the order database on a laptop next to the cash register. “I can check our old orders. Do you remember where in the cemetery you found it?”

  “I found it by a grave. The name on the tombstone was Jenny Stills,” said Rachel. “She was a teenage girl who died here in the early nineties.”

  “Jenny Stills,” said Renata, her hand frozen above the keyboard. Her voice was filled with a mixture of recognition and sadness. “I haven’t heard her name spoken for years.”

  “You knew Jenny?” Rachel felt a thrill of excitement. “Were you friends?”

  “I knew her from school. We weren’t really friends.”

  “Do you know how Jenny died?” Rachel asked.

  “I was in Europe with my parents that summer. It was a sort of sixteenth-birthday present. Dad bought antiques and we vacationed. We were gone for almost three months. Missed the first few weeks of school. By the time I came back, Jenny was long dead. I heard it was in an accident. A couple of boys died in a car crash that summer, so I assumed that’s how Jenny died, too.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “There was nobody to ask. Her mother was dead. Her sister gone. The town had a collective trauma. Nobody wanted to talk about what happened that summer. A few months later, there was a ceremony to install a memorial for the car crash victims. I was surprised that I didn’t see Jenny’s name on the memorial. I asked my teacher. He said that Jenny wasn’t killed in the car accident. That she drowned. I was shocked.”

  “Why were you shocked?”

  “Everyone knew that Jenny was a strong swimmer. I couldn’t believe that she of all people would have drowned. It was around that time that the graffiti began to appear, too.”

  “What graffiti?”

  “Rude sexualized drawings with dumb jokes about Jenny. I didn’t understand why people would be so mean about a dead girl.” Renata flushed suddenly, as if embarrassed by the memory.

  “Her tombstone had been graffitied with the word ‘WHORE.’ Do you know why someone would do that?” Rachel asked.

  “Can’t believe it still goes on after all these years,” sighed Renata. “After Jenny died, her name became synonymous with being a ‘slut.’ Interchangeable, really. Boys would rate girls on what they called the ‘Jenny Stills index.’ A girl who put out would get a nine or ten on the ‘J.S. index.’ That’s what they called it. There was other stuff, too, that they used to say which I can’t even describe because it was so crude. I’m sure you get the picture. I feel bad. I turned a blind eye like everyone else. I learned that it was better to shut up.”

  “Why was it better to shut up?”

  “There was a girl at school who’d been Jenny’s friend. The boys teased her terribly, and made comments suggesting she was easy. I never stood up for that girl. I feel bad about it now. In those days, I was afraid they’d all turn on me. That I’d become the next Jenny Stills. That girl left town for college and never returned.” She paused. “Now that I think about it, I guess I did the same.”

  “Was Jenny bullied when she was alive? Teased or harassed by boys?”

  “Jenny was very pretty and nice, but she wasn’t popular. I don’t think she could shake off the Stills name. Jenny and her sister didn’t look at all alike. Everyone knew that her mother had two kids from separate fathers. In those days, that sort of thing was still scandalous.”

  “You’re the first person I’ve spoken with who seems to have really known Jenny,” Rachel said. “It’s amazing to me that you remember her so vividly.”

  “I’ve never forgotten her,” said Renata. “Mom gave Jenny and her kid sister a ride home once. They’d been waiting out a thunderstorm at the gas station by the Old Mill Road junction. The man in charge wouldn’t let them inside the store to take shelter from the rain. Said something about how he’d known the Stills family for years and they were perfectly capable of walking home in any weather,” Renata recalled, scooping up another bunch of roses and clipping their stems. “My mom was furious. She flatly refused to put gas in her car at that service station after that incident. Even if she was running on empty. Said she wouldn’t give her business to that horrible man.”

  “Was his name Rick by any chance?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes, it was. Actually, Mom donated some flowers to a retirement home a few months ago and she saw him there. He was one of the residents. She told me about it on the phone. Anyway, after that incident with the thunderstorm, Mom tried to help the Stills family. She’d sometimes leave a bag of clothes or a hamper of food on their porch at night. She told me not to say anything if I saw Jenny wearing my hand-me-downs. Said it was kinder to give people charity without them knowing where it came from.”

  She glanced at her laptop. “I’ve found something. Mom’s received several orders in the past to deliver a premium bouquet to Jenny Stills’s grave. They were online order paid for by PayPal. There’s no information on the sender. But there’s a card. Let’s see what it says.” Rachel waited while Renata scanned the computer.

  “Isn’t that strange!” said Renata. “All the orders request the exact same message on the card.”

  “What’s the message?” Rachel asked.

  “‘Forgive me,’” Renata read out. “That’s the message. It just says: ‘Forgive me.’”

  36

  Rachel

  The Golden Vista retirement village was on the edge of town, opposite a field of overgrown grass littered with rusting car chassis and abandoned tires. The complex consisted of single-level brick buildings in a garden setting. Raggedy pines obscured views of the town dump. The garbage couldn’t be seen, but Rachel sure smelled it as she walked to the reception building.

  A woman at the reception desk gave Rachel a visitor’s badge and directed her to a recreation room down the hall where the residents were relaxing after their early dinner. Most of the residents sat on plastic bucket seats and wheelchairs arranged around a chipped upright piano where a woman with bright lipstick sashayed her shoulders while singing an old Beatles tune.

  Rachel beelined to a man sitting in the corner, wearing dark pants and a pale wrinkled shirt. His skin clung to his bones so tightly that Rachel could see the outline of his skull. He grimaced as she approached, flashing nicotine-stained teeth almost as a warning. Like a cat hissing, thought Rachel as she pulled over a chair.

  “You’re Rick? You used to own the gas station on the Old Mill Road?” Rachel asked.

  “What do you want?” Rick snapped.

  “Do you remember Jenny and Hannah Stills?”

  He shrugged. “There were hundreds of kids who came into my store, stealing when I wasn’t looking and tracking in mud. And sand. I never knew their names. Never wanted to know.” He closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Rachel could tell from the tautness of his body that he was awake.

  “I gave you their names. I never said they were kids,” Rachel said carefully. His eyes opened at being caught out.

  “I know you know them,” said Rachel. “What will it take for you to tell me what you remember?”

  “Fish burger and fries,” he said, sitting up. “From Admiral’s Burgers. Downtown. I tried to get them to deliver once. They said we’re outside their delivery zone. The staff here won’t get it for me. They say it’s high in sodium and cholesterol. Too unhealthy.” He laughed hollowly. “Look at me. I’m a dead man walking and they’re worried about my sodium levels.”

  “I’ll arrange your burger and fries if you tell me what you remember about the Stills family,” Rachel promised.

  “I knew the mom from when she was very small. Her granddad would send her to buy liquor. Never any food. Only liquor. A bottle a day. He’d rather his kid starve than miss out on his drink. Sometimes, little Hope would come in and her face would be swollen. Black eye. Cut lip. When Ed Stills was sober, he adored that girl. When he was drunk,
he was as mean a drunk as you’ll find anywhere.”

  “What happened to Hope’s daughters. Jenny and Hannah?”

  “I told the police everything I knew about those girls,” he said.

  “Which was?”

  “That I didn’t see a thing. Nothing. I don’t know nothing. Not a thing. And between you and me, even if I did, I wouldn’t say.”

  “There were some teenage boys who used to drive around in a pickup. They’d get gasoline from your store. Sometimes shoplift, too,” said Rachel. “Do you remember them?”

  “Lots of kids drove pickups in those days. Today they’re driving Jeeps. In those days they had trucks,” he said dismissively.

  “This pickup was a regular. Try to remember,” Rachel pressed. “It’s important. I think they might have been involved in Jenny Stills’s death.”

  “All I can tell you is that I called the ambulance that night because that little kid was messing up my floor with all that blood. I took her down to the beach in my old truck. I was shutting down for the night anyway, so I drove her. Got there before the cops and the ambulance.”

  “What did you see?”

  “It was dark. There were no lights around there at night. It was hard to see anything at all. The little sister jumped out. I was going to go after her when I heard sirens coming. Figured she didn’t need me anymore. Turned the car around to drive home. Almost ran over that boy.”

  “What boy?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Rick added quickly, realizing he’d said too much. “I’m eighty-one. Memory isn’t what it was.”

  “You remember everything, Rick,” corrected Rachel. “Who was that boy you almost ran over? What was his name?”

  “I saw him here. Two, three summers ago,” he said, warming to the subject and Rachel’s attention. “Saw him one afternoon in the garden. They take us out to get sun like we’re fucking tomatoes that need to be ripened. I went up to him and told him I remember what he did all those summers ago. He looked rattled. Left soon after. Never saw him again.” He laughed wryly. “Not surprised. Always running. Like a rat.”