The Night Swim

by Megan Goldin

  We walked in silence to the sound of rustling grass and the occasional whine of a car engine passing by. Me in front, Jenny, a few yards behind. We didn’t talk. In the space of a few short weeks, Jenny had become introverted and brooding.

  I picked up a long stick and scraped it on the dirt path behind me as I walked. When the path veered away from the road around a clump of trees, I followed it. My feet kicked up dust and my eyes were downcast as I focused on drawing an unbroken line with the stick. The trees blocked the road from view and acted as a buffer from the noise of passing cars.

  The path eventually curved back to the road after the trees. Eventually, I realized that I hadn’t heard Jenny’s footsteps or the rustle of shopping bags for a while. I assumed I was walking too fast and Jenny had fallen behind. I stopped and waited. When Jenny still didn’t appear, I called to her.

  “Jenny?”

  No response.

  “Jenny? Where are you?” I called out. She didn’t emerge from the path.

  “Hurry up, Jenny!” I was annoyed she was taking so long.

  “Jenny?”

  I huffed in frustration at the silence that followed. I ran back along the path. When I found no trace of my sister, I walked into the road to look for her. There was no sign of her walking along the road on either side. All I saw was a red apple that had rolled onto the asphalt.

  I picked up the apple. That’s when I saw Jenny’s shopping bags lying in the long grass by the side of the road. One bag had tipped over. Loose fruit had spilled onto the ground. The other bag was upright. There was no sign of Jenny. She was gone. I ran uphill, pushing long strands of grass out of my way until I reached the top.

  Puffing loudly from running, my lungs burning, I stopped at the pinnacle and scanned the landscape below. I didn’t see Jenny. But I did see a familiar pickup truck driving slowly down an unpaved road leading to the mouth of the forest. I ran down the other side of the hill in the direction of the truck. I crossed the road and followed it into the forest.

  I moved off the dirt road, walking among the trees into the darkness as the foliage became denser. I darted around tree trunks and bent under unruly branches that scratched my arms. Deep in the forest, I saw the pickup. It had been parked hastily on the side of the road. A canvas cover lay in a heap on the back of the truck alongside a half-empty box of beer. I heard voices and laughter coming from a clearing. Cruel laughter. As I moved closer, I saw a boy lying on top of Jenny while two others stood by and watched. Jeering.

  I was filled with rage. I instinctively picked up a rock to charge at the boy who was hurting Jenny. I raced toward him, the rock raised in my right hand. Before I reached the clearing, a hand slapped onto my face like a suction cup. I couldn’t scream or say a word as I was lifted off the ground. My feet hung in the air as I was carried through the forest, restrained by powerful arms. My sandals slipped off. I tried to kick and struggle free. It was impossible. His grip was crushing.

  43

  Rachel

  Rachel ran against a lava-lamp sky of navy cut with orange. Dawn had broken by the time she’d reached the Morrison’s Point jetty. Her breathing was labored as she leaned over the rails and looked into the dark, impenetrable water.

  Long gone were the wildflowers that Hannah had scattered in the waves a few days earlier to commemorate her sister’s death. That had been the last message that Rachel had received from her. Pete was checking the podcast inbox several times a day in case Hannah reached out again. There had been plenty of mail from fans and detractors alike. Nothing from Hannah. Rachel had repeatedly called the phone number for Hannah that Kitty had given her, but it went to an automated voice mail each time. She’d left several voice messages for Hannah, but she hadn’t received any response.

  It may take time for me to get you the last letter. I keep starting it and stopping, Hannah had written at the end of the email. It will take all my strength to put into words what happened to Jenny that night. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Maybe I should leave the past alone. Let it die with me.

  Hannah’s last words left Rachel deeply worried. Hannah had intimated a few times in her correspondence to Rachel that she’d contemplated death. Rachel wished there was a way for her to reach out to Hannah. To reassure her. To get her help if she needed it. But Rachel couldn’t help someone who was so determined to stay out of reach. It was almost as if Hannah wanted to keep Rachel at arm’s length. It was, Rachel thought as she watched the pink dawn drain from the sky, as if she was a pawn in a game, the rules of which only Hannah knew.

  Pete had called Rachel late the previous night to share the results of the background check he’d run on Vince Knox. “Four years ago, a man by the name of Vince Knox died of a heart attack in prison,” Pete told her. Rachel had been drifting to sleep when he called, his voice filled with enough urgency to immediately wake her. “The character witness who testified about Scott Blair saving that drowning boy can’t possibly be Vince Knox, Rach. For one thing, all records of his existence date back to exactly a week to the day after the Vince Knox I mentioned died in prison. I believe the character witness took the name Vince Knox after the real Vince Knox died, but he wasn’t born with that name. He’s actually someone else. The question is who?”

  “Maybe I should ask him,” said Rachel. “Do you have an address for him?”

  “No fixed address. He’s a vagrant. Apparently, he sometimes sleeps on the beaches south of town in the summer.”

  “That’s a big area,” said Rachel, yawning. “There are a lot of beaches south of town.”

  “If it helps, I just got off the phone with a charity worker who works with the poor in Neapolis and she said that he’s been known to sleep in a boat shed near the marine reserve,” said Pete.

  Rachel knew the beach Pete was referring to. Right next to the national park was a sheltered beach with a row of boat sheds and a ramp. On the map, it was called Anderson’s Beach. But Rachel knew it in another context. It was the beach where Scott Blair had taken Kelly Moore for pizza and then allegedly raped her.

  After Rachel finished the call with Pete, she set her alarm to wake her before dawn. She wanted to run along the beach south of Morrison’s Point in case she stumbled across Vince Knox sleeping rough in one of his usual haunts.

  After catching her breath on the jetty, Rachel continued running south to the national marine park, darting over clumps of glistening seaweed that had littered the beaches overnight. When she came around the last peninsula, she saw a row of boat sheds in the distance, painted in faded pastel hues. From across the beach, Rachel heard a repeated banging noise. It was coming from a boat-shed door, which was slamming open and closed in the wind. She ran across the sand to the shed to close the door. Otherwise it would tear off its hinges from the repeated banging.

  As she approached, the door blew wide open in a fresh gust, giving Rachel a clear view inside. There was an old fiberglass boat with an outboard motor. Men’s work clothes hung off nails banged into the timber. On the concrete floor was a makeshift bed and a pile of blankets. On the walls, newspaper clippings fluttered in the early morning breeze.

  Rachel stepped into the boat shed, her eyes drawn to the wall decorated with the newspaper clippings. She was shocked to see they were all about the Scott Blair case. They’d been carefully torn out and hammered into the timber walls with rusty nails. There were black-and-white photos of Scott Blair coming into court, and photos of Mitch Alkins and Dale Quinn walking down the courthouse stairs, their expressions blank.

  An article about Kelly Moore’s testimony was pinned prominently on the wall. Sections of text were circled with a ballpoint pen. As Rachel moved closer to read the text in the dim light, the door banged shut behind her. It cast the room in an opaque blackness that made it impossible for Rachel to see.

  Rachel instinctively moved blindly in the direction of the door, shoving it hard with her shoulder. The door swung open violently. Rachel tripped and stumbled out into the bright glare of morning and str
aight into the naked chest of a man.

  The right side of his bare torso was horribly disfigured with severe burn scars, puckered and patched by skin grafts. The parts of his chest unmarred by scars were covered with tattoos. Rachel recognized one as a homemade gangland prison tattoo. She raised her head to look at the stranger’s face. Vince Knox’s eyes were narrow and they burned with rage.

  “What are you doing sneaking around here?” he rasped. His lip lifted in a half snarl as Rachel moved back in surprise.

  He lurched toward her as if to scare her. It instinctively made her want to step back to put space between them, but she resisted the urge. If she stepped back then he’d be able to corral her into the boat shed and lock her in. Rachel took a step to the side, which at least offered the possibility of outrunning him across the sand dunes.

  Except Rachel didn’t run. She didn’t need to. He’d turned his attention away from her and bent down to caress a quivering seagull, which was bundled up in a plaid shirt near his feet. His gentle touch and the deep concern that creased his face as he tended to the bird was a sharp departure from his anger toward Rachel a moment earlier.

  “I didn’t know that someone lived here,” Rachel said, by way of an apology. She figured that the only way to defuse the situation was to act normal. “I thought the boat shed lock had broken off.”

  “I left the door unlocked when I went for a swim.” He rose, looming over Rachel to intimidate her again. She held her ground. “What are you doing here? You’re not a cop, are you?” he hissed. “I hate cops.”

  “I’m a reporter covering the trial. I saw you testify for Scott Blair. You didn’t look like you were enjoying it. After you left court, I saw you talking to some guy who works for Greg Blair. Did Greg Blair buy your testimony, Mr. Knox?”

  “No,” he said. “Everything I said in court was true. Scott Blair saved that kid’s life that day. Swam out and pulled him in. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Then what’s the connection between you and Greg Blair?” Rachel asked.

  “It’s none of your goddamn business,” he roared. Realizing that he’d startled the bird, he bent down again to soothe the frightened creature in a hushed voice.

  “Maybe it’s not my business,” said Rachel. “It is the business of the prosecutor, Mitch Alkins. He might be very interested, especially if Greg Blair paid for your testimony.”

  “Every word that I said was true. That trial, it ain’t got nothing to do with me,” Vince Knox said. “I don’t have time for your dumb questions. I need to put a splint on this bird’s wing before she goes into shock.” He moved into the boat shed and returned a moment later with a box of bandages. He squatted down and expertly repaired the injured bird’s wing with a crude splint and bandages as Rachel watched.

  “How long have you been living here?” Rachel asked a few minutes later as he cut up scraps of fresh fish with a pocketknife which he fed to the injured gull, now swathed in bandages.

  “I stay sometimes in the summer. Get paid to keep an eye on the boats. There’s a shower and toilets. A coin barbecue so I can cook. That’s all I need.”

  “Where do you live in the winter?”

  “I get by,” he said. “If I make enough money in the summer then I rent a room. Mostly I mind my own business. You should try it sometime.”

  Rachel flushed. He was right. She had no right to barge into this man’s life with her questions.

  “Tell me about how you know Greg Blair and I’ll go,” she said.

  “I knew Greg once,” he said. “He remembered me. Asked me to testify for his son about that time I saw him save that kid from drowning. Said if I didn’t then he’d remind people of something that I did a long time ago. All I want is a quiet life, so I agreed. Didn’t say anything that wasn’t true in court. I made sure of it.”

  “I had the feeling that you know more than you said in court. That you were holding back on something,” Rachel said softly.

  “What makes you think that?” He stared at her with an expression that she couldn’t decipher.

  “Instinct,” she said.

  “Your instincts are wrong,” he snapped.

  “How did you get your injuries?” Rachel asked as he put on his plaid shirt and buttoned it up to cover the puckered burn scars on his chest.

  “Knife fight,” he said, pointing to the scars that slashed the side of his face.

  “What about the burns? They look pretty bad.”

  “They’re from a childhood accident. Have I satisfied your curiosity now?” he asked. “I might not look like much. And I might not have much. But there are a lot more dangerous people than me in this town. They wear suits and look respectable, but there ain’t nothing respectable about the things they’re willing do to get what they want. Nothing.”

  Rachel thought about his remark as she ran across the beach back toward town. Wisps of clouds marred the otherwise perfect sky as she jogged toward her hotel in the far distance. It was Friday, the last court session before the weekend. Rachel’s gut feeling told her that it would be a dramatic one.

  All week, court had started the same way. Judge Shaw asked Mitch Alkins if Kelly Moore was returning to the stand. Alkins told the judge that Kelly’s psychiatrist said she wasn’t quite ready. That she needed a little more time. Alkins had bought time all week with that response. He wouldn’t get away with it for much longer. Dale Quinn was running out of witnesses and Judge Shaw was running out of patience.

  44

  Guilty or Not Guilty

  Season 3, Episode 10: Cross-examination

  Tempers are short in court as we get to the business end of the trial. There’s been no more banter about what the jurors ate for lunch. The mood is too tense. Judge Shaw is on edge. His tongue is pure acid. I’ve heard people say they haven’t seen him this acerbic since he was last reversed by an appeals court seven years ago.

  The jury is showing signs of exhaustion. Too many long days of hearing testimony that is complex and oftentimes harrowing. It gets to a person after a while, trying to figure out who to believe.

  Today the jury heard the forensic expert for the defense give his testimony. Professor Carl Braun earned an estimated thirty thousand dollars to tear apart the prosecution’s forensic case with surgical precision. He said there was zero evidence that indicated K was sexually assaulted. Zero. That is reasonable doubt right there. If the jury believes him, that is.

  Remember Dr. Wendy North. She was the expert witness for the prosecution. She’s considered one of the leading forensic sexual assault experts in the country.

  Professor Braun contradicted all her findings with a certainty that I found staggering. The Harvard academic who hasn’t been in clinical practice for decades said repeatedly on the stand that there was no indication of sexual assault. Just signs of rough sex. Two clumsy teenagers rolling in the hay. That’s the way that he tried to make it sound.

  Professor Braun is a tall man. Six foot two, I’d say, at a guess. He has wiry steel-colored hair. He wears rimless reading glasses and tucks a handkerchief in his jacket pocket. He’s old-school. He talks in a deep baritone that resonates with a godlike authority. This is a man who has no doubts. At least not about his opinions. Sure, the jurors liked Dr. North. But Professor Braun is in a league of his own when it comes to confidence.

  The prosecution’s forensic case had been strong, until Braun ripped it apart. I can’t say whether his points had any basis to them. To tell you the truth, at times it sounded to me like doublespeak. But it was doublespeak delivered with an arrogant assurance that would be hard for a jury to dismiss. We may not have seen the last of Professor Braun. He may be recalled to the stand after K testifies, presumably to undermine whatever she says during cross-examination from a forensics point of view.

  Regardless, there is no doubt that Braun’s testimony changed the stakes. The defense has thrown a good dose of reasonable doubt on every aspect of the prosecution’s case. Braun’s testimony has severely damaged
the prosecution’s forensic evidence. Now more than ever, K needs to return to the stand.

  Today in court, Dale Quinn asked Judge Shaw to set a deadline. He said it can’t drag out much longer. Here are his exact words: “Every day that passes without me being able to test the complainant’s evidence through cross-examination hurts my client’s chances of a fair trial. Her unchallenged testimony gets further embedded in the jury’s minds. I believe the defense has been patient, but we need a date. When will she testify?”

  Judge Shaw fidgeted with his reading glasses, evidently just as perturbed by the delay. “This is a sexual assault case. I have some latitude to give the complainant time. However,” he said, turning toward Alkins, “the court’s patience in this matter is not endless.”

  “She is a young girl going through a very bad time,” said Alkins. “I urge the court to be sympathetic and patient. We are very close.”

  Quinn’s chair scraped the floor as he pushed it back and rose to his feet. “I couldn’t be more sympathetic about the complainant’s emotional troubles,” he said. “But it can’t be at the detriment of my client’s rights under the law. Our inability to cross-examine her severely damages my client’s constitutional right to a fair trial. I can cite dozens of cases.”

  Judge Shaw leaned forward in his seat and snapped into the microphone, “I am aware of the Constitution, Counselor, and the relevant case law.”

  Judge Shaw’s eyes flashed with anger at his being put in such an awkward position. He turned to Alkins and told him in no uncertain terms that he expected K to be in court on Monday, ready to testify. He said the upcoming weekend should give K’s parents and doctors enough time to get her ready for the stand.