by Megan Goldin
Judge Shaw didn’t say what would happen if K wasn’t on the stand on Monday, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. If, by Monday morning, K isn’t in court testifying, then Scott Blair will likely walk free. Whether he can rebuild his reputation and relaunch his champion swimming career is a different matter. But freedom he shall have.
I’ve been watching Mitch Alkins closely throughout this trial. He keeps his cool. He never shows his emotions. But today in court, he looked as if he knew that his case hung by a tenuous thread.
In his only statements to the media, when Scott Blair was first charged, Mitch Alkins said this case was an important step toward showing women that their right to say no is inviolable.
What message will it send if Scott Blair is acquitted? I tried to ask Mitch Alkins that question in the hall outside the courtroom after today’s session. I didn’t get an answer. He pushed past me and headed to his office, where I hear his team is in crisis mode. The case seems to be slipping away from him.
I drove past K’s house today. The blinds were down. There was a big sign on the lawn telling people it was private property and asking them to stay away. It is heartbreaking to think about what K and her family are going through as she decides whether she has the strength to endure a grueling cross-examination by Dale Quinn. Her parents would be well aware of the terrible implications of her decision. Put simply, if K doesn’t take the stand, then the trial is over and Scott Blair wins.
This is Rachel Krall for Guilty or Not Guilty, the podcast that puts you in the jury box.
45
Rachel
Rachel gave her breakfast order to the waitress without looking at the menu. She’d been staying at the hotel long enough to know the options by heart. She drank a mug of coffee while reading the Saturday edition of the Neapolis Gazette, which she’d taken from a newspaper rack in the lobby.
The front page featured an enormous photograph of Scott Blair being hauled out of the Olympic-sized swimming pool on the day that he was arrested. His muscular arms were cuffed behind his back. He wore his stars-and-stripes Speedo and a matching swimming cap. Drops of water ran down his skin.
The headline said: “Blair Trial May End on Monday.” Rachel didn’t have to read the article to know its point. Without Kelly’s testimony, Scott would be free.
“Good morning, Rachel.”
Detective Cooper’s blond stubble looked darker in the atmospheric lighting of the hotel cafe. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a sports jacket zipped over it. He sat opposite Rachel without asking, just as the waitress arrived with her glass of orange juice and acai bowl.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” said Rachel. “Scott Blair is about to get off. Surely, the entire police department is out looking for evidence to save the day.”
“It only works that way on television. The sex-crimes unit investigated this case for months and they already handed over whatever evidence they could find. The case rests on Kelly Moore.”
“It shouldn’t have to rest on whether a teenage girl will allow herself to be traumatized and humiliated again on the stand,” Rachel argued.
“Unfortunately,” said Detective Cooper softly, “that’s how the system works.” He called over a waitress and gave his order of eggs, over easy, on whole-wheat toast with a coffee.
“Mitch Alkins would like to meet you,” he said when the waitress had gone.
“So he sent you to bring me to him?”
“He knows that on Saturday mornings I’m out early checking my boat, which is docked in the marina right across the road from your hotel. He asked me last night if I’d stop by and see if you’re still interested in talking to him.”
“How does Mitch Alkins know so much about your weekend sailing routine?” Rachel asked, her eyes focused on his as she took another sip of coffee.
“Before this town became a glorified retirement village, it was small enough that just about everyone knew everyone. As it happens, Mitch is also my cousin,” he said. “And he’s a late riser. I’ll check if he’s ready to see you. That is, if you’re okay to meet him?”
Rachel nodded. She’d been wanting to talk to Mitch Alkins for days. She was hardly going to pass up the opportunity.
While Detective Cooper ate his breakfast, Rachel checked her phone for messages from Pete. He texted her to say there were over eight hundred emails in the podcast inbox following the latest episode. If there was any message from Hannah, he’d let her know straightaway, but he warned that it would take time for him to trawl through them all.
Cooper’s phone beeped as the waitress cleared away the dishes. He read the text, looking up at Rachel cryptically.
“Mitch is up early after all,” he said. “He says we should come now. My car is parked across the road at the marina. I’ll drive you there.”
They drove through the light Saturday morning traffic. Detective Cooper’s left elbow rested casually on his open window. His golden hair was tousled by the wind. Rachel could see the shadow of a gun in a shoulder holster inside his gaping jacket.
“I thought Alkins would be at his office,” said Rachel in surprise when she noticed they were driving out of the city limits and into a rural area to the north of Neapolis.
“Didn’t I mention that he’s working from his home?” said Detective Cooper. His voice was strangely contemplative. “It’s not much further.”
They drove past a strip of luxury homes on the gated estate where the Blair family home was located in its own compound. There was extra security detail at the entrance. Rachel presumed it was to keep away the protesters who jeered at Scott Blair every day when he came into court.
Detective Cooper veered off the main road five miles later. He turned down a narrow road filled with potholes that ran inland around a peninsula. At one point, the road came close enough to the cliff that Rachel could see waves crashing against boulders in the ocean as they drove by. The area was wild and uninhabited. It was hard to imagine anyone living there—let alone Mitch Alkins. Rachel shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She eyed her door. It was locked. The window was shut, too. It was all operated by the central locking system on the driver’s control panel.
Rachel became even more unsettled a few miles later as they took the right fork of a gravel road that cut through a dense forested area. The bumpy road was so narrow that bushes brushed against the car. The road finally widened to reveal a Jeep parked in a small clearing.
“Where are we?” Rachel asked hesitantly as she climbed out of the car into the silent solitariness of the remote scrub.
“Follow me,” Detective Cooper said, leading her down a crude path hewn between overgrown bushes. Rachel swallowed hard, trying not to show how vulnerable she felt being taken to such an unexpectedly isolated place. As she walked through the brush, she thought to herself that it felt like a place where the Mafia would take someone to execute them and dump the body in a shallow grave. Rachel stopped walking the moment she saw the view between the gap in the trees.
Below them was a breathtaking beach in its own cove. Overlooking it was a house made of timber and mirrored glass that reflected its surroundings of ocean and forest.
“That’s Mitch’s house,” said Detective Cooper. He walked down the sloping pathway toward the house perched on the edge of a cliff. Rachel followed behind.
Mitch Alkins was standing by the steel rails on the balcony, looking out to sea. He wore jeans and a navy button-down shirt that flapped in the wind.
“I’m not supposed to talk with journalists about the trial,” Alkins told Rachel when she reached him. “The last thing I need is to be accused of colluding with an influential podcaster. So I’m not talking with you. This conversation isn’t happening. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely,” she said, turning around to look for Detective Cooper. Through the enormous glass windows of the house, she could see him walking through the minimalist living room down a floating staircase until he disappeared out of sight.
>
“You’ve been trying to talk to me for days. What did you want to discuss?” Alkins asked, his eyes fixed out on the blue expanse of sea.
“Jenny Stills. Do you remember her?”
“Of course I remember her,” he said. “Jenny was my first crush.”
“How old were you then?” she asked.
“I must have been around fourteen, fifteen. Jenny was two years below me at school. I spent what felt like years trying to pluck up the courage to talk with her. Eventually I did. We became friendly. Sometimes we’d hang out together at the beach. I still didn’t have the courage to ask her out, though.”
“What happened to Jenny the summer she died?” Rachel asked.
She found herself staring at her own reflection in the lenses of Alkins’s sunglasses as he turned away from the view to face her. He looked angry at her impertinence, but there was another emotion on his face. Rachel’s throat tightened in fear as it dawned on her that it was guilt.
“I know that you leave flowers for her every year. Asking her to forgive you,” Rachel said. “What terrible thing did you do all those years ago that you want Jenny to forgive?”
“You’re asking if I killed Jenny?”
Rachel swallowed hard and nodded. Mitch Alkins was a formidable man at the best of times. A man who was never lost for words. His stormy expression told Rachel that she had one hell of a nerve interrogating him. Yet he said nothing as he turned away and stared out to sea.
“Did you hurt Jenny Stills?” Rachel prompted.
“The answer is yes,” he admitted finally. “I did hurt Jenny.”
Rachel’s heart pounded as she realized that she was in perilous territory. She looked down at the precipice, more aware than ever before of the steep drop from the balcony where she stood to the bottom of the cliff.
“We had the beginning of something beautiful and I destroyed it with my stupidity. I heard rumors that she was sleeping around. That she’d sleep with any boy who asked her. So I figured I’d try my luck. It wasn’t rape. It didn’t get that far. But I think my one-track mind that night devastated her, nevertheless. Does that answer your question?”
Rachel nodded. Her mouth was dry. “You’re the boy that she met at the beach that summer. You took her out on a date. Pizza, I think.”
“Yes,” he said. “How do you know about that?”
“Hannah, her sister, wrote about it in a letter that she sent me. She didn’t know your name, but she clearly remembered the night you came to take Jenny on a date. She says you brought a bunch of wildflowers to give Jenny, but you were embarrassed and dropped the flowers on the ground before you went inside.”
“I was stupid and selfish and so influenced by rumors and my own hormones that I didn’t realize I was destroying something precious. Maybe I broke Jenny’s heart that night. But I never hurt her physically.”
“So who did it?” Rachel asked. “Who killed Jenny Stills?”
“They said she drowned herself,” said Alkins.
“Do you really believe that?”
“There was no reason to doubt it. Anyway, I wasn’t here when she died. I was so disgusted with myself and the way that I’d treated Jenny that I went to stay with my granddad up north before starting college,” he said. “Why are you so interested in Jenny Stills? That was a lifetime ago.”
“I think that Jenny was murdered,” said Rachel. “And I may have some evidence. I need your help. I need a copy of Jenny’s autopsy report and I’d like to speak to the cops who handled the investigation. I don’t have access to that information. You do.”
“I’ll make some calls and get you whatever information you need,” he said. “If it’s true that Jenny Stills was killed then I’ll reopen the case. I let her down once. I won’t do it again.”
On the beach below, Detective Cooper was scrambling over rocks as he walked to a short pier where a motorboat was tethered. He jumped into the boat, released the ropes, and turned on the engine. They watched in silence as he steered the boat into the sea, bouncing so high off incoming waves that it looked as if he might get airborne.
“The coast here is deceptive,” Alkins murmured as he watched the motorboat cutting through the water. “One minute, it looks placid. The next, a storm sweeps in. People die in the water around here all the time. The coastline is a graveyard of sunken ships and memorials to the dead. Us locals learn from the time we’re young to read the mood of the ocean, but even we get it wrong sometimes.”
“I keep forgetting that you grew up here,” said Rachel. “Are you enjoying being back?”
“I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ is the right word. It’s where I belong. I always intended to come back someday, but I ended up doing it sooner than I’d planned.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s certainly a strange career change,” said Rachel. “You were a highly sought-after defense attorney. You were making a fortune. Why make the switch and become a prosecutor and then move back to what is really a backwater town?”
“Because I sleep better at night,” answered Alkins as he watched his cousin stop the motorboat and lean over the side to check a net in the water. “Nick’s checking some lines. He’ll return in a few minutes and take you back to your hotel. I have to get on with my work for the trial next week.”
“The trial might end on Monday,” Rachel reminded him.
“I’m hoping that Kelly will come through. Otherwise”—he sighed—“you may well be right.”
“So you think that Scott might get acquitted, too,” said Rachel, reading between the lines of his comment. “If Scott Blair gets off unpunished, it would be devastating for Kelly.”
“For Kelly and for many other rape victims,” Alkins said. “There’s not a lot I can do. We need her testimony. Without it, we don’t have much of a case.”
His voice sounded exhausted, yet there was also a thread of steely determination that suggested he wouldn’t give up so easily. He turned to face her. “I asked Nick to bring you here because I have a favor to ask,” he said. “I spent most of last evening at the Moores’ home, trying to get Kelly’s parents to understand that without their daughter’s testimony, the case is lost. Except I couldn’t get through to them. They’re completely unrealistic about our chances of winning without Kelly’s testimony. They told me they’re confident the jury will convict regardless of whether Kelly testifies.”
“I don’t see how the jury will convict if Kelly’s evidence is thrown out,” said Rachel.
“Precisely,” Alkins responded. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. It might carry more weight if they hear it from someone without any stick in all of this. An outsider,” he told Rachel. “You’re influential. I gather Dan Moore is a fan of your podcast. Maybe they’ll listen to you.”
Rachel looked up at Alkins. Her eyes searched his face to see whether he was serious. All she could see was her own face in the dark lenses of his aviator sunglasses. As if realizing that she needed confirmation, he took the sunglasses off and leaned against the steel railings so he could look directly at her. “If you think Scott Blair is guilty and deserves to be punished then talk to Kelly’s parents, Rachel. Convince them to let their daughter return to the stand.”
“I shouldn’t get involved.…” Rachel hesitated. “I’m supposed to be a neutral bystander.”
“All I can do is ask you,” he said. “Ultimately, the decision is up to you. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my life, it’s that a good person’s conscience usually leads them to do the right thing.”
“I’m not making any promises,” said Rachel carefully. “But I will think about it.”
“I’m not asking for promises,” he said. They could hear the rising roar of the speedboat engine as Cooper steered the boat back to shore over the choppy waves.
“I want to make one thing clear,” he said as his cousin pulled the boat up to the rickety jetty and tied the ropes. “Unlike Dan Moore, I’m not a fan of your podcast. I don’t understand people’s
fascination with other people’s tragedies. It’s modern-day rubbernecking. Ghoulish. Podcasts like yours feed that obsession. If I’d had my way, Judge Shaw would have never allowed you to cover the trial,” he said. “I want you to know that, because even if you do get Dan and Christine Moore to listen to you, I will still be on your case. I don’t do quid pro quo.”
Rachel appreciated Mitch Alkins’s honesty. At least she knew where she stood. Down on the beach, Cooper was looking up at them as if asking Alkins’s permission to return. Alkins inclined his head slightly and Cooper then crossed the beach and traversed the steep path back to the house.
Detective Cooper drove Rachel to town the way they’d come, along the scenic coastal road. This time, he drove at a leisurely pace, slowing to point out panoramic views and points of interest. As they reached the outskirts of town, Rachel’s phone beeped. It was a text message from Pete to let her know that Hannah had sent another email.
46
Hannah
Dear Rachel,
It’s hard to put into words what happened that night. I’ve never written it down or told a single person. All my adult life, I’ve tried to forget. The memories inevitably return. Always at the worst possible time, when something good is happening in my life. Sometimes the pain of remembering is so bad that I consider giving up. Letting myself slip away.
I still remember seeing the forest floor sway unsteadily under my bare feet as I was carried away from the clearing, from Jenny, trapped in the steel grip of a stranger. I couldn’t scream or call for help. There was nobody there to hear my calls. Nobody who could save Jenny, or me.
I heard drunken laughter. Nasty and cruel. Someone threw a beer bottle against a tree trunk. It shattered. Laughter followed. More bottles broke as they turned it into a game. And then pitiful cries. It was Jenny. They were hurting her. There wasn’t a thing that I could do to stop it as I was carried across the forest like a rag doll, my feet dancing helplessly in the air.
