The Night Swim(11)

Before the relatively recent population spike, Neapolis was your classic small town. Everyone knew everyone. In fact, it still has that small-town vibe. The town is on a weather-beaten stretch of North Carolina coast. It gets pummeled by storms, and occasionally by hurricanes. Cartographers can never properly chart the coastline. It changes every year.

The locals love their water sports: fishing, sailing, windsurfing, and sea kayaking. There are shipwrecks along the coast for scuba divers, and a golf course for those who prefer to keep their feet on dry land.

Despite its beautiful beaches and laid-back atmosphere, Neapolis hasn’t taken off in a big way with vacationers. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because it’s never been able to shake off its blue-collar roots. Or maybe it’s because it’s hard to get here. There’s no commercial airport nearby. No train. It’s at the end of a dead-end offshoot that is itself an offshoot of Interstate Ninety-five.

There’s a decent-size hospital. A courthouse and a local paper, the Neapolis Gazette. Flip through its pages and it quickly becomes apparent that the political bent here is more red than blue.

Local cuisine? I’ll have to get back to you on that one, but I’ve been told the crabs around here are something special.

They have a languid way of talking in these parts. As if they have all the time in the world. Which they sort of do, because the rat race feels very far away. Neapolis is surrounded by national parks, a marine reserve, and some expansive beaches. The locals say they’re the prettiest beaches anywhere. From what I’ve seen so far, they could well be right.

Speaking of sweeping landscapes, you’ve probably heard background noise behind me as I talk. I’m not in the studio right now. Maybe you can figure out where I am?

I’ll hold out the microphone so you can hear the ambient noise. Listen real hard.

Can you hear it?

It’s loud. Right?

There’s a definite whoosh. Like a waterfall.

Except there’s no water here.

I’m actually in the middle of a barren field of long wild grass. That whoosh you hear is grass swaying in the wind. We forget how loud nature can be when there are no car engines to mask the magical sound of a windblown field.

I want you to hear the rustling of wild grass because I want you to hear what K heard when she walked through this very field on that fateful night.

K is the name of the victim—sorry, alleged victim—in the case we will be following this season. This podcast follows accepted practice by media outlets to withhold the names of victims of sexual assault. So I won’t be using her real name in the podcasts. We’re going to refer to her as K.

It was a Saturday afternoon. Nearly dusk. The sun was low and the light was ebbing. It was fall. The field I am walking through right now was burnished in rusts and dark autumn gold. Running along the side of the field is a row of dark green fir trees that give it a forbidding air reminiscent of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

You’re probably wondering what brought a sixteen-year-old girl to a desolate field close to nightfall. It was something very simple that I bet happened to you all at least once in your lives: she missed her bus.

K was heading to her best friend Lexi’s house for a sleepover. By the time she reached the bus stop, the bus had gone. Happens to the best of us, right? So K walked.

She had two choices. She could walk along the main road. It would take three-quarters of an hour. Or she could cut through this field. It would take fifteen, twenty minutes tops. She chose the narrow track where I’m walking right now. You can probably hear my feet crunch on the dirt as I walk down the path.

Let me describe where I am right now. On each side of the path is tall wild grass that reaches my waist. Maybe even higher. I’m just short of five foot eight, so that grass is pretty darn tall.

If I spin around and look in every direction, all I see is long burnished grass and the forest beyond. There’s no sign of civilization. No houses. No roads. It feels stark and desolate in a way that kind of makes me nervous. I suspect K felt the same way.

I have no reason to be scared. I’m here in the afternoon. The sun is shining, and my producer, Pete, who’s in the hospital recovering from a car accident, is on speed dial.

That’s not how it was for K. She was here at dusk. Alone. Nobody knew she’d come this way.

Slung over K’s shoulder was a backpack, heavy from the weight of beer bottles she’d brought from home. Her parents were out, so she scrawled a note explaining that she was sleeping at Lexi’s house. She left it under a magnet on the kitchen fridge.

What K didn’t mention in the note was that Lexi’s parents were away until the following evening. They’d left Lexi’s twenty-year-old brother, Miles, in charge. He told Lexi he was out for the night and that she’d better invite a friend to keep her company. That’s why Lexi invited K.

Through a series of texts between the two girls over the course of the afternoon, they decided they would throw a party. Nothing crazy. A dozen friends. Music. Beer. Maybe they’d all chip in money and order pizza. K was rushing to Lexi’s house to get ready for the party when she took this shortcut.

I wonder if she found it menacing?

I do. I saw a discarded crack pipe earlier. Right near me is an empty liquor bottle tossed on the path. It says a lot about the kinds of people who hang out here. At some point, K would have felt vulnerable. Perhaps she sped up. Moved from a fast walk to a jog. Maybe even a sprint. The beer bottles in her backpack would have rattled loudly as she ran down the lone field, pursued by the wind.