The Night Swim(16)
When Lexi ran out of insults, she went inside, locked the glass sliding door, gave K the finger, and for added measure pulled down the blinds. K was alone in the dark in Lexi’s backyard. It was cold out. Her jacket was inside, along with her backpack and her cell phone.
K walked around the house to the driveway, where she waited to catch a ride home with someone leaving the party. Nobody left. She stood in the cold as people gawped and laughed at her through the living room windows. Lexi moved among the onlookers, whispering her version of what had happened.
K was too proud to beg Lexi to let her in, or to ask someone to call her parents and deal with their questions when they picked her up. She’d get home by herself. She walked down the street toward the path she’d taken that afternoon. This time, it wasn’t dusk. It was nearly midnight. More dangerous than ever.
It’s a calculation women make all the time. Cat Girl, whom I mentioned in Episode 1, had to make the calculation, too. Should she walk home from the bar, or take a taxi? Should she cut through the park, or take the long way around? Should she speed-dial nine-one-one when she thought someone was following her? Should she …
Well, you could go on endlessly. Women, girls, we make these decisions all the time. Convenience versus safety.
Most of the time things work out fine.
Occasionally something terrible happens.
I’m Rachel Krall. This is Guilty or Not Guilty, the podcast that puts you in the jury box.
11
Rachel
Neapolis’s old cemetery looked more like a secret garden than a burial ground. It was surrounded by black cast-iron fences choked by overgrown ivy. As Rachel pulled her car into the empty parking lot, she knew it wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done, taking the bait and turning up at the cemetery first thing in the morning. Curiosity was Rachel’s kryptonite. Always had been. Always would be.
Her mother used to warn her that her curious streak would get her into trouble one day. She was wrong about only one thing: it had done so not once but many times over the years. It was also the secret of Rachel’s success.
It was Rachel’s inquisitive nature that drew her to journalism, and it was her indefatigable curiosity that pushed her to investigate the case of a teacher jailed for murdering his wife on their second honeymoon. Rachel found new witnesses who were never contacted by police, and other evidence that strongly indicated the husband, a well-loved high school coach, had been wrongly convicted.
She turned it into the first season of her podcast. It brought her to national prominence and revived her flagging career just as she was contemplating quitting journalism and finding what she jokingly called a real job. It also caused a torrent of hate mail from people convinced she had helped a murderer go free when his conviction was vacated and he was allowed home pending a retrial.
That was why Pete was so concerned for her safety. He would have had a fit if he’d known she was at the graveyard alone. Going there was potentially reckless, Rachel granted as she turned the handle of the gate to enter the cemetery. But she couldn’t bring herself to stay away.
The gate creaked as Rachel pushed it open. She paused, still holding on to the handle as she surveyed shadowy tombstones covered with creepers. They gave the impression the cemetery was more alive than dead.
A sudden rustle of leaves startled her. The gate slipped out of her grasp, slamming shut behind her with a clang that sent birds flying into the overcast sky. Their panicked wings mimicked Rachel’s quickening heartbeat as she moved deeper into the cemetery. Tree branches interlocked into thick canopies, giving the place a dark soulfulness that might have been quaint under different circumstances.
The map flapped in her hands from the wind as Rachel walked along the cracked, cobbled path, trying to get her bearings. The crumbling ivy-covered gravestones were arranged in no particular order. The plots had been dug randomly in past centuries, before the practice of arranging the dead in neat, parallel rows. In the old days, the dead were buried in whatever patches of soil were softest and easiest to dig out. As a result, the cobbled path meandered unpredictably into a series of dead ends. Rachel had to retrace her footsteps more than once.
The map listed a trail of notable graves, all marked with numbers that corresponded to a short historical description. Among them was the grave of an eighteenth-century cabin boy who served on the pirate Blackbeard’s ship and was captured and executed for piracy. He was buried in a rum barrel in lieu of a coffin.
Farther along were graves of local figures, a senator, a nineteenth-century industrialist, and a cousin of the Wright brothers who’d invested in the aviators’ early aeronautical adventures. There was also a section from the Civil War that included the graves of eleven members of an all-black battalion of Union soldiers.
Rachel found a path that took her through a row of sycamore trees into the new section of the cemetery. It was a bleak stretch of identical rows of headstones, vastly different from the historic graveyard. The lawn was neatly mowed. The headstones were machine carved. There were no creepers, or overhanging oaks. It was orderly and sterile.
Wilting wreaths and flower arrangements lying on graves reminded Rachel that these deaths were still mourned by loved ones. A weathered teddy bear was propped on the grave of a stillborn child. A rusty train engine was perched on the tombstone of a young boy, its red paint peeling. The sky rumbled. Rachel looked up. Dark clouds were rolling in like waves about to crash.