The Night Swim(20)

“So you knew Alkins growing up?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, sure. We were in the same grade at school. Then he went off to Georgetown and became a hotshot defense attorney. Made a lot of money and a big name for himself. Now he’s back here as DA. Said he missed the old place. Gave it all up to come home.”

Rachel knew Mitch Alkins by reputation only. He had been a gun-for-hire defense attorney whose client list read like a “Who’s Who” of scumbags. All rich. They had to be, to pay his fees. Nobody else could afford him. Then about three years ago, he threw it all in, returned to his hometown, and left criminal defense law to become a prosecutor.

“You don’t find it strange that Mitchell Alkins is prosecuting a rape case after spending most of his career defending some of the most savage rapists and murderers imaginable?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t rightly know why Mitch became a prosecutor. I don’t care, either. He is back on the side of good. If anyone is going to get a conviction in this case, it’s Mitch. He’s the best of the best. I’ve known him since we were this high.” He held his hand up to knee level.

“Does everyone know each other here?”

“Not everyone. Newcomers have been pouring in over the past few years. But sure, those of us who grew up here and whose parents grew up here know each other. More than we would like sometimes.”

“The defendant’s father grew up here, too. Greg Blair. Did you know him as a kid?” Rachel asked. The question prompted an awkward silence from Dan Moore.

“Greg and I were friends when we were young,” he answered stiffly. “We grew up to be very different people. We haven’t been friends for a long time. He tried to contact me after it happened. I think he wanted me to ask the police to back off so we could sort it out between us. I don’t know what he was expecting, that Scott could apologize to Kelly for what he did? That all would be forgotten? I told him where he could shove it.”

“You both went to Neapolis High?”

“In those days there was only one high school. Even Judge Shaw went there. He was four years ahead. I never knew him except to say ‘hi.’ You look shocked.” He laughed, taking in Rachel’s surprised expression. “Go ahead and say it: this town is inbred. No doubt about it.”

“What was Alkins’s reputation like at school?” Rachel asked.

“Even at school, Mitch was intimidating. He was smart as a whip with a gilded tongue to boot. That is a lethal combination. He will get a guilty verdict,” he assured Rachel. “Strange how life brings old friends back together. Before this trial, we hadn’t been in touch since school. That’s a good twenty-five years ago. I graduated in ’92.”

Rachel thought back to Jenny Stills’s gravestone in the cemetery. The summer of ’92 was the summer that Jenny Stills had died. It was a small enough town in those days that her death was surely ingrained in the memories of her schoolmates. Or maybe not? Rachel figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“When you were at school, did you know a girl called Jenny Stills? She was probably a sophomore when you graduated.”

“Jenny Stills?” He paused, deep in thought. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “School was a long time ago. I don’t remember a lot of people. Why are you asking?”

“She died the summer you would have graduated. I thought maybe you know what happened.”

“I wasn’t around that summer. Left for vacation not long after graduation. By August, I was in the navy. Boot camp. They ran us so hard I don’t remember anything other than the pain.”

By the time they were finished talking, it was well after midnight. Dan offered to walk Rachel to the car, but she refused. Rachel wouldn’t be cowed. It was a promise that she’d made to herself years earlier when the cops told all the girls in the neighborhood not to walk around at night after Cat Girl had been viciously raped and strangled near her apartment.

Rachel had decided then that she would not be intimidated. Not by anything. Or anyone. Certainly not by the dark.

Dan let her out through the front door, turning on the porch light as he watched her navigate down the garden pathway. As she reached the street, she heard the door close and the metallic click of a bolt. Leaves scraped against the asphalt in the light breeze as Rachel walked into a cloak of darkness, down the deserted street toward her car.

After she turned the corner, she heard footsteps behind her. It sounded as if she was being followed. When she turned around, she saw nothing but shadows. She walked faster. More footsteps. She wondered if they were her own and she was scaring herself.

She crossed the road on a diagonal and clicked her keys to unlock her car. It beeped and the lights turned on. Rachel jumped inside and drove back to the hotel.





14



Rachel


Rachel didn’t so much as twitch when her cell phone first rang. Eventually, the familiar ring tone registered somewhere in her exhausted brain. She reached out her hand from under the covers and turned off the phone without waking. She buried her head under a white pillow and sank back into a heavy sleep.

The old-fashioned peal of her hotel room phone rudely woke her a few minutes later. Rachel jerked the phone console toward her. It toppled onto the bed as she randomly pressed buttons with her eyes closed. All she wanted to do was shut the thing up and go back to sleep. When nothing worked and the insistent ringing continued, she pulled the phone under the covers.