The Night Swim(21)

“Who’s this?” she croaked.

“It’s Pete.”

“Pete? Why’re you calling me in the middle of the night?” she asked, her eyes still closed.

“It’s morning, Rach,” said Pete. “You asked me to wake you early so you could go for a run. Remember?”

Rachel opened her eyes and peeped out of the covers. Bands of bright sunlight at the edges of the drapes indicated it was well into morning.

“So it is,” she said. “I’m so exhausted. I fell asleep at three A.M.”

Rachel sat up and rested her head on a pile of pillows. The green fluorescent numbers of the clock radio told her it was three minutes before seven in the morning. She’d slept for four hours.

“How did it go with Dan Moore?” Pete asked.

“Not sure.” She yawned. “He was reluctant to talk about anything that might come up in court. He mostly told me what happened when he and his wife found out that Kelly was missing.”

“Why make you meet with him in the middle of the night if he wasn’t going to dish dirt?”

“Don’t know. What I do know is that he made me park a block away and sneak into his house after his wife had gone to sleep. He said he didn’t want her or the prosecutors to find out that he was talking to me. I don’t know why anyone would care. It’s not like he told me that much. In fact, he was very—” She heard a murmur of voices over the phone line.

“Rach, my surgeon just arrived for ward rounds. I’ll call you back as soon as he leaves.”

Rachel stifled a yawn and the overwhelming desire to return to sleep. Instead, she rolled out of bed and had a hot shower to wake up while she waited for Pete to call back. She dressed and was pulling open the drapes when her cell phone rang.

“What did the surgeon say?” Rachel asked.

“I need to stay until the end of the week. Between you and me, I’m thinking of staging a prison break. I am so over it,” he said, his lighthearted tone not quite hiding his despondence. “Tell me what Dan Moore said.”

“I’ll do one better. I’ll read you his quotes. Verbatim,” said Rachel, taking out her notebook and sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed as she turned to the first page.



* * *



“‘We were driving up to Norfolk to see John, my son. He’s an ensign in the navy. His base was open for family visits that Sunday. We stopped at Lexi’s house to get Kelly. Since Kelly wasn’t answering her phone, I went inside to get her.

“‘It was obvious there had been a party. There were yellow trash bags overflowing with beer cans piled up by the garage doors. Someone had thrown up in a garden bed. I was surprised Lexi’s parents allowed a party, because they’d only moved into that house a few months earlier. No adult in their right mind would knowingly let their kid throw a party in a brand-new house. It made me immediately suspicious.’”

Rachel climbed off the bed and turned on the kettle. She tore a coffee packet with her teeth and poured the freeze-dried granules into her mug while she read.

“‘The front door was off the latch. I pushed it open. Two teenagers were sleeping in the living room. One was lying on a sofa, fully clothed in jeans and boots. Another was curled under a coffee table with a jacket thrown over his, or her, head. Popcorn and chip crumbs were ground into the carpet.

“‘I followed the sound of vacuuming to the dining room, where I found Lexi. Her makeup was smeared and she was wearing lounge pants and an oversized gray T-shirt. Her feet were bare. There was a wine stain on the carpet near the dinner table. I glanced at it. She blushed like she’d been caught red-handed.

“‘She said it wasn’t her fault. That they’d come uninvited and she couldn’t get rid of them. It sounded to me as if she’d been practicing her excuse for most of the night. I asked her to tell Kelly to come downstairs. She looked at me as if I was crazy. She said something like, “Kelly?” And I said, sort of sarcastically, “Yeah, Kelly, my daughter. Don’t tell me she’s still asleep?” Lexi looked confused. She told me that Kelly wasn’t there. That she’d gone home the night before.’”

Rachel paused to pour boiling water into her mug. She added creamer and sugar and stirred as she remembered the pain in Dan Moore’s voice as he struggled to find words to explain what had happened on the morning his family’s charmed life changed for good.

“‘I panicked,’” Rachel continued reading to Pete. “‘We hadn’t seen any sign of Kelly coming home. Usually she leaves lights on, or dishes in the kitchen. She always leaves her keys on the hall table. Her keys weren’t there. The house had been exactly as we’d left it when we went to sleep the night before. I asked Lexi how Kelly got home. That’s when she got real weird. Swallowed. Went pale. I could tell that she felt guilty about something.

“‘Lexi rambled about how she’d heard from other people that Kelly and some kid from school, Harris, left the party on foot. I asked Lexi which direction they’d walked. At first she shrugged and then she said she guessed they took the shortcut through the field. She said that’s the way Kelly had arrived. Lexi opened the hall closet and gave me Kelly’s bag.

“‘When I saw that Kelly had left behind her backpack with her things and her phone, I knew that Lexi had thrown her out. Kelly would have called me to pick her up if she’d had her phone. I never liked Lexi much. That girl has a vicious streak a mile wide.’”