The Night Swim(23)
Rachel was sweating by the time she jogged up the stairs into the air-conditioned coolness of the white, classical City Hall building. It was the first real exercise she’d had since arriving in Neapolis. She saw an information map on the wall by the entrance and followed the directions down to the basement, where the archive office was located at the end of a long windowless corridor.
A slender man with gray hair looked up from his computer screen as Rachel entered the austere office. Beyond him were tables with old-fashioned equipment for viewing microfilm.
“I’m looking for old newspaper clippings from the Neapolis Gazette,” Rachel told him, still standing even though he motioned to her to sit down. She was in a rush and standing would give some urgency to her request.
“We have newspaper records going back over a century,” he said. “You need to make an application to access the original copies in the archive. It takes a week to get permission. Or if you like, you can look at microfilm copies without an appointment. What period are you looking for?”
“Summer of ’92,” she said.
“In that case, you’ll have to go through the microfilm. Those records haven’t been scanned yet into our digital system.”
“How do I access the microfilm?” Rachel asked.
“We’re closing soon. It would be better if you come on Friday when we’re next open. That way you’ll have time to go through them properly,” he said, making no effort to hide his irritation at her last-minute arrival.
“Today’s the only day I have,” said Rachel, glancing at the wall clock. There were forty minutes left until the archive closed. “There’s still time for me to find what I’m looking for,” Rachel insisted.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “What dates do you want?”
“June to December of ’92.”
The archivist turned on an old-fashioned microfilm machine and went through a catalog of slides with a slowness that Rachel found excruciating as she kept an eye on the wall clock. Eventually, he found the slides in question and loaded them into the machine.
Rachel used the toggles of the machine to skim read the daily editions of the Neapolis Gazette. She found a number of articles about two local boys who’d been killed in a car accident that summer. There were no articles about Jenny Stills’s death until Rachel stumbled across a brief paragraph on an inside page in a local news summary section. It was so small she almost missed it:
NEAPOLIS TEENAGER DROWNS NEAR JETTY
A 16-year-old girl drowned at the Morrison’s Point beach yesterday. She was taken to Neapolis General Hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead on arrival. The victim’s name has not yet been released. The beach was closed following the incident. It has since reopened. Police are urging swimmers to show caution in the water.
Rachel’s suspicion that the drowned girl was Jenny Stills was confirmed in a newspaper article published a few days later. It too was buried in an inside page in the newspaper:
A local teenage girl who drowned at the Morrison’s Point beach has been identified as Jenny Eliza Stills. Police say the girl hit her head on rocks when she jumped off the jetty while swimming at night. Funeral details have not been released by the family. Police and city officials are urging teenagers not to swim near the jetty at Morrison’s Point.
Rachel could find nothing else on Jenny’s death. There were several more updates on the two boys involved in the fatal car crash. Both boys were from obviously prominent families and the coverage, eulogies, and obituary notices on their deaths were extensive. There were also several updates on the condition of an unnamed third boy, believed to be the driver, who was fighting for his life in intensive care. There was nothing more on the drowned girl.
Rachel’s attention was briefly caught by a photograph from a candlelit memorial service, held a week after the fatal car accident. It was on the front page of the newspaper under a headline that said: NEAPOLIS MOURNS. Rachel squinted at a hazy black-and-white photo of the police chief, Russ Moore, standing on a podium beside the mayor. The police chief held his arms ramrod straight and stuck out his chest during what the photo caption described as a moment of silence for the two dead boys. One of the boys was the mayor’s nephew. The other was the only son of a prominent businessman in the town.
Police Chief Moore seemed larger than life, a powerful presence that overshadowed the gray-haired mayor standing alongside him in the photo. In another photo, Rachel recognized a young Dan Moore, his arm in a sling, with his dad.
Rachel toggled through the news clippings faster and faster, aware that she was running out of time. She was disappointed there was no more information on Jenny Stills beyond those two small articles.
The archivist was making a big performance of shutting down the office, noisily turning off the other machines and packing his briefcase. Rachel was not so obtuse that she didn’t realize it was his way of telling her to hurry up. She ignored him and kept toggling through articles, determined to eke out every second that she had left until the archive closed. She was glad that she did when she found an article in a newspaper later that year.
CASE CLOSED ON NEAPOLIS DROWNING
A teenage girl who was found dead in the water at Morrison’s Point last summer died from accidental drowning after jumping off the jetty and hitting rocks, said the medical examiner’s office, which officially closed the case yesterday.