The Night Swim(63)

“You’re Rick? You used to own the gas station on the Old Mill Road?” Rachel asked.

“What do you want?” Rick snapped.

“Do you remember Jenny and Hannah Stills?”

He shrugged. “There were hundreds of kids who came into my store, stealing when I wasn’t looking and tracking in mud. And sand. I never knew their names. Never wanted to know.” He closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Rachel could tell from the tautness of his body that he was awake.

“I gave you their names. I never said they were kids,” Rachel said carefully. His eyes opened at being caught out.

“I know you know them,” said Rachel. “What will it take for you to tell me what you remember?”

“Fish burger and fries,” he said, sitting up. “From Admiral’s Burgers. Downtown. I tried to get them to deliver once. They said we’re outside their delivery zone. The staff here won’t get it for me. They say it’s high in sodium and cholesterol. Too unhealthy.” He laughed hollowly. “Look at me. I’m a dead man walking and they’re worried about my sodium levels.”

“I’ll arrange your burger and fries if you tell me what you remember about the Stills family,” Rachel promised.

“I knew the mom from when she was very small. Her granddad would send her to buy liquor. Never any food. Only liquor. A bottle a day. He’d rather his kid starve than miss out on his drink. Sometimes, little Hope would come in and her face would be swollen. Black eye. Cut lip. When Ed Stills was sober, he adored that girl. When he was drunk, he was as mean a drunk as you’ll find anywhere.”

“What happened to Hope’s daughters. Jenny and Hannah?”

“I told the police everything I knew about those girls,” he said.

“Which was?”

“That I didn’t see a thing. Nothing. I don’t know nothing. Not a thing. And between you and me, even if I did, I wouldn’t say.”

“There were some teenage boys who used to drive around in a pickup. They’d get gasoline from your store. Sometimes shoplift, too,” said Rachel. “Do you remember them?”

“Lots of kids drove pickups in those days. Today they’re driving Jeeps. In those days they had trucks,” he said dismissively.

“This pickup was a regular. Try to remember,” Rachel pressed. “It’s important. I think they might have been involved in Jenny Stills’s death.”

“All I can tell you is that I called the ambulance that night because that little kid was messing up my floor with all that blood. I took her down to the beach in my old truck. I was shutting down for the night anyway, so I drove her. Got there before the cops and the ambulance.”

“What did you see?”

“It was dark. There were no lights around there at night. It was hard to see anything at all. The little sister jumped out. I was going to go after her when I heard sirens coming. Figured she didn’t need me anymore. Turned the car around to drive home. Almost ran over that boy.”

“What boy?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t remember,” Rick added quickly, realizing he’d said too much. “I’m eighty-one. Memory isn’t what it was.”

“You remember everything, Rick,” corrected Rachel. “Who was that boy you almost ran over? What was his name?”

“I saw him here. Two, three summers ago,” he said, warming to the subject and Rachel’s attention. “Saw him one afternoon in the garden. They take us out to get sun like we’re fucking tomatoes that need to be ripened. I went up to him and told him I remember what he did all those summers ago. He looked rattled. Left soon after. Never saw him again.” He laughed wryly. “Not surprised. Always running. Like a rat.”

“What was his name, Rick?”

“Rat,” said Rick hoarsely, as his laughter became a cough. “That’s what they should have called him. Looked like a rat. Ran like a rat.”

“Rick,” said Rachel. “What was his name?”

“Better to forget some things. There are folks in this world that a man can’t afford to cross,” he rasped in between coughs. “I’m senile but not that senile. All these years I kept my mouth shut. Why would I open it now?”

The old man’s spasm of coughing worsened so that Rachel could barely make out his last words. She rushed to a water cooler in the corner of the room and quickly filled a cup with water. By the time she returned, he was bent over, spluttering into his hands. When he lifted up his head, his lips were covered with blood.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rachel asked a uniformed nurse who’d rushed over, decked out with a mask and gloves.

“Lung cancer,” the nurse whispered grimly.

The nurse approached Rick and talked to him in a loud voice, as if he were deaf. “We’ll have to move you to the clinic. I need you to stand up so we can get you in the wheelchair.” She grabbed Rick’s arm and helped him stand while an orderly maneuvered a wheelchair in place.

Rachel watched Rick being wheeled away for treatment as he continued to cough uncontrollably into a wad of Kleenexes the nurse had given him. Rachel wished there was a way to get him to cooperate. To appeal to his better nature. The problem was that Rachel doubted that Rick had a better nature.

On the way out, Rachel took a brochure off a stand in the reception area. It had the same glossy Photoshopped pictures of blossoming gardens and breathtaking views of paddocks that she’d seen on the website. At the back of the brochure was corporate information. The retirement home was owned by Blair Developments. That shouldn’t have surprised her. The Blair family’s interests were, after all, extensive.