The Night Swim(7)

Cat Girl worked at a little jazz club in Carytown, in downtown Richmond. Music lovers went there for the jazz. College students went there for the Happy Hour specials. The bar was a hole-in-the-wall sort of place. Narrow wooden stairs at a side-street entrance leading down to a basement bar. It had midnight blue walls and grungy water-stained tables with mismatched chairs. Nobody noticed because the place was too dark to see anything except the stage.

It was a Thursday night. Cat Girl performed a few songs in between serving tables. At some point, a big-shot record producer who was out scouting talent gave her his business card and invited her to audition for a band he was putting together. It was the biggest break she’d ever had. His business card was listed in her personal effects in the autopsy report. It was a sobering reminder that her life went from elation to tragedy in the space of hours.

When the bar closed, she walked home instead of taking a cab. Maybe she wanted to unwind. It was early summer. A perfect night for walking. So she walked. Why not. Right?

It took fifteen minutes for her to walk home. The last part was a little dicey. Remember, it was my neighborhood. I knew it like the back of my hand. Before she cut through the park, she texted her friend to say she was almost home. I guess you can figure out the rest.

Her body was found by a jogger. She was lying on the grass in the middle of the park. Her clothes and hair were wet. It had rained overnight. Her underwear lay in a ball in a puddle and her skirt was hiked up. There were bruises around her throat. She’d been raped and strangled.

It was the way that she’d been left exposed by her killer that sickened me most. He’d taken everything from her. He’d taken her life. Yet even in death, he had to degrade her in one final act of humiliation.

The area where she was murdered was a popular neighborhood for college students living in off-campus apartments. Rumors spread like wildfire that she was killed by a serial killer. Well, you can imagine the hysteria.

It didn’t help any when the cops told women living in the area to take precautions. You know, the usual stuff. Hold your keys between your fingers to use as a weapon. Keep your phone in your hand and dial nine-one-one if you’re being followed or feel afraid. If every woman who felt afraid called nine-one-one, the switchboard would melt. That is what women live with every day of our lives.

A lot of women felt the cops were blaming Cat Girl instead of her rapist and killer. These women argued that women should be able to walk wherever they want, whenever they want. If they walk home late at night through a park, they shouldn’t be criticized for it. And they sure as hell shouldn’t be raped and murdered for it.

When school kids are shot by a random shooter, nobody asks whether the victims should have taken more precautions. Nobody suggests that maybe the victims should have skipped school that day. Nobody ever blames the victims.

So why is it that when women are attacked, the onus is on them? “If only she hadn’t walked home alone.” “If only she hadn’t cut through the park.” “If only she’d taken a cab.”

When it comes to rape, it seems to me “if only” is used all the time. Never about the man. Nobody ever says “if only” he hadn’t raped her. It’s always about the woman. If only …

As I was researching possible cases for Season 3, I thought a lot about Cat Girl and what happened to her. Mostly I thought about the way she was blamed for her own rape and murder.

Then I heard about the upcoming trial in Neapolis. Something about it moved me so deeply that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It reminded me of the Cat Girl case even though the Neapolis case is different in so many ways. In almost every way.

There is one thing that is exactly the same. That’s the blame-the-victim game. That hasn’t changed at all. Just like with Cat Girl, I kept hearing people blaming the girl at the center of this case in Neapolis.

This trial isn’t about the victim. It’s about the man accused of raping her. Yet somehow you could be mistaken for thinking that the victim is on trial, too, because, like most rape trials, the case largely rests on his word against her word. The alleged rapist and the alleged victim. Which one of them is speaking the truth?

The trial starts next week. We’re in this together. Let’s see where the evidence takes us.

I’m Rachel Krall and this is Guilty or Not Guilty, the podcast that puts you in the jury box.





5



Rachel


Rachel had to stand on her tiptoes to get a glimpse of the sea from her hotel room window. The reception clerk had told her that she’d been upgraded to an ocean view room when he handed her the key card downstairs. He hadn’t mentioned the view would be obstructed by the smokey gray glass of the marina restaurant complex across the road.

Rachel let go of the white netting of the drapes, disappointed by the uninspiring view. She returned to unpacking her suitcase and settling into what would be her home and office for the duration of the trial.

There was a desk, a coffee-making nook, and a brocade armchair alongside a bronze lamp on the blue-gray carpet. In the bathroom was a glass-enclosed shower with a pile of fluffy white towels and an assortment of miniature bottles of translucent body wash and shampoo. The room smelled of carpet deodorizer, vacuum cleaner fumes, and cleaning spray.

Rachel stifled a yawn as she slipped off her shoes and collapsed on the starched white sheets of the king-size bed, staring up at the ceiling until her eyes blurred. She’d been driving since the middle of the night. She longed for sleep and was tempted to take a nap, but she reminded herself that she had work lined up later that afternoon and couldn’t risk oversleeping.