by Megan Goldin
For me, it was three weeks into our summer vacation. I’d fallen asleep on the beach to the sound of summer hits playing loudly on the radio, and a constant trill of laughter woven between the crash of breaking waves.
When I awoke, everything felt different. It was still, and very quiet. The ocean was oddly subdued, on its best behavior. The light was soft. The clear blue sky had been replaced by billowing gray clouds. The temperature was cooler. I sat up and saw that we were the only people lying on the beach. Everyone else had gone home, taking their towels and umbrellas with them. Down the headland, surfers with longboards and half-zipped wet suits emerged from the water and crossed the beach in a raggedy procession as they wrapped up their day.
Jenny was putting on a tie-dyed turquoise beach dress over her bikini. Her damp hair hung loose. I packed my things into the beach bag and we began the long walk home. Our hair knotted with salt and our flushed skin sprinkled with sand.
When we passed the gas station at the Old Mill Road, I asked Jenny if we could stop there for an ice pop. It had become a tradition at the end of each day at the beach.
“It’s going to rain soon,” said Jenny, looking up at the overcast sky.
“It’ll only take a second,” I insisted. I made my bottom lip tremble dramatically. Jenny sighed and we crossed the road. Long afterward, I wondered if our lives would have turned out differently if I hadn’t made a fuss. If we’d kept on walking.
That’s the thing about mistakes. Not all of them can be fixed. I can’t bring the dead back to life, no matter how much I might wish it.
The gas station was run by a man called Rick, whose face was set in a permanent scowl and who never had a kind word to say to us. He’d shout at us for treading sand into the gas station’s convenience store when we hadn’t even been to the beach, or yell at us for opening the freezer door when we hadn’t touched it. “You Stills girls don’t have two cents to rub together. If you’re not going to buy anything, then get out,” he told us once when we came in during a thunderstorm. I’d been afraid of him ever since.
I waited near the gas pumps while Jenny went inside to buy my ice pop. My feet were sandy and I didn’t want to give Rick a reason to snap at me. I watched through the windows as Jenny looked into the freezer and selected a red ice pop. She crossed the store to the cashier area to pay Rick. Through the reflection of the shopwindow, I saw a pickup truck pull up at a gas tank.
Three teenage boys were in the cab. A fourth sat in the back. I recognized him immediately. He was the boy with gray eyes who’d asked for our phone number that day at the beach. As his friends emerged from the pickup, I recognized them, too. I didn’t know their names. All I knew was that those boys always hung out together on the sand dunes, smoking and playing loud music on their boom box. I instinctively knew that it was best to give them a wide berth.
Light rain sprinkled across the cracked raw concrete of the gas station driveway. It was only a matter of time until a downpour erupted.
“You live at the end of the Old Mill Road, don’t you? It’s going to storm soon. I can give you a ride home if you don’t want to get wet,” said the driver, holding the nozzle as he pumped gasoline into his truck.
My eyes flicked to the store. Jenny was waiting for Rick to serve her. He appeared to be adding up a long column in his ledger, and even though he must have known she was there, he kept her waiting until he was done.
“Do you want a ride or not?” the driver asked me again.
“I have to ask my sister.”
Jenny came out of the store and handed me the ice pop. “We’d better hurry home before the rain hits,” she said, picking up the beach bag that had been lying by my feet and walking quickly past the pickup.
“He offered us a ride home,” I called out, my eagerness to get home outweighing my wariness.
“We’ll walk. There’s still time,” Jenny said, motioning me to catch up with her. “Hurry up, Hannah.”
“My foot’s sore. I’m getting a blister,” I complained, lifting up my shoulder stubbornly. “I don’t feel like walking in the rain.”
“We’re going your way. I can drop you off,” said the driver as he screwed on his fuel cap. “It’s no trouble.”
“Please, Jenny,” I begged, looking up at the ominous sky. “I don’t want to walk in a thunderstorm.”
“All right,” she relented grudgingly. She threw the beach bag into the back of the truck and I scrambled in with it. Jenny was about to climb over the side to sit with me when the driver opened the passenger door.
“There’s space here,” he said, waiting until Jenny reluctantly slipped inside.
His three friends came out of the store. The one with the gray eyes lit up a cigarette, ignoring a no-smoking sign by the fuel pumps, and sucked in the smoke like a starving man getting a long-awaited meal. The other two triumphantly removed a selection of candy from under their shirts as they scrambled into the cab next to Jenny. They’d obviously stolen their stash without Rick noticing. Jenny was stuck in the middle. The driver sat next to her and the other two boys sat between her and the front passenger door. I could tell that she wasn’t happy about being boxed in.
The one with gray eyes jumped into the back with me, staring into space as he sucked on his cigarette. Through the glass partition, I saw the two boys in front swigging from a half-empty liquor bottle as they turned on the truck engine and drove out of the gas station. One of them offered Jenny a sip directly from the bottle. She shook her head.
When we reached the road, we made a turn so fast that I catapulted against the truck, bruising my shoulder so painfully that I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from crying. The boy with the gray eyes helped me up. He told me to hold tight on to the side of the truck so I wouldn’t hurt myself again.
“Please tell him to drive slower,” I pleaded.
“I’ll tell him first chance I get. What’s your name?” he asked, trying to distract me.
“Hannah,” I answered. “What’s your name?”
“Bobby,” he said.
We stopped abruptly by the one-way bridge. We had to wait for two cars and a pickup to cross over before it was our turn. While we waited, Bobby jumped down and spoke to the driver. I don’t know what he said. They were arguing about something. He didn’t return to the truck. He walked off back toward the gas station, smoking his cigarette. A couple of times he turned around, like he was unsure about something. But he kept walking anyway. I watched him disappear in a cloud of dust as we drove off, across the bridge and up the hill toward my house.
We drove so fast that my knuckles were white from holding the side of the truck so tight. My hair was blowing across my face. I couldn’t see a thing. When we came around a turn, the truck slowed down. I was relieved to see the square smudge of our white house and the faint red of our rusty roof set among the pine trees. I expected we’d be dropped off by our front door, or at least at the start of the dirt driveway that led to our house from the main road. Instead, the truck pulled up on the main road, halfway up the hill. We still had to cross the field to get home.
“You can get out now,” the driver shouted through the partially open window. I tossed out the beach bag and jumped down. I walked over to the passenger door of the cab and waited for Jenny to get out.
She was trapped between them in the middle of the cab. She couldn’t get out unless either the driver or the other passengers climbed out first. Nobody made any attempt to move. Jenny sat stiffly as they drank from the liquor bottle, passing it to each other over her lap. It was starting to rain heavily and I was getting drenched.
I knocked on the passenger window. The boy sitting right next to it rolled down the window, leaving a narrow gap.
“Your sister says she wants to go fishing with us,” he shouted over the blustering engine. I choked from the foul stench of liquor on his breath, which wafted in my face through the narrow gap.
“Jenny hates fishing,” I said.
“I reckon by the time we
’re done teaching her, fishing is going to be her favorite sport.” He smirked. “She’ll be home soon.”
With a screech, the truck sped off in the opposite direction from the sea.
18
Rachel
The radio station receptionist who’d greeted Rachel hours earlier when she’d arrived had long gone when she emerged from the soundproof room after recording the podcast. The overhead office lights were off. The only people around were recording the evening program inside a studio with a red “On Air” sign illuminated above the closed doors.
Rachel let herself out of the building. It was early evening and she was exhausted. The cumulative effects of four to five hours’ sleep each night were taking a toll. She was well aware that she needed to break the unhealthy pattern she’d fallen into since arriving in Neapolis. Too little sleep, too much fast food on the run. No regular exercise. Back home she ran four mornings a week. Since arriving in Neapolis, she hadn’t done a single proper run unless sprinting across the park to visit the City Hall archive counted as a workout.
As she crossed the road to her car, Rachel saw a letter fluttering on her windshield. She sighed. She was getting tired of Hannah’s games. Rachel tossed the letter onto the front passenger seat and put on her seat belt. She had no intention of hastily tearing the envelope open and reading the letter from behind the steering wheel as she’d done at the highway rest stop. It was time to try a new tack. To show no interest in Hannah’s letters. Perhaps that was the way to draw Hannah out so they could meet, and talk in person, rather than play this cat-and-mouse game—the purpose of which Rachel couldn’t begin to fathom.
Pete was right. The podcast needed to be Rachel’s sole focus. There wasn’t time to investigate Jenny Stills’s death. Maybe, Rachel thought, once the trial was over she’d stay in Neapolis for a few days longer and see what she could find out. In the meantime, she needed to give all her attention to the podcast. The last thing she needed was a distraction. There was too much at stake.
Rachel drove toward the hotel, where she’d planned to eat dinner at the lobby cafe while reading her files on the Blair family. Pete had managed to swing her an interview with Greg, Scott Blair’s father. She wanted to read all his press interviews again before she met him and his wife the next day. Rachel glanced at Hannah’s letter on the seat next to her. She was tempted to read it, but she couldn’t allow herself to be drawn in again. She didn’t have time to be Hannah’s savior, or Jenny’s avenger. She briefly considered tearing it up and tossing the pieces out of the window.
Rachel made it two blocks before pulling her car to an abrupt stop on the side of the road. She put on her hazard lights and ripped open the letter. When she was done reading Hannah’s wavy, sometimes barely legible handwriting, she tossed the pages back onto the front passenger seat and restarted the car engine.
Instinctively, Rachel made a furious U-turn and headed south in the direction of the Old Mill Road gas station. Rachel wondered if Rick still worked there and, if he did, if he remembered the driver and passengers of the pickup truck Hannah described in her letter. Rachel got the impression that the truck and its rowdy crew had been regulars at his gas station.
As Rachel drove down the coastal road, she spotted the Morrison’s Point jetty, a gray outline against a darkening sky. Again without thinking it through, Rachel turned off the road and into the beach parking lot. She pulled her car to a stop facing the ocean. It was twilight. Rachel figured she had enough time to quickly go down to the jetty to see if the sign warning swimmers not to jump into the water had been erected, just as the newspaper article she’d read at the archive said.
The evening coastal winds were so strong that Rachel struggled to get out of her car. As she walked across the beach, sand blew into her face, hitting her skin like pinpricks. Rachel spotted the sign. It was hung on a rusted pole stuck into a thick lump of concrete on the shoreline, just out of reach of the waves. Its faded warning to swimmers looked decades old. She hadn’t noticed it the last time she was there, but then, she hadn’t been looking for it.
Rachel stepped onto the jetty. It was unsteady under her feet. She had to hold the rail as she walked, pummeled by the wind and stung by salt sprays from unruly waves. The foamy water looked opaque in the waning light.
When Rachel reached the inscription that Hannah had carved in the timber, she squatted down to read it again: In loving memory of Jenny Stills, who was viciously murdered here when she was just 16. Justice will be done.
Rachel didn’t hear the jetty creak behind her over the loud rush of wind. Nor did she notice the looming outline of a man emerge from the dark behind her.
“Who are you?” His sudden, angry voice shocked Rachel to her feet.
She swung around to confront the intruder but was immediately blinded by a flashlight beam shining directly into her eyes. From what Rachel could make out, he was a heavyset man dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt soaked with sweat so strong she could smell it. His arms and neck were covered in tattoos, and the left side of his face was crisscrossed by the angry ridges of knife scars.
“I asked you a question,” he growled, stepping toward her. Rachel instinctively moved back until her spine was pressed into the timber rail. He pointed his flashlight down to where Rachel had been squatting and moved the beam across the inscription as he read it. He paused the light over the words viciously murdered.
“What do you know about this?” he asked.
“Not much,” said Rachel. “I heard she drowned here. Hit her head on some rocks when she jumped off the jetty.”
“People are stupid. They’ll believe anything,” he spat. “There ain’t no rocks to hit. The ocean floor is pure sand around here. And the water is deep. Real deep. If I remember correctly, she was a real good swimmer.”
“If it wasn’t an accident, then how did she die?” Rachel pressed. It was the first time someone had come close to confirming what she was starting to suspect—that Jenny’s drowning had been no accident at all.
“You need to scram,” he growled, taking another step closer. Rachel saw a flash of metal near his leg. It looked as if he was holding a switchblade. “Get out. And make sure I don’t see you around again.”
Rachel’s heart beat rapidly as she stepped away and left the jetty. She headed to her car, walking fast across the beach. She deliberately held back from a full-blown sprint, even though the roar of wind was too loud for her to know if he was behind her. Catching up. She resisted the temptation to look back over her shoulder. She had no intention of letting him think that he frightened her.
When Rachel reached her car, it took all her physical strength to open the driver’s door in the strong gusts. She slid inside and pulled it shut. The deafening howl of wind stopped immediately. Rachel took a moment to revel in the silence before turning on her car engine and driving away. As she did, she looked out toward the jetty. The man was leaning over the rail, watching her.
Rachel drove toward Old Mill Road, where she found the gas station at the corner, just as Hannah had described. Rachel filled up with fuel before going inside to pay. The convenience store was brightly lit, with a white-tiled floor and neatly packed shelves. Along the back of the store were self-service coffee and soft-drink machines. There was a cabinet with a heating rack that contained jelly doughnuts and burritos in silver-foil bags.
“Does Rick still work here?” she asked the cashier.
“Don’t know any Rick,” the attendant said, without looking up from his phone. He shoved across a credit card machine so that she could pay for the gas.
“He owned this gas station, or worked here a few years ago,” Rachel said as she swiped her credit card. More like a few decades, she thought.
“Never heard of him,” said the attendant, still looking at his phone.
“Would someone else here know him?”
The attendant looked up. “Know who?”
“Rick. The man who used to work here,” said Rachel, swallowing her irritation
.
The attendant rolled his eyes. “Try Sally Crawford. Her house is about a mile that way.” He jabbed his finger in the direction of town. “First house after the empty block. She’s been around for—ev—er,” he said, stretching out the syllables as if it was a curse word. “If Rick worked here, she’d know.”
* * *
Sally Crawford’s house was a single-story home with a ramshackle appearance from several additions built over the years. The lawn was overgrown with long grass and weeds, which also poked out through the packed dirt of the driveway. On the front lawn was a rusty old camper van and a boat hidden under a mildewed canvas cover. Rachel heard dogs barking in the back garden as she walked down the driveway toward the front door.
Rachel pressed the doorbell. There was no answer. She could see light through the frosted hall window and hear enough noise to tell her that people were home. She pressed the bell again, holding her thumb against it for a couple of seconds longer than necessary.
The door swung open to reveal a man in his early twenties, holding an open beer bottle. He wore shorts. No shirt. He had long hair and a scraggly beard.
“You’re not here to sell face cream or some other shit, are you?” he asked Rachel.
“I’m not selling anything. I’m here for a quick word with Sally. It’s kind of private,” said Rachel, trying to give the impression that she knew Sally so that he would let her inside.
He grunted and turned around, walking back up the hall, leaving Rachel to make her own way inside. When Rachel reached the kitchen, she saw a woman she assumed was Sally. She was a large woman with bright red hair and she was standing behind the kitchen counter cutting watermelon with a stainless-steel butcher’s knife. Her son was using his elbow to open the sliding doors to the back garden, where a group of people were standing around by a barbecue.