by Megan Goldin
“Please,” I tried to say. My words were muffled by the hand over my mouth. “Please, stop hurting her.”
We came around a large tree trunk. I could hear Jenny whimper like an injured kitten too weak to let out more than the softest cry. I struggled to wriggle out of the iron grip. I wanted to reach out to her. To touch her. To reassure her that somehow it would all be all right.
But her cries were becoming more distant. We were moving away from her. He held me tighter, locking me in the unbreakable manacles of his arms as he changed course. Moving in a different direction. Deeper into the forest. Away from Jenny. I tried to kick him, but I was no match against his strength and my legs hung limply in the air.
He stopped very suddenly not long after. I felt myself being lifted up and then lowered until I was lying on a hard metallic surface. Metal ridges dug into my skin. I was lying in the back of a truck.
His hand was on my mouth. I couldn’t scream. But I was no longer being restrained by those powerful arms. I lay faceup and looked into the eyes of my captor. Gray eyes that I recognized, even in the gloomy light of the forest.
I flinched in terror as Bobby lowered his face to mine.
He lifted his finger and pressed it to my lips.
“Shh,” he said.
He pushed me down so that I was lying flat. He pulled the canvas sheet over my head. That’s when I understood that he was hiding me. Protecting me. Not long after, I felt the vehicle sink under the weight of people getting into the truck.
Bobby climbed into the back with his legs outstretched alongside me and his back pressed against the cab. There was a light thud as someone was lowered into the back of the truck next to him. I heard a whimper. It was Jenny.
Doors slammed shut. Someone threw an unopened beer can into the back of the truck. It slammed against the metal and bounced onto my leg. It hurt so bad.
We drove off in a loud skid. Jenny was trembling so badly I could hear her teeth chattering. I peered out from under the canvas sheet. Bobby was unbuttoning his shirt. It frightened me to see him get undressed. When he’d removed his shirt, he put it over Jenny and tucked it under her like a blanket. He reached for my hand and squeezed it reassuringly as the truck tore through the forest road, lurching violently when we hit potholes.
“Bobby, make sure she doesn’t fall out. We’re not done with her yet,” someone shouted through an open window. Drunken laughter echoed.
With a squeal of tires, the truck turned sharply onto smooth asphalt. We were on the main road. The drive was faster. Less bumpy. The wind rushed in my ears.
Bobby’s hand was on Jenny’s back. She was lying next to him. He seemed to be comforting her. I tried to lean over to comfort her, too. He pushed me down abruptly as we drove faster along the road. When the truck eventually stopped, I heard the roar of the ocean and smelled the unmistakable smell of sea and salt.
“Where is she?” It was a male voice. Thick and unsteady. He was leaning over the side of the truck. Drunk. I flinched as he almost touched me.
“She’s over there.” Another slurred voice.
“Maybe we should let her go now.” A deeper voice. This one inflected with fear.
“Why would we do that?”
“Yeah, man. We all want to have another go. Maybe Bobby will change his mind and take a turn? What do you say, Bobby?”
My heart pounded. I lay without moving, terrified they would discover me under the canvas sheet. Bobby sat next to me stiffly. It felt as if he was shielding me from them.
“No. Not again. Please. I can’t.” It was Jenny. “Let me go. I want to go home now.”
“Stop crying, you slut,” someone shouted. “Get up.”
Jenny scrambled to her feet. The truck shifted again as she jumped down. They trampled through the sand onto the beach with Jenny.
Bobby, who’d climbed out of the truck, lifted the canvas so he could see my face. “Run,” he whispered. “I’ll try to get them to leave her alone, but you need to get out of here.” I stared at him as he lifted up a crate of beer cans and bottles. “Run,” he urged again, before turning to join his friends on the beach.
I didn’t listen to him. I hid in the bushes. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my sister. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the familiar outlines of the Morrison’s Point jetty. It was strangely reassuring to know our location.
Light flickered from the beach, followed by the noxious smell of gasoline as they built a bonfire on the sand. Their dark silhouettes were set against the fire as they stood by its flames and drank beer, clinking the bottles together.
There was a public phone booth across the parking lot, near the toilet block. I didn’t have money, but I figured that I could dial the operator and ask her to call the police. I walked across the lot quietly, hunching down so there was no chance that I could be seen. My shoes had fallen off when I was in the forest. I was in my bare feet. The dirt parking lot was littered with sharp stones that dug into the soles of my feet. Despite the pain, I didn’t cry out or make any sound at all.
I had to run out into the open to get to the telephone booth. I did so quickly but was delayed getting inside as I fumbled to open the door in the dark. Finally, I pushed my way inside. I lifted the receiver and dialed the operator, my hands shaking so badly that it took a few attempts to press the correct buttons.
“How can I assist you?” the operator said.
“Please,” I mumbled; my throat was so dry that no sound came out. I cleared it and spoke more loudly: “I need to speak to—”
The phone booth door was pushed open abruptly, hitting me painfully in the shoulder. A hand reached inside and pressed down the receiver to disconnect the call. I turned around slowly. It was Bobby’s friend, one of the boys who stole candy from Rick when they gave us a ride home that first time. He stank of liquor. It was so overpowering that I leaned as far away as I could until my back pressed painfully against the telephone console.
“Well, if it isn’t the little sister,” he snarled. He curled his hand into my hair and pulled me close to his hot drunken face.
47
Rachel
They met at the boardwalk at dusk. Dan and Christine Moore approached Rachel arm in arm, baseball caps pulled low to obscure their faces. They were dressed like twins in matching jeans and tees under unbuttoned shirts. Denim for him. White linen for her. Their shirts blew in the wind like parachute canopies.
The three of them stepped off the boardwalk onto the beach, passing stragglers shaking sand off their towels before flipping them over their shoulders and heading home. At the far end of the beach, surfers were paddling to shore, pushed out of the ocean against their will by the ebbing light.
Dan had told Rachel when they’d set up the meeting over the phone that he and Christine were happy to talk with her, but not in the house. Mitch Alkins had been there the night before. It upset Kelly to know that she was being discussed downstairs while she stayed in her room, with her grandmother looking in on her intermittently. They never left Kelly alone for long.
Meeting at a restaurant was out of the question. So was Rachel’s hotel. There was so much publicity around the case, so much scrutiny, that Kelly’s parents hadn’t gone out in public since the trial began. Dan told Rachel they were going stir crazy. His strained voice indicated that he was neither joking nor exaggerating.
Kelly’s name had been withheld by the media but nothing could suppress the town’s rumor mill. It was common knowledge in Neapolis that Kelly Moore was the girl at the center of the rape trial. She’d had to leave her high school, and then a second school, because of the constant buzz of gossip as she walked down the halls. Her mother had taken to ordering groceries online long before the trial started. She didn’t dare go into a supermarket, let alone a restaurant. Kelly had anonymity in name only.
Rachel had suggested she meet Kelly’s parents at the beach at twilight. It would be dark enough that nobody would recognize them and deserted enough that they’d be able to ta
lk privately without being overheard. They’d agreed their discussion would be off the record.
The farther they walked from the marina, the fewer people they saw, until it was just the three of them strolling on the edge of the shore, their outlines dark against the intermingling ink blots of sea and sky as night began to fall.
“How’s Kelly doing?” Rachel asked.
“Not great,” said Christine. Her sigh said more than her words. “She goes into full-on panic mode at the thought of returning to court.”
Christine explained that Kelly was on high doses of anti-anxiety medication to keep her calm. The medication made it hard for her to think coherently. When her doctor lowered her medication, Kelly became anxious. “It’s a vicious cycle,” Christine said. The exhausted dark rings under her eyes told their own story.
“Christine doesn’t want Kelly to go back on the stand,” said Dan, looking down at the pattern the soles of his shoes made in the sand as he walked.
“You don’t agree. You want Kelly to finish testifying,” Rachel surmised.
“Yes.” He looked up. “Mitch Alkins told us that he won’t get a conviction without Kelly. I was up all night thinking about what he said. Kelly needs to do it. She needs to do it so that son of a bitch goes to prison. She needs to do it so she can move on,” he said firmly. “She’ll regret it for the rest of her life if she doesn’t finish the job. If Scott Blair gets to go free and enjoy his life unpunished.”
Christine shook her head as her husband spoke. It was clearly a major point of contention between the two of them. Time was running out and they still hadn’t reached any joint agreement.
“What do Kelly’s doctors think she should do?” Rachel asked.
“Her therapist is against it,” said Christine. “She worries that it could tip Kelly over the edge. She is emotionally fragile right now. But Dan—” She looked at her husband. “Dan wants blood.”
She fumbled in her pocket for a Kleenex and wiped her wet eyes. “He doesn’t understand that we might lose Kelly in the process.”
Dan put his arms around his wife and hugged her to his chest as she sobbed, their backs to the darkening sea. He looked over Christine’s head at Rachel, pleading for her to break the deadlock. She lowered her eyes and turned away, walking ahead along the beach to give them privacy.
“What’s your view, Rachel?” asked Dan, when, composed again, they’d caught up to her. “You’ve been in court every day. You’ve seen the evidence and heard the testimony. Do you think the jury will convict if Kelly doesn’t return to the stand?”
Rachel looked into the far distance, where she could see the distinctive shape of the Morrison’s Point jetty stretching into the water. Kelly’s parents huddled, together waiting expectantly for her answer. Rachel considered sugarcoating it. Then she remembered what Mitch Alkins had told her. They needed the truth. Raw and unvarnished.
“If Kelly doesn’t take the stand, Dale Quinn will argue that Kelly’s testimony should be struck from the record. All of it. Because she’s a material witness and he wasn’t able to cross-examine her properly. Without Kelly’s testimony, I don’t believe there’s enough evidence for the jury to convict.”
They both flinched at the brutal honesty of her words. Christine wrapped her arms around herself, chilled. “Kelly didn’t make it up. He raped her. Why does the burden have to be on Kelly to prove it? She’s a kid. She’s the one hurting.”
Rachel didn’t have an answer. There was no answer. She’d collected shells as they’d walked, and paused now to toss them into the ocean, one shell at a time. The crash of the surf muffled the soft splashes of the shells hitting the water.
“You think that Judge Shaw will go for that?” Dan asked. “Strike all of Kelly’s testimony from the record.”
“He won’t have much choice,” said Rachel. “He can’t allow her testimony to stand if Dale Quinn didn’t get a decent shot at cross-examining her.”
Dan and Christine stood with their arms around each other’s waists. Rachel knew that Mitch Alkins had said something similar, although perhaps less diplomatic, the previous night when he’d come to their house. Alkins had told Rachel that he’d been blunt with Kelly’s parents before he’d left their home. “If Kelly doesn’t testify then there’s a real chance that Scott Blair will walk,” he’d said.
Rachel hoped that Alkins was right, that hearing the same conclusion from her would carry more weight. After all, she didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome. It wasn’t her reputation as a prosecutor on the line. Plus, she knew the evidence inside and out; she was in court every day, listening to testimony, taking notes, reporting on the trial for the podcast.
They faced a terrible choice. Putting Kelly on the stand could destroy their daughter. Letting Scott Blair go free could destroy her even more. A gull cried as it flew over the beach, looking for a place to roost for the night.
“We can’t do this to Kelly.” Christine turned to face her husband.
“We have to. How can we let him get off? His name untarnished. His reputation intact. He needs to suffer. He deserves to be punished,” Dan shot back. “Let someone do to him in prison what he did to Kelly.”
Christine pummeled his torso softly with her palms, sobs wracking her body. “Every time Kelly talks about it, and I mean every single time, she relives that night. Over. And over. And over again. It’s eating into whatever is left of her spirit. We can’t make her do it. We are her parents. We have to think beyond getting justice. Or revenge. It’s our job to help her heal.”
“Testifying is what will help her heal. It will be painful at first, but it will be worth it. He’ll be punished and her name will be cleared. She’ll be vindicated,” said Dan, kicking a clump of seaweed across the sand until it flopped into the water.
“Kelly doesn’t need her name cleared. She didn’t do anything wrong. She isn’t—” Christine’s voice shook with anger.
Rachel didn’t hear the rest as she moved ahead to give them space to talk. It was clear to her they’d been having the same discussion for days. Going round and round in circles. They were running out of time. It was Saturday night. If Kelly was to testify on Monday morning, they’d need to spend all of Sunday getting her emotionally prepared. Perhaps even letting Mitch Alkins or his people prepare her for the cross-examination.
Dan strode past Rachel, walking off after the angry exchange with his wife. Rachel hung back, waiting for Christine, who was dabbing her eyes when she caught up to Rachel. Both women walked together in silence, deliberately lagging behind Dan, not even trying to catch up. He walked fast and disappeared around the next headland, out of their line of sight.
It was getting darker and visibility was becoming poor. They walked a little longer until they heard the groan of timber as the Morrison’s Point jetty swayed in the wind and tide farther along.
When they caught up with him, he was waiting, staring at the dark outline of the jetty as if afraid to get too close. “I didn’t realize that we’d come so far.” He gave a shiver. “Always hated this place.” He abruptly turned away and marched back toward the marina.
“He looks as if he’s being chased by the devil,” Rachel said to Christine as they watched him stride ahead down the beach.
“Dan blames himself for what happened to Kelly,” Christine said. “He says it would never have happened if he had agreed to move to Portland to live near my folks when he left the navy. Instead, we came here. He insisted on it. Despite his terrible childhood, he felt this was where he belonged.”
“In what way was his childhood terrible?” Rachel asked in surprise. His father was the town’s police chief. Rachel had assumed that he’d had an easy, protected childhood.
Christine shook her head sadly. She told Rachel that when Dan was twelve his dad had beaten him so brutally that he was taken to the hospital with a skull fracture. Chief Moore told the attending doctor that Dan had gone flying while doing a dangerous jump on his skateboard. “The doctor bought it,” she
said. “He had no reason to doubt Police Chief Russ Moore.
“Dan’s mom killed herself a year earlier. The medical examiner said it was an accidental overdose. Nobody accidentally takes a dozen Valium. Dan said she couldn’t take the beatings anymore. Once his mother had gone, his childhood was spent trying to keep out of his father’s way. Thank goodness for the navy. It was the making of him.”
“In what way?” Rachel asked.
“It softened his rough edges. It grounded him. It gave him values. He’s a devoted father, and a wonderful husband,” she said. “Dan does a lot of charity work. He cares about the community. He cares about this town. That’s why this situation has hit him especially hard. The way the town has become divided. The acrimony. People turning against Kelly, against our family. Casting aspersions on her character. He can’t let it go. It’s killing him.”
She lowered her voice when she saw her husband had stopped and was waiting for them on the boardwalk. The tide was coming in hard, eating up the beach. The two women climbed back onto the boardwalk together. The lights of the marina flickered in the distance. As they came closer, they could hear music from the outdoor restaurants.
“I’ll miss Neapolis once we’re gone,” said Christine wistfully.
“You’re leaving town?” Rachel asked.
“I’m taking Kelly to live near my parents. Dan will stay to sell the business and the house. He’ll join us as soon as he can,” Christine said. But there was a tinge to her voice that suggested he might never join them. Rachel got the impression that if Dan Moore insisted his daughter take the stand the family—and the marriage—would never recover.
When they reached the car, Dan took his wife’s hands and looked into her eyes. “On the walk back, I thought about what you said, honey. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not going to make any more. I won’t fight you on Kelly. I have to believe that Scott Blair will be punished. Sometime, somewhere, he will be punished for what he did to my little girl.” He shook his head. “But you are right; Kelly doesn’t have to be the one to make that happen.”