Scott didn’t take K home, as he promised her before she voluntarily stepped into his car. If he had, everything would have turned out differently. He claims that once they were in the car, K asked to go for a spin in his new convertible. It had leather seats and that new-car smell. He claims that he put the top down at K’s request, even though it was October. Neapolis gets biting winds from the Atlantic in October. It would have been freezing driving around in a convertible that night.

They drove along the coast. After a while, they stopped at an all-night pizza place. More footage documents that visit, this time released to the media by the owner of the pizza place. I guess the pizza store owner believes in the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, especially when it’s free.

Anyway, the footage shows Scott and K standing next to each other at the counter as they order. They sit and talk while they wait for their pizzas to be made. After about ten minutes, Scott gets up and collects two boxes of pizza and two sodas in those oversized cups.

Scott walks out of the pizza place carrying the pizza boxes. He has a baseball cap worn backward on his head, jeans, and a dark T-shirt. K is behind him carrying the sodas. You can see her clearly in the CCTV footage.

The defense will argue that she could have hung back. She could have asked the staff at the pizza place to call the cops or used their phone to call her dad. She could have run for it. She didn’t. She followed Scott to his car and the two of them drove off. That indicates that she was with him willingly, which the defense will argue is indicative of her state of mind that night.

Scott drove to a beach. He chose the last beaches before the national park, south of Neapolis. There are a few boat sheds on the beach to store Jet Skis and motorboats for water-skiing. Scott’s parents keep a boat there. Scott would have known that nobody goes there. That it’s out of the way and usually deserted.

In comments to reporters after he was first charged, he said that he and K sat on the beach and ate pizza. They listened to music and talked. It was fun. Romantic. And then one thing led to another and they had sex.

Here’s what his lawyer says: “My client, Scott Blair, and K went swimming together on the night in question after which they engaged in consensual sex. There was no violence, rape, or coercion of any kind. Everything that happened that night, including sexual activity, was entirely consensual at the time that it took place. If there were regrets afterward, then that is unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with the way my client acted that night. Scott is innocent of the charges against him.”

The prosecutors give a very different story in their indictment. They say that Scott lured K into his car with the promise of a ride home. Instead, he took her for a drive and stopped to buy pizza, which they took to an isolated beach where he raped K repeatedly, after which he abandoned her and made the three-hour drive back to his college apartment so he would have an alibi.

They say that Scott Blair raped K because he was in a competition with a friend to see who could have sex with the most girls in a thirty-day period. K was going to be a notch on his bedpost. Whether she wanted it or not.

I’m trying really hard here to be objective. I need to give Scott the benefit of the doubt. You know, innocent until proven guilty. Plus, it’s my job to keep an open mind.

The question that keeps bugging me is: Why did Scott leave K alone at the beach and drive back to his college apartment? Why do that if it was an innocent sexual tryst?

Scott’s parents claim that K asked Scott to drop her at the bus stop. That she told Scott she’d rather take the bus home in the morning so that nobody would see him dropping her off. She didn’t want her parents to find out that she’d spent the night with him.

Was Scott abandoning K to make her own way home the act of an innocent young man who had truly done nothing wrong? Or the act of a man with a very guilty conscience trying to cover up for a crime he knew that he’d committed? We’ll figure it out together when the trial begins tomorrow.

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

22

Rachel

The southern lawn of the Neapolis courthouse was cordoned off as TV reporters did live broadcasts with the redbrick neo-Georgian building as a backdrop. The courthouse dated to the late nineteenth century, when Neapolis had aspirations of becoming a major seaport. It had an expansive plaza with a stone staircase that led to a white-trimmed pillared portico at the entrance.

Rachel joined a group of locals watching from behind a barrier as a TV reporter finished the tail end of a Q&A with a studio host during a live broadcast.

“The trial has divided this small coastal town. Some say that Scott Blair, the swimming star on trial for raping a high school student, is innocent and has been scapegoated by political correctness gone overboard. Others are worried the verdict in this case will affect the willingness of rape victims to come forward,” said the reporter, pausing to listen to the next question coming through her earpiece.

Rachel didn’t stay to hear the reporter’s answer to the follow-up question. A long line was forming on the upstairs portico to pass through the metal detectors just inside the glass-door entrance of the courthouse. Rachel rushed to join the line, zigzagging through the crowded plaza and taking the stairs two at a time after flashing her journalist’s credentials at an impassive police officer manning the barricade.

She looked down at the plaza from the top of the stairs as she waited to go through the metal detectors. The area was bustling with a festive atmosphere that seemed to Rachel to be in poor taste, given it was the start of a rape trial. Food trucks were doing a roaring trade in coffee, doughnuts, and breakfast burritos. Protesters with black T-shirts that said “Stop Rapists” were waving “Lock Him Up” placards. Locals stood around taking selfies.

When the Blair family’s car pulled in, there was a sudden high-pitched scream so loud that heads turned to see what was going on. “Castrate him,” a protester screeched. It was followed by incoherent chanting that became louder as Scott Blair and his parents moved through the crowded plaza, flanked by a two-man security detail. Rachel realized the protesters were chanting, “Cut it off, cut it off,” as they followed the Blair family to the courthouse steps. They were shouted down by a rival group of mostly women wearing white T-shirts with Scott Blair’s photo printed above the word “Innocent.”

The courtroom was half-empty when Rachel pushed through its imposing polished doors and settled in her reserved seat in the media gallery. The court had original timber benches, paneled walls, and a gray stone floor. Filtered light came through clear lead windows set high up on the walls. They softened the harsh summer light and gave the court the atmosphere of a church.

The relative quiet was disrupted by the chaotic thump of files being unloaded onto tables by paralegals. Court clerks turned on computers and arranged paperwork as they prepared for the judge’s arrival. A hum of chatter rose into a din as the courtroom quickly filled to capacity.

Scott Blair arrived, surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers. He wore dark pants and a light blue V-neck sweater that made him look wholesome and younger than his nineteen years.

Cynthia Blair walked behind him in an austere navy dress. Her hair was styled straight; her makeup, natural. Her jewelry was almost nonexistent other than her wedding ring. Rachel found it hard to believe that she was the same glamorous, bejeweled woman she’d met two days ago. Greg Blair wore a middle-of-the-range suit that Rachel cynically suspected was carefully chosen to make the jury forget that the Blairs were the wealthiest family in town.

Dale Quinn had chosen an equally forgettable suit-and-tie ensemble in his bid to play the role of local boy done good rather than the brash out-of-towner. Quinn had used every media opportunity leading up to the trial, including a profile puff piece in the local newspaper, to wax nostalgic about growing up in Neapolis. Even though, from what Rachel knew, he’d lived there only briefly.

With those carefully placed interviews, he’d courted the future jurors before they even received their letters in the mail summoning them to jury duty. Quinn well knew the power of pretrial publicity. “It’s never too early to start influencing a jury,” he was fond of saying, as Rachel had learned from watching YouTube videos of his lectures and interviews as part of her own pretrial research.