“Actually,” said Rachel, “I want to know if you remember a case from the summer of ’92. A teenage girl drowned. I was told that she was brought here and pronounced dead on arrival. Her name was Jenny Stills.”

Stuart stared at her, unblinking. When he saw that she was serious, he pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his hospital scrubs.

“Can we go outside? I’m not allowed to smoke here,” he said.

He took her through the morgue itself. It was a white-tiled room that smelled of antiseptic, with a wall of stainless-steel refrigerators for bodies. There was an empty metal stretcher pressed against the wall, blocking access to an external door. He rolled it out of the way and opened the door. They came out into a basement loading area. He lit a cigarette as he leaned back against a raw concrete wall.

“That was a long time ago. Why’re you asking about Jenny Stills now?” he asked.

“Her sister asked me to look into her death. I’m an investigator,” said Rachel, choosing not to mention the podcast. “Her sister was very young at the time, but she believes that her older sister was murdered. Not drowned, which was apparently the official cause of death.”

He nodded and exhaled. “She did drown. Lungs were full of water,” Stuart said.

“But?” Rachel prompted, half-shocked and half-excited that he remembered the case.

“There were bruises. All over her body,” he said. “Not from hitting rocks, like they said afterward. She’d been hit and kicked. Physically beaten. One bruise was in the pattern of the sole of a shoe. I still remember that. Looked to me as if she’d been badly hurt before she drowned.”

“Did you tell anyone?” Rachel asked.

“Did I tell anyone?” he repeated. “Of course I did. I told the medical examiner. Usually he’ll discuss a case like that with me. When I asked afterward what had come out of the autopsy and whether the police were investigating, he was evasive. I asked a friend on the force who confirmed there was no police investigation under way. So, I did the only thing that I could do.”

“Which was?”

“Went to see the girl’s mother. She was in bed. Could barely sit up. Told her that I thought there was more to it than a drowning. That there had been bruises and cuts on her daughter’s body that looked suspicious. Told her that if she wrote a letter requesting an inquest then the authorities would have to look into it properly. I told her to ask for them to investigate it as a potential homicide. I waited while she wrote the letter and then I mailed it for her.”

“Why did you think it was a homicide?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know if it was a homicide, but it sure was suspicious. Those fresh injuries on her body should have been enough for a homicide investigation. I said as much to the medical examiner at the time. He wouldn’t hear a word of it.”

“The newspaper said there was no investigation. Why?”

“Town was burying those two boys. They died the same night. Drove into a tree. By the time everyone was done grieving, the girl’s mother was dead and there was nobody pushing for an investigation. I’d done everything I could do,” he said. “Couldn’t do any more without risking my job. I had a young family. Needed the income.”

“Is the medical examiner still in town?” Rachel asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Stuart, dropping his cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of his shoe. “He’s in town, all right, but six foot under. Dropped dead of a heart attack a good fifteen years ago. Maybe more. We’ve been through three MEs since then.”

He walked back inside, Rachel following behind. “Come with me,” he said with the whispered urgency of someone about to share a secret.

He went through the morgue to his office, where he unlocked the bottom corner filing cabinet. From the back, he retrieved a repurposed rectangular cookie tin. He took off the lid and handed it to Rachel. Inside were faded photographs of a young girl lying on a stretcher. Her hair was wet and her eyes were closed. Her skin was a bluish hue of death.

Rachel went through the photos of Jenny Stills’s body. There were close-ups of ugly bruises on her legs, shoulders, and stomach. Rachel couldn’t imagine how such bruises could have been caused from hitting rocks. More surprising, the photos of Jenny’s head didn’t seem to show any cuts or abrasions. Surely, if Jenny had died from hitting rocks, there would have been injuries to her head. It made no sense.

“Who took the photos?” Rachel asked.

“The medical examiner took these on the morgue camera immediately after she was brought in here and before she was transferred to the county morgue. A week later, he stopped by and asked me for the camera film. He was in a panic. I smelled a rat,” Stuart said.

“In what way?” Rachel asked.

“Can’t say exactly. He was very political. Always brownnosing. The way he asked made me suspicious.”

“So what did you do?”

“Told him I’d thrown out the camera film undeveloped, said there was no point wasting money developing film of an accidental drowning victim. We had big budget cuts around that time, so it wasn’t unusual to do that sort of thing. He never asked me again.”

“Why did you keep the photos all these years?” Rachel asked.

“I suppose it was in case someone like you came calling one day. Never expected it would take this long,” he said, sorting through the photos and giving Rachel a handful.

“Why do you think nobody followed up?” Rachel asked.

“Because it was more convenient for people if that girl’s death was put down as an accident.”

30

Guilty or Not Guilty

Season 3, Episode 7: Victim

I’ve never been raped. Until recently, if you’d asked me, I would have told you that I’ve never been a victim of a sexual assault. In my mind, that involved being dragged into an alley and forcibly raped by a stranger.

Things are changing. We’re starting to admit that rape and sexual assault can happen in a multitude of ways. We’re starting to acknowledge that it permeates our lives as women. I guess you could say that society was in denial for, well, really, forever.

If you asked me today, and you said, “Rachel, have you ever been a victim of a sexual assault?” I would have to say yes.

Yes, I have been a victim of a sexual assault. Well, probably several really. Funny how we were conditioned to accept these situations as unpleasant instead of outrageous.

Most of the “several” were the types of things many women encounter. We considered them to be nuisances, part and parcel of being women in a misogynist world. I’m talking about things like groping. Guys squeezing a girl’s butt at a college football game. Or a nightclub. One time, when I was in high school, I was sitting on a crowded train and a man with a mustache rubbed his crotch against my arm. Kind of accidentally on purpose. I didn’t know whether it was an accident or not until I saw him move forward and do the same thing to another girl farther down the car.

Another time, at a party in college, a guy pushed past me. Rubbed against my breasts. It was all so innocent until his friends burst out laughing. Hilarious.

I’m sure that every one of my female listeners knows exactly what I’m talking about. There were no scars from those incidents, except that ever since I’m really careful about my personal space. I hate being in crowds.

So, yes. I’ve been groped. But that’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me. When I was seventeen, my parents divorced and I moved to a new city with my mom. It was kind of traumatic. You know, new town, new high school, new friends.

I was chosen for the track team. I was a pretty good distance runner in those days. A few days after I made the track team, the team’s champion sprinter asked me on a date. He had it all in spades. The guy looked like a movie star. All the girls swooned over him. I was flattered and thrilled.

Of course, I accepted. I counted the days in my diary until the date. I did that stupid schoolgirl thing of scribbling out our intertwined initials in my notebook.

We went to a movie for this date that I’d been so excited about. It was a forgettable rom-com, the type of film that’s supposed to leave you floating on air. In fact, if I’m going to be really cynical about it, it’s the type of movie that a guy chooses to soften up a girl before trying to move from, I don’t know, first base to third base. In the space of an hour.

After the movie we went out for ice creams and then he drove me home. I had a curfew. Instead of turning into my street, he “forgot” to take the turn.

He drove into this parking lot that faced a park with a pretty view of the skyline. Your classic make-out location. What can I say, this guy truly lacked imagination. He kissed me. It was a beautiful kiss. Everything a girl could have wanted.