Free Dark Waters by Alex Prentiss

word “Super!”
    Stillwater, dressed only in tight blue jeans, kicked aside enough detritus to expose the couch. “Have a seat.”
    “No, thanks. Is anyone else here?”
    “No.”
    “Are you an actor, Mr. Stillwater?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Do you own a white wig?”
    He blinked. “Huh?”
    “How old are you?”
    “Um … twenty-three.”
    He looked it, too. The man who disrupted the ceremony, though, had been at least ten years older. Could it have been makeup? “Where were you this afternoon between twelve and three?”
    “Here. I was sick, I think.”
    “You think?”
    “No, I was sick.”
    He didn’t sound guilty or stoned, just sleepy and confused. He also wasn’t anything like the sex god described by the women who saw him at the park. Then again, he was an actor. “Someone who called himself Kyle Stillwater disrupted a civic event in Olbrich Park.”
    Stillwater looked like he had trouble following her statement. “Someone …”
    “There aren’t a lot of Kyle Stillwaters in the area. In fact, there’s precisely one.”
    “Well, it wasn’t me!”
    “Can anyone corroborate that?”
    He looked confused at the word “corroborate.”
    “Can anyone give you an alibi?” she repeated patiently.
    “No, I’ve been sick. I told you.”
    He wasn’t old enough to be the guy from the park, she thought, and he certainly seemed legitimately sick, or at least out of it. She could haul him in for questioning, see if he was on drugs, but her gut told her this wasn’t the guy. “All right, Mr. Stillwater, it looks like some weird case of identity theft. Someone used your name. But I’m going to leave my card so if you hear anything you can call me. You’ll do that, right?”
    Stillwater took the card and looked at it. “Yeah, sure.”
    WHEN THE POLICEWOMAN left, Kyle Stillwater put the card under a magnet on the refrigerator, stumbled back to the bedroom, and was unconscious before he hit the mattress. In his dreams he swam without any need to breathe, past the faces of others similarly engaged.
    AT MIDNIGHT, RACHEL could stand it no longer. For discretion and safety she wanted to wait until later, but the need was simply too great. She’d been pacing her apartment, naked, for an hour.
    The parks all closed at eleven, and since the Korbus kidnappings, the police had been extra-diligent about chasing people away. They also made frequent patrols during the night, but that wasn’t a problem. She needed only a small window of time unobserved. Once she got into the water, she’d be fine.
    She put on her T-shirt, running shorts, and tennis shoes; locked the door behind her; and started down the street toward Hudson Park. The air shimmered with humidity, making halos around the pink streetlights. Insects swirled about them, and when she began to jog she felt tiny midges against her legs and face.
    The sidewalks were deserted, and most of the houses were dark. She ran silently through the neighborhood of big lakeshore homes, breathing methodically and enjoying the feel of fresh sweat on her skin. The whole Arlin Korbus affair had made her slightly paranoid; she checked often for pursuit and perused shadows for unexpected movement, but she could accept this small-scale PTSD. Korbus was dead by her own hands, and the chances that another of his ilk lurked nearby were astronomical.
    “Rachel!” someone called out.
    She jumped, startled, and would’ve sprinted away had she not recognized the voice. A young man emerged from one of the side streets, also dressed for running. His hair was dyed jet-black with lighter tips, and he had huge hoop modifiers in his earlobes. She’d met him once before, on a night when she was too busy to stop and talk. “Ace, right?”
    “That’s it,” he said with a grin. His inherent shyness overcame his attempt at blasé cool. “Ace is the place. Mind if I run with you?”
    Something about his boyish friendliness made her smile. “Okay, for a bit. But part of the reason I run