The council chamber tastes like percolated coffee and winter coats. Wet wool breathes as the room settles; the fluorescents hum two notes apart, a dissonance my recorder can’t ignore. I wear the locket tucked against my skin, warm as a promise I didn’t ask for. Victims’ families fill the second row—Lydia at the end, hands folded around a tissue she never uses, and two sisters from the dock bruise tip leaning into each other like bookends that learned to carry weight.
“Public comment is open,” the chair says. “Three minutes, please. Keep remarks respectful.”
Ruth touches my elbow, grounding me to the aisle carpet with its municipal pattern of blue anchors and stains. “Facts, not fire,” she whispers. “Breathe like you’re recording room tone.”
I step to the mic. The red ring lights; the sound system clicks and smears the room for a beat, then catches. I set my portable recorder beside the agenda packet and slide my manila folder closer, its tabs on evidence, not accusations.
“I’m Mara Keane,” I say. “I produce a local podcast about objects and their histories. I’ve shared with counsel a sworn affidavit from a repair technician regarding a ten-second video extracted from a damaged device. The video’s timestamp places it on regatta night, 2008. The audio includes tower bells and the word ‘Three’ spoken by a male participant. I’m not asserting identity here. I’m stating what’s on the record.”
A whisper moves through the back row like wind across rope. Lydia keeps her eyes on me and nods once, giving me a steady to walk on.
“I have also provided chain-of-custody for a Bluetooth speaker recovered from the pier following the recent ‘scream’ incident,” I continue. “A patrol officer bagged the device; its MAC address matched a profile name labeled ‘CRANE-HSE-AUX.’ Again, I’m making no conclusion about ownership. The fact is: the sound was staged by a speaker, not a person.”
A woman near the coffee table claps once before catching herself; the gesture collapses into a cough. I wait for quiet. The hum of the lights slides down a half tone as the heater cycles; somewhere outside, the lake slaps the breakwall with the short, angry rhythm of a seiche.
“I’m asking the council not to expand regatta permits and funding tonight,” I say. “The festival is already a strain on our officers and first responders, and the public safety narrative has been used to obscure real harms. I’m not naming defendants. I’m asking for scrutiny. I’ve provided documents in your packets—affidavits, photos, and receipts. I’ve kept survivor consent. I will gladly answer procedural questions after the vote.”
Councilor Ames leans forward, fingers steepled, eyebrows climbing into performative bafflement. “Ms. Keane,” he says, “is this the same podcast that posted a manipulated scream? The same show that harasses clergy in their rectory?”
Laughter pops from the aisle, too tidy to be spontaneous. Everett sits there, suited winter-gray with a scarf that knows its fiber count. He doesn’t laugh; he watches me the way a captain watches wind shifts—assessing, calculating, ready to call a tack.
I keep my hands on the folder. “No, Councilor. I did not post a scream. I documented a staged one. A parish officer voluntarily provided us a spare tower key for lawful testing under supervision. We have a notarized statement. I can share those details with counsel.”
Lydia’s tissue rustles. Behind her, a man with a donor lapel pin shakes his head at the floor so he won’t have to look up and see the room.
Ames waves a hand at the packet. “Your documents are unvetted. The scholarship fund has done more for our kids than—”
“Point of order,” the chair says, a practiced calm. “Mr. Ames, remarks through the chair.”
I raise my copy of the club newsletter ad and slide it to the edge of the podium. “There’s also a watch receipt with an engraving date weeks before Celia Brighton vanished,” I say, voice steady. “The model appears in a club newsletter photographed during the same period. I am not drawing a line you can accuse me of drawing. I’m giving you dates and images and asking you to slow down before you widen a festival footprint we can’t police.”
Gasps break like minor surf. The anchor-pattern carpet becomes a lake I have to cross, and the only boat is the voice I’ve trained to hold a line when a room wants to wash it away.
Ames pushes back his chair so hard it wobbles and knocks into the dais. “I won’t sit here while you smear this town with innuendo,” he snaps. “I won’t be party to a cancel mob with microphones.”
The chair tries the gavel. “Councilor—”
Ames stands, grabs his coat, and storms down the side aisle, the scent of cold and cologne eddying in his wake. He passes Everett, and their eyes meet for a fraction too long to be unfamiliar. Everett’s mouth doesn’t move, but his cheek tightens—just a twitch the camera would miss, the kind of twitch you see when you’ve been counting bells for months.
I let the silence breathe. I don’t fill it with relief or victory; I let the facts sit where the room can see them. “That’s all,” I say. “Thank you for your time.”
I step back from the mic. Ruth is there before I reach my seat, her hand brief on my shoulder, her eyes scanning aisles and exits and faces the way she reads case notes. “Good clean edges,” she murmurs. “No adjectives.”
“I miss adjectives,” I whisper back, and she snorts, the tiniest spark that makes the room less cold.
Families go next. Lydia doesn’t speak; she stands behind the mic and rests her fingers on the wood and lets the act of standing do what words can’t carry without fraying. The two sisters read one sentence each—dates, locations, what they smelled the night they found their friend sitting on the curb shaking: diesel and cloves. A father with a marina cap says, rough, “You have my boy’s thanks for making it just facts.” He steps away before gratitude can be used against him.
Everett signs up for comment. He walks like he owns the floor and wants to be seen arguing he doesn’t. “I applaud Ms. Keane’s civility,” he says, placing just enough oil on the word to make it gleam. “We all want safety. Our foundation will double emergency grants if the council approves the expansion.”
A hum goes through the donor section like choir drones. Everett spreads his hands, palms out, a ritual absolution. “We must not let fearmongering choke our town’s economic lifeline,” he says. “Let us be guided by facts, yes, but also by hope.”
Hope tastes like sweet coffee when it’s sold by men who pass out plaques. I keep my eyes on the agenda. His voice slides through the room like smoke, and when it’s over the chair thanks him, and the clerk calls the roll.
“Motion,” the chair says. “To approve expanded regatta permits and allocate additional security funding.”
The first yes lands, solid, predictable. The second yes wavers before falling. A no follows, a councilor clearing his throat before he risks his donors. The vote tiptoes forward, tied twice, dipped by a sudden absence where Ames would have tallied. The chair looks out at the crowd through careful eyelashes.
“By a vote of four to three,” the chair says, “the motion fails.”
For a heartbeat, the room forgets the rules. A sharp inhale rolls the rows. Lydia closes her eyes, just once, just long enough to let air be a kind thing. Someone starts to clap; the chair slaps the gavel, not unkind, and the room remembers where it is.
I don’t celebrate. I reach for Ruth’s hand under the armrest and find it already open in the dark. She squeezes once—a tactical, not an emotional, squeeze—and then taps the side of her nose: eyes up. The aisle loosens like a knot someone might try to pull through without being seen. Everett stands there, not leaving. His smile is tight as a tourniquet, color returning to the edges slow and mean. He watches me with that gentle head tilt men use to ask if I’m tired.
“You made their math harder,” Ruth murmurs. “Math fights back.”
I shoulder my bag and slide the manila folder into it, trying not to rustle. The percolator gurgles its last bitter syllables. The donor plaque on the wall winks under the fluorescent hum like brass that knows where blood hid to dry. The lake throws a distant bell into the room; the audio arrives a beat late, warped by wind and the long, low pulse of the seiche.
Everett steps into the aisle where I have to pass. “Mara,” he says, voice velveted but worn, “you’ve got a gift for performance. Truly. I hope your audience appreciates restraint as much as I do.”
I stop one arm’s length away and keep my eyes on the door behind him, as if the exit is a horizon I can row toward. “I’m interested in records,” I say. “Performance is for the regatta.”
He smiles tighter. “We’re all boats in this town,” he says. “Some of us know the currents. Careful where you row at night.”
Ruth’s voice lands between us like a fender. “Public building,” she says. “Public aisle. Public eyes.”
He nods to her, a gentleman parsing rules he intends to rewrite later. “Ms. Calder,” he says, “you still have friends here.”
“Then they’ll keep their hands in their pockets,” she replies.
He steps aside first, and that is its own small ledger entry. I walk past him and smell his cologne, a cedar thing that tries to erase the diesel that lives on this block. Outside, the air sharpens my lungs; the wind carries lake frost and the metallic breath of the rail yard. The crowd spills into the night with Facebook opinions already composing themselves under mittened thumbs.
A woman in a marina blazer mutters into her phone, “The podcaster made them nervous,” like irritation is a civic duty. A high-school kid in a puffer asks me quietly, “Is the scream real?” and I say, “What matters is whether this town will hear girls when they say don’t,” and he nods like he knows somebody who hasn’t been heard yet.
Ruth angles us toward the lot, scanning reflections. “We won the inning,” she says. “They’ll throw at your head next pitch.”
“I have a helmet,” I say, tapping the recorder in my coat pocket. “And a spare.” I try to make my mouth a straight line; it wobbles.
“Night Walk?” she asks.
The words land heavier in my chest than they should, full of tower steps and dock planks and the number three hanging in air like frost. “After we brief the attorney,” I say. “After we sleep two hours.” The thought of stepping between bell tower and water at night tastes like pennies and wind. I say yes anyway because stories save and stories exploit, and I don’t want to be one more person who confuses comfort for care.
We reach the car. Across the street, Everett lingers in a pool of light, phone at his ear, smile gone now, jaw working. Councilor Ames’s silhouette appears briefly at the far corner, then disappears toward the marina where the donor plaques reflect like little moons.
I get in and pull the door shut. The window fogs with the first breath. I listen to the heater start its slow warm and to the lake pushing itself against the shoreline until the sound changes—like a hand sliding under the town and lifting.
I ask the question that threads the council vote to the walk I’ve promised the dark: now that facts have moved the tide by one notch, who’s waiting along the route from bell to dock to make sure the next sound I record is my own?