When Devils Sing(63)

“Yeah, well, it goes both ways,” Neera acknowledged. “Why were you asking about Dawson before the news even mentioned him? It’s obvious you didn’t know him personally.”

Isaiah heaved a heavy sigh, head tilting to the cloudless blue sky above. “Go to the podcast app on your phone and click on the true crime section,” Isaiah said. “Scroll until you see a podcast called Secrets of the South.”

Neera didn’t have to scroll far, as it currently sat at number seven in the “top shows” ranking. She clicked on it, finding a brief description about investigating small-town legends and rumors, and the real, often terrible stories behind them. “Why’re you showing me this?”

“That’s me, Neera,” Isaiah said plainly.

“Sorry?” Neera blinked. “That’s you? I don’t follow.”

“That’s my podcast. I’m behind the whole thing, from investigation to production. It’s all me.”

Neera didn’t have to be a true-crime aficionado to see the podcast was popular. She scrolled through the backlog of episodes, finding they started the same year she and Isaiah stopped talking. The year Ajay died. Three seasons, one for each year that had passed. “I—I didn’t know. This is impressive, Isaiah. Seriously.”

Isaiah shrugged. “You weren’t the only one going through things the past few years. My parents’ divorce was … it was hard on me. I needed something to escape to. I’m sure you get that.”

Neera nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I do. I’m sorry. Shit. And your dad—does he know?”

“No,” Isaiah said. “No one does. I run the podcast anonymously. It was just for fun at first, but now it’s a whole thing. There’s a lot of listeners, a lot of stories coming my way all the time. That’s how I found out about Dawson. He sent the podcast an email when he was at the Colonial.”

“Can I see it?” Neera braced her cut-up hand against the mural as Isaiah showed her the email, and then he rattled off the different clues he’d picked up over the past few days. “You’ve been busy,” she breathed, taking it all in. “What can we do now?”

“Well,” Isaiah began. “I think I’ve found out all I can from Andrea Sumter. But there’s still two people in Dawson’s life that could tell us something: Reid Langley and Samantha Calhoun.”

“Sam’s part of this?” Neera’s eyes went wide. “I can try and talk to her. We’re friends. Friendly. We work together at the Tavern.”

“Do that,” Isaiah agreed. “I’m supposed to talk to Reid Langley tonight.”

Neera’s cheeks warmed as flashes of last night returned to her—of Reid finding her on the road. “Do you think Reid can be trusted?”

“Can Sam?”

Neera gave him a sad smile. “Sounds like we both have a big day ahead of us.”

“Yeah,” Isaiah said. “I guess we do.”

SECRETS OF THE SOUTH



SEASON 4: EPISODE 3

(INTRO THEME SONG)

HOST (to audience): Picture this: a shimmering lake filled with pontoon boats, Jet Skis racing across the water, paddleboard enthusiasts coasting near sandy shores. Elaborate lakeside homes with long docks that extend out into the water. This is the image of your average American lake during the warm summer months of June and July.

But tourists from all over the country gather in droves to boat on a lake deep in rural Southwest Georgia every year. This begs the question: Why there?

ANGELA ABERNATHY, EDITOR OF SOUTHERN MAGNOLIA LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE (phone): You’re asking me if I think Lake Clearwater is special? (brief pause) Well, yes. Of course. There’s a unique charm to the lake and the community that surrounds it, that we don’t often see in the South anymore. Clearwater has done a highly marketable thing of preserving its history, while also reinventing itself for the modern American. The Langley Plantation and Estate, for example, is a hallmark of historical preservation on its own.

HOST (phone): Could you elaborate on that reinvention?

ANGELA ABERNATHY (phone): People want to be reminded of a time when the South was genteel and aristocratic, not downtrodden and ugly, as we so often see. Tourists want to be sold a very specific fairy tale, and I think Lake Clearwater does that better than anywhere else. It’s classy and it’s beautiful—filled with romantic Southern grace. What more could someone want from a vacation?

HOST: It’s not just the well-preserved Southern charm of the lake that attracts tourists. Every thirteen years, Lake Clearwater holds a festival that Southern Magnolia Lifestyle Magazine once described as both “… elaborate and ostentatious.” They continued, “The Cicada Festival is a decadent musical celebration of what makes the South enchanting.”

But the Cicada Festival isn’t all dancing to country music and eating deep-fried okra served on fine china. There’s a hazard to the lake that no one wants to talk about. People die on Lake Clearwater every thirteen years in ways that the local police describe as “unfortunate but not unlikely.”

I consulted with a statistician who told me that the casualties were the result of basic math. The more tourists that boat on the lake’s waters, the more accidents there are to occur.

But I’m not satisfied with that answer. And you shouldn’t be, either. I’ll leave you with this chilling audio clip until our next episode. It is a piece that was filmed for the WCLB News station in 2008. It was nearly scrubbed entirely from the internet.