The door creaked open, a strip of light illuminating three freshman boys who looked terrified to find us there. “We were exploring,” one said quickly. Maybe he thought we were prefects. He probably couldn’t even see, in the dark, who it was.
“That’s funny,” Geoff said, “we were in here to investigate the alarming smell of cigarette smoke. Would you boys have any idea where that was coming from?”
The bravest said, “You guys getting it on in there or what?”
“Come in and find out,” Geoff said, starting to unbutton his shirt. The boys swore, ran away laughing.
In another universe, I kissed Geoff then. In that other universe, I understood that I was not disgusting, that Geoff might have welcomed it or in any case would at least have been flattered. I’d have let down my guard, allowed myself to like a real and attainable person, rather than dead musicians and the hottest boy at Granby. But in the real world, it never crossed my mind.
48
I’d arranged to show the film students a double feature of the original and 1983 versions of Scarface in the theater that night. In addition to Memento, they had already watched Eyes Without a Face and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fargo, but on their own. Here was the same stage I’d illuminated as my peers sang and danced, the same stage on which we’d occasionally been allowed to yank down the overhead screen and project VHS movies. Now, there was a hookup for my laptop, and a remote control that brought a screen as large as the stage gliding soundlessly down.
The place smelled the same, sawdust and sweat and paint—but my lighting booth had been replaced when the theater was gutted and expanded. Still, as I told the students before we started, this room was where I’d discovered film. “I was one of the only students allowed to work the projector,” I said, “so I was essentially forced into joining film club.” I rambled about Geoff Richler introducing Bringing Up Baby to the handful of us assembled, how he explained that no one had dovetailed their lines like this, like Hepburn and Grant did, before Howard Hawks—who’d also directed the 1932 Scarface we were about to screen—whipped them into overlapping comedic frenzy. It was the first time I’d watched a movie for anything other than plot. It wasn’t long before I was interested in the camera work and the history and, eventually, the theory of film.
My students were notably less zealous. They were spread all over the room, some in pairs, some solo. I said, “Just a reminder that when you look at your phone, I’ll know. Your chin glows blue in the dark.”
Within ten minutes I’d broken my own rule, but then I’ve seen each Scarface a dozen times. Sitting in the back row, I thumbed an email to Vanessa Keith, who was now Vanessa Birch. I reminded her I’d been her sister’s roommate, not mentioning that Thalia and I were randomly assigned. I want to thank you for any info you’re able to share with my students, I wrote. They’re not interested in stirring up trouble, and I think their focus will be on how the school itself impeded or aided the investigation. I wasn’t sure that was true, but I hoped it would read as anodyne. I added that I’d lost a brother at around the same age, that I understood how long and complicated grief can be, and I didn’t want to upset her. Then I settled back and watched the film.
We were only at the part where Poppy asks Tony about his jewelry when I got a reply.
She had sent an actual Dropbox link. No message.
I was thrilled, and I was terrified. Terrified of finding myself in the interview transcripts, and terrified to be drawn further into this vortex, and terrified that there would be nothing useful here at all.
One night years ago, when I was fairly sure Jerome was sleeping with another artist, I stole his phone and took it into the bathroom. It wasn’t till I found nothing at all in his text messages that I realized I’d been wanting to find proof, if only to validate my instinct that something was terribly wrong between us. I felt the same way now—hoping, oddly, for the worst, the glaring evidence that would tell me I needed to be involved, needed to drop everything and devote the next years of my life to sorting this all out.
I was afraid my shaking hands would delete the link—if they’d liked that awful GIF, who knew what else they could do—but I managed to open it, to sit in the back row having my own private, horrible Christmas morning.
There were over four hundred pages of documents. First, an enormous number of both medical and legal records that looked equally incomprehensible. I’d have thought I’d be a better reader for legal papers than medical ones, but it was all motions and codes and filings.
But there were also the interview transcripts I’d been hoping for, from the weeks after Thalia’s death—much more than the day or two at Miss Vogel’s kitchen table that I remembered. It seemed the State Police had returned several times to interview Thalia’s close friends. I wanted to print these all out and read them thoroughly, didn’t want to stare at the scanned Courier type on my phone, but I couldn’t help skimming a few.
Here were Bendt Jensen’s account of the mattress party, Jenny Osaka’s of the dorm fire alarm. The first interviews indeed seemed to be from Saturday, March 11, a full week (a full, inexcusable week) after Thalia’s body was found.
Yes—oh God—my own brief interview was there, but I wasn’t ready to read it. Partly because reading it first would make me feel like some desperate opportunist (See, look! I was really there!) and partly because I was mortified to see what I’d said about Thalia being on drugs.
I scanned forward for any mention of Omar.
Here was Beth Docherty saying, “There’s this guy who works in the weight room who’s super sketchy. He’d definitely go to girls’ sports practices a lot. Maybe that was part of his job, but it was weird. Thalia said this thing to me, she kept saying, ‘Don’t get involved with an older guy, it’s not worth it.’ But Robbie’s only like a month older than her. So that makes me think.”
Puja Sharma saying, “As a girl you have unwanted attention, at least if you’re reasonably attractive. I think most boys left Thalia alone because she was dating Robbie. I don’t think this was a student, because a student, you know, would see Thalia a certain way. You want to look at the people who—you want to ask, who around here knows the students, but isn’t a student?” The interviewer asked if she meant anyone in particular, and Puja said, with surprising directness, “What I’ve heard is you should be looking at Omar, from the gym.”
A Detective Boudreau from the Major Crimes Unit was asking most of the questions. “Did she tell you her plans for that evening?” he asked everyone, and “Did you know Thalia to be sexually active?” and “Was Thalia hurting herself in any way?” The questions seemed irrelevant to the case, as if he’d be asking the same things no matter who died or how. There was an occasional follow-up, a “How so?” or “Could you spell that?” or “What time would that have been?” but nothing terribly incisive.
I hoped against hope that someone besides me had mentioned her being on drugs, at least smoking up once in a while. I needed that not to have come from me alone. So far, though, my skimming turned up nothing else.
I’d need to read thoroughly later, with a clear head, in an organized way. Or Britt and Alder would, rather. I forwarded them the Dropbox.
From somewhere in the dark, the voice of one of my students: “Wait, he’s her brother? He’s way too into her.” Someone else shushed him.