“It’s audio if we read it aloud.” He opened his laptop and cleared his throat. “Okay, this is Sonya Rousseau. She was the one—she was married to Omar for about a year, before he came here. So, she gave an interview on this random website five years ago. It’s her, it checks out.” He angled the computer so the rest of us could look. I recognized the name of the site, remembered someone on Reddit referencing the interview, but I hadn’t seen it.
I knew about Sonya before the news reports, because Omar had talked about her. He’d chat when we were on the ergs, tell us how after UNH he met and got engaged to a Dartmouth senior whose parents disapproved. They eloped, but were separated by their first anniversary in 1991. She’d left him with no warning, cleaned everything out one day while he was at work—even the TV, even the cat. Omar brought her up obsessively: She was smart like all of you, he’d say, or My ex could never lift more than ten pounds. She was like, Ow, my arms! He didn’t say it in a vengeful way. He didn’t call her crazy, or a bitch. But it was constant.
Alder began to read her words: Omar’s temper scared me, and it scared my parents. He locked me out of the house once. It was twenty degrees and I didn’t have my boots. He’d yell, he’d grab my shoulders and get right in my face. You have to understand, he’s six foot two, he lifts. Sometimes I’d agree with him just so things didn’t get physical. He didn’t have to use his body to be violent. Does that make sense? And when he was mad, he wouldn’t give up. Once, he stormed out of the house and I locked the doors behind him. He decided to get back in, so he started banging, and he climbed up onto the porch roof and opened our bedroom window. I called the police, and they didn’t understand. How do you explain that yes, this is your husband and this is his house but no, he’s not supposed to be here?
“Wait,” Lola said, “so she’s saying it’s bad that he locked her out of the house but also she locked him out of the house and that was good?”
Alyssa said, “Yeah, but he does sound intimidating.”
“Depends what she means by grabbed her shoulders,” Jamila said. “Like, we’ve all grabbed people by the shoulders. There’s a normal way to do it, and a scary way.”
“But she’s saying it was the scary way.”
“Right,” Lola said, “but she’s a white woman saying this about a Black man after he was arrested for murder. Her perception might be skewed.”
They started arguing, and I couldn’t follow anyone’s voice.
This—I realized it, and it sank me into my chair—this was why I shouldn’t be involved. Because what the hell did I know? Maybe Sonya was bitter and exaggerating and he was the same Omar I knew, outgoing and kind; maybe she was telling the truth and Omar killed Thalia, would have killed again if he weren’t in prison; maybe he was indeed a terrible husband, an aggressive man, who had not killed Thalia but whose vibe had given Thalia’s friends just enough fuel to convince each other it was him.
If it was inappropriate, in 1995, for Thalia’s friends to speculate, for their opinions to weigh something—for me to offer my unhelpful memory to the police, too—maybe it was equally inappropriate for these students to get involved. What measures did any of us have for the truth?
But who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to stop the kids, or myself.
I put on my most convincing teacher voice and I said, “The back-and-forth on this will make it a better podcast. Remember, we want questions. This raises such great questions.”
52
I wanted to call Yahav after film class, but I knew he’d be getting his kids dinner—he was the family cook—plus I’d told Mike Stiles I’d call.
I hate the phone. It’s one thing talking to family or the pharmacist, but a scheduled call with someone I sort of know makes me want to pull hairs from the nape of my neck. I do best when I’m moving, so after a hot shower in the guesthouse, I put in my AirPods and started my walk toward the dining hall.
He answered, mercifully, with “Bodie!” so there was no need to stammer an explanation, remind him why I was calling. He said, “How’s everyone? How’s everything?”
I gushed about Lola, the class, campus, told him who was still around. I said, “I hear you’re at UConn.” He mentioned that he had three kids, that the oldest was twelve.
I was crossing Middle Bridge, and told him so.
“I’m jealous!” he said. “Lola knows I’m coming to graduation whether I’m invited or not.” And then, “So speaking of Lola, this—this project.”
“Oddly,” I said, inanely anxious that he know this, “I had nothing to do with the idea.” I explained about Britt’s interest predating the class, how the kids saw the whole thing as ancient lore.
Mike said, “It’s been on my mind a lot, actually. The past couple years.”
“It means something new when you have your own kids.”
“Sure,” he said, “sure. But I guess I just mean this moment we’re in, the stuff—we were so—God, Bodie, I don’t know.”
One of the first things I’d taught the kids about getting someone to talk was biting your tongue. (“Literally,” I said, “if necessary.”) Sure enough, he filled his own silence.
“If I had to play the odds, I’d say Omar did it. But you can’t arrest someone on rumors, right? I remember we had that sign-up sheet, and we went in—we said what we knew, but we’d for sure already talked to each other. You’re sitting around for days trying to process, trying to figure out what happened, and people are saying stuff about Omar. It starts to make sense.”
I was at New Chapel now, and snow had started to fall again, fast and thick and wet, landing on my face and scarf, blowing into my legs. I ducked inside, stood in the vestibule. There had once been a pay phone here; now there was a phone charging station.
“Then Omar confessed,” he said, “and even if he recanted it was like, okay, well, there’s your answer. It’s solved, like the end of a TV show. But, Bodie, what I know now—false confessions are so common.”
It was wild how familiar his voice sounded. He’d never talked in class, and I hadn’t spoken to him much—but then I’d listened to him every night in Camelot rehearsal, heard his gravelly voice not too long ago in the YouTube version, saying, My teacher Merlin, who always remembered things that haven’t happened better than things that have.
Mike said, “Especially—I look at this case, and they had Omar on drug charges, easily. We basically handed him over on that. They’re asking who could have done this, and we all said, Well, this guy follows Thalia around, and we heard he sells weed. I mean, we knew he sold weed. I’m sure when they searched his place they found enough drugs to put him away. I was never there, but—the guys who’d been to his apartment said he had grow lamps and everything.” I wondered if those guys had really been there, or had claimed this only after Omar’s arrest, but I didn’t ask. “And it’s possible the drugs were a factor in his confession. What did they really have him on, besides that initial confession?”
“He had access to the pool,” I said. “He was in the building.” I didn’t consider this solid evidence anymore, but Mike had asked.
“That’s absolutely circumstantial. And also. Bodie. We all had access to the gym, if not the pool. How many master keys were circulating? If that one pool door wasn’t locked, any of us could’ve gotten in. And some kids probably had the pool key, too. I remember I’m answering their questions, and I’m thinking, Christ, I have two different illicit keys under a sneaker insole in my closet right now. I remember thinking that if they knew, they’d arrest me.”
“And Omar’s DNA was on the swimsuit,” I said. “And he drew that noose.”
“Right.” He sighed. “Right.” He was quiet a moment.