“Okay, but what if the killer wants to kill everyone who knows who he is? He could ship poison in the mail.”
“Well,” I said, “no one knows who he is. So we’d be safe.” It probably wasn’t the most reassuring thought.
Poison, I thought, did seem like your style. More than strangulation, more than head injuries. Poison fit into the sly, ironic, aesthetically pleasant bubble you walked around in. You’d have made a good Masterpiece Theatre villain.
Jasmine Wilde had used that word in her interview. “What he did,” she said of Jerome, “was he poisoned the well.”
6
Omar’s voice on the podcast is scratchy and deep—not a voice I would have recognized. The phone line isn’t great and there’s background noise.
* * *
? ? ?
Granby was a good job, he says. I look back and it was a job I might’ve kept five, six years. Then I move on, right? It’d just be this job I had once.
One thing that happens in here: The last people and places you knew outside, they’re the clearest things you have to look back on. I remember Granby so well because it’s not like I’ve been anywhere since then, except here. Court and here. Your brain doesn’t cover it with other info.
I could tell you where every piece of equipment in that weight room was, for example.
But then, it’s a million years away.
* * *
? ? ?
Alder asks what he remembers about the night Thalia died.
* * *
? ? ?
Nothing, really. The cops asked so many times, and I know what I told them when it was fresh in my mind. That night I was in my office. I’d been on the road with girls’ hockey, their last game of the season, and I had these phone calls and order forms and I was doing time sheets for my student trainers. I listened to the radio a little. Then I went home, I called this girl Marissa I’d been seeing, we talked from about one a.m. to two a.m. She testified to that.
Later in court it becomes this whole thing, my calling her at one. They say I called her because I couldn’t sleep, because I felt guilty.
The next day was Saturday and I didn’t have to work. We were between sports seasons, no games or meets. This is one of my only weekends off all school year, so I basically slept all day. The next day, Sunday, I see this girl Marissa, then I go to my mom’s for dinner, and when I get back to my place there’s a squad car out front.
I honestly—I grew a little weed, and it’s the only law I’d ever broken besides running a few lights. So that’s where your mind goes. That’s what I assumed was up.
They want me to come back to the station in Granby, and they won’t say why. What I know now is, you get a lawyer, always. But at the time, I figure that looks weird. Especially once they tell me what it’s about, and I realize it’s not the weed. I’m spooked hearing about it, this girl I kind of knew. I thought she was great, and she’s dead so young. She’s dead at my place of work. That’s a mindfuck.
This first round of questioning, they’re chill about it, they’re like, We just want to see if you heard anything. So why would I go, Hold it, I gotta lawyer up? It’s like you’re announcing you’ve done something wrong. And I hadn’t.
It’s the local police. The State Police weren’t involved yet. I’m not even sure when they finished the autopsy.
They aren’t faking being casual because at this point, they still think it’s a drunk accident. They’re just trying to figure out how she got in the gym, just writing up this little police report. And it makes sense that it’s an accident. I’m sure some people thought those kids were angels, but I got to hear a lot of shit. I wasn’t a teacher, so they’d talk right in front of me. Just drinking, sneaking around, nothing you wouldn’t expect, but these kids are bored in the woods, they’ve got money, they get up to shit.
So I go back to work Monday, and things are almost normal except the pool and back hallway are taped off. But other than that, like, there’s kids all over that gym until they kick them out again a couple days later.
Early the next week, they call me in again. This time it’s the State Police, and by now we all know something looks wrong about the way she died. They’ve been questioning students and teachers, I know. So okay, I didn’t need a lawyer the first time, why would I need a lawyer the second time? They tell me this is about loose ends. Then they do this shit where whatever I say, they just shake their heads and look disappointed. That starts messing with me. They leave me alone for an hour, come back, ask the same stuff again. Then they lay out two things. They say, these kids are telling us you grow weed and you sell weed. And they’re saying you were obsessed with Thalia Keith.
At this point, why would I admit to the weed? They make it sound like it’s all tied in, like if I admit to having a couple grow lights I’m confessing to murder. And I wasn’t into Thalia. I liked to tease her, but that’s how I was. I was immature. I knew Thalia because she played tennis, and she messed up her elbow a few times. I’m out there at matches, but that was back in the fall. I haven’t seen her all winter. It’s not like she’s coming in to lift, right?
They ask for a hair sample, a saliva sample. I do that, and they let me go.
Actually—wait—I should explain this. You know what they do? They have to get something like a hundred hairs. This lady stands over me with rubber gloves pulling hairs out by the root from every part of my head, and then from my arm and leg. It’s torture.
Then that Friday, I’m in my office at school and they come arrest me. I don’t even think anything’s up when they come in. I got used to them poking around the building.
But they have me stand up, they do the cuffs and my Miranda, and all I can do is laugh. It’s a weird response, I know. Not laughing hysterically, I mean I’m just sort of laughing in disbelief. It felt like a movie. But then yeah, two years later in court, the one officer testifies that when they came and got me I was laughing. I sound like a maniac.
What they had on me, what they thought they had, was a very small piece of my hair in Thalia’s mouth and my DNA on the bathing suit. I don’t know what to say here because either it was shit luck or, I gotta suggest, maybe they gave themselves a little help. They do what they can to strengthen their case because they’re under a metric shit ton of pressure to solve this thing. And I’m a solution that makes the school happy. I’m not a student, I’m not a teacher. I’m not some huge part of the community. They probably think they’ve figured it out, and they just need that little bit of extra help.
Or maybe it’s legit. I swam in that pool a lot of mornings. I’d lift, rinse off, go for a swim, shower, get to work. So sure, maybe some of my hair is in the pool. The bathing suit, I have no idea. I touched a lot of shit in that gym.
They say “DNA” and it sounds so definite, like it must be my blood or semen. And DNA evidence was this new, exciting thing back then—like this was something juries had maybe heard about on TV but just barely. They hear DNA and, wow, that’s official.
But what you’ve got is a quarter-million gallons of water in a pool with fuck knows what floating in it, and one of those things is a piece of my hair.