“Oh God,” I said. “Fuck.” Jen had shown more restraint than I’d realized that afternoon. Maybe she’d wanted to spare me the guilt.
I felt like retching, but instead suggested we see if Fran’s key worked for the clock tower. It did, and we climbed the wooden stairs, steep as ever. I’d gone up there with crew friends once, to pass a Johnson’s Baby Shampoo bottle our cox had filled with Jim Beam. (She kept it in a shower caddy; teachers wouldn’t think to smell your shampoo.) And I’d gone on my own, with Radiohead on my Discman—the only thing to listen to in a puddle of teen angst inside a clock tower.
We might have just stood awkwardly in the dark, but I decided to sit on the floor near the big gearbox, and Mike joined. The backs of all four clocks, each one five feet tall, surrounded us, their opaque glass glowing from the outside lampposts and the moon. A filmmaker scouting locations on campus would die of joy. But the floor was dusty, and it was almost as cold in here as outside. I wondered about bats. I wished we had booze, at least. A bottle of good old baby shampoo. Both of us hugged our knees.
Mike said, “So who’s watching your kids? Aren’t they still pretty young?”
“I left them in front of the TV with some canned goods and pepper spray.”
He looked stupefied. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Probably.”
He said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you I changed my mind about something. When we first talked, I told you it was about the process for me. My original view was, Omar probably did it, but they investigated wrong, they prosecuted wrong, he didn’t have adequate defense. That’s my professional take. I think I even said to you I was still pretty sure he did it.”
“You said something like that.”
“Then when he was on the podcast, I don’t know. I listened to that one episode five times. It’s a gut instinct, but I fully believe him. My personal take, I’m listening and I’m thinking, my God, this guy didn’t do it. Either he’s the craftiest actor in the world, or he had nothing to do with that night.”
“That’s gratifying.”
He said, “Do you have any pot?”
“With me?”
“I don’t know, you’re from California.”
“Exactly. I flew here on a plane.”
“Shoot. I thought you might.”
“Is that why you texted me?”
He looked embarrassed enough that I guessed it was at least half true. He said, “We legalized last year, in Connecticut. It takes some of the fun away, actually. I miss that thrill of sneaking around.”
I said, “And why would Omar meet her in the shed?”
“Huh?”
I realized it was a non sequitur. I was still half-drunk, so cold my brain was shrinking.
“Omar’s an adult with an office and a car and an apartment. If she comes to meet him for sex, why would they go to this dusty place with old sports equipment? There were mice, remember? If you’re meeting someone you’re involved with, you go somewhere warm and private, or at least somewhere romantic, like here.”
Mike blushed—even if I couldn’t quite tell the color of his cheeks, I could see it in his eyes, the sudden downward tilt of his head—and I might have said then that of course that wasn’t what I meant, I wasn’t talking about us, about now, but instead I kept going.
“The only reason Omar, who has an office with a couch, takes her to the shed is if it’s premeditated. But that doesn’t fit with anything else. Not with putting her in the pool, which is a panic move. Not with the state’s theory that it was some fit of rage.”
Mike said, “I wish they could settle how that exit opened, what key and everything. It kills me they didn’t document every inch of that door in ’95.”
Something else started nagging at me: Why would you take her there? Your home was off-limits, obviously. But your classroom? The choir room? You, like Omar, had a car. The shed was dirty. It wasn’t the first time the incongruity had occurred to me: you in your neatly pressed khakis, clearing your way through cobwebs and broken track hurdles. Did Thalia lead you there? Did she show you how to open the door? Pure darkness and the smell of dust. She didn’t understand what a gift she’d just handed you.
I said, “I’m really fucking cold. Let me bring you to this party. They have good drinks.”
18
My hangover plus the warning from Hector were reasons enough to hide out in my room all morning. I went down only to grab the bagged breakfast (unsliced cold bagel, one little packet of cream cheese, flimsy plastic knife), then returned to bed to watch HGTV. It was Saturday—no action at the courthouse, nothing to wait for but any buzz about Dane’s video. So far, the comments beneath it were all from Dane fans, agreeing or disagreeing, gossiping about what little they could find online. They were excited—but there was nothing yet from anyone who knew you.
I’d fallen asleep again when someone started knocking on my door despite the Do Not Disturb sign. It was one in the afternoon.
I saw Alder through the peephole and wanted to yell at him to go away, but also didn’t want to yell, so I opened the door and pulled him in by the arm.
I said, “You’re nuts.”
“I’m not even here, though!”
Alder wore a sport coat over a Purple Rain T-shirt, and he’d grown even taller since I saw him last. I always forget how late boys keep growing.
He said, “You have to see this,” and he sat on the end of my bed, poked at his phone.
I said, “This better be a YouTube video of kittens.”
“It’s the lead investigator for the Major Crimes Unit, from the State Police. Yesterday’s last witness.”
“Dwight Boudreau?” I looked at the paused video. The man was ancient. Old enough that I calculated he must have been nearing retirement when I’d spoken with him so briefly at Miss Vogel’s kitchen table. I said, “You can’t show me that.”
“That’s why I didn’t send it! That’s why I’m here in person!”
“Can you just summarize it?”
“Mostly, but there’s one part you have to hear because it’s hilarious. Okay, Amy’s going through the investigation beat by beat, starting with the medical examiner contacting him. Most of it’s excruciatingly boring. Like paperwork, but out loud. So then she goes through the interview transcripts, all these things he never followed up on. Some teacher said Thalia’s grades were plummeting and she was like, Did you obtain her grade records? and he hadn’t. Stuff like that. There were a million of those, so it added up. If I’d been the judge, I’d be like, Oh, dang.
“Anyway. I’m gonna put this kitten video on right over here, and if you happen to overhear anything, that’s just bad luck.”
He pressed play, laid the phone on the bed. I half sat on the dresser, a few feet away, as if a yard of distance would let me off the hook.
Amy March’s voice: “You had a meeting on Wednesday, March 8, 1995, with Dr. Mary Ellen Calahan, Granby’s head of school, is that correct?”
An old man’s voice, thick and phlegmy: “Yes.”
“And these are your notes from that meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Could you read these highlighted lines out loud? We have magnification for you.”
“I can’t read that.”
“Okay, if the court will allow, I’ll read it.” A mumble from the judge. “It says, Dr. C suggests we look at community members strong enough to heft a struggling body into the pool. Not students, not faculty. Do you recall writing that note?”
“If it’s in my handwriting, I wrote it.”
“Did you follow that advice from Dr. Calahan?”
“I wouldn’t say that we took our direction from her, but sure, we’re certainly looking at who could carry a teenage girl, who could wrestle her into that bathing suit, assuming it was put on her, and who could get her in that pool.”
“Detective Boudreau, how much did Thalia Keith weigh at the time of her death?”
“I do not recall.”
“Thalia Keith weighed 110 pounds.”
“Okay.”
“That’s quite thin for her height. She was significantly underweight.”