Did you know it was Robbie? Did you at least know it wasn’t Omar? Did you hear the rumors about some older guy and realize, when they arrested him, the bullet you’d dodged?
Did Robbie see something? Did he walk in on you and Thalia? Did she tell you he was growing suspicious? Did she tell you he knew? Did she tell you that one night, early that spring, she’d confessed it all to Robbie—or at least confessed that she was seeing someone, even if he didn’t know it was you? Did she tell you he was angry? That she was scared of him?
When they came around asking questions, did you refrain from implicating Robbie, from mentioning that he might have a motive, because if you fingered him, he could finger you? Did you work it out with him, even? Make meaningful eye contact across the dining hall, the kind that said We’d both do best to keep our mouths shut?
Did you accept that job in Bulgaria before Thalia died? Did you take the job and tell her and she was mad that you were leaving the entire country, and let something slip to Robbie? Or did you conduct a frantic job search the week after her death, knowing if you stayed the rumors about you might accumulate, stick?
Before they arrested Omar, did you worry they’d get you? Did you lie awake thinking about yourself, rather than what had happened to Thalia? Did you thank God for your alibi, for chatting with me as you rolled the timpani away? Did you make sure your wife remembered what time you came home?
Have you thought what would have happened if you’d come forward? If you’d sacrificed everything to help Omar? To find justice for Thalia, whom I’m sure you believe you loved? It’s a big ask, I know. It would ruin your marriage, your career. (Careers and marriages have been ruined for less.) But you could have told your own version of the story. She wasn’t there to contradict you.
Have you thought about the cavity searches that happen in prison? Have you thought about the way prison guards exact their own arbitrary justice, kicking a guy’s teeth in because he didn’t show enough respect?
Have you considered how things might have turned out had the adult closest to Thalia at Granby been a voice of wisdom, someone she could confide in, someone who would notice that she was miserable with Robbie, that she wasn’t eating, that he was angry and controlling?
If you had done the difficult work of adulthood and intervened—what then? Would she have lived?
Do you sleep well?
Do you dream?
Is there forgiveness, in your dreams?
27
Monday morning, I gave up on a frustrating Google search and texted Yahav to ask what would happen if new evidence were discovered this late.
What kind of evidence? he wrote.
Well, that was the problem. It wasn’t really evidence. And it wasn’t really new. And Amy March wasn’t even particularly interested. I wrote: Let’s say evidence that destroys another viable suspect’s alibi.
If the state withheld it, he wrote, that’s a Brady violation.
No, nothing like that. More like—if sthg new came up or a witness changed their story. Wishful thinking. Even if I could crack Mike—and I wasn’t sure there was anything more there to crack—he wasn’t on the witness list, which complicated things further. Sakina had never changed her story. And Beth was gone and hated me. What was I going to do, track down Bendt Jensen in Denmark and ask if he happened to remember who arrived in what order twenty-seven years ago?
Geoff was in touch with a few other people who’d been at the mattresses, and he planned to spend the day contacting Jimmy Scalzitti and Fizz and a skier named Kirtzman whom I remembered primarily as a loud sneezer. He’d see if he could find anything concrete.
Yahav wrote, Is defense still presenting? Defense could still call whoever. Or if they already testified, could recall during rebuttal after state closes. What happened???
Really nothing, I answered, more accurately than I would have liked. Just curious.
28
A correction: Beth was gone, but, I discovered, not far. On her Instagram, she’d posted a photo of herself and her handsome husband at a fire pit on a restaurant terrace. She’d labeled it #selfcare and #r&r, and had tagged a ski resort in Stowe, Vermont—one that looked, from its website, to offer luxury spa services and locally sourced food. It clicked now why she’d waited for her husband to pick her up; they were having a nice weekend before his surgery.
I scrolled through her older photos: Beth on a footbridge, Beth’s husband in a tux on a crosswalk, Beth’s kids sprawled across her bed in what looked like a magazine shoot, and possibly was. One photo showed her getting vaccinated last spring, blue eyes welling with happy tears above her mask.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t know if she’d be able to help, or willing, and nothing here would answer those questions. But I had to try. If I ruined her weekend, I ruined her weekend.
Alder was back in court, but Britt was not—and Britt could be trusted with discretion. She was the one I called to ask if she’d drive me to Vermont. The sequestration rules were my last concern. Britt had driven here from Smith, and she picked me up in front of the Calvin Inn in her Kia.
As we drove, Britt said, “If we’re right—I bet that’s why Robbie brought his family. Don’t you think? He was scared of something like this happening. He wants to look good.” Britt was convinced by Alder’s theory, even if the defense team wasn’t. They weren’t about to discuss it on the podcast yet, but they could always do that down the road, if need be.
The drive took us two and a half hours—the roads, as we got up into the mountains, still packed in places with opaque gray ice.
I asked Britt if she was seeing anyone at Smith and she said, “I’m still with Alder.”
I was glad she was looking at the road and didn’t see my gobsmacked face. To the extent that I’d considered it at all, I’d assumed both of them were interested in the same sex. And I’d never had the slightest hint that they were an item.
“That’s so great!” I managed to say after too long a pause. “How long has it been now?”
She shrugged. “I guess since your class, basically. The long-distance thing has been chill.”
Asking more seemed invasive, so I dropped it. But the news delighted me. Proof that it wasn’t only a trail of chaos I was leaving behind.
Britt said, “I’ve been feeling optimistic. Even before today. The problem is, that’s usually a bad sign.”
“I know what you mean.” I’ve always preferred to hedge against optimism. But hope—wasn’t that how Omar was staying alive? Knowing hell might one day end?
All day I’d been filling with hope for Omar. I’d imagined him stepping out into the wind of a spring day. I’d imagined him moving in with his younger brother, and the new, soft sheets his brother might buy him. I imagined him eating all the foods he wanted. Ice cream, hot bread, a beautiful salad. I imagined him getting a massage, getting acupuncture, seeing a chiropractor, lighting up a joint. I imagined him moving through space the way he used to, graceful and muscled, on springs. Getting in a car and driving fast, fast, fast.
Of course, even if his conviction were vacated, it might be two or three years until a new trial. Maybe longer, if there were more waves of COVID. In the meantime, the state could appeal and the New Hampshire Supreme Court could reverse the judge’s decision, just like that. It was unlikely that bail would be granted, since it wasn’t granted back in ’95. And all of this was the best-case scenario, the pipe dream.
We arrived, finally, at a resort much larger than I’d anticipated, a parking lot teeming with out-of-state SUVs.