“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “and others. I am—I don’t even know what to say. As you’ve doubtless heard, we had the kind of bombshell today that could upend this whole hearing.
“I’m speaking to you from my hotel room on the evening of Wednesday, March sixteenth. Here’s what we know so far. Today, the defense was able to recall their witness Elizabeth Docherty, who testified that Robbie Serenho was not provably at the mattresses until 9:59 p.m., and that Thalia Keith confided with her on more than one occasion that Serenho had physically assaulted her. To which I say: whooooo, boy.
“I’m happy that my gut instincts were right, my very first instincts. If you’re wondering how Denny Bloch fits into all this—and if you haven’t watched Episode 46, please give it a moment of your time—what I recently discovered is not irrelevant. Robbie Serenho did this thing. Dennis Bloch was the motivation. Ms. Docherty spoke about Bloch today in court, and it seems the defense will use that in some way going forward. Thalia sleeping with her music teacher, that’s a death penalty offense according to young Mr. Serenho. We now have means, motive, and opportunity for Serenho. That makes him a viable suspect, a more than viable suspect.”
Dane stops here, takes a long sip of water from a fingerprint-smudged glass.
“Serenho is entitled to get himself legal representation, which, duh, he will. He’s on the docket for tomorrow morning, which should be incredibly interesting.
“I have seen Robbie Serenho in town with his family. At the time I sighted them, I was more interested in the new information about Dennis Bloch; otherwise I might have been tempted to confront him. One of many reasons I’ll be staying in Kern a while is to see if I can find him before he leaves.”
Dane leans in to stop the recording, his nose too close to the camera.
Geoff, watching the video with me Wednesday night, had already filled me in on the day. He’d told me how Mike Stiles had raced out of the courtroom right after Beth’s testimony, before the cross-examination. Presumably to tell Robbie everything that had happened.
Geoff said, “You got what you wanted. I mean—with Bloch, his name going on the record. You still wanted that, right?”
Yes. I did.
I said, “I don’t want them to kill him. I don’t—”
“No, I know.”
I said, “It’s out of my hands now. Which feels good. Or at least it’s supposed to feel good.”
Geoff pulled me onto him, stroked my hair.
For context, I suppose I do need to explain here that Geoff and I had found ourselves in my bed. I don’t feel like telling you more than that. It’s none of your business.
Geoff said, “What do you think the Serenhos are doing right now?”
I couldn’t imagine. All I knew was that Robbie had lawyers, and probably his lawyers had lawyers. He was well-connected, after all. A Granby alum.
35
When I arrived for freshman year in August of ’91, Severn Robeson walked me around the unchanged parts of campus. The dining hall, Old Chapel, New Chapel, the library. He walked me into Couchman, his old dorm, to my excruciating embarrassment. Surely I wasn’t allowed in here. But no one looked at us twice; maybe they assumed I was dropping off my brother.
The broad wooden window frames in the Couchman common were carved within an inch of their lives—initials, dates, names. With visible pleasure, Severn found, in the corner of one frame, the initials SDR. “There I am!” he said. “Ah, that’s gratifying. Like I never left.”
I’d seen plenty of graffiti back in Indiana, but that was the vandalism of the bored, the desperate, those trapped in a horrible town and ready to desecrate it. This, though—this was a thing of beauty, these lasting marks. Like someone had summitted a mountain and wanted to leave a mark, to say I was here.
I think about this a lot. When someone asks if I liked boarding school, I can no longer base my answer, my judgment, on the people I knew. Once, I might have thought of you. I might have thought of any number of people who weren’t what I once believed. But I can still love the place itself, as a place, as smells and echoes and angles of light, as surfaces etched deep with their own history.
If Mike Stiles first knew he belonged at Granby when he saw those memorial plaques, I felt something similar in the Couchman common. It wasn’t destiny I felt—just that this was a place where someone could claim a small corner, a place where, by the end of four years, I’d be able to say I was part of something. Somewhere on campus, I’d find a place to leave a piece of myself.
I was here.
I was here.
36
Alder and Britt and Geoff all individually related the bizarre scene that had rolled out Thursday morning, the same morning I’d spent lying in bed staring at CNN, at global calamities that made the entire state of New Hampshire feel microscopic.
Robbie, his face pale and swollen, had taken the stand with his lawyer right behind him—“hovering over him like a puppeteer,” Geoff said. Britt said, “I had no idea they could do that. This guy was just telling him what to say.”
Robbie had apparently looked to his attorney after every question, even the ones about what years he’d attended Granby, whether he knew Thalia at all. For those questions, the attorney nodded and Robbie answered. As soon as Amy asked if his relationship with Thalia was sexual in nature, the attorney shook his head, and Robbie said, “I exercise my Fifth Amendment right not to answer.” And then the same, again and again, for every remaining question.
On cross-examination, the state asked only “Were you responsible for the death of Thalia Keith?” to which Robbie responded, loudly and forcefully, “No.”
Geoff said, “The fucker’s gonna get away with it. Even if Omar got off, they’re never going after Serenho. I don’t see it.”
Yahav said so, too, on the phone. He said, “There’s no case against him.”
I said, “But there was no case against Omar, either.”
“Yes. Well.”
37
There was a man who got off the hook because he married the only witness very quickly; she couldn’t be forced to testify against her husband. She was the victim’s mother.
There was a man who got away with it because the defense made the girl’s best friend, now thirteen, testify that the dead girl had sneaked into R-rated movies. This apparently meant she was mature enough (“sexually active,” they said) at twelve that anyone could have killed her, not just the bus driver who had the nude photos.
There was a man they let out on a technicality (a paperwork error) who went free in just enough time to show up, to her family’s horror, at the graveside service of the girlfriend he’d strangled.
There was a boy who was not charged with involuntary manslaughter for pushing his father off a restaurant deck—because the system worked for him as it should work for everyone. When they brought him in for questioning, they gave him a blanket and hot chocolate. They understood that he was a child.
There was a man who got away with it because five Black, trans women found dead in the same park in one year must have been coincidence, a sign that it was a seedy park. They never even looked for him.
In the ’90s there was a case where the state declined to press charges against the family friend whose semen had been found in the mouth and vagina and anus of the murdered eleven-year-old. The state’s attorney didn’t feel there was enough evidence. The girl might have been sitting on a bed where he’d previously masturbated, and eaten some popcorn there, and gotten his semen in her mouth. “This is how we get colds,” the man said. “We touch something, we touch our face. And then a little girl goes to the bathroom, and what does she do? She wipes herself, front to back, like this.” And on live TV, in some marbled court hallway, he squatted low, swiped his hand between the legs of his suit pants.
38