The defense rested after they questioned Robbie, and the state introduced no witnesses of their own. They spent the following day making arguments, the state again saying I had influenced people, this time manipulating Beth. I would have been allowed back into the courtroom for the closing arguments, but Amy didn’t think that would be a good idea; she told me to fly home, and the whole thing ended when I was in the air somewhere over the Rockies. When I landed, I had a voicemail from Amy telling me she thought it had gone very well. Now the judge would take it all “under advisement,” and in one to six months, Amy thought, we’d hear if he’d decided to vacate the original verdict.
The day I got home, I checked my email and found a note from a young woman in Salem, Oregon. You knew her when she was a student in Providence. Paula Gutierrez; I’m sure the name rings a bell. She was hoping I could get a note to Beth Docherty, thanking her for what she’d said about you on the stand. It sounded so eerily familiar, she wrote to Beth. Like you were talking about my own life.
A week later, Dane Rubra forwarded me an email from Allison Mayfield, who’d attended the school you came to Granby from. Do you remember her? The one who dropped out junior year after she cut her wrists with fingernail scissors?
How about Zoe Ellis? She really thought the two of you were in love. She hadn’t reexamined it until a friend sent her news about the hearing. God bless Zoe, she was ready to go public, to write about it all.
How about Annie Mintz?
Do you still have a job? Do you still have a family?
It’s hard to tell online.
39
In April, I flew back east to see Geoff. We spent a week together in New York—we lay around in bed, I worked on the book, we ordered food—and we made plans for him to come out to LA that summer. I was very happy about it. I’m still happy about it.
I lied to Fran that I was in New York for research. I was holding out for the right moment to tell her, the right moment to hear her shriek “I’ve been waiting for this for thirty years!”
From New York, I took the Amtrak up to Manchester, where Fran picked me up and brought me to Granby; I’d stay with her for two nights. We had something important to do, something I don’t want to tell you about quite yet. The next day, we’d go to the matinee of the student musical, the one the Shirley Jackson fanatic wanted me to see.
Late that first afternoon, as Fran and I walked her golden retriever around the lacrosse field, my phone buzzed with three messages in a row, from Britt, Yahav, and Alder: Bad news and Motion for retrial denied and Fucckckck, respectively.
My breath stopped with disbelief more than shock. Wasn’t it too soon? It had barely been a month. This was surely a mistake, some minor legal hiccup I didn’t understand. But it was real.
Yahav wrote again: He can appeal, altho that’s an even longer shot. I’m so sorry, Bodie. I hope I didn’t give you false optimism. I tried not to. These things never come through. They’re designed that way.
I showed my phone to Fran, my hand shaking. Boris tried to jump up to sniff it, this thing we were both so interested in.
Fran asked if I wanted to be alone. I didn’t answer, just numbly followed her home.
I wondered how long it would take for Omar to get the news. He might not know yet. I wished him one last night of hope.
In Fran’s guest room, in the dark, I watched the video Dane Rubra had just put up. I’d become strangely fond of him. If nothing else, I could let him feel all the emotions for me.
Dane said, “Ultimately, no, it’s not a shock. This was not actually exculpatory evidence for Omar. You can believe Robbie Serenho beat the tar out of Thalia every day and showed up late to the woods and still believe Omar was the one who did it. You’d be wrong, but there you go.”
He said, “You know what to do, all of you in this incredible community we’ve built. Brand-new evidence could still be a game changer, and we know there’s more to be found. The state is bound to dig their heels in. They’ll never admit they were wrong. My strong guess, they’re consulting with Thalia’s family. And the Keiths have been dead set from the beginning on Omar Evans’s guilt. If you’ve seen the video of the Keith family’s statement, of Myron Keith outside his house today, you know what I’m talking about. These people won’t budge. But we—everyone watching this, this whole army we have now—we’re going to move mountains.”
I felt strangely galvanized by his little speech. That, and I felt a wave of fury. Or rather, I felt my extant wave of fury grow tsunami-tall.
I was thinking of the moment Omar would learn this news; and I was thinking of everything we’d done, everything Beth had put herself through; and then I thought about the people out there—you, Mike, Dorian, not to mention Robbie—just sitting on what you knew.
I was thinking that if I had nothing to lose, I’d go find you myself. And if I couldn’t get you to talk, I’d do the talking.
I was thinking: What do I have to lose, really? The things that matter aren’t going anywhere: my kids, Geoff, the book I’m falling deeper into with every moment of research.
And maybe you’re the missing piece of the puzzle. You, Robbie’s motivation. You, who knew a lot about a lot of things and never said them. You, with a front-row seat to what went wrong. You, a big part of what went wrong.
Maybe I’m coming for you. Maybe I’ve been coming for you all along.
40
That was her flip-flop beside the van.
That was her comb in the ravine.
That was her bank card at the ATM in Kansas, but that wasn’t her on the security footage.
Some leave more than others, to be sure; some leave trails and videos and yearbook quotes; some leave barely a trace.
That was her handwriting in the logbook.
That was her phone, tossed off the overpass.
That was her blood in the bathroom.
That was her hair in the attic.
We’re lucky to find this much.
That was her laundry, still in the dryer.
This was her body, but she’s long gone.
41
The show was Into the Woods, which we never could have pulled off in our day: complex orchestration, boys who could actually sing, a budget for mechanized trees. It had choreography well beyond the grapevines and box steps that had been my peers’ entire range. It had a Cinderella from Nigeria and a Witch from Shenzhen and a Big Bad Wolf who, Fran whispered, was headed to Berklee in Boston for musical theater.
It was a worthy distraction. I’ve always been happiest when I can sit in the dark, when I can turn off my own life and watch a story unfold.
At intermission I met the couple next to me, retirees from Peterborough who said they never missed a Granby show. “We saw this one on Broadway in the ’90s,” the woman said, “and I swear this is just as good.”
As the lights dimmed again, I said to Fran, “I’d never get into Granby now, would I?”
“Probably not,” she whispered. “No offense.”
Of course, we’d be different if we were growing up now. We’d still be idiots, still na?ve. We’d be more stressed. Maybe we’d have ulcers. But we might have put up with less. And that would be something.
The kids sang and acted their hearts out; what better to do with all the concentrated emotions of youth?
There was, I remembered, a man released after forty-three years on death row who said the best thing about being free was singing in a shower where he controlled the temperature. He said, “I can sing opera in scalding water if I want.”