“At that point,” I said, “we still thought it was an accident. That either she’d been swimming drunk at night, or she’d gone over in the morning to exercise and—who knows.”
Britt said, “When did it become clear they were investigating the death as a murder?”
“Not for a few days. They did an autopsy, which I guess is standard for accidental deaths, and after that the State Police showed up.”
Britt referred to her notebook. She said, “So, the State Police came on Tuesday, and the family’s own investigators did, too. That’s three full days after the body was found, and meanwhile the Granby police hadn’t even secured the scene.”
I said, “Well, they thought it was an accident.”
“You’re supposed to secure the scene, but apparently they just left. They didn’t even take good pictures. And the school didn’t keep kids out of the gym.”
I nodded slowly. “They actually drained the pool. You knew that, right?”
Britt hadn’t known. Her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth, but she ought to say something, for the sake of the podcast. I nodded at her phone.
What she said was, “Holy wow.”
“What I remember,” I said, “was Alumni Weekend was coming up, I think that next weekend. The last thing they wanted was yellow tape around the gym.”
Leave it to Granby to schedule Alumni Weekend not for a gorgeous spring day but for the end of ski season, so alumni could day-drink at the Granby Invitational.
I said, “You’d think they might have canceled the weekend, but they went right ahead. They strung up those Welcome Back banners. I remember they had the State Police park behind the gym so no one would see.” We’d rolled our eyes at the time, but saying it aloud in 2018, I found myself kind of shocked. By the school’s callousness, but also by the way the police apparently just did whatever Dr. Calahan asked.
“So that same weekend,” Britt said, “that’s when they started interviewing students. A whole week after her death.”
Was that right? I remembered people missing class right away, but maybe that was to meet with counselors rather than detectives.
I wouldn’t have dared to sign up for counseling on the bulletin board. Nor was I one of the girls with just enough claim to Thalia that I could walk around the next few weeks collapsing whenever I wanted out of a test. Perhaps that’s unkind, but really—there were a few girls vying for Oscars that spring.
I was on the detectives’ list, though, and one night I was called into Miss Vogel’s apartment to sit at her table with two men from the Major Crimes Unit, Miss Vogel’s parakeet chirping in a cage over the sink. The detectives were both tall—one beefy, one gray-haired. They were far too loud for that little kitchen.
I told Britt, “They interviewed me for maybe ten minutes. I remember they asked if I knew of anyone she was fighting with. In the past few days I’d heard other kids talk about Omar, but it was secondhand so I didn’t bring that up. I did tell them this random story, and I thought it was surreal how they wrote down whatever I said. It made me feel important.”
I’d felt at the time like it was at least something to give them, and I felt the same way with Britt now. At least I had one story no one else would have.
I said, “That past September, I was babysitting for a family in one of those stone houses.” It was the one to the right of Fran and Anne’s. The Pelonis’ house, if you remember them. Three obnoxious kids who thought it was funny to spin each other in Mr. Peloni’s desk chair till they were sick. “There were a couple dumpsters behind those houses, between their backyards and the loading dock of the dining hall.”
Britt nodded. “That’s all still there.”
“So the kids had gone to bed, but it was still light out, and I was on their back porch doing homework. I looked up and Thalia was by the dumpsters, wearing pajamas. I mean, bare feet, boxers, a T-shirt. She didn’t see me. There were shrubs between us.” I hadn’t wanted to be seen, didn’t want Thalia to feel obliged to make patronizing small talk. “She started circling this one dumpster. Just walking around and around it, but like something was wrong. Every once in a while she’d jump up, trying to see in. It was weird.”
Britt looked confused. I wasn’t telling it right.
“What I’m saying is, something was off. At first I thought she was sleepwalking, and then I’m like, it’s eight thirty p.m. I wondered if she was on drugs. I mean, something serious. Something that made the world not totally real.”
Britt was excited now, leaning forward. “Something that could make you try to jump into the pool from the observation deck!”
I said, “But they did toxicology on her, and she was only a little drunk, right?”
“What’s weird,” Britt said, “is there was some alcohol in her bloodstream, but there was lots in her stomach that hadn’t been absorbed yet. So, like, she drank a lot but she died before she was drunk.”
I said, “Oh, right.” I had known this at one point—it was probably in one of the articles Fran had sent—but I hadn’t put it together with—with what? There was a word-on-my-tongue feeling, some Jungian breakthrough that wouldn’t break through.
Britt said, “You know they used that in the trial? Like, if she was drinking right before she died, but she wasn’t in the woods with those kids, she somehow got alcohol at the gym. So the prosecution decides it must have come from Omar. How na?ve is that? Like only an adult would have booze?”
The flask. The flask in the video, in Beth Docherty’s hand.
I didn’t say anything. Because I was still piecing it together, and because I was being recorded.
They’d probably passed the flask backstage as the show wound down, as they pre-gamed for the mattresses.
There were kids who, if they’d been asked the right question soon enough, if they’d been honest enough, might have said they saw Thalia drink. They might have seen her come back after her last scene and gulp down whatever was left.
I said, “Could they tell what kind of alcohol it was?” and Britt shrugged.
It would have been vodka in that flask, for sure. Beth always drank vodka and still sprayed her mouth with Binaca after, would breathe in your face and ask if you could smell anything. Or rather, she’d do it to boys she liked, an excuse to breathe on them.
If it was vodka in Thalia’s stomach—well, that wouldn’t prove anything. But it might suggest she died soon after the end of the show.
And what would that mean? That she went straight to Omar’s, that he killed her almost immediately? That he was waiting backstage, even, and whatever she mouthed into the wings was to him?
It certainly wasn’t to you; you were down in the pit.
Britt said, “Do you think?”
“I’m sorry?”
“That the police got it from you?”
I looked at her, baffled; I’d missed a few sentences.
“The idea that she was on drugs. That was what the prosecution argued, that she’d been sleeping with Omar in exchange for drugs. Do you think they based that on the story you told them?”
My mind pinwheeled, and then my guts did. That couldn’t be it, couldn’t be the only reason.