The place smelled the same, sawdust and sweat and paint—but my lighting booth had been replaced when the theater was gutted and expanded. Still, as I told the students before we started, this room was where I’d discovered film. “I was one of the only students allowed to work the projector,” I said, “so I was essentially forced into joining film club.” I rambled about Geoff Richler introducing Bringing Up Baby to the handful of us assembled, how he explained that no one had dovetailed their lines like this, like Hepburn and Grant did, before Howard Hawks—who’d also directed the 1932 Scarface we were about to screen—whipped them into overlapping comedic frenzy. It was the first time I’d watched a movie for anything other than plot. It wasn’t long before I was interested in the camera work and the history and, eventually, the theory of film.
My students were notably less zealous. They were spread all over the room, some in pairs, some solo. I said, “Just a reminder that when you look at your phone, I’ll know. Your chin glows blue in the dark.”
Within ten minutes I’d broken my own rule, but then I’ve seen each Scarface a dozen times. Sitting in the back row, I thumbed an email to Vanessa Keith, who was now Vanessa Birch. I reminded her I’d been her sister’s roommate, not mentioning that Thalia and I were randomly assigned. I want to thank you for any info you’re able to share with my students, I wrote. They’re not interested in stirring up trouble, and I think their focus will be on how the school itself impeded or aided the investigation. I wasn’t sure that was true, but I hoped it would read as anodyne. I added that I’d lost a brother at around the same age, that I understood how long and complicated grief can be, and I didn’t want to upset her. Then I settled back and watched the film.
We were only at the part where Poppy asks Tony about his jewelry when I got a reply.
She had sent an actual Dropbox link. No message.
I was thrilled, and I was terrified. Terrified of finding myself in the interview transcripts, and terrified to be drawn further into this vortex, and terrified that there would be nothing useful here at all.
One night years ago, when I was fairly sure Jerome was sleeping with another artist, I stole his phone and took it into the bathroom. It wasn’t till I found nothing at all in his text messages that I realized I’d been wanting to find proof, if only to validate my instinct that something was terribly wrong between us. I felt the same way now—hoping, oddly, for the worst, the glaring evidence that would tell me I needed to be involved, needed to drop everything and devote the next years of my life to sorting this all out.
I was afraid my shaking hands would delete the link—if they’d liked that awful GIF, who knew what else they could do—but I managed to open it, to sit in the back row having my own private, horrible Christmas morning.
There were over four hundred pages of documents. First, an enormous number of both medical and legal records that looked equally incomprehensible. I’d have thought I’d be a better reader for legal papers than medical ones, but it was all motions and codes and filings.
But there were also the interview transcripts I’d been hoping for, from the weeks after Thalia’s death—much more than the day or two at Miss Vogel’s kitchen table that I remembered. It seemed the State Police had returned several times to interview Thalia’s close friends. I wanted to print these all out and read them thoroughly, didn’t want to stare at the scanned Courier type on my phone, but I couldn’t help skimming a few.
Here were Bendt Jensen’s account of the mattress party, Jenny Osaka’s of the dorm fire alarm. The first interviews indeed seemed to be from Saturday, March 11, a full week （a full, inexcusable week） after Thalia’s body was found.
Yes—oh God—my own brief interview was there, but I wasn’t ready to read it. Partly because reading it first would make me feel like some desperate opportunist （See, look! I was really there!） and partly because I was mortified to see what I’d said about Thalia being on drugs.
I scanned forward for any mention of Omar.
Here was Beth Docherty saying, “There’s this guy who works in the weight room who’s super sketchy. He’d definitely go to girls’ sports practices a lot. Maybe that was part of his job, but it was weird. Thalia said this thing to me, she kept saying, ‘Don’t get involved with an older guy, it’s not worth it.’ But Robbie’s only like a month older than her. So that makes me think.”
Puja Sharma saying, “As a girl you have unwanted attention, at least if you’re reasonably attractive. I think most boys left Thalia alone because she was dating Robbie. I don’t think this was a student, because a student, you know, would see Thalia a certain way. You want to look at the people who—you want to ask, who around here knows the students, but isn’t a student?” The interviewer asked if she meant anyone in particular, and Puja said, with surprising directness, “What I’ve heard is you should be looking at Omar, from the gym.”
A Detective Boudreau from the Major Crimes Unit was asking most of the questions. “Did she tell you her plans for that evening?” he asked everyone, and “Did you know Thalia to be sexually active?” and “Was Thalia hurting herself in any way?” The questions seemed irrelevant to the case, as if he’d be asking the same things no matter who died or how. There was an occasional follow-up, a “How so?” or “Could you spell that?” or “What time would that have been?” but nothing terribly incisive.
I hoped against hope that someone besides me had mentioned her being on drugs, at least smoking up once in a while. I needed that not to have come from me alone. So far, though, my skimming turned up nothing else.
I’d need to read thoroughly later, with a clear head, in an organized way. Or Britt and Alder would, rather. I forwarded them the Dropbox.
From somewhere in the dark, the voice of one of my students: “Wait, he’s her brother? He’s way too into her.” Someone else shushed him.
I’d ordered pizzas, and toward the end of the 1932 version, I had to stand outside and wait for the delivery. I was shifting from foot to foot in the cold when my phone pinged with a text from Mike Stiles. That Lola had included me when they introduced their Uncle Mike to Britt via text on Friday made this only a bit less shocking. There, in my phone, Maybe: Mike Stiles.
The text read: Hey, Bodie, it was so good to hear your name from Lola. I can’t believe how long it’s been! I have a few reservations about talking to these students. Would you be able to chat sometime tomorrow?
I had the sudden feeling of being watched, out there in the cold. I felt the need to compose my face, to tug my coat down smooth over my stomach, pull my shoulders back. I thought of typing a response, but it was too cold to take my gloves off, and it would probably be better just to call tomorrow. Plus here was the pizza car.
My timing was perfect; I returned to the theater just as Tony died in the gutter, just as the sign behind him announced that the world was his.
49
By two a.m., I’d gone through every document Vanessa had sent, reading the ones I could understand. I’d looked at my own words, which took up just two pages. The dumpster story was the only thing of note that I told them. I talked about the musical, but they never asked what time it ended.