The good news was, I was not the arbiter of Jerome’s goodness. And the divorce made that official.
I’d seen someone for a few months before the pandemic hit, and then, during that brief wave of postvaccine optimism in the summer of ’21, Yahav flew out to LA for a conference and we spent the weekend sleeping together, which threw me back into full-tilt longing and then into a pained equilibrium, an acceptance that Yahav’s place in my life would be two to forty-eight hours here and there for an unspecified number of years. Like a stomach bug that overtook me entirely for a weekend and then vanished.
“By the way, funny thing,” Jerome said. “Somebody rang my cell yesterday looking for you. They were trying to figure out your address. I hung up.”
“Yeesh,” I said. “Man? Woman?”
“Sounded like a young woman, pretty nervous. I think, you know, an amateur sleuth.”
I’d been so flooded with emails in the past three years that I’d put an autoreply on my account asking people with information about the case to contact the defense team. The thing was, no one ever had information about the case. They had theories. There was that one serial killer active in Maryland in the early ’90s who resurfaced in Quebec in 2001. They wondered if the nearest Planned Parenthood would tell us if Thalia had been there. They wanted me to know that their brother had been wrongfully convicted of a gas station shooting in Texas and wondered if I could help. Once in a hundred emails, someone still wanted to tell me something about Greta Garbo.
Leo’s voice: “Mom, they’re not gonna stalk us, are they? Are people gonna find our house?”
“No,” I said, “of course not,” although that had already happened twice. One woman filming on a phone, two young men who wanted me to come on their video podcast and figured since I hadn’t answered their emails they should try me at home.
Silvie said, “What if the killer—”
“Nope,” Jerome said. “Silvie, we’ve covered this. No one dangerous is interested in us.”
“Okay, but what if the killer wants to kill everyone who knows who he is? He could ship poison in the mail.”
“Well,” I said, “no one knows who he is. So we’d be safe.” It probably wasn’t the most reassuring thought.
Poison, I thought, did seem like your style. More than strangulation, more than head injuries. Poison fit into the sly, ironic, aesthetically pleasant bubble you walked around in. You’d have made a good Masterpiece Theatre villain.
Jasmine Wilde had used that word in her interview. “What he did,” she said of Jerome, “was he poisoned the well.”
6
Omar’s voice on the podcast is scratchy and deep—not a voice I would have recognized. The phone line isn’t great and there’s background noise.
* * *
? ? ?
Granby was a good job, he says. I look back and it was a job I might’ve kept five, six years. Then I move on, right? It’d just be this job I had once.
One thing that happens in here: The last people and places you knew outside, they’re the clearest things you have to look back on. I remember Granby so well because it’s not like I’ve been anywhere since then, except here. Court and here. Your brain doesn’t cover it with other info.
I could tell you where every piece of equipment in that weight room was, for example.
But then, it’s a million years away.
* * *
? ? ?
Alder asks what he remembers about the night Thalia died.
* * *
? ? ?
Nothing, really. The cops asked so many times, and I know what I told them when it was fresh in my mind. That night I was in my office. I’d been on the road with girls’ hockey, their last game of the season, and I had these phone calls and order forms and I was doing time sheets for my student trainers. I listened to the radio a little. Then I went home, I called this girl Marissa I’d been seeing, we talked from about one a.m. to two a.m. She testified to that.
Later in court it becomes this whole thing, my calling her at one. They say I called her because I couldn’t sleep, because I felt guilty.
The next day was Saturday and I didn’t have to work. We were between sports seasons, no games or meets. This is one of my only weekends off all school year, so I basically slept all day. The next day, Sunday, I see this girl Marissa, then I go to my mom’s for dinner, and when I get back to my place there’s a squad car out front.
I honestly—I grew a little weed, and it’s the only law I’d ever broken besides running a few lights. So that’s where your mind goes. That’s what I assumed was up.
They want me to come back to the station in Granby, and they won’t say why. What I know now is, you get a lawyer, always. But at the time, I figure that looks weird. Especially once they tell me what it’s about, and I realize it’s not the weed. I’m spooked hearing about it, this girl I kind of knew. I thought she was great, and she’s dead so young. She’s dead at my place of work. That’s a mindfuck.
This first round of questioning, they’re chill about it, they’re like, We just want to see if you heard anything. So why would I go, Hold it, I gotta lawyer up? It’s like you’re announcing you’ve done something wrong. And I hadn’t.
It’s the local police. The State Police weren’t involved yet. I’m not even sure when they finished the autopsy.
They aren’t faking being casual because at this point, they still think it’s a drunk accident. They’re just trying to figure out how she got in the gym, just writing up this little police report. And it makes sense that it’s an accident. I’m sure some people thought those kids were angels, but I got to hear a lot of shit. I wasn’t a teacher, so they’d talk right in front of me. Just drinking, sneaking around, nothing you wouldn’t expect, but these kids are bored in the woods, they’ve got money, they get up to shit.
So I go back to work Monday, and things are almost normal except the pool and back hallway are taped off. But other than that, like, there’s kids all over that gym until they kick them out again a couple days later.
Early the next week, they call me in again. This time it’s the State Police, and by now we all know something looks wrong about the way she died. They’ve been questioning students and teachers, I know. So okay, I didn’t need a lawyer the first time, why would I need a lawyer the second time? They tell me this is about loose ends. Then they do this shit where whatever I say, they just shake their heads and look disappointed. That starts messing with me. They leave me alone for an hour, come back, ask the same stuff again. Then they lay out two things. They say, these kids are telling us you grow weed and you sell weed. And they’re saying you were obsessed with Thalia Keith.
At this point, why would I admit to the weed? They make it sound like it’s all tied in, like if I admit to having a couple grow lights I’m confessing to murder. And I wasn’t into Thalia. I liked to tease her, but that’s how I was. I was immature. I knew Thalia because she played tennis, and she messed up her elbow a few times. I’m out there at matches, but that was back in the fall. I haven’t seen her all winter. It’s not like she’s coming in to lift, right?