He shook his head. “Right, it might have changed things just by putting a different innocent person in prison. I’m not saying I value Robbie’s freedom over Omar’s, but there’s no telling what else they would’ve gotten wrong.”
There were several things I wanted to scream at him. One was the fact that he clearly had put Robbie ahead of Omar. Another was that he didn’t even seem concerned about justice for Thalia, about the fact that maybe she wasn’t resting in peace, and maybe the person who did this had gone on to hurt more people.
Instead of screaming, I tucked a bolster pillow between my shoulder blades, stretched my shoulders back and pushed my boobs out.
I wondered whether Mike would testify to any of this—whatever his professional convictions, his personal ethics. My phone had been recording the whole time, just in case. I’m not an idiot.
“It makes so much sense, then, that you’d all get your stories straight. He was vulnerable.” I swallowed all the spit in my mouth and said, “Even if Robbie had shown up a little late at the mattresses, you’d have to say he was there from the beginning, right? Otherwise they’re off on some rabbit chase. Maybe they’d fully pin it on him.”
I expected Mike to look alarmed, but he shrugged. “He was there, though.”
“You remember walking with him?”
“After all this time, I mean—but he was in the pictures from the beginning. That’s rock-solid.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “He’s in the first one. Knowing him, it was probably his idea to take photos in the first place.”
“Right? If we were kids now he’d be the Instagram king. He always wanted everyone to remember how much fun they’d had.”
“That’s really sweet,” I said. “He’s a sweet guy.”
“He’s a sap. He used to listen to Phantom of the Opera. I could never figure it out, how does a guy get away with listening to Phantom of the Opera and not get ragged on? No one questioned his sexuality.”
“So if they asked you on the stand,” I said, “whether he was there from the beginning, you’d be positive? Because I’m having this crisis of confidence about testifying. Like, how do you remember things? It was so long ago.”
“I think for us, it helped that we talked about it right away. We’re sitting around listing who all was in the woods, we’re making sure we know what time we got there.”
“Was that all from Robbie? It seems like he was so smart about it, developing the photos and everything.”
I sipped my whiskey and intentionally spilled some down my chin, onto my tank top, so I had to paw myself dry.
Mike kept his eyes studiously above my head. “Yeah, actually,” he said. “He was the one who gathered a bunch of us. Or maybe—I guess we were in his room to check on him. It was the day after they found her. He started writing everything down in a notebook, who was there and what time we left the theater. It helped him process it all.”
The motherfucker. That entitled little floppy-haired motherfucker.
“For sure,” I said. “And I bet he was terrified. Of being blamed. I mean, what if he hadn’t been there? Or what if he’d joined you all later, or left earlier?”
“But he didn’t,” Mike said, and it felt like I’d hit a trip wire. He looked irritated, checked his phone. “Jesus, it’s late,” he said.
I threw a pillow at him. “No kidding! Get out of here and stop keeping me up!”
And there he went. There was Mike Stiles’s back as he left my hotel room like a lover departing after a tryst. The teenager somewhere in me, watching from 1995, was bewildered by it all.
I whispered to her: “It’s not what you think.”
26
I have some questions for you.
Did you know it was Robbie? Did you at least know it wasn’t Omar? Did you hear the rumors about some older guy and realize, when they arrested him, the bullet you’d dodged?
Did Robbie see something? Did he walk in on you and Thalia? Did she tell you he was growing suspicious? Did she tell you he knew? Did she tell you that one night, early that spring, she’d confessed it all to Robbie—or at least confessed that she was seeing someone, even if he didn’t know it was you? Did she tell you he was angry? That she was scared of him?
When they came around asking questions, did you refrain from implicating Robbie, from mentioning that he might have a motive, because if you fingered him, he could finger you? Did you work it out with him, even? Make meaningful eye contact across the dining hall, the kind that said We’d both do best to keep our mouths shut?
Did you accept that job in Bulgaria before Thalia died? Did you take the job and tell her and she was mad that you were leaving the entire country, and let something slip to Robbie? Or did you conduct a frantic job search the week after her death, knowing if you stayed the rumors about you might accumulate, stick?
Before they arrested Omar, did you worry they’d get you? Did you lie awake thinking about yourself, rather than what had happened to Thalia? Did you thank God for your alibi, for chatting with me as you rolled the timpani away? Did you make sure your wife remembered what time you came home?
Have you thought what would have happened if you’d come forward? If you’d sacrificed everything to help Omar? To find justice for Thalia, whom I’m sure you believe you loved? It’s a big ask, I know. It would ruin your marriage, your career. （Careers and marriages have been ruined for less.） But you could have told your own version of the story. She wasn’t there to contradict you.
Have you thought about the cavity searches that happen in prison? Have you thought about the way prison guards exact their own arbitrary justice, kicking a guy’s teeth in because he didn’t show enough respect?
Have you considered how things might have turned out had the adult closest to Thalia at Granby been a voice of wisdom, someone she could confide in, someone who would notice that she was miserable with Robbie, that she wasn’t eating, that he was angry and controlling?
If you had done the difficult work of adulthood and intervened—what then? Would she have lived?
Do you sleep well?
Do you dream?
Is there forgiveness, in your dreams?
27
Monday morning, I gave up on a frustrating Google search and texted Yahav to ask what would happen if new evidence were discovered this late.
What kind of evidence? he wrote.
Well, that was the problem. It wasn’t really evidence. And it wasn’t really new. And Amy March wasn’t even particularly interested. I wrote: Let’s say evidence that destroys another viable suspect’s alibi.
If the state withheld it, he wrote, that’s a Brady violation.
No, nothing like that. More like—if sthg new came up or a witness changed their story. Wishful thinking. Even if I could crack Mike—and I wasn’t sure there was anything more there to crack—he wasn’t on the witness list, which complicated things further. Sakina had never changed her story. And Beth was gone and hated me. What was I going to do, track down Bendt Jensen in Denmark and ask if he happened to remember who arrived in what order twenty-seven years ago?
Geoff was in touch with a few other people who’d been at the mattresses, and he planned to spend the day contacting Jimmy Scalzitti and Fizz and a skier named Kirtzman whom I remembered primarily as a loud sneezer. He’d see if he could find anything concrete.