Pizza polished off and an hour gone by, we’ve done very little actual work, so we agree to a writing sprint—fifteen minutes and then we’ll check in. Avery gives up after eight.
“This is impossible.” She groans. “I want to write about Emma. I’m trying to. But a part of me thinks it’s a dick move, and nothing is coming out right. It’s this huge, life-changing thing, and every word I write sounds like trite bullshit.” She turns to me. “What are you writing about? Are you…?”
I grimace. I am. I nod. “Every time I give up and try to write about something else, it comes out sounding stupid. Like who cares about ECs and achievements when two weeks ago I found my friend dead in the rowing pool?”
“Right?”
We exhale twin huffs of frustration. Then Avery gets a glint in her eye.
“How much you want to bet every student at Claflin who’s applying RD is gonna write about Emma?” Avery gnaws absently on an uncharacteristically ragged fingernail. “They’ll steal our thunder if they apply to the same schools that we do.”
I stare agog at my friend and her Machiavellian musings. Is this really only about competitive advantage for college? I’m too shocked to say anything, and besides, before I can, Avery moves on.
“I’ll text Megan and ask her for tips.” She makes for the fridge to grab us a fresh batch of snacks.
I return to my Google Doc and delete every word I’ve written. Start fresh on something that has nothing to do with Emma. I am more than my friend’s murder.
Avery sees me off the next morning like a mom, making sure I get up on time, driving me to the station, even stopping for coffee along the way so I am caffeinated. It is eight o’clock and I’m expected at the FBI office in Chelsea by ten.
“Party starts by eight!” Avery calls out the car window as she drops me off at the Wellesley Square station. “Don’t be late.”
I wave her off. Thanks to the holiday, the train isn’t packed, so I manage to get a seat. I get off at South Station to switch trains up to Chelsea, where I alight into the frigid cold. The FBI building is a few blocks away.
I’m too hot in my peacoat after a brisk walk, but I make it. The building looms above me, eight stories of sleek black steel and white concrete with hundreds of windows that reflect a gray, cloudless sky. I have to check in first at the security gate and then again inside in the wide, high-ceilinged lobby. The room is staid, corporate, with shallow, square leather seating and surprisingly dated honey-stained wood wall panels. I lower myself onto a vacant couch and wait for Cataldo to collect me.
She appears not even five minutes later, perfectly prompt and looking distinctly uncomfortable. Her mouth is turned down at the corners, and she tugs at the edge of her persimmon boatneck blouse, as if it’s a bad fit. It’s strange to see her in a black pencil skirt. She wore black trousers, sometimes khaki, and a rotation of sweaters and turtlenecks on campus. This must be her guest-at-the-FBI-field-office look.
Suddenly I feel underdressed in jeans.
“Olivia, good morning.” She flashes me a tight smile and leads me to a bank of elevators, where she uses a key card to get us up to the fifth floor. We pass a sea of cubicles and wind our way to the back of the floor, past the bathrooms and into a clearly disused cluster of offices. She makes small talk as we go, asking how my Christmas was, remarking on the windchill. I’m perfunctory with my answers. I’ll be doing more than enough talking over the next few hours, I know.
She leads me to a small office devoid of personality. Standard-issue furniture, no photographs or personal items other than a purple lattice-patterned Kleenex box.
“My temporary home,” Cataldo says with a grand gesture as she takes a seat behind the desk. I settle down in a cushioned black metal chair across from her. I’m slightly disappointed it’s not an interrogation room.
“Thank you for coming all the way up here to talk with me again.” She starts an ancient-looking digital recorder and rattles off the details of the interview. “As I mentioned on the phone, our techs have been unable to recover data on Emma’s iPhone, and seeing as it was her burner, we don’t have information on whatever second Apple account she created for it. If Tipton helped her set it up, he’s not saying, for obvious reasons.”
“It’s the only proof they were together, isn’t it?” I say. My stomach turns over. This means he could walk. Cataldo hums.
“Absent any forensics on the body—which, having been submerged in water, is not looking great—indeed we’ll be needing to corroborate his relationship with Emma via witness statements.”
“Do you know how he killed her?”
I remember that last time I asked the detective how Emma died, she wouldn’t tell me. This time, she considers me. I’m no longer a suspect. She turns off the recorder.
“Emma was strangled. That is confidential information, and you mustn’t repeat it.” She starts the recording again.
“Mr. Tipton does concede to being in the boathouse that night,” Cataldo continues. “However, he swears he did not see Emma. He would have had no reason to go into the rowing room, and so he didn’t find the body.”
“He’s lying,” I say. “He has to be. He did it.”
Cataldo inclines her head. “We are pressing him on that point. Your tip about Emma’s earring ended up bearing fruit. We found the other stud in Tipton’s office.”
I barely suppress a whoop of triumph. “Then that’s it. You have him!”
“Not quite. That’s why you’re here. Let’s dive right in.”
We spend the better part of the next hour going over all of “Beau’s” texts with Emma. I try to remember as many of them verbatim as I can. Cataldo writes everything down. Then she pulls out a cream-colored folder, flips it open, taps her pen on the papers inside. It’s upside down, but I can see it’s a timeline. “What I’m stuck on is Emma’s sweater in your room. How heavy of a sleeper are you usually?”
“Uh, it usually takes me a while to fall asleep, but once I’m really under, I sleep like the dead. And I was, uh…”
“You were drinking that night,” she finishes. “So it stands to reason that from eleven-thirty to midnight or shortly thereafter, you probably would have woken up if Emma had returned.”
I think about it. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“But if someone were in your room closer to two? Could that have woken you up?”
“I had a nightmare,” I say. “That’s what woke me up.” Wasn’t it?