“It’s just…” Cataldo taps her pen some more. “According to Miss Montfort, they met in that secret room in the boathouse at midnight and were there until approximately one-thirty. Things were tense, and Emma left before they did, alive, according to them.”
Avery explained this to me, too. She and the other girls had invited Emma to party with them in the boathouse, to air their grievances. They fought again, and Emma stormed out, and then Avery burned her hoodie as a sort of personal cleansing ritual—her words. I suspected this was partly glossy hindsight, the way Avery told it. Burning her Harvard paraphernalia was surely also Avery’s own fuck-you to the school, to her mom.
“According to our last conversation, Emma texted her secret boyfriend from her second phone, asking him to meet her at their usual spot at two a.m. And we know their spot was the boathouse. Now, I suppose Emma might have gone back to Bay, but it’s about an eight-minute walk each way, plus getting in and out of that window, going upstairs…It’s a lot to simply drop off a sweater. She’d barely have made it back by two to meet her boyfriend. And Tipton claims he got there on time and didn’t see her.”
“Tyler’s her boyfriend,” I say. “Tipton was…something else. And he must be lying. Again. And it’s not just the sweater. She had to have dropped off her phone, too.”
“Because you found it in the Wheat Thins box,” Cataldo says matter-of-factly. She did remember the phone, but was she leading me to it? This is the first time I’ve pieced it together. The illogic of how the phone ended up back in my room. How could I be such an idiot?
“So either Emma sprinted back to our dorm to drop them off, or her killer planted them.” My stomach does a flip. Is that what woke me up? Emma’s murderer creeping around my room?
Cataldo doesn’t say anything. She waits for me.
“Wait, do you think I did something with the sweater and the phone? That I—”
Cataldo stops the recording. “Let’s break for lunch,” she says.
* * *
—
We’re back in the office after our meal in the second-floor cafeteria—a sandwich combo, her treat—when she properly pounces.
“Were you blackmailing Mr. Tipton, Olivia? About his affair with Emma?”
The accusation pushes me back in my chair. “What? No! I didn’t even know it was him until the memorial.”
“He claims you did.” Cataldo pulls another folder, this one seafoam green, out of her bag, places it on the table in front of us, then makes a show of extracting several sheets of paper and laying them out in a row in front of me. She sits back, gives me time to scan the pages. It’s a series of screenshots of text exchanges. I scan through them.
You’re pathetic. What kind of grown man has to get his rocks off with an underage girl?
What if they knew that she died so close to where you used to screw her? Maybe she was going to turn you in. Motive.
There were emails as well.
From: Claflin, Perv Joe <[email protected]>
To: Tipton, Joe <[email protected]>
Subject: I have you two on video.
This message has no content.
From: Joe, Tipton <[email protected]>
To: Claflin, Perv Joe <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: I have you two on video.
What do you want?
From: Claflin, Perv Joe <[email protected]>
To: Tipton, Joe <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: re: I have you two on video.
You should confess.
“I—I didn’t send these,” I stammer. Push the sheets back across the table to her. The things Tipton said when he attacked me finally make sense. Called me a blackmailing bitch, mentioned Emma’s phone as a trump card. “You have to believe me. And, wait—what was the blackmail? These are threats. Taunts.”
The detective’s mouth quirks into a smile. She produces another sheet with a flourish. Another email, with a new subject that delivers a punch to the stomach.
From: Claflin, Perv Joe <[email protected]>
To: Tipton, Joe <[email protected]>
Subject: Murderers do better in prison than rapists
The message itself is a kick to the shins.
If you don’t confess to Emma’s murder, I’ll turn over your sex tape. Either way you’re done, but it’s far easier to just be a murderer. No one likes a pedo.
“He wasn’t a pedo.” I don’t know why it’s the first thing that springs to mind, why I say it. Cataldo snorts. “Sorry. I think he’s a huge fucking creep, but she was seventeen.”
“Indeed. Mr. Tipton was quite fixated on that distinction as well. And he reminded me that the age of consent in Massachusetts is sixteen.”
“So the blackmail didn’t even matter?”
Cataldo arches a brow. “Whoever sent the messages was clearly hoping Tipton wasn’t well versed in the law, or they themselves were ignorant.”
“So you know it wasn’t me.”
“It doesn’t seem like your style,” she says, sitting back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I noticed your stunt at the memorial. It was smart. Not a move to make if you already had him pegged.”
“So why ask? Why let me piece together the bit about the phone?”
Cataldo taps her index finger against her forearm. Considers me. “You’re mixed up in this somehow. You may not know it, or understand it, but things keep leading back to you. Might be because of your meddling in my case, but the sweater and the phone…it’s never fit for me. Why Tipton would run those back to your room.”
“Do you not think he did it?” Something icy grips my heart. This can’t be happening.
“No, I think he’s perfect for it. An adult, a teacher figure, sleeping with a student. He met with her regularly in the very spot where she was murdered. Was there that night. Attacked you. It’ll make a good case. Circumstantial, but solid.”