I TAKE A BUS BACK to Cambridge early the next morning, relishing the remaining moments of quiet. I only have one chance to get this ending right.
I quickly gather all the things I’ll need—an extra phone battery, a list of questions for the DA, a recording device, my notebook, and an updated public records request for the police files. I’m eager to clear the mundane items off my to-do list to have time for what I really want to be doing: calling everyone close to the story. I don’t want them to be caught off guard by the news.
Arthur Bankoff, who was with Jane at Tepe Yahya, says that he’s relieved it’s none of his friends.
There’s a catch in Dan Potts’s throat after he hears that it was someone random. “What about the rug and the ochre?” his wife, Hildy, who had been an archaeological illustrator at the Harvard Semitic Museum, asks. They have me on speakerphone in their car. “And the hand ax thing,” Dan adds. Hildy pulls herself back from the brink of skepticism—“I mean I suppose you can’t quibble with DNA”––and wonders out loud, with the same kind of half seriousness of the rumors that plagued Karl in the days after the murder, whether there might be a part of Karl that will be disappointed in being stripped of his mythology.
Stephen Loring, back from his weeks-long archaeological expedition up north, answers the phone cheerfully, “Well, hellooo!”
The news hits him in waves. At first, he finds it comforting that it’s none of our three “characters.” Then he hovers over the story, as if it’s no longer events he lived, but a narrative whose structure he can admire: “I like this ending.” He finds a beauty in the way it forces a reassessment of old thought patterns, and in doing so, makes obvious the blinders that experience and desire put on us.
Each of us had our own reasons for being seduced by a particular version, he says. The Abraham family, for instance, would have liked for Gramly to be a villain because then Anne’s death is no longer just “an accidental twist of fate. It was a malevolent human action.” For some, it is easier to believe in an evil person than an uncaring God.
He writes a gentle email to Alice Abraham and her wife, Chris, to break the news. “I am sorry to be the bearer of these tidings not that they make our loss any less painful nor bring any closure to the sad days in ’76, or absolve Mr. Gramly of his poor behavior and judgment, but they do close down one avenue of speculation which—I suppose—is a good thing.”
Alice writes instantly to Patricia, one of the two “Golden Girls” who had pegged her suspicions on Gramly. Patricia says she thinks it’s wonderful that it’s solved, but it will take her a while to process her own relationship to the news. Where do you go from here, I ask her. She doesn’t yet know. On the one hand, it’s also an ending for her, and yet: Do you throw everything away?
I also get an email from Mary McCutcheon, the other half of the Golden Girls. At first, she’s as bubbly as ever. “WOW,” she writes in all caps. “I hope he feels exonerated and vindicated.” But over time, her enthusiasm settles into deep remorse. She writes me again: “The overactive pattern-recognition part of my brain came to, what I now know, was a false conclusion. For any pain I caused, I am so very sorry.”
Ted Abraham, Anne’s brother, writes with a greater sense of peace than I feared might be the case. “It was an unexpected outcome but at least there is some closure to one haunting mystery.”
Richard Meadow, still a lecturer at Harvard, is the only one who knows the news already when I call. Jim Humphries had told him weeks ago. I’m happy to hear that Jim already knows—I didn’t want to bother him, but I also didn’t want him to find out from a newspaper article.
Jill Nash, unlike everyone else, wishes that she never heard the news. I learn this from Don, who, in his final effort to get her to talk, argued that I helped pressure the police into finding a solution. Isn’t speaking with me the least she could do to show her gratitude? Jill, still angry about everything––the way she had been interrogated by the cops, how long the resolution took, that she was now forced to alter her narrative of this horrific event to include an even more horrific ending––doesn’t budge.
The parade continues, and time insists on itself. Peter Panchy is recovering from surgery; Richard Rose’s new cancer treatment is helping him manage the disease.
James Ronan says it’s fitting that this story, which has tracked archaeological methods and theories in thematic ways, would end with DNA, in much the same way that the field itself has turned to genetic analysis for studying human origins and migration patterns. Perhaps this is the answer to how archaeology found its way out of the mire of post-processual nothing-means-anything: by turning away from digging and storytelling, and toward science.
He also tells me that Harvard’s archaeology program has made its first female hire in years: a tenure-track professor named Christina Warinner, who specializes in biomolecular archaeology.
The conversations feel like a reunion of a strange and beautiful community, bolstering me for whatever will come tomorrow. Jane—who had always been the one to approach the person standing alone at the party; the one who, for better or worse, had decided to stay after Lee burned the carpet; the friend who had made Radcliffe less isolating for Elisabeth—had once again brought a band of outsiders together.
I call Jay. We haven’t spoken in years. But we were clear to each other that if we ever needed the other, we would be there. He picks up immediately, even though he’s late running off to a meeting. His voice sounds exactly the same. He’s grateful for the call, and we slip right back into a rhythm, but the familiarity is precisely the danger. We both know that this momentary reprieve changes nothing in the scheme of our frozen friendship—we’re still waiting for the one day maybe, it will be okay––so I relish our connection for the moments it lasts. It feels like paying honor to the relationship that founded this story.
Before the day is done, I call Karl.
A man answers the phone. The voice sounds American, with no hint of drama or bellow. A son, perhaps?
“I was hoping to speak with Karl,” I say.
“Speaking.”
I scramble. “Hi, this is Becky Cooper. We were in touch about the Jane Britton—” story? Murder? Case?
“Oooooooh,” he says, lyrically descending, and there is that flair again. He asks me how it’s going.
“I was calling to let you know—it hasn’t been officially announced yet—but there will be a press conference on Tuesday at 1 p.m., announcing a break in the case.”
“Do you know—” He hesitates. “Do you know what the break is?” His tone is flat again.
“I think they’ve solved it.”
Three seconds of silence.
“You think they. You think they. You think they—what?” I’ve never heard him at a loss for words like that.
I pronounce solved as slowly as I can.
He breathes deeply again.
“Oh, I see,” he says. “Well, that is good news.” His voice dips despite the cheeriness of the remark.
I ask if we might meet for one more interview after it breaks. After Thanksgiving, he agrees. I thank him.
“Yep, bye-bye.”
I’m disoriented by the lack of bravado. Was he just caught off guard? Distracted? Nervous?
And then, slowly, it occurs to me that it might have been something else entirely: sadness.