We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence

by Becky Cooper

I had hoped for a ten-person crew, but the only other digger was in the car with me, a man in his sixties named Daniel. His pant hems were ripped from where he repeatedly stepped on them, and he was still short of breath from just getting in the car. I worried about how he would fare in the hundred-degree heat that was heading our way.

Casual ageism.

He called soda “carbonated water,” and it pained me to see him slather inches worth of the cook’s homemade honey on white bread, when he refused to eat the vegetables.

Hall-monitor energy.

It was random? It was senseless? It could have been anyone? He had been following her. He waited until Jim left. He let himself in. He beat her. He raped her. I never wanted to imagine her scared or tortured or in pain. I had let myself believe that she was knocked unconscious before she was beaten, and maybe she didn’t even see her killer. That she maybe only felt the sharp surprise of the first hit before she passed out. The randomness forces me to confront the awful fact that she might have suffered.

No, duh!