Chapter 23

The opportunity to get closer to the Thompson family came through an unexpected route during the third week of the trial.

Following Mark to the gym where Jill worked gave me the idea to get my own membership. It was, I thought, a way to kill two birds with one stone. It would allow me to further investigate what had happened to Jill, what Mark's involvement was, and I would be able to get a workout at the same time. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford an actual membership, so I settled for a week-long trial membership.

Jill's sister still frequented the gym. The two of them had been close. They lived together for several years during their early twenties, worked out together, and lost weight together. The only thing they hadn't done together was die.

During her testimony, she described the last time that she'd seen her sister alive.

"We got together early for a workout, which we do—did—several times a week. I was happy because I reached a personal record in how much weight I could squat."

"And what happened after that?" the female prosecutor asked.

"I went to the locker room to get ready for work." Her voice, which was timid at the best of times, quavered. "I waved goodbye to Jill. She was already with a client. I didn't—I didn't think it was going to be the last time I ever saw her."

"When did you start to suspect that something was wrong?"

"I texted her a funny video while I was at work of this dog wearing a bunch of different outfits and she never responded. Sometimes it takes her a minute. She doesn't always have access to her phone when she's working with a client, so I didn't think much of it. A couple of hours later, I got a call from the gym saying that Jill missed a training session. It was so unlike her. I tried calling and she didn't pick up."

"When did you call the police?"

That was when Jill's sister started crying. They weren't pretty little tears, but ugly gasps that also manifested in a runny nose.

"I still thought she might be okay. You know, maybe she forgot to write down an appointment or something. It wasn't until the next day when she still wasn't answering her phone that I called them. I can't express how much I regret this. Maybe if I had called earlier, she would still be alive."

Something I learned over the course of the trial was that when someone died, no matter how they were killed, everyone around them was eager to blame themselves as a symptom of their grief. The exception to this was Kimberly, who had no one close enough to save her even if they were given the chance.

"Did you ever hear Jill mention a man named William Thompson?" the prosecutor asked.

"Yes," Jill's sister said with an unquestionable firmness to her tone.

"What did she say about him?"

"She said that he was weirdly competitive, always trying to prove that he was stronger than her. Jill was considering asking if he wanted to switch to a male trainer."

I looked at William's head when she said that. In his letters, William claimed that he'd always been a subpar athlete compared to the expectations that his father had of him. I was under the impression that his father and Bentley were the competitive ones and William was merely along for the ride. I wasn't sure if William's self-perception was wrong or if he was lying. There was also the possibility that Jill's sister was exaggerating in the wake of her sister's death.

"I heard," Dotty whispered into my ear, "that she does Jill's workout videos obsessively."

"Oh," I whispered back, like that was a novel thing and not a practice that I also engaged in.

On their cross examination, the defense asked if there were other men that Jill found frightening.

"Of course," her sister responded. "Jill was famous. She got threats from a lot of people. They got mad when she didn't give them attention or said that she was faking her weight loss. They were just people online though. They didn't know her in person, not like William."

"And did William ever actually threaten your sister?" one of the defense attorneys asked.

"No," Jill's sister admitted. "He never actually threatened her, or at least not that I know of."

I recognized the weirdness of going to the same gym as Jill's sister. However, I figured that it was no stranger than following around members of the Thompson family. I also benefited from being an average-looking white woman; no one looked at me and saw someone with the capacity for violence.

I knew from Instagram that Jill's sister, like Jill herself, liked to work out early in the morning. She made posts of herself wearing workout gear with captions that said things like "Exercise is the only thing holding me together right now. Without it, I might get in bed and never leave."

I was never one of those people who got endorphins from exercise, though I strove to be. I showed up at the gym one morning before the trial, bleary-eyed and wearing leggings with a suspicious amount of pet hair on them for someone who didn't own a pet. It wasn't hard to find Jill's sister. In that space, she was a celebrity.

"How are you doing?" muscled white bros and older Black women alike came up and asked her.

"It's amazing that you're here," they said. "Jill would be proud that you've continued your fitness journey in the wake of this tragedy."

I didn't know what I was doing. I tried my best to avoid staring outright. I picked up a twenty-pound weight and then exchanged it for fifteen. Even living bodies were in a constant process of atrophy. I lifted the weights over my head and then approximated dead lifts before moving to the machines. I studied the instructions on the side and hoped that my movements weren't embarrassingly wrong. The closest I got to Jill's sister was a quick "Hey" at the water fountain, an ordinary kind of nicety. I spent the rest of the day sleepy and famished and used the workout as an excuse to order three tacos from the food truck at lunchtime. I struggled to keep my eyes open while a forensic expert testified that the rope used in all four murders was the same. It was a common type of rope, he said. One available in any home improvement store.

While I didn't run into Mark at the gym, I slowly got closer to Jill's sister. By the third day, our conversation extended all the way to "Hey, how are you?" It didn't seem like that far of a leap from friendly greetings to actual friend status.

In the trial, another forensic expert described the injuries sustained by the bodies that couldn't be ascribed to the cause of death or the tumble down the ravine.

"It is very likely that these injuries were inflicted before death," he said.

His testimony was followed by that of a psychiatrist who said that anyone who did such things clearly took a type of pleasure in causing pain. These were not murders of necessity or convenience. These were murders of fantasy fulfillment.

By the end of my free week at the gym, my body was sore and my brain tired. Rather than try to further stalk the Thompson family, I spent the evening alone with a cheap pizza that I picked up on my way back to the hotel.

It was on the last day of the free gym membership that Jill's sister recognized me.

She was using the squat rack.

"Are you almost done?" I asked her while she rested between sets as though I knew anything about using a barbell.

She nodded and took a sip from her water bottle.

"Sorry, I know that I've been hogging the rack for a long time. It's been a tough week," she said.

I saw my opening.

"I heard about your sister. I'm sorry."

"Thank you," she said. It was clear from her posture that she considered the conversation finished.

I lurked behind her as she completed her set. She was strong in a way that I'd never been. I wondered what it was like to have that much control over your own body.

"I'm done," she told me as she took another swig of water.

She glanced at me again.

"I've seen you before," she said. "You've been watching the trial. You're one of his supporters, aren't you?" The volume of her voice increased with every word. Other people in the gym were looking at us.

Oh no. Like the man outside the gas station, she'd smelled it on me, the scent.

"No, I—" I said, searching for a defense. I had none. I was worse than a supporter. I was his girlfriend.

"You need to leave," she said.

I saw the gym bros looking at me, two senior citizens on elliptical machines casting shaded glances in my direction.

"Okay," I said. "I'm sorry. I really don't mean to hurt you."

I wanted her to say something else. She didn't.

I left and lamented that I hadn't been able to finish my workout first.

Our confrontation carried over to the courthouse. I saw Jill's sister pointing to me from where she sat with the friends of the other victims. They were hungry for someone to hate, someone who was more accessible than William himself.

"Leave Jill's sister alone," one of Emma's friends hissed at me in line for security after lunch.

"How can you live with yourself?" said another while I washed my hands in the bathroom.

They found my Instagram page, the real one rather than the one that I'd made to spy on Max, and left comments calling me deranged and sexist. Despite having thoroughly researched all of them online, it was a shock to realize that they could do the same thing to me. I'd forgotten that I wasn't invisible, that my actions could impact other people. Begrudgingly, I made my profile private and blocked the girls one by one.

In the end, it was Mark Thompson who approached me.

"I saw those girls being nasty to you and wanted to introduce myself," he said. "My family appreciates your support of my son."

Mark had a firm handshake and a distinctly Southern accent. Strangely, I'd never imagined William as having an accent. It occurred to me that I didn't know what his voice sounded like.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Hannah," I said.

"I can't wait to get to know you better, Hannah."

That was how I became entangled with the rest of the Thompson family.