At first he’s hesitant to show us the camera feed for the swimming pool without clearing it through building management. However, my brother is very convincing with his light blue eyes that cut right through you, and his title as City Alderman. Dante’s silent, imposing bulk is persuasive in an entirely different way.

Ronald takes us into a small back room with a single desk, chair, and computer monitor.

“You can watch the video feeds on here,” he says.

“We need to see all the cameras on the roof,” Dante says. “The ones that show the swimming pool.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ronald says, sitting down at the desk and clicking tentatively with the mouse. “We only got the security cameras this year, so I’m not entirely familiar with the system. I’ve only had to review the footage twice before, when Mrs. Peterson kept insisting someone was knocking on her door . . .”

“Were they?” Dante asks.

“No,” Ronald chuckles. “It was her cockatoo, inside her apartment.”

Ronald manages to pull up the swimming pool camera, winding back the recording to two hours earlier.

“Is that the only camera up there?” Callum asks.

“Yes. There’s only one per floor,” Ronald says.

The camera is mounted high in the corner, so almost the entirety of the pool is in view. We can see the lounge chairs on both sides of the pool, the cabinet that holds all the extra towels, and the entryway where people enter and exit on their way to the elevators. However, the lower-left corner of the swimming pool is cut off.

We watch the grainy footage as a mother and her two young children paddle around, then a group of teenagers lay on the lounge chairs while an old man swims laps. After that, the pool empties out, and for a long time there’s no one up there at all.

Finally, I see my own familiar figure come walking across the tiles. I watch myself turn on the music streaming to my waterproof headphones via my phone, then I set the phone down on the nearest lounge chair, atop a folded towel. Calm and oblivious of what’s about to happen, I stride over to the pool and dive in.

My heart rate quickens as the seconds count down to what I know is about to happen. I feel the ridiculous urge to call out a warning to myself. I watch my tiny figure swim back and forth across the pool, knowing that any second those steady laps are about to be interrupted.

What happens next looks strangely benign on the video screen. I simply drop down below the water and disappear. The camera is too far away and the resolution too weak to make out what’s actually happening. You can see churning in the water, and the dark shadow of a figure below, but it’s impossible to tell that there’s actually two people down there, locked in a deadly struggle.

I realize that if the diver had successfully held me down, all the camera would have captured is my body floating back up to the surface, face-down. It would have looked like I cramped up and drowned. No one would have known I’d been murdered.