“Well, I made you something to give to the judge. Instead of—instead of whatever you have. And even if in the long run, it doesn’t work, it’ll buy you a lot of time.” I pointed to the canisters again. “We all have the same problem. You don’t want to give up the film; I can’t have anyone in my studio. So. Go on. Take it.” As I shoveled the pasta in my mouth, I realized it was the only thing I’d eaten that day. I kept going—I was starving.

“What’s on it?” Jes asked, leaning back in her chair ever so slightly. All eight of their eyes flew to the canisters.

I explained between bites. “It is a film of a woman who looks exactly like Carey Logan walking into a lake and disappearing under the water for over ten minutes. It is filmed from two angles, wide shots, at the lake, with the Eliot property in the background. She does not resurface.” I released the pen from my hair and pushed the turban over it, then reached over and took Tyler’s sunglasses from the V of his neck. “I bought cat’s-eyes, but they sank. I had freckles earlier too, and lipstick, but most of it washed out. Anyway. See?”

“That’s not—” Jes stopped herself from speaking. She reached for a canister, but Marlin’s arm shot out and stopped her.

“Don’t touch that,” Marlin said.

“It’s not right?” I asked, still eating, though everyone else’s plates remained untouched. “I know, the original was underwater. But—it’s exactly what the notebook says. I used vintage thirty-five millimeter film stock from Jes’s studio on a double reel, which makes it about twenty-two minutes long. I don’t know where you found her body. Possibly the angles will be off? But does it matter?”

“It’s fraud,” Marlin said immediately. The woman I’d known thus far as a soft freckled smile was suddenly all angles. “How are we supposed to resolve that? It’s first-degree fraud.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it is explicitly fraud. It is a course of a conduct with intent to defraud ten or more persons by false or fraudulent pretenses to so obtain property with a value in excess of a thousand dollars. And for you personally it is criminal impersonation in the second degree.”

“So then…” I drummed my fingernails against the table. “…don’t give it value in excess of a thousand dollars. Don’t let Eliot&Sprain sell it,” I said. “Let them have it, to display, or loan, but…explicitly state that it does not have a value. I mean. It shouldn’t have one, anyway. I don’t even know how you would calculate that. Are there…what are they called, actuarial tables for this? What’s the going rate for watching someone die?”