My hands were sweaty. I wiped my fingers on my jeans legs, but I was afraid to lift the reel. This is what August had found, what my troublemakers had been hunting for. Not the thumb drive, nor yet the baby’s hand. A movie.

Lou, or Ed, went over to a supply cabinet and came back with a pair of latex gloves. “Good lamp over on that worktable.” He jerked his head toward a high wooden counter where tools and engine pieces were laid out in careful stacks. He moved a fan and turned on a high-wattage work light.

With the gloves on, I carefully unspooled the reel, holding it so we could all see the tiny images, ghostly figures in the reverse coloring of a black-and-white negative. Before digital media, before VHS and Beta tapes, someone had shot film. This could be the sole copy of whatever it was.

I thought there were frames of a plane, of a woman with a baby in her arms—Jenny with Baby Cady Number One?—and maybe an aerial view of a campsite, but it wasn’t possible to piece together a story by looking at the frames. I needed a projector, I needed a duplicator, I needed to dump this onto video and get a million copies made.

“Found that old projector once, didn’t we?” Lou asked Ed. “We keep that or what?”

“Got it over to the house,” Ed said. “Thought it would come in handy one of these days. You expecting anyone this afternoon? It’s getting dark, may be time to close up the yard for the day.”

He turned to me. “Ms. Albritten didn’t give us your name, just that you were a detective from Chicago helping out, but we’ve got to call you something.”

“Vic. Your turn—how do I tell who’s Ed and who’s Lou?”

The men gave a rumbling laugh. “Ed has a mole on his left temple,” Lou said. “I have the gold front tooth. Vic, you seal that box up and let me put it in my tool kit. You follow us out to the house, take it nice and slow so the sheriff don’t pay you no mind.”

It was just on five o’clock, twilight in November, as I followed their old Chevy truck north. Traffic was heavy, homebound commuters, until we passed the exit to I-70. The truck turned left and started up a hill. We were immediately in the country, on a side road that decanted us at a small farm. Ed waved me around the truck and pointed to a barn, where there was space for the Prius.

As I walked back, motion sensors turned on lights in the yard and behind the windows of a log-framed house that stood in the yard. The cabin was modern, not a historic relic, properly mortised and mortared, with skylights and solar panels on the roof.