When I was satisfied, I turned the flashlight off and looked over to see that Bess had wandered off and was standing in front of one of the photographs. I walked over to her.

“What are you looking at?” I said in a low voice.

I remembered the photograph from a previous visit. It was of an empty street somewhere near the edge of town, or at least where the edge of town had been. Perched on a thin and scraggly tree was a bird, just lifting its wings and about to take flight.

“When I first met Lucas, I was looking at this photo,” Bess said. “He said that capturing this moment was just pure luck. The bird started to take off at exactly the right time. But when I asked how he knew that, he said he was just assuming and quickly changed the subject.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Lucas does study art history,” I said. “Maybe he read it somewhere.”

“Yeah,” said Bess. “Maybe.”

“Hey!” called George, in a whisper-shout. “Aren’t we going through here?” She was standing near the STAFF ONLY hallway and had her hand on the door handle.

“Actually,” I said, “there’s one more thing.” I walked over to where one of the security cameras was hanging from the ceiling and pointed up at it. I had thought there was something off about these cameras, but now I had George here to test that theory. “What do you think of these cameras, George?” I asked.

She walked over to stand next to me, then looked directly up at the underside of the video camera with her face scrunched up.

“Hang on,” she said. “I need a better look.”

She walked out of the room and soon returned with a chair she said was from the front desk. After placing it underneath the camera, she stood up on the chair and was high enough to be nearly eye level with the camera’s blinking red light. She used her own phone’s flashlight function to get a better look.

Eventually she shook her head. “If this is their camera,” said George, “then their security system is ancient. It shouldn’t even still be working.”

“Is there a way to tell if it is?” I asked her.

Instead of responding, George hooked her finger on one of the wires coming out of the camera. To our surprise, the wire popped right off from where it had appeared to be leading into the ceiling.

“George!” said Bess. “Did you break that?”

“No,” said George with a grin. “It’s fake! Look, the end of the wire just attaches right back onto the ceiling, like a sticker. But it doesn’t actually lead anywhere.”

“What about the flashing red light?” I asked.

“The light is probably battery powered,” George said. Then she tapped the side of the camera’s body. It sounded hollow. “But there’s almost nothing in here. There’s no way this camera is recording anything.”

This meant that Susan had been lying about the security footage. Which meant that she had also lied about the police watching that footage. Anyone could be sneaking around this museum at night, and there wasn’t any way for her or the police to know.