A PALE, UNSMILING MAN MATERIALIZED beside us in the lobby. He was so thin that his hips could fit into the jeans of a twelve-year-old girl. He grimaced as we shook hands, his hairy wrists immediately retracting into their buttoned sleeves. “I’m Jim, the studio manager. Sorry, the director doesn’t generally come in today,” he told us. “Would you like to see the studios?” He held up a ring of keys and key cards. “I understand that’s why you’re here.”

“We’d love to see the studios,” said Janis. She glanced at Ray for confirmation, and he nodded.

“Anything else you’d like to show us along the way,” Ray said in a thickened southern accent, “feel free.”

Jim gave a little shrug, as if tour add-ons were not his bailiwick, and started toward a corridor on the far side of the lobby. Our footfalls made hollow sounds. I was glad to be here, glad to have some context to visualize Brenae’s last days, but without talking to people, I couldn’t imagine we’d find anything new at LAAC. Instead, the silent, vacant corridors reminded me of the interchangeability of the students. For a few years, LAAC was theirs, their paint-spattered studios, their dinky library, their cafeteria with the pork buns on Wednesdays. Then, abruptly and just as intensely, it became the possession of others. The constant flow through the school would have protected Hal, enabled him to side with whichever student he chose; in two years, few would have personally known Erik Reidl or Brenae Brasil.

Jim walked swiftly, occasionally naming a department, a lab, all marked by small signs. The building’s windowless stretches, filled with aging 1970s tile and paneling, didn’t help its eerie feeling of repetition and displacement. Only the library was open, empty except for a couple of students and the librarian at the desk. We passed it quickly, and then the Super Shop, where Brenae had worked. It was closed, the welding, sandblasting, and woodworking machines inside hulking and still. I stared in, wondering where the desk was where Brenae had stood, checking out tools to the students.

Janis seemed nettled by our silence. “What questions do you have for Jim? He’s been working at LAAC for three years, he tells me. Former graduate. Sculpture major, am I right?”

Jim gave her a nervous smile. “I did some different installations.”

“Sounds vague, Jim,” Janis said with her stern good humor.

Jim looked startled, then laughed. “Didn’t seem so at the time.”

Were we supposed to ask about Brenae? I glanced at Ray. He shook his head.

“Did you like being a student here?” he asked Jim.

“It changed my life,” Jim said.

“How so?” I said.

“A better question is ‘How not?’ The experience here is like nowhere else.” There was no snobbery or admonition in his voice, but he seemed puzzled by my question, as if I didn’t understand LAAC at all.