The white receiver of my apartment phone grew warm in my hand before I called Ray. The sight of Calvin and Nelson together deeply troubled me. I had no idea what it would do to Ray. At the same time, I feared I already knew. He suspected Nelson de Wilde. Of something.

I remembered the list in Ray’s notebook, the names of people who might have run into his brother on his last night alive.

Brenae’s footage held one answer.

Ray didn’t pick up my call. “There’s something you need to see,” I said to his voicemail. “I have to go back to the gallery, but when you get this, call me and I’ll come down the street and give it to you.”

17

HAL GIROUX WAS EXCEEDING HIS thirty minutes with a New York reporter by thirty-five more, but every time I appeared in the doorway to Nelson’s office, he shooed me away. Hal excelled at this—as soon as I materialized, he waved a gnarled hand at me and rolled his head back toward his guest in one fluid motion, the way a horse avoids a harness and ignores you at the same time.

I retreated with a polite face. Hal didn’t know what he was in for. Let him have his last moment in the sun. Janis must have made some calls by now, and soon the school would have to act. The more I thought about the crew’s interviews with Ray and their reactions to the video, the more I was sure who had erased the files from Brenae’s laptop. It wouldn’t take much, just one confession, to damn Hal to never work again.

The two waiting journalists had already roamed the installation twice and were sitting at opposite ends on the hard bench by the door, clutching their media packets and glaring at me. One of them had just made a loud, complaining phone call about her delay.

“Do you think he’ll want to reschedule?” she said to me. Her voice was thick with ire. “I have to go in fifteen minutes.”

I told her I’d check on Hal, and walked all the way into Nelson’s office this time, and up to Hal, who was lounging on the turquoise couch, legs crossed, grinning at the New York reporter, a skeletal young guy with huge, gorgeous brown eyes. It was clear Hal was loving the interview and wanted something from it.

I told Hal that two people were now waiting for him. “Should I ask them to reschedule?”

“Yes, do,” Hal said, but the reporter leaped up.

“Don’t let me limit your coverage,” he said.