All in all, illegal art smuggling and attempted murder were enough to put Nelson in jail, but not to convict him of a life-threatening assault on Calvin. An ongoing search of Nelson’s properties had not yet turned up any other proof. Why would it? Who would keep evidence of beating someone nearly to death?

“Do you think there’s any possibility at all that Nelson killed Brenae?” I asked Alicia. “What if she had connected him to Calvin’s death?”

“Not his usual method.” Her voice deepened. “Her body was unmarked. The location was too public. And he wasn’t that skilled. If he had killed her, he would have slipped up somewhere and the police would have found it. They spent weeks. Ray didn’t see any holes in her case, either.”

She wore an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, her feet in strappy gold sandals. This was off-work Alicia, and I could imagine her lounging back, a magazine on her lap, but she sat stiffly upright beside me. She was worried about Ray, but she was also still wary of me. I wished I knew how to signal my gratitude to her without insinuating that I expected to be pals. Alicia sipped coffee from a paper cup and checked her watch, until her phone buzzed. She looked at the number, frowned, then held it to her ear.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She listened for a while. “That’s great.” She rose and walked to the corner of the garden, standing under an angel’s trumpet tree, looking up at the dangling yellow flowers as she spoke. After an intense conversation, she hung up and strode back, sitting down again. “That was Layla’s lawyer,” she said. “She will cooperate with us fully as part of a plea bargain. And Erik’s been released,” she said. “Hal Giroux went to the station and spoke on his behalf. He said that he personally had requested that Erik talk Brenae out of sharing her video. He claimed he was worried Erik’s visa status might get threatened if the school took action against him.”

So Hal had finally publicly admitted it: He’d always taken Erik’s side and not Brenae’s. Even after he’d watched Lesson in Red, after he’d witnessed Erik’s body pin her body and her stricken face stare back at him, demanding to be seen, even after hearing her agonized words, Hal had decided that Erik’s acts were not real and that Brenae’s outrage was a performance. He had seen all the evidence before him, and still had not believed.