“In the early morning of March 13, Brenae took some sleeping pills, put a pillow over her head, and shot herself,” said the detective. “The college discovered her body when she didn’t show up for her job at the campus Super Shop. She was also off her depression medication, had been doing poorly in classes, and had recently lost her funding for her second year. There was a note on her laptop that said, Watch me.”

“No funding for her second year,” I said. “Really?” According to Lynne’s introduction the other night, Brenae had come to LAAC on a full two-year scholarship. If Brenae had stayed on without her scholarship, she would have owed the school tens of thousands of dollars. If she’d left, no degree. It was a terrifying position to put a student in. Even a cruel one. “But I thought she was a star.”

“She was at odds with the school,” said Janis. “As you’ll see.”

“LASD knew there were two other films made by Brenae Brasil in the months before she died, both of which she submitted to Hal Giroux,” Detective Ruiz said to me, “but no copies have been found. Giroux denies ever possessing any. He says he watched them on her laptop in his office when they met about Brenae’s academic probation. There are no files of either on her hard drive. In fact, it appears that her laptop was tampered with after her death.”

“This, we think, is one of the films,” said Janis.

Ray inserted the disc into his open laptop and aimed the screen at me. It was hard to see the footage in the bright light. A title card said LESSON IN RED in bold white letters, and then a camera showed a couple on a mattress on a bare floor, a blanket covering them. The man was on top, and his rhythmic motions underneath the blanket suggested sex. The woman’s eyes, Brenae’s eyes, were blank, her mouth slack. The man’s head had been blurred out by editing, emphasizing the thrust of his hips. The blanket wrinkled and shuddered, slipping down, exposing one of Brenae’s breasts. A toneless female voice spoke over the images:

He comes.

He asks me.

I say yes.

What can I say?

What will happen if I say no?

Where will I go?

The three questions repeated over and over, louder and louder, building like Ravel’s Boléro. As they did, a red tone crept over the scene, deepening and darkening until it blotted out the figures on the screen.

Unlike the sensual and almost glamorous tone of Packing, this video was gritty, dull, and excruciating. Limbs and heads, the jolting rhythm of sex. A bad taste flooded my mouth. When I looked down at my hands, I saw that they were fisted, my thighs pressed tight together.

“It’s horrifying to watch, isn’t it?” said Janis, her eyes on me. “Imagine making it. Showing it.”