“Do you think Erik has seen the sex video before?” I said.

Ray shrugged. “Hard to say. Seen it, heard about it.”

I decided it was time to voice my main concern about our new findings: “But if it’s not Hal in the video, then Janis has no—”

“If you and I recognized who it might be, why wouldn’t Hal? And if he did, he failed to handle the situation properly.” Ray turned on my street, toward my pink adobe apartment building.

“You think Hal warned Erik that Brenae wanted to expose him as a rapist,” I said. I didn’t like the last word in my mouth, and my saying it aloud made Ray blink, but it was what we had witnessed.

Instead of answering, Ray gazed at the pink building, slowing the car. “It’s like a giant welt,” he said. “Or a pox. What do you think, welt or pox?”

“I think we’re talking pox,” I said. “Pox doesn’t work alone.”

“Hal probably warned Erik. Protected his future prizewinner.” Ray said the last word sardonically. “Even worse, I think Hal made sure anything incriminating on Brenae’s laptop was erased. Someone knew how to shred data.”

“Is that enough for Janis?” I said. “It’s all speculative.”

“She has ways to confidentially inform the school’s board of trustees that she suspects something,” he said. “She could start there.”

“But what if the video dates back to Brenae’s time at USC?” I added. “Then it’s not even Hal’s campus. And what if Erik claims it was consensual?”

Ray slid to a stop by the hydrant outside my front gate.

“Did it look consensual to you?” he said.

“No,” I said. “But we don’t know what they said to each other. He could claim she was using him. He could claim anything. She’s dead. I could see the board turning a blind eye just to keep it all quiet. And then what would Janis do?”

“You should be thinking harder about what you want to do,” Ray said. He leaned back against his headrest and looked over at me, at my suit and at the sweat dried in my hair, his gaze frank and assessing. “Find the real story and write it.”

FIND THE REAL STORY AND write it.

I’d shaken off Ray’s comment with a laugh and changed the subject. But he was right. The whole story was more complicated than a botched university response to a woman’s complaint. Why did Brenae have to die? Why did a woman so talented have to shoot herself at night in a school that had nurtured generations of young artists?