Another professor told me she’d saved one of Brenae’s video works and left me a copy with her department. It was from Brenae’s First-Generation College Student series. I sat on the giant blue sofa and fed in the DVD, watching Brenae swim the length of a pool with her eyes and mouth taped. Two cameras, one underwater, one above, alternated footage of Brenae in a red swimsuit, her blind, even strokes. About halfway across the blue expanse, she ripped off the mouth tape to breathe, bubbles spewing. Then she paused and tried to put the tape back on, but it only stuck loosely, then flapped free. For the rest of the swim, Brenae struggled to replace her gag. The effort made her lose her sense of direction, and she splashed in zigs and zags, treading water, coming up for air, sticking the gag back on. Finally she gave up and pulled off one of the eye tapes, too, her lid beneath red, dented, and puffy. Sighted now, she swam the last feet to the edge. The final image showed her gasping through the dangling tape, her hair flattened to her skull, one eye tearing up, one still covered. Her light brown fingers clutched the edge. This was Erik’s cinematography again, three years ago, when Brenae was just nineteen. I thought about what Ray said, that Brenae was Erik’s creation and this was the reason he couldn’t see her as a human being. I didn’t know how anyone could watch this video, much less film it, without seeing the human being.

ON THURSDAY MORNING, I WAS running low on West Side outfits, so I picked a dress I rarely wore, a black one with cap sleeves and a slim cut. I hoped it said unconscious sophistication and not holiday cocktail party. Today was Thursday, and my decision loomed: tell Janis I wanted to continue this investigation my own way, as groundwork for an article, or hand over everything I’d found out and go back to the Rocque. My phone buzzed with an L.A. number.

“Good,” said a brusque female voice when I answered. “You need to get ready. Ray is going to pick you up in fifteen minutes to go out to LAAC. We have our own personal tour. We’ll be able to see the scene of her death.”

Just as I realized that the caller was Janis Rocque, she hung up.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, Ray rolled up, dressed in a silver-gray suit. He told me he was playing the role of a potential donor (“Oil money, honey,” he’d informed me), with intentions to renovate the school’s crumbling 1970s-era studios and then plaster his name all over them. The early hour was to shave off traffic time and to beat Hal’s possible arrival at LAAC.