Pollard nodded, his dark eyes misty. She was my first love, he had written in his email. But I’d rather not say any more than that here . . .

Quentin said, “You never forget the voice of your first love.”

Pollard’s gaze traveled to the desk—the one framed photograph he’d placed at an angle, next to his computer. “That’s right,” he said quietly.

It was always interesting, the personal pictures people chose to frame and display. In his office at Claremont College, Dean had dozens of them—candid and staged photos of his parents, his younger sister and her husband and baby, a cheesy shot of Quentin feeding him cake at their wedding, even a black-and-white of his childhood dog. Reg Sharkey, of course, had a mantelpiece littered with framed pictures from a lifetime ago, while Summer’s desk at work held just two: a photo of Joan Didion and herself, taken at a book signing, and a college-era pic of Quentin, his face contorted in laughter. It embarrassed him every time he caught a glimpse of it.

Quentin, for his part, had none. To him, framing a picture was an attempt to make time stand still—something that was neither possible nor desirable. He preferred to keep his personal photos on his phone, ready at any given moment to be deleted forever.

The sole framed picture on George Pollard’s desk, the one he stared at now as though he were asking it for guidance, was of his family—his entire family. There were at least twenty people in the shot, ranging in age from elderly to infant, all wearing pale blue T-shirts, the words POLLARD REUNION 2014 emblazoned in white on the front. “Do they know about April?” Quentin said.

“No.”

“None of them?” Summer said. “You haven’t shown your wife the video?”

“No. And I never will.”

“Why?”

Pollard turned his attention to Summer, then Quentin. “You’re journalists,” he said. “Can’t you just investigate this?”

Quentin exhaled hard. “Mr. Pollard,” he said. “My mother’s younger sister was killed at the gas station where you worked.”

“I know. And I’m so sorry.”

“Were you there that day?”

“No.”

“Did April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy expect you to be there?”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?” Summer said. Quentin glanced at her—those enormous cat eyes, that glow-in-the-dark pale skin, that red hair blazing furiously. Summer’s looks were as arresting as her rat-a-tat speech pattern, and she had a powerful effect on the people she interviewed, like a human interrogation lamp. Quentin had seen subjects break under her unblinking stare, revealing more than they ever intended. “Quentin and I always thought it was random,” she was saying to Pollard. “The police report says the Arco station massacre was a botched robbery. LeRoy had stopped there for gas and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to hold the place up.”

“That may have been.”