Jake hesitated a moment, then said as evenly as he could, “Is it?”

“It was you, Jake, wasn’t it?” Glynis asked. “You gave the interview.”

“Don’t tell that to anybody else!” he snapped.

Glynis laughed. “Your secret is safe with me.”

For how long? Jake wondered as he hung up.

He called up his calendar for the day and saw that he was scheduled to do a scene for the TV documentary that Tomlinson’s public relations people were putting together about the promise of MHD. Nodding to himself, Jake thought, This’ll be a good day to be off campus.

He had already arranged with a teaching assistant to handle his afternoon class, so Jake hurried down to the parking lot and drove to the utility company’s power plant on the outskirts of the city, where Bob Rogers and the video crew were waiting for him. With Amy.

The power plant hummed and vibrated, huge turbines spinning endlessly, generating the electricity that lit the city and its environs. The turbines were taller than a basketball player, massive. Even though their metal housings were gleaming and spotless, somehow they looked old-fashioned to Jake, antiquated.

Bob Rogers was wearing an actual suit, dark brown, although he had a turquoise bolo at his throat rather than a normal necktie. Jake wondered if the sports jacket and open-necked shirt he was wearing would be good enough for the day.

Amy introduced them to the video director. “Jake, Bob, this is Wallace Ziegler, from Los Angeles.”

Ziegler was an austere, tall, slim man with an outdoorsman’s rugged, deeply tanned face and thinning silver hair. He was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt and chinos.

“Call me Wally,” he said, smiling genially as he shook hands with Rogers and Jake.

“Wally’s worked a lot with Clint Eastwood,” Amy said, obviously impressed.

“Assistant director,” said Ziegler. “I handled some of his outdoor scenes.”

“Wow,” Rogers said. “What’s he like to work with?”

“A real stickler. Same as me.”

Jake asked, “Um, should I be wearing a tie?”

Ziegler gave him a fatherly smile. “No, you’re fine.”

A technician came up and clipped thumbtack-sized microphones to their shirts as Ziegler explained that they should just speak normally, stay relaxed, and pay no attention to the pair of cameras that would be trained on them.

“You just look at me, or each other. Talk as if you’re having a normal conversation. We’ve got the script cued up on the teleprompters, but you don’t have to follow it word for word. Just be your natural selves.”

Jake wondered how natural he could be with a team of cameramen and technicians surrounding them.

As they walked over toward one of the big turbines to begin their scene, Bob Rogers asked Jake, “Did you look at the news blogs today? They’ve got Sinclair’s murder splashed all over them.”

“I took a look before driving out here,” Jake said tightly.