“Yeah, I’m good.” Coyle decided he didn’t need to prove his geek credentials to some stoner with spots on his face. At thirty-five, did he already look out of date? What constituted a generation in geekdom? Should he share with Mountain Head his theory that the way each person uses technology is like a signature? Not now. This guy was working too hard at looking bored.

“You watch it?” Coyle asked.

The kid shook his head. “I watched a feed a year ago when someone was breaking into the snack bar. The thing mostly picks up animals, which is kind of cool and creepy at the same time. Once in a while, you see teenagers sneaking into the park to play hide the salami. Some of them even wave at the camera.”

In the beginning, Coyle watched the recording, not certain what he was seeing. The digital capture had no audio track, just a silent, dimly lit picture. The timer’s numbers flickered: 20:32.34, 20:42.07, 20:56.13. Gradually, he figured out the camera’s motion sensor could detect the movement of very small animals. He ran the software on fast-forward.

At 2:10:23, something appeared. Coyle slowed the recording. A raccoon walked out of the underbrush on the right side of the screen. It stood for a moment in the center of the drive, smelled the air, and walked slowly offstage. Six minutes later, the raccoon returned with something in its mouth. Or, at least it looked like the same raccoon.

Coyle sat up and rolled his neck. He thought of Adrienne. An hour earlier he had texted to say he wouldn’t be coming home tonight. She just wrote back “kay.” Although they had been living together for a year, he still didn’t know what she was thinking. Lately he thought their sex was better than before, but they didn’t talk about it. Was it normal not to talk about it?

He never knew what was normal. In his job, he was around a lot that wasn’t normal. And he had no one to ask. The guys in the unit only talked about work. When he told Frames his girlfriend’s name, Frames did an imitation of Sylvester Stallone from the first Rocky movie, screaming Adrienne’s name from the boxing ring.

Coyle clicked to fast-forward again, and the nearly identical images skittered by—ticket booth in a pool of light, ticket booth in a pool of light. Suddenly something darker. He stopped the tape. 4:02:16. A figure in a hooded sweatshirt stood next to the tubular-steel gate, facing away from the camera. The figure bent over the structure, working at something on the chain lock. “Hidy-ho, motherfucker,” Coyle said out loud.