I dig in my purse for the flash drive, pull it free.
There’s no path for someone ordinary like me to find one missing woman in this whole city. To rescue her if she needs rescuing. To clear the name of an innocent man. It takes teams of police officers, laboratories, experts, courts. The impossibilities rise around me, steep and sheer. But I think of the hero of Fitzgerald’s last novel, Monroe Stahr, flying over the highest mountains and talking to his pilot about the old railroad men and how they had to lay a track through anyway. You can’t test the best way—except by doing it. So you just do it … You choose some way for no reason at all.
I stick the drive into the computer and open the files, scrolling through them fast. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. One hundred. Kim’s in every frame, bending, collapsed, grinning, stripped and bound.
My phone rings. Yegina. She knows. She always knows.
I keep scrolling, wincing at what I see but not surprised by it. These are all studies for the paintings in Still Lives.
Four rings. Yegina doesn’t leave a message. She calls again, hangs up again when I don’t pick up.
At the very end of the string of pictures are five photos I don’t recognize. They don’t connect with the exhibition at all.
Yegina calls a third time. The rings are like shrieks to me. I take my hand off the mouse and answer.
“You awake?” Yegina says. She tells me that she was phoning to apologize, to say she understands how difficult this is, her kindness like a warm blanket she throws over me.
I close my eyes, close my ears.
“I’m not mad.” I speak low to keep my voice steady through the lie that comes next. “And you’re right. It’s ridiculous to play detective.”
“Phew,” Yegina says. “It’s hard to just sit on things, but that’s what spin class is for. You in tomorrow?”
“I’m in,” I say, surprised at how calm I sound.
MONDAY
14
Of the 231 pictures on Kim Lord’s flash drive, 226 are studies for the Still Lives exhibition. This morning I scan through them a third time before I leave for work. Last night, in the dark, the whole experience felt like trespassing, my heart in my throat as I witnessed each thumbnail, but I am getting used to it now, and with that relief comes the sinking sense that Greg was right, there is nothing to find on here.
Blown up large, and viewed in L.A.’s cheerful morning light, the photos have none of the haunting quality of the exhibition. Instead, the whole slide show seems campy and overdone. Kim Lord donning her wigs, hanging from her arms, lying prone. Girl playing dress-up. Girl playing with mud. Girl playing with roses and blood. The studies for “Kitty Genovese” and “The Black Dahlia” look especially goofy. All that glistening splatter and gore. Finally, I come to Kim Lord sprawled on a table piled with objects—a study for “Disappearances”—her head in some kind of wooden crate. It looks like she tripped and fell into someone’s garage sale.
After these are the last five photographs, the ones that don’t fit. Four pictures show a random dog yawning and wagging for the camera. Whose dog? I don’t recognize it.
The final photo shines on my screen. Last night, I thought it was Kim, disguised in heavy makeup, but this morning I decide it is someone else. Another woman who resembles Kim, only slumped, haggard, and glum-looking. A potential suspect? She doesn’t look capable of standing up, much less hurting anyone.
I force myself through all the Still Lives studies one last time, finding nothing but the inexplicable gap between crude sketches and a finished masterpiece.
Still, anything could be a piece to this story. Today I’m going to find another piece: where Bas went on Monday. I leave early to beat rush hour, but by the time I make it to the Rocque, a throng of journalists is standing outside, white TV trucks behind them. Their frank, curious gazes follow me like guards at a checkpoint. I can feel their hunger for a new angle, something no one else knows. I duck my chin and hurry past, clutching my bag containing the flash drive and Kevin’s notes.
“Miss … miss …,” one of the reporters calls to me. “Do you work here? Any comment on the Greg Shaw Ferguson arrest?” All the newspeople call him Greg Shaw Ferguson, in that three-beat crescendo that echoes other famous killers.
I shake my head.
“When was the last time you saw Kim Lord?”
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and Jayme’s voice rings out.
“The director is preparing a press conference for ten o’clock,” she says. “Until then, please let our employees get to work.” She muscles in beside me. “Don’t even glance their way,” she mutters.
“Hey, Jayme,” yells another one. “I hear that Kim Lord had a stalker following her to and from the museum. Any comment?”
There’s a sudden silence, in which I can feel the Santa Anas breathing warm desert air on us all. Clearly, this is new and confusing information to everyone. Jayme goes rigid and stops. I keep walking.
“Press conference at ten,” she repeats behind me. Across the glass front of the Rocque I see two pale, bare legs flashing and realize they’re my own. Those are my own hunched shoulders, my fierce, hunted expression.
“You look like you slept about five seconds last night,” Jayme says as we ride the elevator to our floor. She’s ironed her usually springy hair smooth again today, the way she wore it to the Gala. It looks a bit like a helmet. “You talk to Shaw?”
“His attorney. I bet she’s the one who planted the stalker idea with the media,” I say.
Jayme eyes me questioningly.
“If it casts enough doubt on Shaw’s case, then the police may postpone the arraignment until they have more evidence,” I tell her. “She’s trying to get him out.”
The elevator slows and toggles. Jayme looks like she’s about to say something, but instead she punches the button to our floor again.
“Do you need me to help with the press conference?” I ask.
She shakes her head, and I see the tremble in her shoulders.
“You sure?” I say.
There’s a beat of silence, and then Jayme swings on me.
“I want you to stay away from them,” she says with such force that I back up into the elevator wall. Jayme blinks, but she keeps talking. “They’ll eat you alive if they connect you to Shaw. They’re desperate for anything now, because the cops have clammed up. The detectives are not even coming today. It’s just Bas talking for ten minutes, and me taking questions.” She straightens to her fullest height. “You are not allowed, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, cowed.
Ordinarily I might show up to help Jayme anyway, but now I’m thinking, Ten o’clock might be the only time Bas’s assistant leaves her cube all day. I hug my bag closer to my body, gathering courage from Jayme’s courage. Whatever happened to her, she doesn’t let it rule her. The elevator shudders and the doors slide open.
“This is a terrible time for you,” Jayme says gently. “You want to take a sick day, I’ll sign off.”
“I want to be here,” I say, and stride out with her staring after me.
Press conference at ten. I’ve got an hour and forty minutes before Bas and his assistant, Juanita, vacate their offices. My stomach is a sack of acid, I’m so nervous, but I tell myself that this snooping is just another kind of copyediting—looking for things that should not be there. I’m watching what happened last week the way I watch the page.
Monday
Bas and stalker seen together by Kim Lord.
Monday or Tuesday?
Kim Lord offers massive gift to museum, negotiating herself out of millions of dollars.
Tuesday
Greg last sees Kim Lord.
Wednesday
My last sighting of Kim Lord, leaving the Rocque.
Thursday