Juno had chosen a table where nobody could sit behind her.
It stood beneath an awning at the marina café, with the rail at her back and a clear view of the path from the hotel. Her little laptop was open. The black drive lay beside it. Cal saw the cable first, then the card wallet half inside her bag, and had to stop himself reaching past her.
“Sit down,” she said.
He remained standing. “You had that on purpose. The whole thing.”
“Yes.”
“You know what they're saying?”
She looked at the phone beside the laptop. “I've seen some.”
“Then take it down.”
“You can take it off the page. People have it.”
A woman at the next table looked up. Cal pulled the chair out and sat. He had walked fast and could feel the sweat running beneath his collar.
“Give me the media.”
Juno moved the black drive closer to the laptop. “I'll give you a copy of what you need.”
“It's my work.”
“You want to have that conversation here?”
He looked at the other tables. The café had opened for people who'd come off boats, not for a man trying to recover his life from a bag. A waiter put a menu down between them. Neither picked it up.
“I'll pay you,” Cal said. “The whole balance. I'll make the payment instruction today. You bring everything back.”
“So I get money you've owed me for months and you get to put your name on the next piece.”
“This isn't a piece, Juno. A man's dead.”
“I know.”
She sounded tired. Not victorious. It made him angrier because he had come ready to meet somebody enjoying herself.
She opened a folder. “Look at this.”
The suite appeared, seen through the uneven mouth of his own bag. Gideon sat on the sofa with the cloth against his face. Cal himself moved at the edge of the frame, one hand passing close enough to cover most of the lens. Then he left.
Cal stared at the door.
Juno moved forward over the empty minutes. The door opened again. Adrian came in.
Cal put his hand flat on the table. “Don't be alone with him.”
“I know.”
“Juno. I left Gideon alive. You can see me leave him. Adrian said he'd come up.”
“I saw this after your message. Before I put B out. I know he might have done it.”
He looked away from the laptop at her face. She had known. She had watched another man come into the room after he left and then published him hitting Gideon.
“And you did it anyway.”
She kept her hand beside the drive.
“Yes.”
On-screen Adrian sat down. Gideon moved the cloth from his mouth and said something Cal couldn't catch through the café noise. Juno offered headphones. Cal put one earpiece in, leaving the other loose so he could hear her.
There was no grand confession. Two men in a room. A short exchange, broken by Gideon moving his glass and Cal's own bag settling around the camera. Then Adrian stood. Gideon followed him toward the bedroom doorway, slow and annoyed, walking under his own power.
They went out of view.
Cal leaned closer, as though he could get past the doorway by changing his own angle. He could hear indistinct movement farther away, the room's air-conditioning, a brief sound he couldn't make into words. The picture held the sofa. The glass remained on the low table.
Juno let it run.
“This is what you were going to have,” she said. “Whatever it caught.”
He didn't answer.
Adrian came back into view alone. He stood a moment at the edge of the room, then went out through the main door. Gideon did not follow.
Cal could see the route outside in his mind: the little vestibule, passenger elevator one way, service passage the other. He could not see which Adrian had used.
“Keep going,” he said.
She did. Empty sofa, glass, flowers shifting slightly in the air from the vent. At the end Juno came through the door. She went straight to the bag. Her hand grew huge as it reached the lens, and the recording stopped.
She hadn't gone to the bedroom. She hadn't seen what was there.
Cal took the earpiece out.
“You didn't know last night.”
“No.”
He touched the little frozen picture. It didn't become more complete. Gideon had been alive after Cal left him. Adrian had been there. There was still a door Cal couldn't see through.
“I need that,” he said.
Juno took a small delivery drive out of her bag, checked what was on it and connected it to the other port. She began copying the whole A file, not only the few minutes she'd shown. The progress bar moved slowly.
“It'll take a while,” she said.
He nodded. The waiter returned. Cal ordered two coffees without asking whether she wanted one. She let him.
His phone was full of things he didn't want to open. He found Quinn's number and wrote that A had been recording, that what he'd said at the hotel was wrong. Juno had the file. Adrian appeared in it after Cal left. He gave the café name and said a copy was being made.
He read the message to the end. The first sentence looked worse than the rest.
He sent it.
Juno watched him put the phone down. “She knows where I am. I've spoken to her officer.”
“You've given them this?”
“I've told them what it shows. They want the full inventory. I have to get it together, all the cards and drives, not just a little export.” She looked at the bags beneath her chair. “I've said I'll bring it to the shore office. We need to fix the time.”
“Give it now.”
“You can have the file now. That's what I'm doing.”
“All of it.”
She shook her head. The copying bar had barely crossed a third.
Cal sat back. A boat horn sounded beyond the awning. Somebody on the next table asked the waiter if the kitchen had eggs. The same world was continuing in two directions, and he couldn't get either to stop long enough to make the other behave.
“Why publish me?” he asked.
Juno looked at the screen rather than him.
“Rafi sent a number. Twenty-five. I kept looking at it. I put my name on the file and then took it off again because I thought I could still take the money.”
“Then take the money.”
“He wanted the whole thing through the company. His company. Gideon would get involved. He kept saying it would be done properly.”
She rubbed one eye with the heel of her hand, carefully, as if it hurt.
“I could see myself making another file while somebody else told people it was theirs. So I put it out before I could answer him.”
“You had the later footage.”
“I know.”
“You knew what it would look like when people heard he was dead.”
She looked at him then. He wanted a defense he could take apart. She didn't give him one.
“I wanted them to see it,” she said.
“My face.”
“Mine's there too. You can hear me. Asking about the hotel. Saying your name and then carrying on.”
Her mouth tightened. “I've had three people ask if I'm available. One of them wanted to know if I'd do the same to his client. I don't know if anyone sensible will book me again.”
He saw how little sleep she'd had. The mark at the bridge of her nose where she'd rubbed it, a frayed black thread hanging from her sleeve. She could have had twenty-five thousand dollars. She had pressed a button instead.
“You could have given them the context,” he said.
“I gave them the whole public scene. Not a murder. I didn't say he died in it.”
“You knew.”
She looked down. “Yes.”
The coffees came. Neither reached for a cup until the waiter had moved away.
Cal wanted the old argument back, the one in which he was late paying and she was right. He could have settled that one, if he'd wanted to.
His phone vibrated. Quinn had received his message. She wanted him available for another account; the correction would need discussing. The hardware and workroom were being accounted for. He should arrange any collection through the hotel staff and the officer there, not let himself back in.
He looked toward the hotel. From here it was all pale balconies and windows, a place for people to wake up in linen and ask for coffee. His own workroom had no view at all.
“They've held the kit,” he said. “The cameras, laptop. I tried to take A. They stopped me.”
“I know. They've asked which cards belong to which body. I gave them the list again.”
He nearly asked her to get his camera.
“You won't be able to just walk in either,” he said.
“I'm not trying to. I'll go through the manager. C's the fixed one they want held with the setup. A and B are empty. They'll tell us what can be signed out.”
She drank the coffee and made a face. It was too hot. She put it down, pushed the sleeve of her shirt up and waited for it to cool.
The copy reached the end while they sat there. Juno opened the drive, checked the beginning and end of the file and wrote A604 on a piece of tape around it. She gave it to Cal.
He put it in his pocket.
“Where did he go when he left?” Juno asked.
“I don't know. I was downstairs.”
“Somebody will.”
Cal remembered Emilio with the cart, the little gray service passage and the man's eyes on the floor this morning. He had seen Adrian disappear from the reception, come back with his cuff twisted. Somebody might have seen the part between.
“I'm going to find out,” he said.
Juno gathered the cable from the copy drive, wound it once and set it aside. She did not hand him the card wallet when he stood.
“Don't be alone with him,” he said again.
“I heard you.”
She turned back to her own screen. Cal went toward the hotel with the file in his pocket and her name still open on the public page.