Chapter 11: Nettie's Cloud

Darla came across Marshall Street in her bathrobe and a raincoat, with her reading glasses on the chain and no gum at all.

She looked at the clean square in the dust for a long time.

"Well," she said. "Shit."

Nettie, who'd been half asleep against the filing cabinet, opened one eye.

"Quarter."

"I'll owe you, baby."

"You owe me four dollars from chess night."

"Then put it on my tab, too."

Two patrol officers came at eleven.

They took pictures of the splintered frame and wrote down "recording equipment, laptop" and asked Ike if he had any enemies.

Ike looked at Darla. Darla looked at me.

"A few," Ike said.

When they'd gone, the four of us sat in the office with the lights off and the neon buzzing pink through the front window.

"Did the detective ever take a copy?" Darla asked.

"He told me to hang on to it," Ike said.

"And the laptop?"

"I put it on the laptop for him. That's the only other copy."

Darla put her face in her hands.

"I told you nobody touches the box till my examiner comes. I didn't tell you to leave it sitting there like a pie on a windowsill."

"I locked the door."

"They brought a crowbar, Ike."

I sat on the card table with my arms around my knees.

Without the footage, it was a white car on a street.

It was my drawing from a hospital bed. It was my word that a woman at a breakfast had whispered.

And Brantley could twist anything to suit him.

"It's okay," I said, and it came out thin. "We still have the sketchbooks."

"Sugar, the sketchbooks prove he's a pig. They don't prove she was there."

Nettie had been very quiet.

She was sitting up now, holding her dinosaur tablet against her chest with both arms.

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