Excluded and Uninvited novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Back Door Camera

The bar had a camera over its back door, and I knew it because I had once helped the owner hang it.

I drove down from Tahoe at first light, with eight stitches pulling every time I turned my head.

The bar was not open yet.

The owner let me in through the kitchen, a woman in her sixties with reading glasses pushed up in her gray hair.

"I wondered when you'd come," she said.

"You saw the post."

"My granddaughter showed me. I told her it was a lie." She took me into the back office and woke up an old monitor. "Then I told her I'd prove it."

"The police asked you for the footage?"

"They took a copy Saturday. This is mine."

She sat me down in her chair and clicked a file.

The picture was black and white and from high up.

The alley ran away from the camera, wet and narrow, with the street lights at the far end.

Three people came into the frame from the street side.

Brandy walked in front and turned her head to say something to the others.

Greg followed her.

I came last, with my hands in my jacket pockets.

"That's me," I said. "That's the three of us."

"Look at her," the owner said. "She's the one who picked the alley."

I leaned in.

Brandy had stopped at the mouth and pointed down it.

Greg was already pulling his phone out of his back pocket.

At the other end, three orange figures came out from behind a dumpster.

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