Chapter 13: What the Camera Saw

I did not say anything to him.

I looked at the chair, and I looked at his red eyes, and I asked for the only thing that mattered.

"Where is the reader?"

"In my truck," Joaquin said.

He carried it down himself, a gray box with a cable and a laptop under his arm.

Beto cleared his desk with one sweep of his forearm.

"Tomas told me the company owns the only machine that reads this drive," I said.

"It's a thirty-dollar adapter," Joaquin said. "I bought it in a hardware store."

He plugged in the drive and the screen flickered.

I sat down in Beto's chair, and Beto stood behind me with his hand on its back.

Joaquin stayed on his feet.

The picture came up gray and grainy.

It showed the corridor in front of the cold storage door, from high in the corner.

A date ran along the bottom: Sunday night, five years ago, 9:41.

The steel door stood open, and the room behind it was dark.

Two people came into the frame.

One was my mother in black, with her hair still pinned for the funeral.

The other was a small girl in a black dress, with a long braid down her back.

Renata had that girl by the upper arm.

"Mama, you said papers," the girl said.

The sound was thin, but I knew the voice, and my hands closed into fists.

"Inside," Renata said. "Be good and wait."

"It's cold in there."

"Then stand still."

She pushed.

The girl stumbled over the sill, and the door was already swinging at her back.

Then my brother came into the frame.

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