“I had an idea,” Timmy said. “Is there room for a person?”
Jumping the gun, probably, but he couldn’t help himself. Later, if things worked out, they could add her name.
14
This is pointless,” Luis said.
They sat shoulder to shoulder in the front office, looking at security footage on his computer screen. Claudia wished that she’d gone home to shower. From Timmy’s she had driven straight to work, in yesterday’s clothes—reeking, probably, of sex and weed.
The front office was tiny. One wall was mounted with video screens, six different views of the clinic: the waiting room and reception desk, the long corridor that led to the exam rooms, the front and back doors, the sidewalk out front. On the desk beside Luis's computer sat Claudia’s laptop, the browser pointed to the Hall of Shame.
“My eyes are starting to cross,” Luis said. “I need a break.”
“Ten more minutes,” Claudia said.
The security footage was grainy, indistinct. To save time they watched it on quadruple speed. Even compressed, it was short on action. The protestors were unbelievably boring to watch. Claudia thought of Puffy, who showed up at the clinic each morning to do absolutely nothing. How could he stand it? What, exactly, kept him coming back?
Luis leaned forward in his chair and fiddled with the laptop. Click to begin slide show. They watched in silence as one woman after another flashed across the screen.
“You know what’s weird about this?” he said.
“Everything?”
“Well, yeah. But also . . .” He paused. “They’re all White.”
Claudia blinked. In truth, she hadn’t noticed. It was, for her, an illuminating moment: the limits of her vision, her own dumb parallax. What else had she failed to see?
Luis stared intently at the screen. “Whoa, what’s he doing?”
“Who?”
“That guy in the back.” He paused the playback and rewound by a few seconds. On the screen, a slight female figure moved jerkily toward the front door.
“Okay, watch this guy.” Luis pointed to the bottom left corner of the screen. A male figure hovered at the edge of the crowd. He stood awkwardly with his elbows out, hands at chest height. He seemed to be holding something.
“He’s taking a photo,” Luis said.
They rewound the playback and watched again, on the slowest speed. One frame at a time, the female figure—dressed in black tights and clunky boots—made its way to the door.
“Wait. I know her,” Claudia said, squinting. “Maybe. I think she’s one of my Access patients.” As soon as she said it, she wasn’t sure. The video was grainy, the resolution muddy. “Can you zoom in on her face?”
Luis did. The resolution got even fuzzier, but Claudia could discern the point of flickering light, the diamond stud above the girl’s top lip.
“That’s Shannon,” she said, her heart racing. “The patient I told you about that night at the pub. She said some guy took her picture, but I didn’t believe her.”
They paused the playback, rewound and played it again. Frame by jerky frame, Shannon approached the door. From the bottom left corner of the screen, the guy in the Sox cap moved toward her—a White guy in a down jacket and Red Sox cap, holding a cell phone.
“Can’t you get any closer?” Claudia asked.
“Nah, that’s the best we can do.”
She squinted. The man was younger than Puffy, a little taller, but identically dressed. He raised the phone to chest height for just a second. Then he glanced briefly over his shoulder, his hand to his face, and stepped out of the frame.