Vaughn Requested My Camera And Left With A Signed Receipt

I let Vaughn's call end before I called him back.

"Is there a problem with the river pictures?" I asked.

Through my kitchen window, I could see the pale shapes of ships anchored out in the river. My apartment sat above an empty shop, and fog had swallowed the far bank. Vaughn waited through my question as if silence were another tool he owned. I set my camera on the table where I could see it.

"We've had a privacy complaint. Bring the camera and all theater images."

"From whom?"

"You don't need to trouble yourself with that."

I wrote down his words and the time. Then I made another copy of my files. I put one drive in my home lockbox and took another to the rented storage drawer where I kept finished job records.

I didn't change the pictures. I made separate viewing copies and flipped one so I could read the number in the mirror: 714206.

At eight, Vaughn waited beside my table. Cal stood near the door.

"Good morning," Vaughn said. "Camera, please."

"It's mine. I can show you the contract."

"Everything made on these premises belongs to us."

Tessa arrived carrying a paper cup. I gave her page four.

She read it twice.

"Maren keeps the originals," she said. "We get the treatment report and approved copies."

Vaughn's smile stayed in place.

"Then approve the copies."

I gave him a sealed envelope containing the six condition views already due with my first invoice. The small prints showed the whole backdrops. I had prepared them the week before the shipment.

"Receipt," I said, holding out a form.

"For pictures?"

"For the contract file."

He signed with a heavy silver pen. I noted the six file numbers beside his name. He hadn't received my whole archive, and I hadn't claimed otherwise.

As he left, he said, "The north gate is closed to contractors until further notice."

My car was on the other side of it.

I carried my tools six blocks through rain that came sideways off the Columbia. By the time I reached home, the paper in my receipt folder was damp along one edge.

Elias's card was still in my coat.

I called the public number printed on it, checked that he worked there, and asked to leave a message.

He called back twenty minutes later.

"I think I photographed something," I said. "I need to know what happens if I give it to you."

"We make a record of what you provide. You keep your own copies. I can't promise nobody will learn you're a witness."

That answer scared me. It also helped.

"Could you come when Vaughn isn't here?"

"Yes. Where would you feel comfortable?"

I chose the theater's front lobby at ten the next morning, when the volunteer box office crew would be folding programs.

He arrived at ten, wiped his shoes, and waited for me to choose a table.

"You don't have to call it nothing," he said when I began with, "It may be nothing."

I opened my laptop.

He leaned forward but kept his hands away from the keys.

"That's a reflection?"

"Stage mirror. The surface has waves. The number is clearest in the middle sheet."

"May I write it down?"

"You may."

He compared it with a number in his notebook. His face changed very little.

"This matters," he said.

I told him about the destroyed drive. He asked what I had seen, then read my account back. When he reached "smashed the camera," I stopped him.

"Recorder drive. He hit the recorder drive."

Elias crossed out the words with one line.

"Thank you."

"You're thanking me for correcting you?"

"I'd rather be corrected here than in court. Chairs are worse there."

I laughed. The sound surprised both of us.

We agreed to meet with his evidence technician the following day. He gave me a receipt for a viewing copy and explained that the originals would need a careful, recorded transfer.

"Don't confront him," he said. "And don't go looking inside crates."

"I mend linen. Breaking into wood would be a career change."

He smiled, then asked about the gate.

I hadn't told him that part. Tessa had mentioned it during his first visit upstairs.

"I'm managing," I said.

"I believe you. Managing can still be hard."

After he left, I stood at the lobby window longer than I needed to. He paused outside to let an older volunteer pass under his umbrella.

I wanted him to come back. I told myself it was because he listened.

At three, Tessa brought me a new envelope.

Inside was a claim from Rusk Shore Freight for $18,900 in alleged loading damage. A second page told the theater to hold my $8,400 until the claim was settled.

Clipped to both pages was a photograph of a broken mirror I had never seen before.