CHAPTER 28
Malcolm
The hospital curtain is too thin to hold back a countdown.
It comes through Officer Soto’s radio in clipped bursts, buried under static, voices, a building I can’t see, and Clara’s silence where her voice should be.
“Media server active,” Alvarez says through the speaker. “Autoplay in four minutes. Hales visible through viewing glass. Service room secured. Need tech support now.”
Four minutes.
My body does the old thing.
Muscles tighten before thought. Left hand grips the bed rail. Bad shoulder tries to join the mutiny and sends a hot white line through my chest. Wrapped palm flexes inside bandages and burns with the insult of being useless. My head pulses behind the gauze.
The bed does not move.
The curtain does not move.
I do not move.
I hate every object in this room for being better at restraint than I am.
Janet Kim stands at the foot of the bed with her phone in one hand and her face turned toward Soto’s radio.
Dr. Imada is beside the monitor, arms folded, expression carved from medical refusal.
Soto has one shoulder angled toward the hallway and one ear toward me like he expects me to attempt something stupid and wants to be able to block it in time.
Fair.
I would like to attempt several stupid things.
“Put Alvarez on speaker,” I say.
Soto already has the radio up. “Detective, Reed is here. Kim is present. Doctor is present. He is not moving.”
“Good,” Alvarez says. “Keep it that way.”
Clara’s voice comes faintly in the background. “Tell him not to enjoy being right.”
My chest tightens.
Not from pain.
Not only pain.
She is there. Angry. Alive. In a room Victor built around her name.
The monitor beside my bed beeps once, faster.
Dr. Imada looks at it, then me. “No.”
“I didn’t speak.”
“Your pulse did.”
“Unprofessional of it.”
Janet cuts in. “Alvarez, describe the equipment.”
A rustle. Movement. Then Alvarez again. “Portable media server on rolling cart. Monitor attached. Cables floor channel to ballroom. Countdown on screen. File named Legacy Presentation Final. Door behind service room closed. Victor is behind viewing glass, likely ballroom side or donor corridor. We have one detective at rack. He was about to cut power.”
“No,” I say.
Everyone looks at me.
“Do not cut power.”
Soto relays, “Reed says don’t cut power.”
Alvarez snaps back, “Why?”
I close my eyes for one second, not to think better, but to see the room from memory.
Bellwether Cultural Center. West loading bay.
Freight lift. Archive level. Exhibit Wall B.
Private screening room behind it. Victor likes controlled entrances, clean labels, legal ownership.
Gavin likes secondary controls. Red Vale likes plausible deniability.
Media servers at donor events never run one line if the room contains money and press.
“Because the ballroom feed may have a failover,” I say. “If you cut the rack, it could switch to backup output or trigger upload. Victor wouldn’t rely on one plug in a room with police access.”
Alvarez is quiet for half a beat.
Good. Not because he trusts me.
Because the room has made the same kind of mistake before.
“Then what do we cut?” he asks.
“Nothing yet. Need to identify signal path.”
Dr. Imada mutters, “I would love for all of you to remember he has a head injury.”
“I remember,” I say. “It’s very present.”
Janet steps closer. “Think slower.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try visibly.”
I force my left hand off the bed rail.
Small thing.
Difficult thing.
Clara told me once, years ago, that men like me think control is a door with a lock. She was wrong in one way. Control is a map. Worse. Maps make you believe you’re helping because you can name every exit while someone else is still trapped in the room.
I don’t get to make Clara’s next move.
I can only give her the walls.
“Ask Diana if she sees front-of-house projection,” I say.
Soto relays.
Static.
A pause.
Then Diana’s voice, breathless and furious, comes over Alvarez’s line. “I am currently being escorted away from three donors and a damaged coffee table, so yes, I see projection. Ballroom has three screens. Donor loop currently playing on main. Side screens idle with Red Vale logo.”
“Any tech booth?” I ask.
Soto repeats.
Diana answers, “Rear balcony. One operator. Looks terrified. Not Victor’s man, I think. He has the posture of someone who thought today involved muffins.”
“Good. He can help if he doesn’t get fired first.”
Diana says, “Everyone gets fired eventually. Be specific.”
The corner of Janet’s mouth moves.
Dr. Imada looks unimpressed by humor but doesn’t interrupt.
I look at Soto. “Tell Alvarez: don’t kill power. Pull ballroom input from the switcher side, not server side. Replace with house loop or black. Preserve server running and record countdown. If there’s auto-upload, keep network live until tech isolates it.”
Soto relays in pieces.
Alvarez comes back. “We don’t have house tech in the service room.”
“Diana can get the operator to switch program output from the balcony,” I say. “He doesn’t need to know evidence. Tell him safety hold. No feed from archive source.”
Diana laughs once through the radio. “I can absolutely terrify a man with muffins.”
Clara says something too low to catch.
I hate that I can’t hear her.
I hate more that I want to.
Janet notices because lawyers are paid to ruin privacy. “You’re not calling her.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“I’m not calling her.”
“Good.”
Soto’s radio crackles again. “Countdown at three minutes.”
The beeping monitor beside me answers with another small spike.
Dr. Imada steps closer. “Mr. Reed.”
“I’m in bed.”
“Your cardiovascular system is not.”
“Tell it to stop reading the room.”
“I would, but it seems attached to you.”
The nurse from earlier appears with a syringe in hand, sees Janet, Soto, the doctor, me, and the radio, then pauses. “Am I interrupting an illegal board meeting?”
“No,” Dr. Imada says. “A very stupid legal-medical-police hybrid.”
“Should I come back?”
“Pain medication,” Dr. Imada says.
“I need to stay clear.”
Dr. Imada looks at me the way nature looks at fragile things before weather. “You need not to throw your body into shock because a rich man owns a projector.”
That sentence should not be accurate.
It is.
Janet says, “Reduced dose?”
Dr. Imada considers.
The nurse waits with the expression of someone who has seen men negotiate with pain and lose in bulk.
“Reduced,” Dr. Imada says. “Enough to keep him useful, not enough to let him think martyrdom is a treatment plan.”
“I’m standing right here,” I say.
“You are lying down right there.”
Soto coughs into his hand.
The medication enters through the IV, cool and immediate. It doesn’t take the pain away. It puts a pane of glass between me and the sharpest part.
Not enough glass to stop me seeing Clara behind another pane, Victor smiling through it.
The parallel is cheap.
Real life has no shame about obvious imagery.
Alvarez’s line opens again. “We have house operator moving to switch input. Countdown at two-forty. Victor has approached microphone. Donors being seated. Clara is in service room with us.”
“Is she visible to ballroom cameras?” I ask.
A pause.
Alvarez repeats the question to someone nearby.
Clara answers, clearer this time. “There’s a small wall camera above the rack.”
My fingers go cold.
Of course.
“Cover it,” I say.
Alvarez says, “Already did.”
Clara’s voice follows, dry as old paper. “With the Marla’s hoodie. Very dignified.”
A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it.
It hurts. Shoulder, ribs, head. All of them object. I still keep the laugh for half a second because she covered a surveillance camera with diner merch while Victor waited behind glass in a preserved-film charity event.
There are worse reasons to live.
Dr. Imada points at the monitor. “Do not make that a habit.”
“I’ll avoid joy.”
“Good.”
Janet’s phone buzzes. She reads, then lifts her eyes. “Gideon says the canister is logged. No preview yet. Entertainment Wire is pushing the Laurel clip harder.”
I look at the radio.
“Does Clara know?”
Janet doesn’t answer fast enough.
“She knows,” I say.
“Yes.”
My chest goes tight.
Laurel’s voice, cut in pieces.
Clara knows.
She knew before the last take.
There are sentences that can survive editing because the listener knows the speaker. Clara knows Laurel. But trauma rearranges recognition. It turns someone else’s voice into a room full of hidden doors.
I need to help.
No.
Wrong.
I need to stop making help about proximity.
“What can we get from the media server without playing it?” I ask.
Janet looks at me. “Clarify.”
“Metadata. File tree. Time stamps. Source path. If Victor built the second cut for ballroom playback, the server may show file creation location or network mount. Red Vale edit suite, Victor’s office, archive machine. That matters more than what the donors see.”
Soto relays.
A different voice comes through. Casey.
Thank God.
“Reed? Casey. I’m remote through Alvarez’s phone. I can walk detective through screen photos. No direct network touch yet.”
“Don’t connect to it.”
“I was born tired, not stupid.”
“Fair.”
Casey’s voice is fast, thin from pressure. “Screen shows autoplay from local media app. File has companion folder. Names visible: LW_FINAL_CLIP, CV_ROOM_STILLS, AVERY_RESCUE_PULL, M_REED_AUDIO, DONOR_ROLL.”
CV room stills.
Avery rescue pull.
My audio.
He planned the entire presentation as a public indictment. Not only Laurel’s recording. Clara’s office. Avery’s rescue. Me at the hospital maybe, if they got it in time. A whole sequence that makes evidence look like obsession and rescue look like staging.
My stomach turns.
Not nausea from concussion.
A cleaner disgust.
“Alvarez,” I say. “If that plays, it doesn’t just frame Clara. It contaminates the witness pool. Donors, press, potential jurors, investors. Victor wants a public memory before legal memory catches up.”
Janet nods slowly.
“She’s right,” she says.