Dana was against it. She'd been against the simple version from the first phone call. She kept coming back to the same thing, which was that photos of a porch kiss were one thing, but she wanted something that couldn't be argued away in a deposition. She'd clearly been thinking about the legal end of this more than Rick or I had in those first days. "I want video," she said.
"Something that shows exactly what's happening and who's there. No room for it looks bad, but it wasn't what it seems." I thought about that. She was right. Photos were evidence of a moment. Video was evidence of a pattern in motion.
It would show them together in the cabin in a way that closed every exit. And if things went the way I expected them to go once we walked through that door, video of the before, the footage from the tree line, would be important later when lawyers started picking at timelines. I said I could do it. I knew the property well enough by now. I could get into the tree line on the south side closer than last time with my phone set to record before anyone moved.
Long enough to establish who was there and what was happening. Then I'd signal Rick and Dana. Rick sent back one line. "I just want to see it myself." I understood that. It's different seeing it yourself.
I'd stood in that tree line with a camera and gotten the photos and still part of my brain had spent 2 weeks trying to build an alternate explanation out of nothing because that's what your brain does when it doesn't want something to be true. Rick needed to see it. Not for the lawyers, just for himself. So we worked out the shape of it. I'd go in first, get into position off the access road, and record for enough time to make the footage useful.
Dana and Rick would wait by their cars until I signaled. Then I'd knock or open the door. I hadn't decided which yet. Depended on whether it was unlocked and they'd follow me in. I told them to stay back until I went in first.
I didn't say why, exactly, but they both understood. Whatever Brent's first reaction was going to be, I wanted it directed at me. Rick said he understood but that he wasn't going to wait long. I said I wasn't asking him to. I started privately calling Brent Slick right around this time.
Not out loud, just in my own head when I was running through the plan or looking at his photo or imagining his face when the door opened. He had that quality, Slick did. Good-looking in a low-effort way, confident in the specific manner of someone who'd never once thought they'd get caught. The company picnic handshake, the smile, the way you could tell he considered himself without quite saying it to be pretty good at life. I kept the name to myself, but I thought it a lot.
The rest of that week was the strangest week I've had in recent memory. You go through your day, you make dinner, Holly packs a bag and you watch her do it, and she's chatting about whatever, and you're answering her questions and doing the dishes, and you're also completely somewhere else, running the logistics for the third time that hour without meaning to. It has the quality of a dream, the ordinary surface of everything, and underneath it something you can barely hold. She asked me to help her load the car the Thursday before she left, her bag and a small cooler she'd packed. I carried the bag out.