Spiral

way.”
    ”Sí.” The only Spanish word Pintana seemed to use. ”Buford and Kalil Biggs did not arrive at the very beginning of it.”
    We were in her small office now, each of us with half our rumps on respective front comers of the desk, both of us staring at the monitor above her VCR.
    I said, ”The house cameras were turned off by this point?”
    ”Approximately thirty minutes earlier. We were told that Veronica wished it so, and her grandfather made it so.”
    I watched the silent images on the screen.
    ”Audio?”
    ”Kalil told us he forgot to engage it.”
    The images bounced and shifted as whoever was carrying the camcorder—Kalil, probably—tried to pan the living room and the party-goers in it.
    Pintana said, ”You have seen the interior of the house?”
    ”Yes.”
    She pointed to a corner. ”That is the entrance to the corridor leading to the pool area.” The focus shifted away. ”Unfortunately, the entire tape is like this. Plenty of time for one of the guests to enter the pool area without being on camera.”
    ”Veronica, too?”
    ”Yes and no. I think he preceded her there, though.”
    ”You’re assuming a male did the killing?”
    Pintana kept her eyes on the screen. ”I would not like to think that a woman—the ones at the party, anyway—would mimic a rape in killing another female.”
    I thought about Cassandra Helides’s apparently avid interest in sex, but kept my own counsel on it.
    Then I started counting the people onscreen that I could recognize. The Skipper and his wife. Duy Tranh. And now a brash, sassy girl with cornrowed, reddish-blond hair that I vaguely remembered seeing pictured on the television in a Boston bar the week before. Her gold lamé blouse was tucked into the waist of spandex tights, the material stretching over her upper thighs and buttocks. She looked at least seventeen.
    ”That’s Veronica?” I said.
    ” Sí. ”
    ”I thought she was only thirteen?”
    ”Twelve and ten months, actually.”
    Veronica and a number of adults ebbed and flowed across the none-too-steady lens. ”You’ve analyzed how much time each person is offscreen?”
    ”To the tenth of a second. It is hopeless. Apparently Kalil Biggs was striving for a ‘stream of consciousness’ in his cinema verité.”
    ”James Joyce meets Martin Scorsese.”
    After a moment, Pintana said, ”Kyle would really hate you as a partner.”
    Within ten minutes, there was food and drink being taken from a lavishly stocked buffet table that Kalil’s camera panned in the adjoining room. I could see what Pintana meant about the tape not being very helpful in locating who was where when.
    Then we were back in the living room, focused on Veronica Held. Suddenly, she tore off her own blouse, showing a tank top underneath, budding breasts pushing against it. And Veronica began a suggestive, languid dance, her mouth and throat cords implying that she was singing.
    I said, ”Is there any—”
    ”Kalil Biggs remembers now to click on the audio.”
    And suddenly a piercing, achingly adult voice filled Pintana’s office. It wasn’t that the volume was turned up too high; it was more that Veronica’s voice carried so well. Maybe the reddish hair spurred the memory, but I was reminded of the signature song from Annie, ‘Tomorrow,” I think it’s called.
    Except the a cappella lyric coming from Veronica Held’s mouth was anything but naively optimistic.
    I said, ”She’s singing a song about sex with an older man on her grandfather’s birthday?”
    Pintana said, ”Not for long.”
    You could hear the thunder of the Skipper’s voice even through the garbling caused by his stroke. And while Veronica pouted—in a pretty fair imitation of Cassandra, her ”stepgrandmother”—the girl did stop singing before talking off, the camera following her until she was lost in the broader adult bodies. A stocky man in his forties with a
    Manchu mustache hurried after Veronica, a woman in!*er thirties with flowers in her hair—literally—following ehind him.
    ”The parents?”
    ” Sí. Spi Held and Jeanette Held.”
    ”Can you identify the others for me?”
    ”If I hurry.” Pintana leaned forward, pressing the pad of an index finger to the screen over the face of a thin African-American man. ”Kalil’s father, Buford Biggs, the band’s keyboardist.” The finger moved to a fat, bald man and a stolid, sandy-haired woman. ”Gordo Lazar, the band’s bass player, and Delgis Reyes, Veronica’s au