Me: Sex with minors. Girls. I didn’t do it.
Donna: Do they have evidence against you?
Me: No. They have falsified documents that appear to be photographs. But they’re not real.
Donna: The documents are not real?
Me: Well, they’re real documents. You can hold them in your hand. I have. But what they depict is not real. What they show never happened.
Donna: How can these documents portray something that didn’t happen?
Me: I’m not sure of the technicalities, yet, but basically, the same way Hollywood can show you space invaders blowing up New York City. If I could explain the exact process, I would. It has something to do with digital data banks and image manipulation. I think a thing called an Iris printer may be used, too.
Donna: Who created this evidence you say is false?
Me: I don’t know.
Donna: How did you learn of it?
Me: It was found during a search.
Donna: You’re saying you were framed?
Me: I was framed.
Donna: The images show you in what setting?
Me: A cave.
Donna: Cave?
Me: It was a place I used to go sometimes to think in private, to get away from things.
Donna: So, you have actually been to the place the photographs show?
Me: Yes. But never in the company of a woman, or... girl. Well, I mean, I did take my step... ah... the daughter of a good friend of mine, there. But she isn’t the girl in the fake photographs.
Donna: You never had sex in the cave?
Me: No.
Donna: Did you ever have sex with the girl in the picture of you two, having sex?
Me: No.
Donna: Do you know who this girl is?
I suddenly broke into a cold, miserable sweat. My eyeballs felt like they were on wires. The lights burned. Something truly horrible had just broken loose in my memory, like a calf sliding off from an iceberg, and now came floating out into my ocean of despair. The girl in the cave.
I’d seen her!
Donna: Do you know who the girl in the picture is? Have you seen her before?
Me: No. Never.
There it was, my first on-camera lie. I knew how obvious it would have to be, with the sweat shining on my face and the sudden rigid dilation of my pupils. I glanced at Donna’s shocked and frightened expression. Anybody who saw this video was going to demand that I be crucified. Because I had seen this girl before, and there was no way I could hide it.
Donna: Mr. Naughton... you must realize that a great many people aren’t going to believe what you just told me. They’re going to assume the worst about you.
Me: Damn every one of them.
Donna: Is there something you’re not telling me?
Me: Turn off the camera, Donna.
Donna: Mr. Naughton?
Me: Donna, turn off the camera.
Donna: Mr. Naugh—
Me: —Turn off the fucking camera goddamnit!
I was off the stool and across the room before I even knew it. What I saw next was Donna up against the wall, flat as a shadow, and the camera, tripods and lights scattered on the floor in front of her. The recorder’s little red indicator light was still on. There was a big dent in the plaster above it. And we were surrounded by the abrupt quiet that often follows violence.
“Did I throw you there?”
“I got here under my own power. Who is she, Terry?”
“I don’t know. Come off that wall, please.”
“You’ve seen her before, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I didn’t push you, did I?”
“I’m fine, Terry. Now explain her to me.”
“I can’t I just... know I’ve seen her. Somehow and somewhere. But Donna, I swear, that’s not the worst of it. I mean...”
She didn’t even bother to speak.
“Will you please come off that wall?”
She stepped away from the wall, toeing her way past the splayed equipment, her dark West Virginian eyes not leaving my face, not even for a second.
“Say it, Terry.”
“I’ve seen myself there before, too.”
“In the cave, with her?”
“No, not the cave, not there, but doing that... I don’t know. I can’t say where. Just that I’ve seen myself from that angle before. I’ve been in that... posture. Some other time. I’ve seen me like that. Like... in a dream maybe. Like in a movie about myself.”
“In another picture?”
Then I understood. A simple, logical question like that, and I knew.
“It was one that Ardith took, years ago. I haven’t looked at any of those since Matt... you know...”
“I know.”
“Right, well, that’s... where I saw me. That’s where I was doing... that’s what I was... I mean, that’s where I was. With Matt.”
“In the cave?”
“No! I didn’t know about the cave back then.”
“You’re not making full sense, Terry. What about the girl?”
I stared at her a moment, then backed off and looked down at the tangled mass of video gear. The girl’s image flickered in from my memory, like a speeding dove in a vast blue sky. But my memory was not of the pictures. It was of something else. Something similar, but different.
“Then who’s the girl?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve seen her before.”
“Another picture, then?”
“I can’t say.”
“I hope you can say pretty soon, Terry. Because until you do, all you’ve got is a greased skid straight to some hellhole of a prison.”
I tried to read her expression. Doubtful. Hopeful. Askance. Willing to believe. Believe what?
“You think that’s where I belong?”
“I told you I wouldn’t answer that again. I won’t. You’re going to have to clean and jerk your own conscience, Terry. I can’t do that for you. What I can do is go make myself useful now. I’m going to edit that interview we just had.”
She knelt down and unscrewed the video camera from its tripod plate. She stood up, holding the big thing by the handle, like a suitcase.
“Don’t forget to turn it off,” I said.
She blushed. It was the first time that I’d caught Donna Mason in a dishonesty, or at least the first I knew of.
“The red light’s still going,” I said. “You knew it was on.”
“Well... yes, I did.”
Donna was still red faced and flustered. She said nothing, but she looked down at the camera and turned it off. I heard the traffic out on the freeway. I smelled my own fear.
“Now what?” I asked.
She looked very tired, suddenly, and she spoke quietly, with a trace of the south in her voice. “Go back to the studio and edit. After that, I got a late flight out to Dallas. My bags are packed and waiting in the car.”
“Mary Lou Kidder?”
“Yeah. It’s our Texas connection to The Horridus. Nobody has that angle but me. Thanks to you.”
Donna: ambition, guts, energy.
“I’m trusting you,” I said.