Chapter 4 - The Footage That Didn't Show Enough
The security office was colder than the ballroom and smelled like old coffee and cleaning spray. No chandeliers in here. Just a wall of monitors buzzing faintly, a metal desk, and a folding chair they'd pointed me toward. I didn't sit.
Dmitri stood by the door with his hands clasped in front of him. He wasn't touching me anymore but I could still feel where his hand had been around my throat, a tight, hot ring. My apron was crooked. I tried to straighten it and my fingers wouldn't stop shaking.
Victor didn't look at me at first. He stood in front of the monitors with the hotel security manager, a thin guy in his fifties with a radio clipped to his belt and a name tag that said M. Keller. Keller was already pulling up the files, his mouse clicking fast.
"We've got the overhead on table six," he said. "That's the marble table by the east drape. And the wide-angle from the north wall. Both should've caught the pour."
Victor nodded once. His right hand, the one with the dark ink across the knuckles, rested on the edge of the desk. He hadn't said anything to me since we'd walked down the service hallway. I kept my eyes on the largest screen.
Keller hit play.
The ballroom looked strange from above, all that warm golden light turned flat and white on camera. I saw myself enter the frame from the left with my service tray held too tight against my chest. I was moving between tables, head down. On the marble table, Victor's coupe sat alone, half full, that pale gold catching the chandelier glare.
Then a cart rolled through. A big bus cart stacked with plates. It was pushed by a busboy in a white shirt and black vest — younger than me, maybe nineteen. As he passed table six, his tray lifted, just for a second, and his arm crossed over the glass.
I leaned forward without meaning to. "There. Right there."
Keller paused it. He tried to enhance it, zooming in. The glare from the chandelier blew out the whole corner of the image. Where the busboy's hand should have been there was just white flare and the edge of a silver tray.
"Can't see the hand," Keller muttered. "Tray blocks it. And the crystal throws that reflection every night at this angle."
Victor's jaw tightened slightly. He didn't look frustrated. He just watched.
Keller let it play again. At 8:47:12, the busboy cleared the table and was gone. At 8:47:49, I came back into frame. I stopped a foot away from the table. My face on camera was blurred but I remembered what I'd been thinking — that I'd seen something wrong and wasn't sure if I was supposed to say anything. Then at 8:48:03, a man in a dark blazer stopped beside the same table. He had his phone to his ear, his back half to the camera, and he reached down like he was adjusting a napkin. His shoulder covered the coupe completely for three seconds.
At 8:48:41, Victor entered the frame and reached for the glass. At 8:48:42, I lunged.
Keller rewound and put both angles side by side. The second angle was worse. A draped curtain and a floral arrangement cut off the view of the table entirely during those two windows.
"So we got two contacts within ninety seconds," Keller said, checking his notepad. "Busboy is Ethan Park, on staff tonight. Blazer is a guest, checked in under Caldwell, table three donor list. Both had opportunity. Neither is clear."
My breath caught. "But you saw I wasn't near it when —"
"I saw you near it twice," Victor said quietly. He finally turned to look at me. His eyes were calm, but there was a distance in them that hadn't been there in the hallway. "And I saw two other people near it. And I saw you knock it out of my hand."
It hit me what he was thinking. The air left my chest.
"You think I did it and now I'm pretending I stopped it," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.
Dmitri shifted his weight by the door but didn't speak.
"I think the tape doesn't tell me anything," Victor said. He looked back at the frozen image — my blurred shape mid-lunge, Dmitri's hand already reaching. "A tray and a chandelier glare is a very convenient cover. Or it's just bad luck. Right now you're in the same ninety seconds as the other two."
Keller cleared his throat. "I can pull the service hallway feed, see who Ethan talked to after —"
"No," Victor said. "Not yet." He tapped the desk once with his finger. "We keep this tight. No one deletes anything, no one tells the floor staff we're looking."
He looked at Keller first. "You will seal that coupe and everything on that marble table. Plastic, tape, no housekeeping touches it. I want a chemical test of what's left in the glass and the spill. Tonight."
Keller nodded quickly and reached for his radio. "On it, Mr. Romano."
Then Victor looked at Dmitri. "Bring Ethan Park to the small office off the kitchen. Alone. And find Caldwell in the blazer, ask him to wait in the lounge. Separate interviews. No one in the same room."
Dmitri gave a short nod and opened the door.
Victor's gaze came back to me. For a second his expression softened, just enough that I could see he didn't want to believe I was part of it.
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"Stay here," he said to me, not unkindly. "You don't go back to the floor until we know what was in that glass."
The monitors kept humming behind him, the frozen ballroom held on that white flare where a hand should have been.
