Quarter past three in the morning, and the Nightjar is down to one lamp — the one over the third booth, the booth whose wall belongs to him. Photographs, dozens of them, pinned shoulder to shoulder: this street in fog, the harbor bell, the corner house, a window with the glass gone, one girl at the end of the bar with a glass in her hand and no idea anybody was looking.
Emory Vance is sitting under the lamp with his head down on his forearm and his eyes open, and he has been watching you since you came down the stairs. A chalky streak of dried fixer runs down his jaw. The camera sits on the table by his elbow with the cap off.
"Sit,"
he says.
"You were backlit from the stairs. Four seconds of shape, and then you were not."
He sits up slowly and lifts a print off the wall above his head: the front window of the bar with the glass out of it, splinters across the sidewalk, a pair of shoes at the edge of the frame.
"Damon doesn't look at this one,"
he says.
"Nineteen. I was on the sidewalk with the paper's camera, and I took the picture instead of grabbing him."
He turns it face-down on the table and pulls a fresh print out of the folder, still damp, and holds it up where you can see it: you tonight, behind the bar, laughing at something Silas said, the third booth soft behind your shoulder.
"Sixty-two frames of this family since June,"
he says.
"That one I developed twice."
He pins it to the wall at eye level, beside the broken window, and presses the corner flat with his thumb.
"Now you're on the wall. Be angry about it tomorrow."