Pete nodded. “Sometimes you’re lucky to get through to one or two out of a class of thirty.”
Would that have been Casey and JD?
“I better get going,” I answered, moving past the last stall.
“Snow, come on,” he drawled.
I glanced over my shoulder and Pete pulled what I figured was the stolen Colt Walker revolver out of his sweatshirt. I froze.
Pete scratched his beard with his free hand. “I’ve only got two rounds left. Don’t make me use them, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered. I slowly put my hands up.
“You found the Dickson drafts?” he asked.
I nodded.
“How? Was there a fourth film?”
I frowned. “No. What do you mean?”
“All the research I’ve been doing… it all pointed at needing thefilmsto uncover where Dickson hid his inventions. I got those films from you—”
“JD did,” I corrected.
“Well, if you dangle a million dollars in front of an eighteen-year-old from a low-income family, you can get them to agree to the craziest things.”
“That’s cruel, Pete,” I said quietly. “Come on. Put the gun down.”
“So if I have all the films,” he continued without missing a beat, “and none of them show the hiding spot, how did you find the documents?”
I didn’t respond.
Pete cocked the hammer back on the revolver.
“It was dumb luck,” I said quickly.
“Bullshit.”
“The clue that was most important was that the assistant, Tom Howard, said the filmsandKinetoscope had to be kept safe. The movies simply put to rest the tragedy of Albert Martin.”
“Who gives a shit about some 120-year-old dead guy?”
“B-but the movies also laid out the facts of Dickson’s final months at Black Maria. One film shows a man in the background, crouched in front of a Kinetoscope.”
Pete used his free hand to make a motion, like,speed it up.
“Dickson’s paperwork was stashed inside the frame of the cabinet,” I said in haste. “Pete—”
“Oh man!” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “That’s… wow. Okay, I gotta hand it to you, Snow.” Pete pointed at me. “Smart.Thisis why I like you!”
“Lucky me,” I whispered.
“I’ve been searching for those inventions my entire adult life,” Pete said with an almost sweet expression. “Even joined this waste-of-time convention committee in the hopes of expanding my reach. Then I come to find one of my film students, his fucking grandpa owned the Kinetoscope with the Tom Howard story. Casey and I tried to get the guy to let us put the Kinetoscope in the show. That way we could access the films, find where the documents were, and return them with him none the wiser.”
“But he thought his grandson was going to steal it,” I finished.
“Well, the old guy refused to put it in the show. After it went MIA, Casey checked his grandpa’s computer history and found your shop in the search engine. I honestly could have cared less about the bizarre and morbid shit you sell, it was obvious in the beginning that you weren’t relevant to my search—but when Casey confirmed the Kinetoscope ended up inyour store….” Pete smiled in an odd manner, his lips pulled thin over his teeth, and shrugged, like,there was no alternative.
