“What are you doing in here?”
“Why do you have these? How did you get them?” I counter.
He double-checks the door handle, turns it a couple times, as if making sure it still locks. Then he reverts his attention to me. He looks again at the photos in my hand, then sighs deeply. “Believe me, I had no idea what they were when they were sent to me, and I haven’t told anyone about them since. No one’s seen them except me.”
None of this makes any sense. “Why would Justin have sent these to you?”
“When preproduction started onTo Catch a Killer, Greer hired me to research anyone connected with the case. Claire Tenenbaum was visiting you at the time of her death, so I decided to look into your background. I reached out to a Cooper Union alumni group, asked if anyone remembered you from school. Justin Billings offered to send me a package I might find interesting for the right price.”
“Youpaidfor these?” That makes it feel about a thousand times worse.
“Yes, but since he didn’t know about the show, it was a fraction of what any reporter would’ve been willing to lay out a few months down the line.”
“These are the only copies, then?”
“That’s what he told me. And I believe him. If he’d made duplicates, he would’ve sold them off the momentTo Catch a Killerbecame a success.”
I suppose I should feel grateful that Connor got his hands on them before anyone else could. But the fact that he’s looked through them, that he’s seen me like… that, makes me want to sink into the floorboards.
“What are you going to do with them?” I ask. “I mean, why didn’t you put them through a paper shredder as soon as you realized what they were? Why bring them here?”
“I wanted to return them to you. Not to embarrass you, but because if these were my photos, I’d be worried that they were still out there somewhere. I thought having them back might give you some peace of mind.”
I’ve read about what happens to teachers when photos like this are posted online—how, regardless of how long ago they were taken, regardless of whether the teacher wanted them made public, they inevitably ruin their careers. Not like my career hasn’t already been ruined, but these photos, combined with my disastrous turn on reality television, would eliminate any hope of me ever returning to the classroom. “Back in college, these photos were passed around. I had no idea who ended up with them.”
“You can have them back,” he says, hands up, as if to say they’re all mine now. “But I have a few questions I’d like you to answer first.”
I don’t want to answer his questions, but then again, I broke into his room and rifled through his personal belongings. I probably owe him that. “Fine, what?”
“Who took those photos?”
“I did.” No way am I telling him about my relationship with Claire. “The camera was on a timer. No one was ever meant to see them.”
To be honest, I forgot all about them until an engineering major approached me in the lecture hall, asking if the girl in the photos was me. He had to flip through a few—close-ups of breasts and genitals—before I realized what they were. The boy, who had all the freshly scrubbed appeal of a Neutrogena commercial, watched the mortification spread across my face. I was operating on autopilot when I turned to him and shook my head no.
“That’s not you?”
I shook my head again, even though we both knew I was lying.
“It’s okay if it is. My friends and I”—here, he gestured to his buddies who were cracking up on the sidelines—“we’re into it.”
One of them snorted loud enough to make everyone in the lecture hall turn his way.
The boy stepped closer, crossing the line into my personal space. My breath quickened. “What do you think? Maybe you and I could try to re-create these”—he shook the photos—“after class?”
That’s what finally sent me running to the bathroom. I kept my eyes locked over my shoulder the entire time, waiting to see if they’d follow, if they’d trap me in one of the stalls and take what they wanted. And I wouldn’t be able to stop them. Just like I couldn’t stop those photos from spreading across campus.
“How did Justin get them?” Connor asks, pulling me back to the present.
“We used to invite classmates over to our apartment all the time. He must’ve gone through my desk.”
He nods but doesn’t look convinced. Does he know I’m lying?
“I overheard you talking to Steffani that first night, on the balcony,” he says.
It’s such an abrupt change in topic, it catches me off guard. “Really?”
“What did she say?”
