Page 59 of His Wall

"I'm sorry I cornered you in my office this morning. I should not have done that."

"It's all right, Julian."

A beat.

"Can you come over?"

I stood under the streetlight with the phone against my cheek and twenty-three photographs on it I had just chosen not to send.

"I am not asking for anything. I just don't want to be in this apartment alone tonight. If you can't, that's fine. I'll — "

"Send me the address."

ELEVEN

JULIAN

The conference room door clicked closed behind Nolan and the three of us were alone with the gala guest list spread across the table.

Declan had already been through it twice. The pages were laid edge to edge, the names down the left margin, the plus-ones beside them, the vendor credentials in a separate stack at his elbow. He had a yellow highlighter uncapped in his right hand and a pencil behind his ear and the dark hair he had not bothered to fix this morning was standing up at the back.

"He's not on it. I've gone through it twice. Conrad Weiss is not on any of the three lists."

Nolan pulled out the chair across from him and sat. He had on the charcoal sweater again, sleeves pushed up, a coffee an inch from his elbow.

"Then he didn't walk in off the street."

"He didn't walk in off the street."

I sat at the head of the table. I had not slept. I had a mug of coffee in front of me I had not touched.

"Vendor staff," Nolan said. "Possible."

"Unlikely. Conrad would not come in through the kitchen."

"Plus-one of a guest."

"Names were verified at the door. Security ran every plus-one against the master list. I was standing 5 ft. from the head of security at 8:45 p.m. He cleared every name."

"Staff credentials."

"I pulled the security company's personnel list this morning." Nolan flipped a page in the folder open in front of him. "I'm having it cross-checked against the vendor's badge issuance for the night. If anyone on that crew has worked at an event Conrad attended in the last two years, we'll know by lunch."

Declan dropped the highlighter on the table.

He looked at me.

"Graham."

My chest tightened.

"Graham is gone, Dec."

"Graham is gone. But we never found who put Graham up to it. We looked for six months and we found nothing. We told ourselves he acted alone."

He laid his hand flat on the guest list.

"What if he didn't act alone? What if the person who got to Graham got someone into that gala?"