Chapter 6

The archive was a narrow room off the north stair with flat files, a card catalog, and a smell like a library in a church.

Iris turned the lights on at 9:19 and went straight to the 1984 drawer. She had catalogued it herself in 2011. Aurelia Theatre - Interior Restoration, 1984 - Photographs, Contracts, Crew Lists, Clippings.

She had the crew list in her hand within a minute. Mueller, D. - Master Carpenter. Doyle, E. - Scenic Artist. She had read that page a dozen times in nineteen years and never once connected it to the man who carried the keys at night, because why would she? The night watchman was the night watchman. Nobody reads the credits on the ceiling.

Then she opened the clippings folder.

The photograph was on newsprint gone the color of weak tea, cracked along the fold, dated May 1984, from the St. Louis Chronicle. A young man stood on scaffolding in this same lobby, in this same corner, brush in his right hand, arm extended up to a panel. He was squinting into the flash. His hair was dark. His jaw was the same jaw.

Under the picture: Scenic artist Emmett Doyle, 26, touches up a panel of the Aurelia's 1927 lobby ceiling during the theater's restoration.

Iris put her reading glasses on and leaned in.

His left hand was on the scaffold rail, knuckles toward the camera, and the knuckles were shiny and puckered with a burn that had not finished healing.

She sat down on the stool in the middle of the room and stayed there for a while.

Her phone buzzed. Dez Pruitt. A photograph of a crate stencil, and beneath it, a shipping label stuck to the wood:

CALDERON IMAGING - PASSAIC, NJ - PRINTED VINYL PANELS - 42 PCS.

Iris looked at the label. Then she looked at the photograph of the young man on the scaffold. Then she looked at the clock on the wall, which said 9:24, and at her own program for the evening, which said 9:30 - Remarks on the Building's History, Dr. Iris Falk.

She stood up, put the clipping in the folder, put the folder under her arm, and walked back down the north stair into the lobby. She found the sound technician behind his board near the coat check.

"When I finish," she said, "leave the microphone on."