Inside, the air conditioning hit us like an icy wave. A uniformed officer checked Dominic’s identification and glanced at me with professional curiosity before waving us through.
“Down the hall,” the detective said.
The corridor was quiet. Closed doors on either side. The detective stopped at the last door and turned the handle.
“He’s inside.”
Luca positioned the chair slightly behind Dominic as we entered the room. Henri Fontenot sat at the table with his hands folded in front of him. He looked older. The composure was still there, but it took effort to maintain it.
A camera was mounted high in the corner, and an officer stood quietly against the wall. Dominic took the chair opposite Henri. Luca positioned mine just behind Dominic’s right shoulder.
Henri looked at Dominic. “I wanted the city to know what actually happened,” he said.
The conversation had begun. Henri rested his folded hands on the table and kept his eyes on Dominic.
“I wanted the city to know what actually happened,” he said again. “Not the version that generated memorable photographs or the version memorialized on plaques. The truth of it.”
Dominic said nothing. Henri glanced at the camera in the corner.
“I wanted the program notes to celebrate a different name,” he said. “I wanted the record to stop behaving as though the music assembled itself because you lifted your hands at the correct moment.” He took a careful breath. “I wanted you to stand at that podium and know what it had cost someone else.”
Dominic sat with both hands resting lightly on the table. He had not removed his jacket. The line of his shoulders remained straight. He was attentive.
“I know,” he said. Luca shifted in his seat.
Henri did not move.
Dominic continued, “I drafted the acknowledgment three weeks ago.”
Henri’s eyes narrowed.
“It will go into the notes accompanying all records of the performance,” Dominic said. “Your name. Your role. The calls you made. The musicians you gathered.”
The officer leaning against the wall remained expressionless. Luca, beside me, was still.
Henri looked at Dominic for a long time. “I don’t believe you,” he said finally.
Dominic inclined his head once, as though acknowledging the response. “You are free not to,” he said. “The facts remain.”
Henri looked down at Dominic’s hands and then back at his face.
“I should have done it sooner,” Dominic said. “I should have done it twenty years ago, or nineteen, or eighteen. I have no justification for how I failed you.”
That statement landed harder than the acknowledgment.
I saw it in Henri, tightening around the eyes and a subtle flinch. He leaned back in the chair and looked slightly less arranged.
“I spent twenty years watching the city tell itself a simpler story,” he said. “A story that required a face and found yours convenient. There were committees and retrospectives and journalists who wanted the clip and not the story of the conditions that made the clip possible. There were students quoting what happened that night back to me, assuming no involvement from me.” He exhaled through his nose. “You became useful to the city in a way I never did.”
“That is true,” Dominic said.
Henri looked at the table between them. The bright white LED lights above us flattened the room and gave no one anywhere to hide.
“I told myself I was acting to correct and refuse a false record as historical fact,” he said.
“Why Bridget?” I asked.
Henri turned his head toward me.
