Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

  Interview with Hal Giroux

  March 16, 2003

  LAAC

  Detective Strick

  Tell me how long and in what context you knew Brenae Brasil.

  She was one of my star students in the fall. She came in blazing, straight from undergraduate. I hired her to work on my crew, and she assisted in building my London show. I was also the chair of her review committee.

  So exactly how many months did you know her?

  August to March. Seven or eight months.

  You’d never met her before she was a student at LAAC?

  No.

  Did your relationship to Brenae change over the course of those months?

  My relationship to all of my students is fairly constant. I expect the best of them.

  What made you hire her to work on your crew?

  I thought she was talented. I wanted to give her a chance.

  Did Brenae do her best, in your mind?

  I don’t think Brenae was ready for the intensity of graduate school. Her second semester was a total disaster. She barely attended any classes. She was showing up to places clearly under the influence—

  How so?

  Slurring and stumbling.

  What “places” are you referring to?

  Open studios, presentations. LAAC social gatherings mostly.

  Was she the only student to show up to social events inebriated?

  Of course not. I brought it up because you asked what changed. She changed.

  Tell me about your probationary meeting on March 5, 2003.

  I meet with all my students at the end of their first year to have a preliminary talk about their graduation show. In Brenae’s case, we met early because I was worried about her career at LAAC. She hadn’t produced anything since the fall, and she was likely to flunk her classes. Her future funding had been suspended because her performance was so poor. Frankly, I thought she ought to put school on hiatus and come back and finish the degree when she felt well again. I told her so. I promised her a place.

  She refused and insisted that she had in fact produced some work and she wanted to show it to me.

  What work?

  There were two videos. One was quite long, but I watched the whole thing. It was footage she’d taken over the past year at openings and parties, of people walking away to their cars. That’s all it was. The parties breaking up.

  I didn’t think much of it. It had none of Brenae’s usual verve. She wasn’t starring in it. That was a big problem. The other problem is that students think their social lives are more interesting than they are.

  What was in the second video?

  The other video showed Brenae engaged in a sexual act with an unidentified male. She’d put together a voice-over that implied that he was forcing her. That shocked me. Then she told me that as part of her graduation project, she wanted to project it on a wall in our main building. She thought this was a daring idea, a confrontation of sexual politics at LAAC, and she didn’t see any of its complications for her, for the school, for whoever her sexual partner was. I told her that was impossible.

  Do you know who it was?

  No. The man’s head was blurred out.

  No guesses? You must have guessed.

  None.

  And she didn’t tell you?

  No.

  Why didn’t you ask?

  I did. I asked Brenae if she wanted to initiate formal sexual harassment proceedings with the college. She said that “a specific perpetrator, a specific victim” wasn’t the point. I remember those were her exact words. I told her that no one would see a symbol when they saw that footage. They would see a man. And they would see her. And she could get sued. I don’t think she anticipated how much damage she could do to herself.

  Did you discuss these videos with anyone?

  No. I told her that her best route was to take time off. I told her that procedures were always in place for her to lodge a formal complaint, and I gave her the names of dedicated staff who could help her with her personal crisis and with transitioning to taking a leave from LAAC. We have a great mental health team here at LAAC.

  The videos you describe are missing. The files erased from her hard drive. What do you think happened to them?

  Maybe she erased them herself. I never tell students to destroy their work, although sometimes that’s exactly the remedy they need. But I don’t coddle them, either. I was devastated when I heard she ended her life. I believed in her talent and vision. But I wouldn’t have been doing her any favors paying her another year to burn bridges at LAAC. You have to launch from this place with success and momentum, or you can’t make the leaps you need to.

  The videos were erased after her death. How is that possible, in your mind?

  It’s not. I asked our staff to do a welfare check and they found her, and I promptly called the police. The studio was under lock and key that whole time. No one could have tampered with her laptop.

  What if someone entered the studio after her death, erased the files, and then locked the door again and walked away?

  That’s an insidious claim. Wouldn’t there be evidence? Fingerprints?

  Who has keys to the studio?

  The student. And custodial has a set. That’s it.

  Where do the custodians keep them?

  I don’t know actually. Their office somewhere, I suppose. You can ask.

  So it’s technically possible that someone lifted the key, unlocked the studio, erased the files, and replaced the key.

  Sure. It sounds like an awful lot of trouble for a couple of student films, though. Isn’t it more likely that you have the dates and times wrong and that Brenae erased them herself?

  Let’s go back to your last meeting with Brenae. You didn’t think the subject of the second video merited further investigation on your part.

  As I’ve said twice now, I asked Brenae if she wanted to initiate formal sexual harassment proceedings with the college. She said only after she projected the video on a wall on campus. I said no deal. Students rarely consider the legal implications of what they do, but I have to. Our program can’t survive expensive public lawsuits.

  What measures did the school take to make sure that students don’t carry firearms to campus?

  We don’t allow firearms. I heard of Brenae’s Packing project about halfway through the week she was making it. I contacted her immediately and told her that she could never bring the weapon to campus or it would be confiscated and she would be suspended. She agreed, in writing. I can have my assistant show you the contract. I asked her once what she did with the gun after she completed the project, and she told me she’d sold it back to the gun dealer. I had no idea she stored it in her studio until she shot herself.

  When did you learn of her death?

  The day my staff discovered her. I won’t forget that day for a long time. The school has been very impacted by her loss. Very impacted.

  She may have been in her studio for an entire day and night before she shot herself. Do you find it unusual that no one would notice this?

  Our student artists often retreat to get their work done. Frankly, they like to binge on isolation. It’s part of their process. So, no, it would not come off as unusual.

  She wrote “Watch me” in a note on her laptop. What does that mean to you?

  I don’t know. It sounds like a dare. The language. It’s provocative.

  You don’t think it’s in reference to the erased files or to the sexual situation she revealed on one of them?

  Brenae made some fine artworks in her life. Maybe she wanted people to watch them all.

  Do you have any further thoughts about Brenae Brasil that you would like to share?

  My heart goes out to her family. I’m very sorry for their loss. And I’m very sorry for ours.

  7

  INSIDE THE CASE FILE THE next morning, I half expected to find lurid photographs of Brenae’s dead body, like I’d seen from TV crime shows, but if there had been
photos, our source hadn’t included them. Instead, I encountered pages and pages of forms in a tiny font. Dates, times, locations, numbers. A lot of numbers. Even the paramedics who’d been called to her studio had had numbers assigned to them.

  The file’s chronology followed the detectives from the moment they were given the case to the moment they made their conclusions, noting the reports, interviews, and tips that came to them along the way. Brenae’s suicide boiled down to a series of steps and calculations, her fate and character reconstructed in hindsight. A twenty-two-year-old woman. A woman mostly estranged from her family, except for her musician brother. A student who, according to one witness, “had a talent for controversy.” A student who had been given the world last spring with a rare full scholarship to LAAC, and who had gone from exceeding her professors’ expectations to missing weeks of classes and failing to turn in assignments.

  The interview with Hal Giroux halted me for a while. He didn’t sound like a man covering up his own guilt. But what about the guilt of someone else? Why wouldn’t he look harder into the situation that Brenae presented to him, instead of essentially cutting her off? Wasn’t that his job as director of his program? There were interviews with other professors as well, including a female instructor who claimed she’d brought Brenae’s lapses to Hal’s attention, and that Brenae had started catching up on her missed work before she shot herself. “She was digging herself out, but I think when she realized she was going to finish the year with Bs and Cs, she just gave up,” the instructor reflected. “She could only be a star or a failure, and nothing in between.”

  The file’s forensic information I found overwhelming and hard to read. Brenae’s wounds were numbered, and there was only one that mattered: the shot that killed her. Otherwise, she’d had two small bruises, one on her right ankle and one on her left thigh. No signs of any sexual penetration. I didn’t understand all the abbreviations, but the medical examiner’s report indicated temazepam in her bloodstream—which I already knew about from the newspaper accounts—and described the trajectory of the bullet from under her chin through the top of her skull. Time of death was somewhere between midnight and 4:00 a.m., the day before she was found. The gun had only her fingerprints on it.

  Two students—reluctant to admit they’d been sleeping together in one of their studios—confirmed a loud noise in the early hours of Thursday morning, though they didn’t suspect it was a gun firing. “It sounded like a pop,” said one student. “We thought someone was setting off fireworks.”

  The property and evidence report cataloged objects in Brenae’s studio, from crumpled tissues in the wastebasket to a metal safe to her bloody pillow.

  Her phone records revealed little. Brenae’s landline and prepaid cell had few calls out, mostly to her brother Davi in her last month. Her only registered e-mail was the school e-mail address, and here, too, she had minimal interactions beyond setting up meetings and responding (or not responding) to assignments. Her laptop held more clues. A Friendster page surfaced. Brenae had 111 friends and posted stills from her videos. Three were from her After-Parties video. The stills showed clusters of mostly young, hip people in the light-soaked L.A. night. But After-Parties wasn’t in the contents of her hard drive. Nor was Lesson in Red. In fact, as the interview with Hal had disclosed, it appeared as if someone had gotten to her computer twenty-four hours before she was found and erased and shredded some data. Most people think if they erase a file, it’s deleted from a computer, but actually only the pathway is deleted, not the data. It takes effort and software to shred. It takes a person so anxious to hide something, they will make sure it is gone. Computer forensics identified the time it was done: Thursday at 8:00 p.m. According to the coroner, Brenae died in the early morning hours on Thursday. She was found on Friday.

  The report contained so much information, it would take me many more hours to pore over it all. And yet a team of qualified professionals had scoured Brenae’s existence for why she died, and they’d come up with one clear conclusion: she planned her own exit, and she took it alone. I don’t know why this depressed me the most. Murder wouldn’t have been better, but someone else’s jealousy or rage was easier to swallow than Brenae’s abject despair.

  An hour before I was supposed to meet Ray, I put down the case file, showered, pulled on the suit, smoothed my hair back into a clip, and stepped to the mirror. My lower half was as sleek as a seal, but I didn’t know what to do about my obtrusively wholesome, sincere face. Eye makeup wouldn’t help; it tended to turn me into a sad clown. It was too late to sculpt my brows to arched lines. Darker lipstick would have to do. I swiped my mouth. Too red. Blood red. I cleaned it off and put on a lighter shade. Fake pink. Garish. I scoured my lips with a tissue. Darker again. Berry brown. A Gorgon’s mouth. I rubbed it off. Went for a gloss, smearing a little too hard. The glisten sickened me. I pushed myself away from the mirror and opened the bathroom window, taking gulping breaths. Even without grisly crime photos, the facts were enough. I saw Brenae lying on that mattress, her head an exploded nest of blood.

  The air carried the faintest tang of the ocean. I pressed my cheek to the window screen, willing myself to focus on what today was really about: interviewing the talented young actress who would play Françoise Gilot. The rest was simply a favor to Janis. When my pulse had settled, I fixed my lips up with a dulled garnet color, grabbed my notes, and headed down the stairs to the carport. Warm morning sun kissed my face and hair. I’d always loved the early hours of the Southern California day. They made me feel ageless and light. When I reached my car, I hesitated. A little stroll might help me now. It was only eight blocks to the gallery, twelve to the coffee shop. A long walk, but there was a breeze. I started striding.

  For the first five glorious minutes, I imagined my day as gallerina, as Hollywood interviewer. Then the haze began to burn off, and even behind my sunglasses I could feel the city blocks heating up. Every window glared. I started to sweat and veered off the big boulevard for the smaller streets. Mistake. There was little shade in the manicured neighborhoods. Lawns were dotted with green hedges and dwarf trees. Small white signs indicated vigorous security surveillance. Wealth is here, they announced, as if anyone needed reminding.

  Sweat trickled in my eyes. I tripped on a fallen palm frond and tweaked my ankle, staggering. I almost turned around. But no one had seen. No one was walking outside but me, and I ducked my head and kept going.

  Several more turns, and I arrived at the main commercial boulevard. The buildings grew spotless windows and cursive signs, showcasing the delights inside, an organic juicery, sushi, New Age books, small-batch ice cream. I’d pass the gallery in three blocks. Two blocks. One. Rush-hour exhaust filled my mouth. There was Hal’s name printed on the glass and, beyond, the unlit emptiness of the white cube. Wait, no. I spotted shadows, then figures. Three of the four young people from the desert were there: the redheaded woman and the two guys. They were already inside, already talking. I sped up, my stomach sinking. I had finally recognized the redhead.

  Earlier this year, I’d seen pictures of her online, smiling with her horrible father, the rich, overbearing collector who’d secretly tried to rig Kim Lord’s career and one of Ray’s principal suspects in the violent death of his brother.

  She was Layla Goetz-Middleton.

  8

  AFTER I FIXED MY DAMP hairline as best I could in the coffee shop window, I tugged my suit straight and entered. Ray was at a table, flipping through the city’s free weekly paper, a smart publication that supported itself mostly with thinly veiled prostitution ads. I wondered how the arts editor would respond to an exposé about a suicide and sexual harassment at LAAC. I could see Brenae’s face on the weekly’s cover, staring out, her thick hair like a halo. But not my own byline.

  Ray rose from his seat as I approached. He looked like he might be wearing the same T-shirt and jeans as last night, a suit jacket thrown over them, and his eye sockets were dark from lack of sleep.

  As we wai
ted in line together, he told me that Detective Ruiz was also on her way, but her one-year-old had dropped her cell phone in the toilet that morning and she was stopping to get a new one. I heard my shocked laugh, and expressions of sympathy and pity, but inside I was thinking, She’s a mom? How could I not know? Ray seemed unsurprised, entertained even. It struck me again that they seemed to know each other well. Better than professionals engaged in the same task. Like friends. Or more than friends.

  We both ordered large plain coffees, and I noted with some amusement that Ray seemed to approve of this spartan choice. Paper cups slid warm into our hands. “I want it noted that I’m fetching you your coffee,” Ray said, brandishing a credit card. “Long day ahead of us.”

  “The students are already there,” I said as we sat down. “They didn’t spot me,” I added, noting his alarmed look. “But I saw Layla. It’s his daughter, isn’t it? Layla Goetz-Middleton?”

  Ray nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “Funny how we always skip the small talk.”

  “Funny that she’s involved in this and that you didn’t mention her yesterday,” I said.

  When artist Kim Lord went missing on the opening night of her Rocque exhibition in April, Ray and I ended up independently following the same dead-end lead, to a rich collector named Steve Goetz. Goetz had spent the better part of two decades trying to rig Kim Lord’s value in the art market by buying and rebuying her artworks under different identities. He considered it a conceptual experiment, demonstrating the power of the collector to fix an artist’s worth. But when Kim was murdered, Janis had strong-armed Goetz into selling most of the paintings to the Rocque’s collection, and the collector’s manipulations had never reached the public.

  Still, Goetz had frightened me when I met him at his gallery last spring. I remembered his coldness and his pride. And I remembered Ray’s hostility toward him, too.

  “You seemed suspicious of him, even after . . .” I didn’t finish.

  “You really all healed up?” Ray said, his blue eyes examining me.