Chapter 2

The old man had gotten ten yards or so down the sidewalk when 911 called back.

I told them exactly what had happened.

"The patient stood up and walked away on his own. He said he didn't need an ambulance, but a minute ago he was saying his lower back hurt badly."

The dispatcher told me to hand the phone to the man so he could confirm.

I looked up. He was almost at the corner.

"Sir, dispatch needs you to confirm the cancellation yourself."

His steps quickened.

The man in the gray shirt came out through the coffee shop's other door, and the two of them turned into the side alley one behind the other.

The guy in the ball cap lowered his phone.

"Those two are together, right?"

"You got it on video?"

"Yeah. That guy stood up three times, and he was making hand signals at the old man."

"What kind of signals?"

"He'd point toward you first, then push his hand down."

He played the clip back for me.

The picture wasn't very clear, but you could see the man in the gray shirt moving his hand a few times behind the glass.

Every time the old man looked back, he was watching.

"Can you send me a copy?"

The guy hesitated.

"You're not going to post it all over the place, are you?"

"An officer's on the way. I'll hand it to him. If it ever gets made public, I'll blur out your face."

"Okay."

He added me as a contact and sent over the original.

Officer Hughes from the nearby precinct showed up with an auxiliary officer.

Officer Hughes asked first: "Where's the injured man?"

"He left on his own."

The woman from the hot dog stand jumped in.

"She insisted on calling the police and scared the old man off."

I handed him my phone.

"This is the full recording, from the old man falling to the moment he left. This guy also caught what was happening inside the coffee shop across the street."

The guy in the ball cap nodded.

"That man and the old guy must know each other."

Officer Hughes watched a stretch of it, then asked me: "Did the old man ask you for money?"

"No."

"Did he say you knocked him down?"

"No. He kept telling me to just pull him up."

"Did you touch him at all?"

"No."

Officer Hughes glanced in the direction the old man had gone.

"On this alone, we can't call it a staged scam. We'll log the report first. Save the original video files, and don't cut anything."

The woman from the hot dog stand let out a scoff.

"See, that's what I said. She didn't do a thing. Girls these days guard against old folks like they're thieves."

Officer Hughes turned to look at her.

"Did you record any video?"

"I did, yeah."

"Keep your originals too. Don't post it online out of context."

She agreed fast enough.

"I know, I know. I'm not stupid."

Half an hour later, I came across myself while scrolling the local feed on a short-video app.

The title read:

"Elderly Man Begs on the Ground, Young Woman Films the Whole Time and Refuses to Help Him Up"

The video was only twenty-seven seconds long.

It opened with the old man reaching out toward me.

Then came me holding up my phone, saying: "Don't move, I'm recording all of this."

The 911 part was cut out entirely.

So was the footage of the old man climbing up on his own.

The last shot held on my face.

The woman from the hot dog stand had added a line of voiceover.

"This girl's scared of getting blamed. She'd rather watch an old man lie on the ground than lend a hand."

The comments had already passed two thousand.

"Isn't this just standing by while someone dies?"

"And she looks so self-righteous about it."

"Someday her own parents will fall and nobody'll help them either."

"Track her down. Let her workplace see this."

I zoomed in on the profile picture.

It was the woman from the hot dog stand.

Her account was called "Gina Tells It Straight," with over sixty thousand followers.

I was about to send her a message when the comments appeared again.

【Don't ask her to take it down.】

【The faster she posts, the more useful the full video becomes.】

【Download her video first, then screen-record the comments.】

I stared at those few lines.

They weren't a hallucination.

At least, they didn't seem like one.

I saved her video and screen-recorded the whole thing from start to finish.

My coworker Anna Woodward called.

"Antonia, is that you in the video?"

"Yes."

"Someone's already reposted it in the group chat. Manager Randall is asking what's going on."

"Someone cut off the second half."

"Do you have the full video?"

"I do."

"Then post it, quick. Drag your feet any longer and they'll invent which school your kid goes to."

"I don't have a kid."

"They won't care. Back up your evidence first. I'm coming to you now."

I didn't post the video right away.

I uploaded the original files to the cloud, then copied them onto my computer and an external drive.

After that, I sent one message to "Gina Tells It Straight."

"Please add the complete video. You filmed me calling 911, and you filmed the old man standing up and leaving on his own."

She replied fast.

"I post what I film. Don't you threaten me."

"I'm not threatening you."

"You wouldn't help an old man yourself, and now you're scared of what people say?"

"You can share your opinion, but you can't cut out the key facts."

She sent back a string of smirking emojis.

"Feeling guilty, are you?"

Ten minutes later, she posted another video.

The title had changed to "Cold-Hearted Girl Threatens Me in DMs to Delete Video."

She'd only screenshotted the last line of my message.

"You can't cut out the key facts."

The line before it was gone.