As often occurs in dreams, the landscape shifted. The trees were gone and the land around the river was flat and barren.
Someone called to her from the opposite shore. It was a man. She could not hear what he was saying because of the roar of the river. She strained to see him clearly, but his features were blurred by the reflected sunlight. To reach him, she would have to swim the river, and suddenly she was fighting a current that swept her downstream.
Tracy panicked. She sank below the surface, then bobbed up again. She was drowning, dying, when she splashed into a calm section of the river.
She gasped for air, still unable to swim to shore, but no longer in immediate danger. The current spun her toward the far shore, where the man miraculously appeared. He shouted to her, but the water roared in her ears, baffling the sound. Then she saw that he was holding something. She watched his arms fly upward. The object sailed toward her. Tracy reached up to catch it and saw a ball rotating slowly through the air. The minute the ball touched her hands, Tracy bolted upright in bed, jerked out of sleep by a truth that frightened her more than any nightmare she'd ever had.
The offices were dark except for the reception area, where the lights were kept on all night. Tracy let them in with her key and Barry punched in the alarm code.
'It's in here,' Tracy said, leading Barry to the small room next to Matthew's office where they were keeping the defense evidence.
'I hope you're wrong about this,' Barry said.
'I hope I am, too.'
The evidence was arranged on a table. Tracy looked through it until she found the photographs and negatives in the FotoFast envelope. She set the negatives aside and shuffled through the photographs. There were shots of Abigail Griffen, pictures of the beach and the ocean, exteriors and interiors of the cabin and the photo of the shed Matthew had used on cross-examination to destroy Charlie Deems. Tracy checked the dates stamped on the negatives. Some of the early pictures on the roll had been taken in June, but the bulk of the negatives, including the photo of the shed, were dated August 12, the day Deems testified that he had met Abbie at the cabin and the day Abbie claimed she had been attacked.
Tracy studied the photograph of the shed. Barry looked over her shoulder. The photograph showed the interior of the shed.
Tracy could see the volleyball net, the tools and the space where a box of dynamite could have sat. In the middle of the space was the volleyball.
'I'm right,' she said dispiritedly.
'Are you certain?'
'Yes. While you were looking around, I walked over to the edge of the bluff and sat on the stairs. On my way, I looked in the shed. The volleyball was resting on the volleyball net. You had the ball when you found me sitting on the stairs, and we played with it on the beach. On the way back to the car, you tossed the ball into the shed. I have a very clear mental picture of the ball coming to rest in the empty space.
'We were at the cabin in September, Barry. The ball was on the net when I opened the shed door. If the ball was in the empty space on August 12, how did it get onto the net? And how can the ball be in the exact position we left it in September in a photograph taken in August? The only answer is that this photograph was taken after we were at the cabin and it's been phonied up to look like it was taken in August. Only I don't know anything about photography, so { have no idea how it was done.'
'Well, I know a lot about cameras. I have to on this job. Let me see the negatives and I'll try to figure this out.'
The negatives were in cellophane slipcases. Each strip contained the negatives for four pictures. Tracy handed the stack of negative strips to Barry. He held up the strip with the picture of the shed to the light. All four negatives were dated August 12.
Barry sat down at the table and picked up the Pentax camera.
He turned it over and studied it. Then he looked at the strip of negatives again. Barry frowned. His brow furrowed. He examined the negative strips for all of the photographs. Then he laid down the strip with the negative of the shed and placed another strip directly above it. He studied the two strips, then he removed the strip without the picture of the shed and put another strip in its place. He repeated this with all of the negative strips. When he was done, Barry's shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes.
'What is it?' Tracy asked.
'You're right. The picture of the shed was not taken when the rest of these pictures were.'
'How is that possible if the negative is dated August 12?'
'That's the easy part,' Barry said, picking up the camera and pointing to a digital readout on the back. 'The Pentax 105-R camera has a mechanism for setting the date that is similar to the mechanism you use to set the date on a VCR or a digital watch.
The person who took the picture simply reset the date to August 12, took the pictures he wanted, then reset the camera to the correct date.'
'But there are pictures of Mrs. Griffen on the roll of film. The roll had to have ,been taken before she was confined to her house.'
'It was. When FotoFast developed the film, it was in one strip.
Fotofast cut the strip of negatives into several strips, each with four shots on them. The strip with the shot of the shed was the only strip that was not taken on the date stamped on the negative.'
'How do you know that?'
'When film is placed in a camera it's blank. It doesn't have any frames demurking where each photograph will be. The frames are formed when you take a picture. But each roll of film does have numbers imprinted on it that don't appear on the photograph but do show up on the negatives below the frames when a picture is taken. These numbers start at 1 and go 1, 1A, 2, 2A, and so on. You can see them here,' Barry said, pointing out the numbers.
'These numbers are spaced along the bottom of the roll of film at a set distance from each other. The distance doesn't change, because the numbers are imprinted on the film when the film is produced.
'Whoever did this went to the coast after we were there. He had the negatives of the film Mrs. Griffen gave you. He took out one strip that would be in the natural sequence on the roll for the shot of the shed to appear. In this case it was the strip with the numbers 15 to 16A. Then he took photographs with the Pentax using the same brand of film Mrs. Griffen used. When he came to the shot that would be numbered 15, he copied the shot Mrs. Griffen had taken at that point on the strip. 15A is the fake shot of the shed. He took the shot showing the shed without any dynamite. Then he duplicated shots 16 and 16A, finished the roll, had it printed by the same FotoFast store that printed the roll Mrs. Griffen took and switched the single strip.
'Look at the strips,' Barry said, holding up two he picked at random.
'Each row of film from the same company is manufactured like every other roll. If you take two rolls of film from the same company and lay them side by side, the numbers will line up. If you take a ruler and measure from the tip of one roll to 1A and from the tip of a second roll to 1A, the distance will be identical. But there's a little piece of film at the end of each roll of film called the leader that you place in the camera when you roll the film into it to get the film into a position where a shot can be taken. Every person does this differently. That means that the numbers will be in a different place in relation to the frames that are formed when each picture is taken on one roll than they will be on another person's roll.'
Barry put down one of the strips he was holding and picked up the strip with the shot of the shed. Then he held one strip directly over the other.
'On every negative strip but the one with the shot of the shed, the number is on the edge of the frame. On the strip with 15 to 16A, the numbers are slightly closer to the center of the frame.
Can you see that?' Tracy nodded.
'That's impossible,' he continued, 'if that strip was on the roll with the rest of the shots.'
Barry put down the strips. 'What I don't understand,' he said, 'is how Griffen was able to get away from her house, take the picture and make the switch without setting off the electronic monitoring system.'
'You don't understand because you don't want to, Barry,' Tracy said sadly.
Barry stared at Tracy. 'You can't think . . .'
