sounds. Was he back in the house somehow? As someone who worked for Valley Forest Estates, did he have some sort of master key? Could he get into any house he wanted, any time he wanted?
All I could hear was the blood pounding in my temples. I shouted, “I know you’re here, asshole! And that cop’s back, right out front! So if you’re smart, you’ll get the hell out!”
Nothing.
Tentatively, I moved into the house, turning on every light switch I passed. The broadloom, with its upgraded underpadding, allowed me to roam about noiselessly. I peeked into the kitchen, the living and dining rooms, the family room where we watched TV. Then I eased the door of my study open, my crumbled Robot still on the carpet. So far, no guests.
I turned the knob on the door to the ground-floor laundry room where I had stashed Stefanie Knight’s purse in the washing machine. I opened the lid, worked the purse out from around the agitator, and took it back into the study. There, just as Rick had done, I dumped its contents out onto the floor, just beyond the range of Robot debris. On my hands and knees, I started sorting.
I put the envelopes to one side. Ditto for makeup items, tampons, car keys, change, expired coupons.
And my eyes settled on the black plastic film canister. I gave it a shake to see that it wasn’t empty. A roll rattled inside. I popped the gray plastic lid off and dumped the roll into the palm of my hand.
There was no strip of film extended from it, so it was clearly one that had pictures on it. It was high-quality, black-and-white film. Twenty-four exposures.
Time to go downstairs and develop some pictures.
19
BY THE TIME I HAD THE NEGATIVES developed and hanging up to dry, I had some sense that this film was, in fact, what Rick might have been looking for. These were not pictures from someone’s trip to Disney World. The twenty-four images were not from an excursion to Mount Rushmore. While I couldn’t yet see who, exactly, was in these images, I could tell that there were two people, and that one of them was a man, and the other was a woman. And that these were not taken out on the street, or looking down from the Eiffel Tower, or at a baseball stadium. These were definitely indoor shots.
I had a lot of time to think in the darkroom while the negatives developed. My eyes adjusted to the near-total absence of light and sound, and I thought back to the trip Sarah and I had taken to the grocery store only a few hours ago, and how much our lives had changed since then. So far, only I was aware just how much.
My guess was that Rick’s version of the events of the evening were not entirely as he’d related them. I believed he had gone to Stefanie’s house. And it was obvious that he had been to Stefanie’s mother’s house. But I didn’t believe that when he went to Stefanie’s house, she hadn’t been there. My guess was that he went there to get back this roll of film. That he had been waiting for her to get home. That would explain the second broken window. And when Stefanie finally showed up, probably on foot, and hadn’t been able to produce the film because she’d lost her purse, he ended up whacking her in the side of the head with a shovel. But he didn’t believe her story about a stolen purse, so he went looking places where he thought Stefanie might have been. Where she could have left that film. That led him to her mother’s house, and the slip of paper I’d left behind had led him to me.
It was hard not to feel that I had, as they say, blood on my hands.
I exposed one neg after another and started dipping the photographic paper into the various trays. As the images became less soft, as graininess gave way to definition, I could see that these pictures were all of the same two people, coupling away on what appeared to be a king-size bed in a well-lit bedroom. The camera had been mounted overhead somehow, perhaps behind a two-way mirror, so the shots in which these two were engaged in the traditional missionary style of lovemaking afforded few clues as to the man’s identity. I could see that he was overweight, and balding, but with enough hair on his back and butt that he should be considering some sort of transplant. (A comb-over was definitely out of the question.) It was not the kind of picture that would be useful in picking a guy out of a lineup.
But the woman’s identity was a different matter. With her hair splayed out across the pillow, it was clear that she was Stefanie Knight.
As I suspected would be the case, subsequent prints made identification of the man much simpler. It was as though Stefanie knew there had to be some shots on the roll in which the man’s face would be easy to see. “Let me get on top,” she must have said to him. “Let me dangle these in your face.” It would have been difficult for him to say no.
And it was a face that I recognized. It had accompanied the article in
It was Roger Carpington, Oakwood town councilman.
I felt-and I know this is going to sound awfully trite-dirty. Working alone here in the darkroom, no one else in the house, developing pornographic images. Not that I’m a prude about such things, but I think that if you’re going to have your picture taken screwing somebody else’s brains out, you should at least have the right to know there’s a camera in the room. Somehow I felt ol’ Roger here didn’t know. And I was betting that Mrs. Carpington didn’t know, either.
I wanted several prints of the shots where he was most identifiable. I was sorry, for the first time, not to have a digital camera. I could have displayed all these images on a computer screen, selected the ones I wanted, and printed them off in a couple of minutes. Doing things the old-fashioned way was going to keep me down here a bit longer, which was frustrating because I was itching to move forward with a plan that was slowly taking shape in my head.
And then, upstairs, a noise.
It was the front door opening. The darkroom was right under the front hall where you stepped into the house.
I’d locked it. I was sure I’d locked it. I’d double-checked every door after coming in from delivering Angie and dropping off Paul’s stuff. Maybe my worst fear was true. Rick did have master keys. He could get into any house in Valley Forest Estates.
The door closed. The sound of footsteps followed. But once they moved away from the front door and were no longer over the darkroom, I couldn’t track them.
Maybe I could stay right where I was. Rick might stick to the main floor, go back into the study and look for the purse, never come down here.
Get real. He would have seen the car in the driveway, suspect that I had to be in the house somewhere. He’d want to find me first, use his powers of persuasion to get me to hand over the film. Maybe arrange an encounter between me and Quincy in the trunk of his car.
Careful not to bump into anything, I shifted over to the corner of the darkroom, where a tripod was leaned up against the wall. It would make a good weapon, I figured, with its three metal legs, once I could get out of the confines of the darkroom and had enough room in which to swing it.
I thought I could hear the door to the basement open, someone coming down the steps. The element of surprise was everything. The darkroom door was only a couple of paces from the bottom of the stairs. I’d spring out, tripod in hand, maybe catch Rick on the side of the head this time.
I held my breath. Counted to myself. On the count of three.
One.
Size things up as fast as you can. Watch for a gun. If he’s got a gun, try to swing for his arm.
Two.
If he’s got someone with him, an accomplice, try to take out the bigger guy first. Go for heads. Go for their fucking heads. Okay, this is it, pal. It’s showtime.
Three.
I burst out of the door, screamed something along the lines of “Ahhhh!” and, grasping the tripod legs down at the end, swung them back over my shoulder like a baseball bat, putting all my energy into the swing, getting ready to let loose with all the power I could muster.
