“No, you don't have to come home. I was wondering how late you could stay there.”
“You want me to stay here?”
“Long as you want. Any chance you could sleep over?”
“On a school night?”
Since when did my children become so concerned about staying up late on a school night?
“Yeah, sure, it's okay. Angie's going to stay with somebody, and it only seemed fair to offer you the same opportunity.”
“Who is this, really?”
“It's your father, Paul.”
“So I get reamed out by my science teacher, and for punishment, I get to stay out all night? If I told you I'm failing math, too, would there be money for me and Andy to get hookers?”
“I was just telling Angie, it's your mother's birthday in a couple of days, and I think she's going to be home from work soon.” A lie. A total lie. “And I wanted to make her arrival extra special.”
There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line. Then, echoing his sister: “Oh gross.” Just how did teenagers think their parents brought them into the world, anyway?
“So do you think you can stay there?” I asked.
“Hang on, I'll check.” He covered the mouthpiece, and I could hear a muffled exchange in the background. Paul came back on the line: “Yeah, it's cool. But I didn't bring over any stuff.”
“What do you need?”
“Like, a toothbrush? And another shirt, but not something you'd like, but a T-shirt, just grab something that's on my floor. And could you grab my pillows? You know how I can't sleep on strange pillows. And my comforter. I'll probably be sleeping on the basement couch, and I don't know how many blankets they've got.”
I grabbed a pen by the phone and started to make a list.
“And my hairbrush? I don't want to use somebody else's hairbrush. Oh, and some toothpaste? I don't think Andy's family has mint toothpaste. And I guess some underwear. I don't need pajamas, though. I'll just sleep in my clothes.”
“Anything else?” I asked, trying to hold back the sarcasm.
“I don't think so. It's just the one night.”
“I'll drop this off in a while,” I said. “I have some other things I have to do first.”
“Okay. See ya later.”
Angie came into the kitchen and I handed her Paul's list. “Can you gather those things up for your brother?”
She scanned it. “His comforter? What about his teddy bear? Should I pack that, too?”
“Just do it, okay?”
I wanted her out of the house as quickly as possible. I didn't know where Rick had gone, or whether he planned to come back. Given that he'd left empty-handed, and with a nasty bump on the head, it seemed logical to assume that he might return to get what he'd come for, and exact a bit of revenge. When I glanced outside I saw that the police car was still sitting there, Officer Greslow making some notes with the inside dome light on. As long as she was there, I figured we were safe from another visit.
I made sure the patio door was locked, as well as the side and garage doors. And while I waited for Angie to pack her things and Paul's, I slid the bolt on the front door.
Nothing was making any sense. When I'd handed Rick those two envelopes of what I now knew to be counterfeit money, he was dumbstruck. The cash, it was obvious now, was not what he had come for.
There had to be something else in the purse.
“Okay,” said Angie. “I'm ready.” She had her own backpack slung over her shoulder packed with her things, and jammed under her arms were Paul's pillows and comforter, and a plastic bag filled with his toiletry items.
“Where's his backpack?” I asked, wondering why she hadn't used that instead of a plastic bag.
“It's already jammed with his crap. I wasn't reaching into it and taking anything out. He'll probably come by in the morning before he goes to school anyway to get his school stuff. It's on the way.”
Before I unlocked the front door, I looked out the window to make sure no one was lurking there. “What are you doing, Dad?” Angie asked. The police car's brake lights came on as the car was shifted into drive, and then it pulled away slowly from the curb.
I opened the door. “Come on, quickly,” I said, locking the door after Angie and hustling her to my old Civic. We tossed everything into the back seat, not wanting to soil Paul's linens with any potentially oily messes in the trunk.
Once the car doors were closed, I locked mine and ordered Angie to do the same. “What's with you tonight?” she asked. “You're more paranoid than usual.”
I decided to tell her something that, while not addressing the issue directly, was still true. “I guess I'm on edge. Your mom phoned from work tonight, said there was a murder not too far from here.”
“Really? Another murder? That's like, what, two in a week? In the suburbs, Dad? You told us these things never happened in the suburbs.”
I ignored that. “Some woman was found dead in a garage. Beaten to death.”
Angie decided that was not joke material, and said nothing. As we sped away down Chancery Park, I had to ask her for directions. “I don't know where this friend of yours lives.”
“Turn right at Lilac,” she said.
We drove on in silence, Angie speaking only to give directions. About five minutes later, we stopped out front of a two-story house with a couple of expensive cars in the driveway. Angie had her hand on the door handle when I reached out and touched her arm.
“I'm sorry, honey,” I said.
She shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “I guess there's no way you could know the money was fake.”
“No, not about that. I'm sorry about moving us out here. I know you haven't liked it out here, that you miss your friends downtown. I was only trying to do what I thought was best at the time.”
Angie looked at me now, trying to read between the lines. “I know that.”
“I'll talk to your mom. I don't know, maybe we need to reassess things.”
“It's not that bad,” she said. “I guess I'm getting used to it.”
I smiled. “I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
“Be careful,” I said as she gave my hand a squeeze and slipped out the door. I watched her run up the walk and ring the bell, and waited until she was safely inside the house before driving away.
next stop: andy's. he and Paul were already out by the end of the driveway, goofing around on skateboards, when my headlights swept around the corner and caught them. Paul grabbed his stuff out of the back seat and wasted as little time as possible on conversation. I think he was afraid I'd change my mind, tell him to get in the car and come home.
I was well over the limit heading back to our house, but I slowed the last half-block, looking for unfamiliar cars parked at the curb, people crouched in the bushes. I parked, locked the Civic, and scooted into the house, looking over my shoulder as I pushed the door in, expecting Rick to suddenly appear, leaping onto me like a wild beast.
But he wasn't there, and once I was inside I threw the deadbolt. And stopped, holding my breath, listening for 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 The Suburban about the death of Willow Creek's best friend, Samuel Spender.
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.
“Dad!”
Paul sprang back, flinging himself into the stairs, raising his hands defensively. I put the brakes on halfway through the swing, which threw me completely off balance, and I staggered into the wall. The top of the tripod crashed into the drywall, creating a deep gash.
“Jesus! Dad! It's me!”
I stumbled onto the floor, threw my arms out to brace myself. “Paul!” I gasped. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I live here!”
I was trying to catch my breath. “You're supposed to be at Andy's! I told you to stay there!”
“I forgot to ask you to bring some video games.” He was as out of breath as I, still sprawled out across the stairs. “We needed some games. Andy's mom drove us over. They're out in the car, waiting for me.”
Slowly, I got back on my feet. “Okay, go get your games.”
“What were you doing in there? Were you hiding or something?”
“I was just developing some pictures, that's all.”
“What pictures? Are you doing Angie's assignment for her?” Of all the things I'd done toni
ght, Paul would consider giving his sister an unfair advantage at school my worst crime. I decided to go with it.
“I was just doing up a couple of prints for her, that's all.”
Paul was still breathing heavily. “I thought you were going to kill me.”
“I was not going to kill you. You just startled me.” I was rubbing my hand across my face. “Come here.” Paul got to within a foot of me and I pulled him closer, threw my arms around him, patted his back a couple of times. “I wasn't going to kill you. Now get your games.”
As I pushed him away, he looked at the hole in the wall. “Mom's going to love that.”
“Yeah, no doubt.”
Paul studied me for a moment and said, “Angie's right.”
“What do you mean, Angie's right?”
“You're turning into some sort of crazy person.” He went into the rec room, grabbed three game cartridges, and met me again at the base of the stairs. “I'll see you in the morning.”
“Okay,” I said. “I'll see you then.” And he mounted the steps, two at a time. I heard him go out the front door, but I couldn't be sure he'd locked it, so I ran up, threw the deadbolt just as Andy's mother's car backed out of the drive and headed off.
Back in the darkroom, I dried half a dozen prints with Carpington's face fully visible. In the study I found a regular letter envelope for the negatives, and a larger one for the eight-by-ten glossies. I dug out the phone book and opened up the Oakwood pages to the C's, running my finger down the column until I encountered “Carpington R.”
I glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten. I dialed.
After the third ring, a woman answered. “Hello?”
“Hi,” I said. “Is this Mrs. Carpington?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Sorry for calling so late, but I wondered if I could speak to Councilman Carpington.” Make it sound like official business, I figured.
“I'm sorry, but he's not in. He's at a council meeting this evening, and they can run pretty late.”
“A council meeting? That's going on now?”