Bad Move (26 page)

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 tonight, 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?"

"That's right. It started around six-thirty."

"At the municipal offices?"

"Yes. Of course. Would you like to leave a message? I'm sure Roger would be happy to get back to you, if not tonight, certainly by tomorrow."

"No," I said. "That's okay. Maybe I'll see if I can find him over at the meeting."

"Suit yourself," she said, and hung up.

I took the negatives and tucked them into the hull of my still-unassembled Seaview submarine model, then carefully glued the bottom in place, sealing them inside. And once again, I scooped everything back into Stefanie Knight's purse and took it with me, as well as the brown oversized envelope with the prints of Roger Carpington's rendezvous with Stefanie. From the front-hall table I grabbed my cell and slid it into my jacket pocket, double-checked that the front door was securely locked behind me, and went out to the car.

The municipal building, designed with as much style and imagination as the new developments in Oakwood, sat across from the mall where Angie had been picked up for passing counterfeit money. It was a redbrick-and-black-metal eyesore, sitting on the landscape like a big shoebox. There was a large parking lot around back, but it was mostly empty. Most of the town's employees were home and presumably getting ready for bed at this hour, but there were a handful of cars, belonging no doubt to the mayor and members of the town council and a few town administrators, plus a few taxpayers with some particular axe to grind or request to make.

I parked, took the brown envelope with me, and walked into the building, following the signs to the council chamber, a high-ceilinged room with light fixtures hanging from long wires, a slightly sloped floor, theaterlike, to allow spectators a chance to watch the council members in action, and two banks of slightly angled desks for the council members, with one in the middle for the mayor, forming a V at the front of the room.

There couldn't have been more than twenty constituents watching the proceedings, plus a reporter from The Suburban taking notes, so my entrance was observed by nearly everyone who glanced up and watched me walk down the aisle and slip quietly into a seat.

There were six council members on either side of the mayor for a total of twelve, with nameplates in front of them. Roger Carpington, portly and balding, in a gray suit and tie, was seated at the far right end. With his index finger he pushed his glasses further up on his nose.

The mayor, a short woman with bluish hair in her late sixties, was speaking. "I think the next speaker on our list is Lucille Belfountain."

A woman in the front row got up and approached a microphone at the foot of the aisle.

"Uh, yes, hello?" she said. "Can you hear me? Is this mike working?"

"We can hear you fine," the mayor said patiently.

"Uh, Madam Mayor, members of the council, thank you for letting me speak to you tonight. I live at 43 Myers Road, and have lived there for the last twenty-seven years, and we have had, in the last few months, a severe problem with dogs running loose."

Not particularly interested in Lucille Belfountain's pack-of-dogs dilemma, my mind wandered. My eyes kept settling on Carpington at the end of the table. He was reviewing a stack of papers in front of him, making notes in the margins, looking up occasionally to hear what Lucille had to say. If you only knew, I thought.

One of the other councilmen, who was apparently quite knowledgeable about animal control problems, promised Lucille Belfountain that he would make sure the town's animal control officers did extra patrols in her neighborhood and urged her to call him back in a couple of weeks if things did not improve. That business done, the mayor asked whether any members of the council had any other business to bring up before she adjourned the meeting.

Carpington leaned into his microphone. "Yes, Mayor, I had a matter I wanted to bring to the council's attention."

"Go ahead," she said.

"I just wanted to serve notice that at the next regular meeting of the council, I will be putting a motion on the table that we approve the final phase of development for Valley Forest Estates. I believe all the environmental concerns have been addressed and that it would be beneficial not only for the developers of this site but for the town as a whole to approve the development at this time. It broadens our tax base, means more jobs, and more families coming into the community of Oakwood and making contributions on so many levels."

I was thinking, You have a hairy butt. You have a hairy butt.

From the other end of the table, Councilman Ben Underwood spoke. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. Samuel Spender, who spoke to us so eloquently only a few weeks ago about the need to protect Willow Creek, died violently but a few days ago, and I think Councilman Carpington's motion is an insult to that man's memory and should be set aside at least until the police investigation into Mr. Spender's death has become fruitful."

"Now hold on," Carpington said. "I'm on record as saying that I had nothing but respect for Samuel Spender and the work he did throughout his life to protect the environment, and we should all be grateful to him for the concerns he raised about Willow Creek, and had he not done that, then Valley Forest Estates would not have had the benefit of his suggestions when it came to revising the plans for its final phase."

"Oh gee, Roger," Underwood sneered, "what did your friends do, cut back from 300 homes to 299?"

"That's a ridiculous comment to make," Carpington said. "You'd rather wipe out an entire neighborhood if it meant saving a salamander. Furthermore, I see no connection between police investigating the circumstances of Mr. Spender's death and the development plans for this property."