Waiting

She and Crivaro took an elevator to a floor occupied by dozens of forensic labs. She followed Crivaro down a hall until they came to a room with a sign that said “DARKROOM.” A lanky, longhaired young man stood leaning next to the door.

Crivaro introduced himself and Riley to the man, who nodded and said, “I’m Charlie Barrett, forensic tech. You got here just in time. I’m taking a break after processing the negatives out of that camera they found at Lady Bird Johnson Park. I was just going back in to make some prints. Come on in.”

Charlie led Riley and Crivaro into a short hallway bathed in amber-colored light. Then they passed through a second door into a room awash with the same weird light.

The first thing that really struck Riley was the pungent, acrid smell of chemicals.

Curiously, she didn’t find the smell to be at all unpleasant.

Instead, it seemed almost …

Cleansing, Riley realized.

For the first time since she’d left the field where they’d found the body, that clinging, sour stench of trash was gone.

Even the horror lifted somewhat, and Riley’s nausea disappeared.

It was a true relief.

Riley peered around through the dim, alien light, fascinated by all the elaborate equipment.

Charlie held up a sheet of paper with rows of images and examined it in the dim light.

“Here are the proofs,” he said. “It looks like she was one hell of a photographer. A shame what happened to her.”

As Charlie laid out strips of film on a table, Riley realized that she’d never been in a darkroom before. She’d always taken her own rolls of exposed film to a drugstore to be processed. Ryan and some of her friends had recently bought digital cameras, which didn’t use film at all.

Janet Davis’s husband had told McCune that his photographer wife had used both kinds of cameras. She tended to use a digital camera for her professional work. But she considered the shots she was taking in the park artwork, and she preferred the film cameras for that.

Riley thought that Charlie also seemed to be an artist, a true master at what he was doing. That made her wonder …

Is this a dying art?

Would all this skilled work with film, paper, instruments, thermometers, timers, valves, and chemicals someday go the way of blacksmithing?

If so, it seemed rather sad.

Charlie began to make the prints one by one—first enlarging the negative onto a piece of photographic paper, then slowly soaking the paper in a basin of developing liquid, followed by further soakings in what Charlie called a “stop bath” and a “fix bath.” Then came a long rinse over a steel sink under tap water. Finally Charlie hung the pictures by clips to a rotating stand.

It was a slow process, and a quiet one. The silence was only broken by the trickling sounds of liquid, the shuffling of feet, and a few words spoken from time to time in what seemed almost like reverential whispers. It just didn’t feel right to talk loudly here.

Riley found the stillness and the slowness to be almost eerily soothing after the noisy disorder at the murder scene, when cops had been struggling to keep reporters at bay.

Riley watched raptly as the images revealed themselves over several long minutes—ghostly and indistinct at first, then finally with sharp clarity and contrast when they hung dripping from the stand.

The black and white photographs captured a quiet, peaceful evening at the park. One showed a wooden footbridge extending over a narrow passage of water. Another seemed at first to be of a flock of seagulls taking flight, but when the image came into clearer focus Riley realized that the birds were part of a large statue.

Another photo showed a rough-hewn stone obelisk with the Washington Monument towering far in the distance. Other images were of paths for biking and walking that passed through wooded areas.

The pictures had clearly been taken as sunset approached, creating soft gray shadows, glowing halos, and silhouettes. Riley could see that Charlie had been correct in his opinion that Janet Davis had been “one hell of a photographer.”

Riley also sensed that Janet knew the park well and had chosen her locations long in advance—and also the time of day, when visitors were few. Riley didn’t see a single person in any of the photos. It was as if Janet had had the park all to herself.

Finally came some shots of a marina, its docks and boats and water fairly shimmering as the sun finally set. The gentle calmness of the scene was truly tangible. Riley could almost hear the gentle lapping of water and the cries of birds, could almost feel the caress of cool air on her cheek.

Then finally came a much more jarring image.

It, too, was of the marina—or at least Riley thought she could make out the shapes of boats and docks. But everything was blurred and chaotic and jumbled.

Riley realized what must have happened at the very moment she’d snapped that picture …

The camera got knocked out of her hands.

Riley’s heart jumped in her throat.

She knew the image had captured the very instant when Janet Davis’s world had changed forever.

In a fraction of a second, tranquility and beauty had turned into ugliness and terror.

CHAPTER NINE

As Riley stared at the blurred image, she wondered …

What happened next?

After the camera was knocked from the woman’s hands, what happened to her?

What did she experience?

Did she struggle against her assailant until he somehow subdued and bound her?

Did she remain conscious throughout her ordeal? Or was she knocked unconscious right there and then, when the picture was taken?

Did she then awaken to the horror of her final moments?

Maybe it doesn’t matter, Riley thought.

She remembered what the ME had said about the likelihood that Janet had died from an overdose of amphetamines.

If that was true, she had actually been frightened to death.

And now Riley was looking at the frozen moment when that fatal terror had really begun.

She shuddered deeply at the thought.

Crivaro pointed to the photo and said to Charlie, “Magnify everything. Not just this one, all the photographs, every square centimeter.”

Charlie scratched his head and asked, “Looking for what?”