Darkroom (11 page)

“All right. Just stay right there, okay?” As if talking to an image in developer solution made any sense. Of course, when I switch the lights on, it’s gone. If this is just another coincidence,
then nothing will come of it, right? It’s just another hallucination.

A minute later I’m dialing Agent Kyle Matthews.

It gets dark early these days. At 4:45, the sun has already gone over the Hudson, casting its amber hues on the sides of tall apartment buildings overlooking the park.

It’s best to meet with Agent Matthews here at Starbucks, rather than at my apartment. He’s wearing black Levi’s and a rugged denim shirt. No stranger to the gym, apparently. I like how he looks with glasses—learned. His short cropped hair reminds me of some of the brave men in Iraq who treated me like a queen when I was on the base and traveling via Humvee around Fallujah. He’s as handsome as Dad was in his pictures from back in the Vietnam War.

“So, you think you might have more information about the Dellafina case?”

“I might.”

“Because you didn’t call me here just to have coffee.”

“No.” The thought makes me pause unwittingly. “No, I didn’t. Have the investigators checked Stacy’s laptop?”

“How do you know she has one?”

“She’s a college student, isn’t she?”

“Good point.” Matthews leans back and takes a sip of his latte; it leaves a frothy white mustache on his upper lip. “Yes. We’ve checked it. Nothing unusual except—”

“Is it a MacBook?”

“Another lucky guess?” He’s not as credulous this time. But it seems inevitable that the image I saw reflects reality. Hope for a scientific explanation seems more and more elusive.

“MacBooks are popular on college campuses.”

“So, what’s this new information?”

“I’m not sure, but I think she might have had a blog.”

“Facebook, Myspace, LiveJournal, yeah. We found nothing unusual there.”

“You sure that’s all she had?”

“One can never be absolutely certain.”

“Can’t you have them check a bit deeper? Don’t those people also check things like ID addresses, that sort of thing?”

“You mean IP address.”

“That’s what I said.”

“So you have reason to believe there’s more to find?” When he smiles, the white latte mustache almost makes me laugh. But I’m not going to tell him about it. Not just yet.

“I have a feeling. Yes.”

With a thoughtful expression and a white frothy brim on his upper lip, he ponders. “Just what makes you think this?”

He’s going to think I’m involved, I’m sure. Absently, I twist a lock of hair around my fingers—a bad habit Mom has bugged me about since childhood. “I just … Never mind. I knew this was stupid.”

“Just relax, Ms. Carrick.”

“I’d feel better if you just called me Xandra.” Will inane phrases never cease to flow from my lips whenever I’m around him?

“As long as you call me Kyle.” He opens his cell phone and dials. At this point, I’m eyeing the exit, seeking the clearest path to escape before he calls the police to arrest me as a suspect. He senses this and places his warm hand on mine. Then he lifts a finger and whispers, “Hold on.” There’s no force whatsoever, just lightly resting his hand on mine. And yet, he’s holding me to my seat as if I were handcuffed.

“Glen? Kyle Matthews. Listen, I want you to run a full ISP sweep, traceroute and all, on the MAC address associated with Stacy Dellafina’s laptop. Focus on social networking and blogs … Yeah, I know. Yeah-yeah-yeah. No, there might be something if you take it to the next level … Of course I’m serious. Trust me. Call me if you find anything of interest, okay?”

For once in my life, I’m speechless. Kyle smiles again, and I can’t help but notice the boyish twinkle in his eye. His hand is
still on mine, and I’m not sure why I haven’t withdrawn yet.

“Why didn’t you …? Excuse me, I’m sorry.” Finally, I take my hand back from the table.

“You thought I was going to have you arrested?”

“With all this information, maybe. At least taken in for questioning.”

“You’re not a suspect.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“For one thing, you don’t fit the profile.” A couple of girls at an adjacent table are looking at him and giggling. He takes note of this and turns back to me. “What?”

“Don’t kill me, okay?” I pull a paper napkin from the dispenser and wipe his upper lip. “You’ve had that there the whole time.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“It was kind of cute.”

“Maybe I should have you arrested after all.”

We both laugh. For a moment I forget we’re talking about a murder investigation.

“Who knows what else you’re not telling me.” His grin begins to fade.

“Look, maybe this was a bad idea. I mean, I made a lucky guess is all. Promise me, whatever you do, you won’t tell anyone about the blog thing. I probably imagined everything.”

He shakes his head and exhales slowly.

“What?”

“I get it,” he says. “You don’t think you can trust me because you’ve got a secret that no one could possibly believe. You’re afraid of getting entangled with something that could end up involving you—or worse—costing you.”

All I can do is blink. Right now, there’s nothing I would like more than to tell someone what happened in the darkroom. Because it’s driving me crazy.

“I just want you to know, Xandra. You can trust me. And I don’t think you’re insane.”

“Who said anything about—?”

“Your eyes.”

“Profilers!”

“Thanks for the latte.” He gets up and places his hand on my shoulder. “If you feel like talking about it, call.”

23

The Marbury Award submission deadline is about a month away and without a photograph I’m confident about submitting, each day that passes makes me more anxious.

It’s been a couple of days since my last darkroom episode, and to be frank, I haven’t given it much thought. That’s probably because of Kyle. I’m on a first-name basis with a federal agent now. Splendid.

If I think more about my visions—hallucinations, rather—I’ll eventually have to talk to him about them. Part of me really wants to, but another part wants nothing to do with all this superstition. That’s all it is.

For the past couple of days, I’ve gone to places of great human interest and taken pictures with the Graflex, despite my misgivings. The antique camera drew more than one odd look from passersby.

From Chinatown to the Village on foot, I tried to capture all walks of life, in all conditions. The grimy homeless man leaning on his shopping cart and inadvertently posed next to a slick executive with her Sergio Rossis and Prada tote, the policeman helping a lost elderly Chinese woman across Canal Street. This is New York—for all the good and bad—the city I love.

I even managed to snap a photo of an NYU student holding a
campaign sign depicting the rugged, can-do face of Richard Colson. Vote for Colson, Vote for Change!

Time away from the Stacy Dellafina case has helped clear my mind. I’m ready to go back into the darkroom now. One of two things will happen. One: I will see nothing unusual and know that everything I saw had just been a random coincidence. Strange as it was, things like that do happen.

Or two: I will see more mysterious images. If that happens, I will definitely call Kyle Matthews. Either way, I’m ready.

Everything’s in place. I’m just about to shut the darkroom door when my cell phone on the coffee table outside buzzes like a nest of angry hornets. “It would ring now.”

I’m going to let it roll over to voice mail.

Lights out.

Under the protection of the safelight, I begin my work. Today’s shots might actually yield a Marbury winner. A minute into the process, my landline rings.

“Oh, come on. Not now.” Let it ring. I’m busy getting my life back on track. It’s about time for me to make a contact sheet when my answering machine starts taking a message. It’s pretty loud and I can hear it through the door.

“Xandra. It’s Kyle Matthews. We need to talk.”

24

“Hello? You there, Xandra? If you are, please pick up.”

Muttering things that Mom wouldn’t be proud to hear me say, I reach for the cordless I keep in the darkroom. “Kyle?”

“Screening your calls?”

“I’m a little busy.”

“Can we talk?”

“Can it wait?”

“Not really.”

Does he expect me to drop everything just to talk to him? “Give me a sec, okay? I’m in the darkroom right now.”

“In your apartment?”

“Yeah, what’s so hard to believe about that?”

“I just didn’t think anyone … never mind.”

This contact sheet isn’t going to turn out anyway. I wipe my hands, step out into my living room, and exhale. “Okay, what did you want to talk about?”

“I’d rather do this in person.”

“Sure, that’d be really convenient for you. But I have things to do today and—”

“I’m not far.”

“Where are you?” The answer comes with a knock on the door. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I think you’re going to want to hear this.”

I open the door, and there he is standing there. Tall, confident, peering at me over the rim of his glasses. “May I?”

I remove the security chain and let him in. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s what Momma always says.”

“Says?”

“I still am.”

“Apparently.” I motion to the living room. “Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

“No lattes, thanks.”

Returning with two cans of Diet Coke, I take a seat across from him and offer him one.

He gives it a queer look. “Diet?”

“Do you know how much sugar there is in regular Coke?”

“Keeps me going.”

“That’s the caffeine, mostly.”

He takes a sip, grimaces, then smiles and tilts his can toward me. “Gotta maintain that figure of yours, I suppose.”

“Not sure how that’s relevant.”

“It’s not. But this is.” From his raincoat lying across the sofa, he pulls a stack of paper and places it on the table. “Turns out you were right.”

Even after two or three glances at the numbers and cryptic language on the paper, I still don’t know what I’m staring at. I look up and shrug. “What is all this?”

“Stacy did have another blog.”

“Really?”

“It’s no longer up on the internet. When you try to go to the web address, you get ‘Page could not be found.’ It’s been gone almost three weeks now, and the hosting service has since expunged its cache. No backups either, which is odd because—”

“Hold on! I was right?”

“You’ve led us to another key to this case.”

“But you said the blog was taken down.”

After a final sip, Kyle licks his lips in distaste and puts the can
down on the table. “Google has a feature that caches defunct websites. I found it under a different DNS name and made copies of the entries.”

At this point, I’m starting to lose that confidence that took two days to build. I’m going to have to talk about the darkroom.

“Xandra, level with me, okay? Did you know Stacy?”

“I told you before, no.” Now I’m up pacing before my window looking down at Central Park. My arms are folded, and I’m twirling a lock of hair between my fingers. “I’ve never met her. Why do you keep asking me?”

“In her last few entries, she mentioned your name.”

“She what?”

“That’s right, she names you.”

“Well, people know me through my work. Maybe she’s into photography or something.”

“Read the highlighted sentences in this entry dated October 25, 2008.” He flips through the printouts and pins a finger down on one of the sheets. “And quit pacing, will you? You’re making me nervous.”

“Hmph.” I step over and take the pages. The blog reads:

I’ve always felt there was something missing in my life since I was a child. With my parents’ divorce when I was only four, I barely remember my father. Then he died when I was eight. Never had the chance to see him—wonder if that’s because he didn’t want to see me, or if Mom wouldn’t let him, or whatever. I’ve been wanting to learn as much about him as possible. Mom’s impossibly tight-lipped, so I did some research on my own.

Turns out, there was this photographer in the 1970s who went with my father’s platoon during the Vietnam War. His name is Peter Carrick. Did a Google on the name but got little info besides his website. But check it—his daughter, Xandra (cool name!), lives pretty close to the dorms. I’m going to see if I can meet her. Maybe she can introduce me to her dad. He could probably tell me things about my father. Just gotta be careful not to let Mom find out.

I’m trying to keep my hands from shaking, but it’s a bit too much. “Was she stalking me?”

“Sure you never met?”

My fist comes to rest on my hips. “Never.”

“Then I really have to ask.”

“Yes, I know.”

25

His eyes are lasers, boring with pinpoint precision into my mind.

“How could you possibly have known all about Stacy? Her body in the pond, her blog?”

“Whatever happens, you have to believe me. I’m not lying.”

Kyle gets up and walks over and stands next to me. He’s looking out the window and with all seriousness says, “I can tell when people lie. And if you were going to lie, you’d have done so already.”

“Right.” He reads me like a book. It makes me feel uncomfortably vulnerable around him. “And you’re not going to laugh.”

“Trust me.”

“I don’t trust people who say that.”

“All right, then. Sometime this decade would be nice.”

“It’s not that easy. I mean, I wouldn’t have given this any credence if it hadn’t happened twice. And you know, there has to be a logical explanation for this. No matter how bizarre, how coincidental—”

“Do you always ramble on like this?”

“Only when I’m nervous or excited.”

“Which are you now?”

“You tell me, you’re the profiler.”

“Both. Now get on with it, will you?”

“If you’d just stop interrupting me, I might be able to.” I cross my arms. An awkward silence ensues. If he’s annoyed, it’s not showing. I, on the other hand, feel as if my left breast has popped out of my shirt at the Super Bowl on national television. “Anyway … It happened in the darkroom.”