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 m
atter 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.”
“Talk about ridiculous comments. You wouldn’t-”
“I think we can hold this debate,” the mayor interrupted, “when Councilman Carpington makes his motion. If there’s no other new business, then I would like to make a motion to declare this meeting adjourned. Do we have a seconder?”
Carpington jammed his papers into a briefcase, shaking his head angrily. At the other end, Underwood grabbed his things and stormed out of the council chamber. This guy was clearly not a friend of Don Greenway’s. Don’t take any walks down by the creek, I thought.
Carpington was hotfooting it to the exit when I tried to head him off. “Mr. Carpington?” I said. “Excuse me?”
He glanced over at me, still bristling from his exchange with Underwood. “Yes?” he said, looking at me over the top of his glasses.
“Do you have a moment?”
“It’s really late,” he said. “Why don’t you call my secretary tomorrow, or my home, and make an appointment?”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait. It’s rather urgent.” I raised the brown envelope in front of me. There were other council members, within earshot, filing past us.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I have to insist. Another time.”
I leaned in close to him, whispered. “It’s about Stefanie Knight, Mr. Carpington.”
It was like you’d turned on a tap and drained the blood out of him in a couple of seconds. He swallowed, glanced over at his colleagues, then whispered back to me, “My office.”
He led me down a tiled hallway and into a small room that served as his municipal office. It contained a small desk stacked with papers, a computer tucked in the corner, and several town surveys tacked to the walls. He quickly closed the door behind us and directed me into a chair. A cheap “World’s Greatest Dad” statuette sat on his desk next to a family photo. He grinned at the camera, surrounded by his plain wife and generic-looking children-a girl and two boys, all under the age of ten.
“What’s this about?” he said, slipping behind his desk. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone named, what was it? Stefanie White?”
“Knight,” I said. “Nice try. I guess that was why you dragged me in here and closed the door, because you’ve never heard of her.”
“I’m afraid I don’t even know who you are.”
“Zack Walker. I’m one of your constituents. I live in the Valley Forest Estates subdivision, on Greenway Lane.”
“I see. Oh yes, Stefanie Knight. I believe she works in the Valley Forest Estates office. I think I’ve run into her there.”
Fuck it, I thought. I opened the envelope, withdrew one of the prints, and flung it across the desk at him. It landed image down. He grabbed it by one corner, flipped it over.
I didn’t believe he could lose any more color. He was the whitest, pastiest-looking weasel I’d ever had the pleasure of sitting across a desk from, and this included all the newspaper editors I’d ever worked for.
The hand holding the print began to shake. Carpington ran his hand over his scalp, wiping away the droplets of sweat that were beginning to form.
“How much?” he asked. “How much do you want?”
20
Right off the bat, Roger Carpington did not strike me as a guy skilled in the art of negotiating. Caving is not one of the standard tactics. One look at the picture of himself with Stefanie Knight and he was ready to cut me a check.
“You think I’m here to blackmail you?” I asked.
Carpington, still sweating, said, “What other purpose could you have in mind when you come to me with a picture like this? You’re out to ruin me, that’s obvious. But I’m guessing that you can be dissuaded from that if we can agree upon a price.”
I leaned back in my chair. “I do think that the motive behind this picture, and the other ones I have in this envelope”-Carpington fixed his eyes upon it-“is definitely blackmail, Mr. Carpington, but I’m not your blackmailer. It’s somebody else. Maybe it’s Stefanie Knight. Has she been blackmailing you? Did she tell you she’d tell your wife about your affair if you didn’t pay her off?”
Carpington was wide-eyed. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not having an affair with Stefanie.”
I furrowed my brow, slid another one of the prints from the envelope out halfway, and peered at it. “You’re right. This one here, where she’s got your dick in her mouth, that doesn’t look like an affair. Maybe she’s just a consultant helping you interpret the town’s official plan.”
“You’re a disgusting man,” Carpington said. “Get out of my office.”
“Okay,” I said, and stood out of my chair. “Ta-ta.”
“Wait! Sit down. Sit down. Tell me what it is you want.”
“I want you to tell me about Stefanie. Everything.”
He shook his head slowly. “What do you care? And how do you happen to have these pictures? Do you know Stefanie? Are you working with her?”
“No, I don’t know her,” I said, “although I have seen her this evening.” I watched for anything in Carpington’s eyes, a glimmer. There was nothing. “How I happen to have these pictures is my business for now, but I can tell you that the negatives are safely stored away, and if something were to happen to me, there are people who’d know where to find them.” I was surprisingly good at this.
“I see,” Carpington said. He seemed to be abandoning any plans he might have had to leap across the desk and rip the envelope out of my hands.
“How did you meet Stefanie?” I asked.
He squirmed in his seat. “I met her through a business acquaintance.”
“Let me guess. Don Greenway.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve met with Mr. Greenway on several occasions, and Stefanie works in his office. I believe she’s his secretary.”
“You’ve been very supportive of Mr. Greenway’s development proposals.”
Carpington shrugged. “I think people like Mr. Greenway bring economic prosperity to a place like Oakwood. They bring jobs, and families, a broadened tax base, hope for the future of our community.”
I needed some Maalox. “Not everyone agrees with you on that, though. Counc
ilman Underwood, for example, and Sam Spender. Greenway’s had to deal with formidable opposition to his subdivision, particularly the last phase near Willow Creek. He must really appreciate having someone like you, in a position of influence, on the council and all, on his side.”
“Are you insinuating something?”
“You tell me. You’re boffing his secretary. That seems like a pretty good inducement to vote in favor of his development. My guess is, keeping you entertained is part of Stefanie’s job description. But just in case you start getting an attack of the guilts, or ever decide to vote against Valley Forest Estates, Greenway has a little something in reserve, these pictures, to make sure you do exactly what he wants you to do.”
“Oh God,” Carpington said, cupping his hands over nose and mouth. “Oh God oh God oh God.”
“When’s the last time you saw Stefanie?” I asked, ignoring his weeping.
“What? Uh, yesterday. At her house.”
“Over on Rambling Rose?”
“Yes. It’s not actually her house, it’s one owned by Greenway’s company, they built a lot of the homes in that area a few years ago, but she lives there.”
“Is that where you’d have your… encounters?”
Carpington nodded.
“There’s a mirror on the ceiling,” I said. “In the bedroom.”
Carpington looked as though he was getting jealous. “So you’ve been with her, too.”
“No, can’t say that I have, but I’m guessing that’s how they got these pictures of the two of you. The camera was mounted behind two-way glass, looking straight down. I guess Greenway or one of his people was up in the attic while you two went at it, fired off the shots he needed, waited until you were gone, and came back down. Left the film with Stefanie to get developed.”
Carpington fiddled vacantly with papers on his desk. “I’m finished. It’s all over for me.”
“Could be. But for the moment, as long as these prints and the negatives don’t land in the wrong hands, you’re still okay. So I’ve got a few more questions. You saw Stefanie yesterday, at her house. What did you talk about? How was she?”
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