10
IT WAS HARD TO TELL IN THE NIGHT AND AT A DISTANCE, but the vehicle might have been an Explorer, the kind of car Nolan drove. Someone was behind the steering wheel, looking in Coltrane’s direction. Jennifer’s headlights disappeared over the hill. The car became barely visible.
Nolan? Coltrane’s stomach muscles were still sore from where he had been punched. Angry, he wanted to storm up the hill and find out if that was Nolan watching the house. But his fury was displaced by a despondency about Jennifer that made him too weary for a confrontation. He wished that there had been another way. He had never wanted to hurt her. I bet that’s something else Jennifer would have been annoyed to hear me tell her, he thought. He stepped back into the house and locked the door. If it was Nolan out there, he was going to have a long, wasted night.
Mouth dry, Coltrane glanced at his watch, realizing that the time was almost midnight. Tash should have been home by now. She should have called by now.
Unless she was waiting to contact Nolan first and Nolan wasn’t home.
Unless that was in fact Nolan in the car out there.
Get back to work, he told himself. It’ll help distract you.
Descending to the darkroom, he shut off the overhead lights, switched on the dim amber safelight, and began making more prints from the negatives he had prepared. Then he remembered the print that he had turned upside down in the washing tray, took it out of the water, and was stunned anew by the beauty of Tash in her diving suit as she emerged from the ocean. Her eyes seemed to look directly into his.
What’s happening to me? he thought. How could someone I’ve known since only yesterday make me feel this way?
He had never believed that love at first sight was possible. But then it hadn’t been at first sight, had it? he reminded himself. He had seen Tash’s face long before he had met her.
He remembered having read about the theory of soul mates – that souls who had been devoted to each other in a former life could never be fulfilled unless they found each other in a later life. Perhaps that explained the irresistible attraction that had overcome him. It was as if he had recognized Rebecca Chance the first time he had seen her photograph. It was as if he had been in love with her in another time and now had the chance to be in love with her again – with Tash.
Whatever you’re feeling, it doesn’t need an explanation, he told himself. You’ll ruin it.
So far he had made prints only for the shots he had taken at the stores in the Beverly Center, Santa Monica, and Westwood. He still had to deal with the images of the crowd near the store in the South Coast Plaza. Uneasy that Tash hadn’t called, beginning to worry that something had happened to her, he forced himself to go to the enlarger and put one of the processed negatives into the negative holder. After determining the correct focus, he put a sheet of eight-by-ten-inch printing paper into the easel, set the timer, and turned on the enlarger lamp, which was positioned above the negative and cast a beam through it, projecting the negative’s image down through a magnifying lens and onto the paper.
If he had been preparing prints that were intended to be displayed, he would have done tests to determine the ideal length of time to expose the light-sensitive paper to the negative’s enlarged image, using trial and error to achieve the perfect density of detail and contrast of lights and darks. But these prints were important only for their information, not their aesthetic appeal. He needed to get them done as soon as possible, so he didn’t care about perfection, only whether the faces in the crowd were clear enough for Tash to be able to recognize any of them.
His experience with developing the previous prints had taught him that twenty seconds was an effective length of time to let the negative’s projected image touch the paper. The instant the timer clicked, the enlarger lamp turned off automatically. He removed the paper and set it where the only illumination that could reach it would be from the dim amber safelight. When he had exposed half a dozen sheets of paper, he took them to the developing tray, set them in the solution, and gently agitated the tray, rotating the sheets, developing them evenly.
The magic happened. Feeling a surge of anticipation, Coltrane studied them, as he had the earlier prints. During his fifteen years as a professional photographer, he had trained himself to have a keen visual memory, so he could easily recall details from earlier prints. But now his surge of anticipation changed to a sinking feeling of disappointment, for he still had not seen any faces that recurred in various locations. His pride made him hope that he wouldn’t have to admit to Tash that his plan had been a failure.
To make matters worse, the six prints in the developing tray had something wrong with them: The faces in the bottom-right corner of each print were overexposed, too dark to be distinguished. The faces in the rest of the area were perfectly acceptable, however. That contrast told him that although twenty seconds of exposure to the enlarger’s light was sufficient for most of the area in these prints, their bottom-right corners needed only fifteen seconds.
The prints weren’t usable. Muttering an expletive, he shoved them into a waste can and returned to the enlarger. He prepared to reexpose sheets of paper to the six negatives. For each one, he again set the timer for twenty seconds. But for this set of prints, when the timer reached fifteen seconds, he slowly waved his right hand between the paper and the negative, preventing the enlarger lamp from projecting onto the bottom-right corner of each print for the final five seconds. The movement of his hand reminded him of a magician’s gesture, an apt comparison because he was, after all, performing darkroom magic. By lessening the exposure time on the lower-right corners, he was able to enhance that area and bring out details.
When the sheets were finally exposed, he set them into the developing tray. But this time when the images came to life, he opened his mouth in shock. The previously indistinct lower-right corners were now vivid. As at the Beverly Center, he had taken these shots from an upper level, aiming down at the crowd. On the first print in the sequence, he found himself staring at a man with a 35-mm camera raised to his face, aiming in the direction of where Tash and her bodyguards approached her store. The camera was a mask, preventing Coltrane from noting the man’s features. The salt-and-pepper hair was an indication of middle age. That and the man’s somewhat-hefty build were the only identifiers.
Feeling as if something sharp was caught in his throat, Coltrane turned to the next print in the sequence and saw that the man had pivoted slightly to the right. His camera remaining at eye level, his finger pressing the shutter button, he was taking a photograph of Tash as she walked along. The new angle of his mostly hidden face revealed a thick neck and the suggestion of a puffy cheek. Coltrane turned to the third print in the series, where the man had pivoted more to the right, continuing to take photographs of Tash. From this angle, Coltrane saw a hint of a jowl. He told himself that he had to be wrong, that his imagination was deceiving him. Hurrying, he flipped through the final three prints in the sequence and saw in stop action the man lower his camera to his chin, to his neck, to his chest, never removing his intense gaze from where Tash was walking. The man’s profiled face was now fully in the open, and Coltrane felt nauseated as he was forced to admit that he hadn’t been wrong, that his imagination hadn’t deceived him. The man was Duncan Reynolds.