Gillian clapped her hands together, then threw back her head and laughed in delight-showing a flash of the charming brat Mary used to know. And in that outfit, with that hair, she looked like a teenager. "I completely forgot about that stupid note!" She doubled over. "That was so funny!"

Mary laughed along with her, and when she finally stopped her stomach muscles hurt from the unfamiliar workout. It's the alcohol, she told herself. There was a good reason she never drank-it skewed her perspective. Laughing her ass off, brought to her knees by a kiss and some wine. And it hadn't even been a real kiss. What would a real kiss have done? she wondered as she took Gillian's arm. "Come on. Let's go harass Mom."

Together they returned to the house.

Chapter 24

Two days later, Mary was in the bedroom of her mother's house, typing up the final pages of her report, when her mobile phone rang. It was Elliot.

"Just got a call from Homicide," he said in a breathless, excited voice. "One of their guys is at a darkroom in Seward. Guess whose name is in their guest book?"

"Hitchcock?"

"Right. The date would fit too. He was there in late October."

She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper. "What's the address?"

"Take 35 West north, get off on Cedar, east on Franklin. It's two blocks south of the co-op. I'll meet you there."

She hung up and turned off her laptop. She slipped on her gun, grabbed her phone and coat, and ran down the stairs and out the door.

Seward was a neighborhood of Minneapolis located north of Powderhorn and just south of the West Bank campus of U of M. It was one of those places like Frogtown in St. Paul, where the crime rate was still higher than city officials and police liked, but was improving.

Mary didn't have any trouble finding the photo lab.

Three police cars were out front, plus Elliot's silver Taurus. She turned onto a side street and parked near a two-story Victorian with a chain-link fence and a yard that had been run bald by the German shepherd that was barking at her.

She locked her car with the remote, then hurried around the block to the photo lab. Inside the door and to the right was a coffee shop. Directly in front of her, curved cement steps led upstairs to a counter where Elliot stood talking to a young man of about eighteen. Elliot made introductions-the kid was a volunteer who worked there in exchange for free lab time.

On the counter in front of them was the sign-in book, open to the page with Hitchcock's name, date, and time of arrival and departure. "I wanted you to see it before we bagged it up," Elliot explained. "We'll send a photocopy to our handwriting expert. The rest will be checked for fingerprints."

"I doubt there will be anything left of Hitchcock's," Mary said.

"I doubt it too." Elliot slid the book into an evidence bag, stuck on a chain of evidence sticker, then signed and dated it. "Now for the fun part."

He led the way down a hall and through a narrow red door to a myriad of rooms and a winding, haunted-house-type maze that was meant to keep light from the developing and enlargement areas without the hassle of doors.

The overhead white lights were on, and police personnel were sifting through boxes of poor-quality photos that had been abandoned by patrons. With gloved hands, two women held strips of developed negatives to the light. Others went through trash containers.

"Ever taken a darkroom class?" Elliot asked.

"No."

"When it's dark in here, and there's nothing on but the red lights, it can be hard to keep track of all your prints and negatives. Especially if there are a lot of people using the lab at one time. It was a full house the day Hitchcock was here. One person for every enlarger."

"But wouldn't the others in the room have noticed his photos?"

"Not necessarily. He may have only made a contact sheet. The photos would have been too small for anyone to see. Or he could have kept his paper upside-down in the developing bath. And if he was only taking pictures of half-nude girls, maybe nobody would think anything of it anyway. You know how artists are. The body is a work of art and all that."

Mary nodded, thinking darkly of Sebastian Tate. "What about fingerprints?"

"Crime lab says it's been too long and too much traffic through here to bother."

"Okay, where do you need me?"

One of the women working with the negatives offered her a strip. "This is the most tedious job," she said apologetically. "Here-" She handed her a small magnifier. "This helps."

Mary took a seat near a lamp, turned it on, and got busy. "Family vacation to Disney World." She groaned. "Why would somebody want black-and-whites of a vacation to Disney World?"

"People do weird things," Elliot said. "As you well know."

"Right."

It didn't take her long to go through the strip of thirty-six. There was the castle. There was the ever annoying It's a Small World.

"What are you smiling about?" Elliot asked, sitting across from her, a negative strip in his hand.

"I was thinking about a trip we took to Disney World. Gillian must have gone on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride six times."

"I heard they closed that," Elliot said, his voice distracted as he concentrated on his own negatives.

"No!" Mary couldn't believe it.

"Not exciting enough or something."

"Closed Mr. Toad's Wild Ride? That's sacrilegious!"

Others got into the conversation, the way people do when working on something monotonous. One person admitted she thought it was past time for the ride to go, and two others agreed.

"Gillian will be devastated." Mary marked the negative strip with a small piece of white tape to show it had been examined. She hung it back up in the drying closet and pulled out another strip.

"I think I may have found something," said one of the investigators who'd been sifting through the trash. He held up a piece of a negative with a pair of tweezers. He moved closer to the light. "It's a woman, anyway. At least partially nude."

"Let's get a print."

They shut off the white lights and turned on the red overheads. Elliot set the negative up in the enlarger. "Anybody see any paper around?" he asked, opening drawers.

"Here-" Someone handed him a black package. "Feels like glossy."

"That'll be fine. Just so it's not fiber, or something that takes too long to develop." He opened the light-safe sleeve, slid out a contact sheet and placed it in the holder, glass on top. "I'm just going to guess on the time. Six seconds is middle of the road and should give us a readable image." He flipped the toggle switch on the timed light. When it automatically clicked off, he lifted the glass, carried the blank white paper to the solution area, and slid it into the developing tray. The group crowded around as the image slowly materialized.

It turned out to be a close-up of a woman from her navel to her 'thighs, nude, pubic hair exposed. After waiting a minute and a half, Elliot picked up the eight-by-ten with wooden tongs, dropped it into the adjoining stop bath, and then followed with the rinse.

"Turn the lights back on, and let's keep looking," he said. "Maybe we can find the other pieces."

Four hours later, they'd gone through the trash in the entire building, plus the Dumpster in the alley. Elliot called the research department and explained the situation. "I need you to find the name of the landfill where Gabe's Garbage takes their trash. Then get some people out there to go through it if it's in any way feasible."

The person on the other end must not have liked the sound of that.

"I don't know," Elliot said with obvious irritation. "Get some protective gear from the toxic waste crew or something. Listen, on NPR I heard about a guy who flew back home, found out where his trash had been taken, went to the landfill, and rescued his son's teddy bear, so I know it can be done." With that, he hung up.