I didn’t answer. Jake’s back. Open shower door. Still life with Sanka. Mrs. Ambler remembering Taco.
“What woman are they talking about?” Ramirez said. “The one you wanted the lifeline on?”
“No,” I said. The picture of Mrs. Ambler was the last one on the cartridge. The developer went back to the beginning. Bottom half of the Hitori. Open car door. Prickly pear. “Did they say anything else?”
“The one in the uniform pointed to something on the hardcopy and said, ‘See. There’s his number on the side. Can you make it out?’ ”
Blurred palm trees and the expressway. The tanker hitting the jackal.
“Stop,” I said. The image froze.
“What?” Ramirez said.
It was a great action shot, the back wheels passing right over the mess that had been the jackal’s hind legs. The jackal was already dead, of course, but you couldn’t see that or the already drying blood coming out of its mouth because of the angle. You couldn’t see the truck’s license number either because of the speed the tanker was going, but the number was there, waiting for the Society’s computers. It looked like the tanker had just hit it.
“What did they do with the picture?” I asked.
“They took it into the chief’s office. I tried to call up the originals from composing, but the chief had already sent for them and your vidcam footage. Then I tried to get you, but I couldn’t get past your damned exclusion.”
“Are they still in there with the chief?”
“They just left. They’re on their way over to your house. The chief told me to tell you he wants ‘full cooperation,’ which means hand over the negatives and any other film you just took this morning. He told me to keep my hands off. No story. Case closed.”
“How long ago did they leave?”
“Five minutes. You’ve got plenty of time to make me a print. Don’t highwire it. I’ll come pick it up.”
“What happened to, The last thing I need is trouble with the Society’?”
“It’ll take them at least twenty minutes to get to your place. Hide it somewhere the Society won’t find it.”
“I can’t,” I said, and listened to her furious silence. “My developer’s broken. It just ate my longshot film,” I said, and hit the exclusion button again.
“You want to see who hit the jackal?” I said to Katie, and motioned her over to the developer. “One of Phoenix’s finest.”
She came and stood in front of the screen, looking at the picture. If the Society’s computers were really good, they could probably prove the jackal was already dead, but the Society wouldn’t keep the film long enough for that. Hunter and Segura had probably already destroyed the highwire copies. Maybe I should offer to run the cartridge sheet through the permanganate bath for them when they got here, just to save time.
I looked at Katie. “It looks guilty as hell, doesn’t it?” I said. “Only it isn’t.” She didn’t say anything, didn’t move. “It would have killed the jackal if it had hit it. It was going at least ninety. But the jackal was already dead.”
She looked across at me.
“The Society would have sent the Amblers to jail. It would have confiscated the house they’ve lived in for fifteen years for an accident that was nobody’s fault. They didn’t even see it coming. It just ran right out in front of them.”
Katie put her hand up to the screen and touched the jackal’s image.
“They’ve suffered enough,” I said, looking at her. It was getting dark. I hadn’t turned on any lights, and the red image of the tanker made her nose look sunburned. “All these years she’s blamed him for her dog’s death, and he didn’t do it,” I said. “A Winnebago’s a hundred square feet on the inside. That’s about as big as this developer, and they’ve lived inside it for fifteen years, while the lanes got narrower and the highways shut down, hardly enough room to breathe, let alone live, and her blaming him for something he didn’t do.”
In the ruddy light from the screen she looked sixteen. “They won’t do anything to the driver, not with the tankers hauling thousands of gallons of water into Phoenix every day. Even the Society won’t run the risk of a boycott. They’ll destroy the negatives and call the case closed. And the Society won’t go after the Amblers,” I said. “Or you.”
I turned back to the developer. “Go,” I said, and the image changed. Yucca. Yucca. My forearm. My back. Cups and spoons.
“Besides,” I said. “I’m an old hand at shifting the blame.” Mrs. Ambler’s arm. Mrs. Ambler’s back. Open shower door. “Did I ever tell you about Aberfan?”
Katie was still watching the screen, her face pale now from the light blue one hundred percent formica shower stall.
“The Society already thinks the tanker did it. The only one I’ve got to convince is my editor.” I reached across to the phone and took the exclusion off. “Ramirez,” I said, “wanta go after the Society?”
Jake’s back. Cups, spoons, and Sanka. “I did,” Ramirez said in a voice that could have frozen the Salt River, “but your developer was broken, and you couldn’t get me a picture.”
Mrs. Ambler and Taco.
I hit the exclusion button again and left my hand on it. “Stop,” I said. “Print.” The screen went dark, and the print slid out into the tray. “Reduce frame. Permanganate bath by one percent. Follow on screen.” I took my hand off. “What’s Dolores Chiwere doing these days, Ramirez?”
“She’s working investigative. Why?” I didn’t answer. The picture of Mrs. Ambler faded a little, a little more.
“The Society does have a link to the lifelines!” Ramirez said, not quite as fast as Hunter, but almost. “That’s why you requested your old girlfriend’s line, isn’t it? You’re running a sting.”
I had been wondering how to get Ramirez off Katie’s trail, and she had done it herself, jumping to conclusions just like the Society. With a little effort, I could convince Katie, too: Do you know why I really came to see you today? To catch the Society. I had to pick somebody the Society couldn’t possibly know about from my lifeline, somebody I didn’t have any known connection with.
Katie watched the screen, looking like she already half-believed it. The picture of Mrs. Ambler faded some more. Any known connection. “Stop,” I said.
“What about the truck?” Ramirez demanded. “What does it have to do with this sting of yours?”
“Nothing,” I said. “And neither does the water board, which is an even bigger bully than the Society. So do what the chief says. Full cooperation. Case closed. We’ll get them on lifeline tapping.”
She digested that, or maybe she’d already hung up and was calling Dolores Chiwere. I looked at the image of Mrs. Ambler on the screen. It had faded enough to look slightly overexposed but not enough to look tampered with. And Taco was gone.
I looked at Katie. “The Society will be here in another fifteen minutes,” I said, “which gives me just enough time to tell you about Aberfan.” I gestured at the couch. “Sit down.”
She came and sat down. “He was a great dog,” I said “He loved the snow. He’d dig through it and toss it up with his muzzle and snap at the snowflakes, trying to catch them.”
Ramirez had obviously hung up, but she would call back if she couldn’t track down Chiwere. I put the exclusion back on and went over to the developer. The image of Mrs. Ambler was still on the screen. The bath hadn’t affected the detail that much. You could still see the wrinkles, the thin white hair, but the guilt, or blame, the look of loss and love, was gone. She looked serene, almost happy.
“There are hardly any good pictures of dogs,” I said. “They lack the necessary muscles to take good pictures, and Aberfan would lunge at you as soon as he saw the camera.”
I turned the developer off. Without the light from the screen, it was almost dark in the room. I turned on the overhead.
“There were less than a hundred dogs left in the United States, and he’d already had the newparvo once and nearly died. The only pictures I had of him had been taken when he was asleep. I wanted a picture of Aberfan playing in the snow.”
I leaned against the narrow shelf in front of the developer’s screen. Katie looked the way she had at the vet’s, sitting there with her hands clenched, waiting for me to tell her something terrible.
“I wanted a picture of him playing in the snow, but he always lunged at the camera,” I said, “so I let him out in the front yard, and then I sneaked out the side door and went across the road to some pine trees where he wouldn’t be able to see me. But he did.”
“And he ran across the road,” Katie said. “And I hit him.”
She was looking down at her hands. I waited for her to look up, dreading what I would see in her face. Or not see.