Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

They would both lose their licenses, no matter who was driving, and the Society would confiscate the Winnebago. They would probably not send two octogenarian specimens of Americana like the Amblers to prison. They wouldn’t have to. The trial would take six months, and Texas already had legislation in committee.

The first picture came up. A light-setting shot of an ocotillo.

Even if they got off, even if they didn’t end up taking away the Winnebago for unauthorized use of a tanker lane or failure to purchase a sales tax permit, the Amblers had six months left at the outside. Utah was all ready to pass a full-divided bill, and Arizona would be next. In spite of the road crews’ stew-slowed pace, Phoenix would be all-divided by the time the investigation was over, and they’d be completely boxed in. Permanent residents of the zoo. Like the coyote.

A shot of the zoo sign, half-hidden in the cactus. A close-up of the Amblers’ flag-trailing sign. The Winnebago in the parking lot.

“Hold,” I said. “Crop.” I indicated the areas with my finger. “Enlarge to full screen.”

The longshot takes great pictures, sharp contrast, excellent detail. The developer only had a five-hundred-thousand-pixel screen, but the dark smear on the bumper was easy to see, and the developed picture would be much clearer. You’d be able to see every splatter, every grayish-yellow hair. The Society’s computers would probably be able to type the blood from it.

“Continue,” I said, and the next picture came on the screen. Artsy shot of the Winnebago and the zoo entrance. Jake washing the bumper.

Red-handed.

Maybe Hunter had bought my story, but he didn’t have any other suspects, and how long would it be before he decided to ask Katie a few more questions? If he thought it was the Amblers, he’d leave her alone.

The Japanese family clustered around the waste-disposal tank. Close-up of the decals on the side. Interiors—Mrs. Ambler in the galley, the upright-coffin shower stall, Mrs. Ambler making coffee.

No wonder she had looked that way in the eisenstadt shot, her face full of memory and grief and loss. Maybe in the instant before they hit it, it had looked like a dog to her, too.

All I had to do was tell Hunter about the Amblers, and Katie was off the hook. It should be easy. I had done it before.

“Stop,” I said to a shot of the salt and pepper collection. The black and white Scottie dogs had painted red-plaid bows and red tongues.

“Expose,” I said. “One through twenty-four.”

The screen went to question marks and started beeping. I should have known better. The developer could handle a lot of orders, but asking it to expose perfectly good film went against its whole memory, and I didn’t have time to give it the step-by-steps that would convince it I meant what I said.

“Eject,” I said. The Scotties blinked out. The developer spat out the film, rerolled into its protective case.

The doorbell rang. I switched on the overhead and pulled the film out to full length and held it directly under the light.

I had told Hunter an RV hit Aberfan, and he had said on the way out, almost an afterthought, “That first shoot you went to, what was it?”

And after he left, what had he done, gone out to check on the sideshow kind of thing, gotten Mrs. Ambler to spill her guts? There hadn’t been time to do that and get back. He must have called Ramirez. I was glad I had locked the door.

I turned off the overhead. I rerolled the film, fed it back into the developer, and gave it a direction it could handle. “Permanganate bath, full strength, one through twenty-four. Remove one hundred percent emulsion. No notify.”

The screen went dark. It would take the developer at least fifteen minutes to run the film through the bleach bath, and the Society’s computers could probably enhance a picture out of two crystals of silver and thin air, but at least the detail wouldn’t be there. I unlocked the door.

It was Katie.

She held up the eisenstadt. “You forgot your briefcase,” she said.

I stared blankly at it. I hadn’t even realized I didn’t have it. I must have left it on the kitchen table when I went tearing out, running down little girls and stewed road workers in my rush to keep Katie from getting involved. And here she was, and Hunter would be back any minute, saying, “That shoot you went on this morning, did you take any pictures?”

“It isn’t a briefcase,” I said.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said, and stopped. “I shouldn’t have accused you of telling the Society I’d killed the jackal. I don’t know why you came to see me today, but I know you’re not capable of—”

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” I said. I opened the door enough to reach for the eisenstadt. “Thanks for bringing it back. I’ll get the paper to reimburse your way-mile credits.”

Go home. Go home. If you’re here when the Society comes back, they’ll ask you how you met me, and I just destroyed the evidence that could shift the blame to the Amblers.

I took hold of the eisenstadt’s handle and started to shut the door.

She put her hand on the door. The screen door and the fading light made her look unfocused, like Misha. “Are you in trouble?”

“No,” I said. “Look, I’m very busy.”

“Why did you come to see me?” she asked. “Did you kill the jackal?”

“No,” I said, but I opened the door and let her in.

I went over to the developer and asked for a visual status. It was only on the sixth frame. “I’m destroying evidence,” I said to Katie. “I took a picture this morning of the vehicle that hit it, only I didn’t know it was the guilty party until half an hour ago.”

I motioned for her to sit down on the couch. “They’re in their eighties. They were driving on a road they weren’t supposed to be on, in an obsolete recreation vehicle, worrying about the cameras and the tankers. There’s no way they could have seen it in time to stop. The Society won’t see it that way, though. They’re determined to blame somebody, anybody, even though it won’t bring them back.”

She set her canvas carryit and the eisenstadt down on the table next to the couch.

“The Society was here when I got home,” I said. “They’d figured out we were both in Colorado when Aberfan died. I told them it was a hit and run, and you’d stopped to help me. They had the vet’s records, and your name was on them.”

I couldn’t read her face. “If they come back,” I said, “you tell them that you gave me a ride to the vet’s.”

I went back to the developer. The longshot film was done. “Eject,” I said, and the developer spit it into my hand. I fed it into the recycler.

“McCombe! Where the hell are you?” Ramirez’s voice exploded into the room, and I jumped and started for the door, but she wasn’t there.

The phone was flashing. “McCombe! This is important!”

Ramirez was on the phone and using some override I didn’t even know existed. I went over and pushed it back to access. The flashing lights went off. “I’m here,” I said.

“You won’t believe what just happened!” She sounded outraged. “A couple of terrorist types from the Society just stormed in here and confiscated the stuff you sent me!”

All I’d sent her was the vidcam footage and the shots from the eisenstadt, and there shouldn’t have been anything on those. Jake had already washed the bumper. “What stuff?” I said.

“The prints from the eisenstadt!” she said, still shouting. “Which I didn’t have a chance to look at when they came in because I was too busy trying to work a trade on your governor’s conference, not to mention trying to track you down! I had hardcopies made and sent the originals straight down to composing with your vidcam footage. I finally got to them half an hour ago, and while I’m sorting through them, this Society creep just grabs them away from me. No warrant, no ‘would you mind?,’ nothing. Right out of my hand. Like a bunch of—”