The First Exposure

Iris Calloway found the camera beneath a stack of tax folders in her father’s study, where dust had settled in the shape of everything he had removed and never replaced.

She was sorting his papers because the bank wanted an inventory by Friday. The study had been closed since his funeral, not from sentiment but because the room contained three filing cabinets, a broken fan, and several decades of receipts no one else could read. Iris had postponed dealing with it until postponement became more work than the room itself.

The camera was an old Polaroid SX-70, folded shut like a piece of metal luggage. Its leather case had split along one edge. She remembered her father using it at the funeral home, though not for work. He had taken photographs of flowers, renovations, once a snowdrift against the back door. He had never explained why.

Iris set the folders aside and opened the case. Inside was a single square of white film.

She frowned. The film cartridge was empty. She checked it twice, then turned the camera over and opened the film door. The rollers were dry and gray. Nothing remained inside but a curled strip of black backing paper.

The photograph slid from the front slot while she was holding the camera.

Iris did not drop it. Dropping things in the embalming room created avoidable damage, and she had spent too long teaching herself not to damage anything. Still, the photograph landed crooked on the desk, and she left it there until the image began to emerge.

At first it showed only a pale blur. Then the room came into focus.

It was the preparation room downstairs. The green tile, the stainless-steel table, the cabinet with its dented left door. The photograph had been taken from near the sink, facing the embalming table.

A body lay beneath the overhead lamp.

Iris leaned closer.

The body wore the dark blue cardigan she had put on that morning. One sleeve had ridden up, revealing the thin silver watch she had inherited from her mother. The face was turned away, but the hair was hers: brown, cut at the jaw, with the uneven section over the right ear she kept meaning to have fixed.

The date appeared along the bottom border in narrow gray letters.

OCTOBER 18.

Seven days from now.

She examined the picture for a hidden reflection, a projection, some trick of light. The body’s left hand rested beside the hip. A dark line marked the throat, though it might have been a shadow from the lamp. The preparation room door stood open in the background. Beyond it, the basement corridor was empty.

The image continued to darken. Nothing changed.

Iris picked up the camera and inspected it under the desk lamp. The metal casing was scratched but intact. She checked the film compartment again. Empty. She pressed the shutter. The camera clicked, whirred, and produced nothing.

“That is encouraging,” she said aloud.

Her voice sounded too close in the room.

She called Tomás Reyes because he understood cameras and because he had known her father well enough to be difficult about him. Tomás arrived forty minutes later in his county sedan, carrying a camera bag and a paper cup of coffee he had forgotten to drink. He wore his crime-scene jacket over a gray shirt, and rain had darkened the shoulders.

“Did you touch it?” he asked.

“The photograph or the camera?”

“Either.”

“I picked up both.”

He gave her the look he used when relatives moved bodies before he could photograph them. It was not a reprimand exactly. Iris trusted him less when he was gentle.

He placed the coffee on a stack of old property records and took the photograph by its edges. His expression changed only after he had studied the border.

“You recognize the room,” Iris said.

“I recognize the date.”

“That was not my question.”

“No.” He turned the photo toward the lamp. “The room is yours. The body is—”

“Mine, yes.”

He looked at her then, not at the photograph. “Could someone have made this digitally?”

“Not with a Polaroid.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Iris took the photograph from him. The surface was still faintly warm. “It could be a staged image. Someone photographed a mannequin wearing my clothes.”

“Your hair?”

“A wig.”

“The watch?”

“A watch.”

“That’s a strong defense.”

“It is a list of possibilities.”

Tomás moved around the study, checking the window latch, the door, the narrow gap behind the filing cabinets. He did not ask permission. Iris followed him because she wanted to see what he noticed, not because she thought there would be a person hiding among her father’s tax records.

The window was locked. The study door opened onto the main corridor, which had a brass bell on the front desk and a camera above the entrance. The camera had been broken for six months. Iris had ordered a replacement and forgotten to install it.

Tomás saw the empty mounting bracket. “You have no security system?”

“We have a lock.”

“You have a funeral home.”

“Most of our visitors are invited.”

He returned to the desk. “Who knew you had this?”

“My father. He’s dead.”

“Iris.”

She folded the photograph into the open ledger, then stopped before the crease reached the image. “I haven’t told anyone about it.”

Tomás glanced at the camera. “Maybe don’t tell anyone yet.”

The suggestion irritated her because it agreed with her own conclusion. She put the photo in an evidence envelope from the preparation room and labeled it with the date, time, and location. Tomás watched her write.

“You’re treating it as evidence,” he said.

“I’m treating it as an object with an unknown origin.”

“And the body?”

“A proposed outcome.”

He did not smile. “You should call Ruth.”

“I should not call Ruth.”

“She’s a deputy.”

“She will ask whether I have a suspect.”

“Do you?”

Iris looked at the photograph through the envelope. The body on the table seemed less like an answer than an accusation. “No.”

“Then she’ll ask whether you feel threatened.”

“I feel inconvenienced.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“It is more useful.”

He stayed another hour, photographing the camera, the desk, the envelope, and the room around them. Before leaving, he put his coffee in the trash without having taken a drink.

That night Iris slept in the apartment above the funeral home with the envelope on the kitchen table. She woke at 3:12 to the old building settling around her. The camera was in the sink beneath a dish towel. She had put it there before bed, though she could not remember deciding to do so.

In the morning, she found a second photograph protruding from its front slot.

The image showed the back staircase. A figure in the blue cardigan lay twisted on the landing, one arm caught between the railings. The head was turned toward the camera. The face was hers.

The border read OCTOBER 17.

Iris carried the photograph to the sheriff’s substation in a plastic sleeve. Ruth Ellery was at the front counter, arguing with a copier that had jammed around a summons.

“Tell me you have a warrant,” Ruth said without looking up.

“I have a photograph.”

“That’s worse.”

Ruth read the date, then the image. Her mouth tightened. She asked Iris where it came from, who had access to the funeral home, whether anyone had threatened her, and whether Tomás had handled the camera. Iris answered in order. Ruth wrote everything down.

When Iris finished, Ruth shut the notebook.

“Stalking,” she said. “That’s what I can file.”

“It isn’t stalking if the person has not been seen.”

“It’s someone sending you images of yourself dead. I’m comfortable calling it stalking.”

“And the camera?”

“We’ll bag it.”

“It may produce another photograph.”

“Then we’ll bag that too.”

Ruth reached for the evidence sleeve. Iris held on.

For years, Iris had managed grief by giving it a container: a casket, a form, a date, a signature. The second photograph had arrived without asking for any of those things. It offered no body to identify, no cause of death to determine. It only narrowed the future by one day.

She let go of the sleeve.

Ruth took it, and the camera began to whir inside its plastic evidence bag.