The Second Exposure

Samuel had left the museum lights on in the photography room, though morning had not yet entered the windows. The fluorescent tubes made every surface look provisional: the metal sink, the gray enlarger, the folders of records waiting to be boxed. Mara stood beside June with her hands flat on the worktable while Samuel slid a fresh print from its sleeve.

“It isn’t a face,” he said. “Not exactly.”

The photograph showed the pump house from the angle of the service-room window. In the foreground, Elena stood with her camera raised, her body turned toward the child below. Daniel’s small figure was visible at the bottom edge, one hand pressed to his bloody knee. Beyond Elena, reflected in the dark glass, stood another person.

The reflection was blurred by scratches, but the person held a camera.

June bent closer. “Can you enlarge it?”

“I did.” Samuel placed a second print beside the first. “The negative is damaged. Whoever handled it tried to abrade this section. But there’s enough.”

The larger image showed a hand around the camera. A narrow watchband crossed the wrist. At the base of the thumb was a pale, triangular scar.

Mara felt, before she understood, that she had seen it before.

“Thomas,” June said.

“No,” Mara answered.

Samuel looked at her. “You’re sure?”

She remembered Thomas’s hands folded over the confession he had written. His wrists were bare. She remembered the old photographs in the county newspaper office, Thomas younger by twenty years, holding a shovel during a museum fundraiser. No scar. No watch.

Then she remembered Walter’s son Raymond, standing at the edge of the pump house property while the ambulance was being turned away. She had barely noticed him that night. He had worn a square-faced watch with a pale band, and when he had lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the headlights, a white scar had crossed the base of his thumb.

“Raymond Mercer,” she said.

June straightened. “Daniel’s father.”

Samuel nodded slowly. “The man in the negative may be him. I can’t certify it.”

“But Elena could,” Mara said.

On the table between them lay the photograph of Elena taking the picture inside Thomas’s envelope. The new print made the arrangement plain. Elena had been photographing Daniel. Raymond had been photographing Elena. Thomas, somewhere beyond the frame, had watched them all.

The museum’s telephone rang in the outer office. Once. Twice. June went to answer it, but stopped when Mara’s mobile began vibrating against the table.