Free A Photographic Death by Judi Culbertson Page A

The photos that showed people rowing on the Avon ambushed me with sadness and guilt. Why hadn’t I been paying attention to what truly mattered? I’d been so anxious to capture the two old ladies in frilly white hats and the young man at the oars that I’d ignored everything else.
    I plowed on. One photo, just one, seemed to hold a woman in a white uniform at the edge of the frame.
    My hand was shaking again as I cut the strip of negatives to fit in the enlarger. Why had I taken only one of her and so many of that damn statue of Shakespeare? The one photo I had would be blurred. The woman had evidently turned her head when she realized she was in my sights. She must have been constantly aware of where I was, what I was doing, knowing when to approach the girls. No one but me would have paid attention to a kindly nanny talking to them.
    I placed the negative strip in the slot, turned on the machine, and waited. Come on, come on. The red light buzzed above my head, and I breathed in the chemicals. Waiting for the images to develop on the paper was excruciating. One precious hour was already gone.
    When there was enough deep contrast, I took the photo through the steps of stop, fix, water. Almost there. I prepared myself to be disappointed. Discoloration could have crept in or white spots speckling everything. The woman could be too blurry to be identifiable. There were a hundred ways to go wrong, and only one to go right.
    I let myself look down at the eight-by-ten photo. The nanny was off to the right. Dark curly hair. A white uniform with a cardigan around her shoulders. Some blur when she realized my camera was focused on her? At least I had her profile. But I was shocked. She was so young and pretty. I had been imagining her as a caricature of a nanny, somewhere past middle age and using a falsely sweet voice to entice little children.
    She looked barely forty. Had she been a desperate childless woman masquerading as a nanny to find a child of her own? I had heard of kidnappers dressing as nurses and stealing babies from hospitals, but what had happened in those cases was discovered almost at once. The disappearance of a child from a park with a river was open to interpretation.
    I had captured only a corner of the stroller, only enough to see how high its plaid sides were.
    Moving rapidly back to the machine, I enlarged her face further. I knew it would be grainy but I had no alternative.
    A dryer in the corner of the darkroom, shaped like a pasta maker, looked newer than the other equipment. I knew it dried resin-coated photo paper more quickly than hanging the print up the old-fashioned way. I hesitated. I had never used one. Suppose I singed this picture? Yet time was an issue. If Annalisa Merck arrived early and was told I was waiting inside for her . . . I didn’t want to imagine the scene.
    Holding my breath, I slipped the paper through the narrow slot and waited. It came out the other side clear and dry and gave a better sense of the woman. Her nose was sharp and distinct. There was a dark spot below her lip that could have been a beauty mark or a flaw in the film. But I was sure I was looking at the woman who I now believed had stolen my daughter. Jane’s arguments about the timing and the way a normal person would have reacted had finally persuaded me. The plaid stroller she was resting her hand against seemed to clinch it.
    We’ve got you now.
    Was there time to print up a photo of Hannah and Caitlin? Caitlin had been wearing red corduroy pants and a striped shirt with a smiling goldfish appliquéd on the front. If I’d let her, she would have worn the shirt every day. I wanted that photo.
    But I heard voices in the hall outside the door. It could have been anyone, just students passing, but I felt a flare of panic. I had what I’d come for. I had to get out. Covering the two prints I had made with tissue paper and wrapping the negative strips quickly, I slipped everything into my woven bag. Then I