Chapter 11: Print 212

By nine that night Lyle's kitchen table was covered in photographs, and Lyle had bought a label maker.

"I'm not going to lose a single one," he said. "Evidence needs a label."

"It needs a ledger," I said, and I took a spiral notebook from the junk drawer.

I numbered every print in the corner and wrote the date and place beside it.

I am a bookkeeper.

Nobody gets to hand me hundreds of unaccounted things.

Zach sat at the end of the table with Gus asleep on his chest, and he did what I told him.

"Print 31. The pharmacy on Maple. Print 32. The pharmacy on Maple, again."

"She buys a lot of diapers," Zach said.

"She bought a lot of prenatal vitamins," I said. "Print 33."

Someone had photographed my whole pregnancy.

My walks, my doctor's building, the grocery store where I had cried in front of the cereal.

Lyle ran the label maker, and it chirped each time he pressed a key.

"Who pays a man to take pictures of a woman buying cereal?" Zach asked.

"Someone who wants a file," I said. "They didn't know what they'd need, so they took everything."

Print 212 was different.

It showed the parking garage under the stadium at night, under yellow lights.

A man with a long camera bag stood by a white pillar.

In front of him stood a woman in a cream coat with long blonde hair over one shoulder, handing him a thick envelope.

I knew the coat.

She had worn it to the hospital.

"That's Lacey," I said.

"That's the same photographer," Lyle said. "Look at the bag. Look at the strap."

"What's the date?"

I turned the print over.

On the back, in a tiny gray stamp: *August 14.*

"That was before Scottsdale," Zach said slowly.

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