Paul was still breathing heavily. "I thought you were going to kill me."
"I was not going to kill you. You just startled me." I was rubbing my hand across my face. "Come here." Paul got to within a foot of me and I pulled him closer, threw my arms around him, patted his back a couple of times. "I wasn't going to kill you. Now get your games."
As I pushed him away, he looked at the hole in the wall. "Mom's going to love that."
"Yeah, no doubt."
Paul studied me for a moment and said, "Angie's right."
"What do you mean, Angie's right?"
"You're turning into some sort of crazy person." He went into the rec room, grabbed three game cartridges, and met me again at the base of the stairs. "I'll see you in the morning."
"Okay," I said. "I'll see you then." And he mounted the steps, two at a time. I heard him go out the front door, but I couldn't be sure he'd locked it, so I ran up, threw the deadbolt just as Andy's mother's car backed out of the drive and headed off.
Back in the darkroom, I dried half a dozen prints with Carpington's face fully visible. In the study I found a regular letter envelope for the negatives, and a larger one for the eight-by-ten glossies. I dug out the phone book and opened up the Oakwood pages to the C's, running my finger down the column until I encountered "Carpington R."
I glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten. I dialed.
After the third ring, a woman answered. "Hello?"
"Hi," I said. "Is this Mrs. Carpington?"
"Yes, it is."
"Sorry for calling so late, but I wondered if I could speak to Councilman Carpington." Make it sound like official business, I figured.
"I'm sorry, but he's not in. He's at a council meeting this evening, and they can run pretty late."
"A council meeting? That's going on now?"
"That's right. It started around six-thirty."
"At the municipal offices?"
"Yes. Of course. Would you like to leave a message? I'm sure Roger would be happy to get back to you, if not tonight, certainly by tomorrow."
"No," I said. "That's okay. Maybe I'll see if I can find him over at the meeting."
"Suit yourself," she said, and hung up.
I took the negatives and tucked them into the hull of my still-unassembled Seaview submarine model, then carefully glued the bottom in place, sealing them inside. And once again, I scooped everything back into Stefanie Knight's purse and took it with me, as well as the brown oversized envelope with the prints of Roger Carpington's rendezvous with Stefanie. From the front-hall table I grabbed my cell and slid it into my jacket pocket, double-checked that the front door was securely locked behind me, and went out to the car.
The municipal building, designed with as much style and imagination as the new developments in Oakwood, sat across from the mall where Angie had been picked up for passing counterfeit money. It was a redbrick-and-black-metal eyesore, sitting on the landscape like a big shoebox. There was a large parking lot around back, but it was mostly empty. Most of the town's employees were home and presumably getting ready for bed at this hour, but there were a handful of cars, belonging no doubt to the mayor and members of the town council and a few town administrators, plus a few taxpayers with some particular axe to grind or request to make.
I parked, took the brown envelope with me, and walked into the building, following the signs to the council chamber, a high-ceilinged room with light fixtures hanging from long wires, a slightly sloped floor, theaterlike, to allow spectators a chance to watch the council members in action, and two banks of slightly angled desks for the council members, with one in the middle for the mayor, forming a V at the front of the room.
There couldn't have been more than twenty constituents watching the proceedings, plus a reporter from The Suburban taking notes, so my entrance was observed by nearly everyone who glanced up and watched me walk down the aisle and slip quietly into a seat.
There were six council members on either side of the mayor for a total of twelve, with nameplates in front of them. Roger Carpington, portly and balding, in a gray suit and tie, was seated at the far right end. With his index finger he pushed his glasses further up on his nose.
The mayor, a short woman with bluish hair in her late sixties, was speaking. "I think the next speaker on our list is Lucille Belfountain."
A woman in the front row got up and approached a microphone at the foot of the aisle.
"Uh, yes, hello?" she said. "Can you hear me? Is this mike working?"
"We can hear you fine," the mayor said patiently.