Chapter 27 Nicola
CONNOR KILLED THEM.
That’s all I can think as I hurdle up the stairs.
I need to find Greer, tell her about the evidence I discovered, but when I reach the landing, I’m surprised to find the door to my room open.
Didn’t we close it when we went downstairs for breakfast?
Careful not to make any noise, I edge closer, peer around the frame.
Greer’s standing next to my bed.
“Oh, thank god,” I exhale, stepping into the room. “I was looking for you. I need to show you—”
“What’s this?”
It’s only then that I notice her bewildered expression and what she’s holding in her hands: a camera. One of those disposable models that was popular in the nineties. The kind that wouldn’t have flagged the electronics detection software on Connor’s tablet. “Where did you find that?”
“Under your bed.”
Under my bed? How could it have gotten there? I brush the thought away; it’s not important now. “Listen, I need to show you something.” I reach into my pocket. “I found this downstairs in—”
“What’s that?”
The hair on the back of my neck prickles.
I slowly turn to find Connor standing in the hallway, eyes fixed on the camera.
What should I do? If he suspects that I know what he’s done, there’s no telling how he’ll react.
The safest thing I can do right now is act like nothing’s wrong; that’s always worked for me before.
“It was under the bed,” Greer says.
“Is it yours?” Connor asks me.
I shake my head.
He brushes past me, and when his elbow grazes my ribs, I can’t help jerking to the side.
He narrows his gaze but doesn’t mention it.
Maybe he thinks my response is because of what happened downstairs, him ripping that envelope away.
God, please let him think that’s all. “This must’ve belonged to Zach,” he says.
He’s standing next to Greer now—so close I want to scream, but instead, I dig my fingernails into my palm, focusing on the bright sting. Stay calm, Nic. Stay calm.
“He probably wanted to include photos in his book. See?” She points to the fine print on the front of the camera. “It’s black-and-white film.”
“Wait.” He reaches for the camera, lifts it to his face. “Is that blood?”
Blood? He shows Greer, then flips the camera around so I can see the spray across the yellow wrapper. It’s the same color as the mysterious stain on my sketchbook. Could that be blood, too? What the hell happened in here?
“We need to find out what’s on that film,” Greer says.
“That’s not a good idea.” Connor sets the camera on the desk. “If the police are called in, won’t they consider that evidence tampering? You don’t want to be involved in a possible felony, especially right before your father’s hearing.”
Whatever’s on that film probably implicates Connor, which explains why he doesn’t want it developed. If Greer doesn’t back off, he’ll start feeling trapped, and trapped men are dangerous men.
I jump in. “He’s right. Besides, we don’t have any way of processing the film. We’d need a developing tank, the right chemicals, a changing bag. Without the correct equipment, we’ll just end up ruining it.”
“We have all that,” she says. “In the storage room, from the nature photography workshop.”
He hesitates, then says, “Yes, but it’s been down there awhile.”
“We bought it last year. It’s fine, I’m sure.”
Connor says nothing. We need to get out of here—now.
“Great,” I say. “Connor, if you know where everything is, can you bring it up here?”
He frowns. “It’s buried under a lot of junk. It would take a while.”
“We’re not going anywhere.”
He turns to Greer, who nods in agreement.
Reluctantly, he leaves the room. “You don’t remember—” Greer starts to say, but I silence her with a finger to my lips.
Her brow furrows in confusion, but she stops talking.
I wait until Connor’s footsteps have faded before rushing over to the desk and grabbing the camera. “We need to leave.”
“Leave? What do you mean?”
“Connor’s the murderer.”
“Wait, what? Why would you think that? Did he say something to you?”
“He asked me to come to his room,” I lie, not wanting to admit I broke in. “He had some questions for me, but while I was in there, I found this.” I exhume the necklace from my pocket, holding it up so she can see the gemstone. “Does this look familiar?”
She leans close, studies it, but then shakes her head. “Should it?”
“It’s Steffani’s. Why does he have a missing girl’s necklace in his room?”
I wait for the moment of impact, when she realizes what this evidence must mean, but it never comes.
Instead, she says, “It could’ve fallen off.
Look, the clasp’s broken.” She points to where a section’s snapped off.
“Connor probably found it, then set it aside in case anyone came to claim it. He sometimes uses his room as the lost and found.”
“Which one do you think’s more likely? That her necklace fell off without her noticing, or that someone ripped it off right before she disappeared?
Look at this.” I produce the driver’s license.
The moment Greer reads the name printed on it, she stiffens; her mouth pinches into a tight line.
“This was in the firepit. Steffani couldn’t have thrown it in because Connor escorted her straight upstairs.
This looks, to me, like someone was trying to dispose of evidence. ”
A clatter from downstairs. “We can talk about it later. Right now, we need to get somewhere safe. We can reach town before sunset, turn this”—I retrieve the camera—“over to the police. The trails might not be well marked, but it’d be more dangerous to stay here.”
I lace my fingers through hers, try tugging her toward the door, but she doesn’t budge. “Nic, I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make sense. Connor wouldn’t kill anyone.”
I think about the way he forcefully pried my fingers off that envelope. “I don’t think you realize what he’s capable of.”
“I’ve known him for a long time—”
“You also knew your father for a long time; you never guessed the truth about him.”
She yanks her hand away. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing.” God, I don’t want to fight about this. “Nothing. It’s just maybe when you’re too close to something, to someone, you have a hard time seeing them for what they really are.”
“I’m not the only one with that problem. You never guessed what your father was, either.”
“You’re right.” I shake the necklace. “But this time, I figured it out. We have jewelry that belongs to a dead girl—the same evidence you used to arrest my dad.”
Why can’t she see it? It’s exactly the same as back in Oliante.
“We don’t know that Steffani’s dead,” she argues. “And even if she is, he couldn’t have done it.”
Why does she keep defending him? We have the necklace, the driver’s license; she had my dad convicted with less.
But that was my dad, someone who didn’t matter to her, whereas Connor…
I recall the photo in his wallet, how he gripped her hip—possessively, the way a boyfriend might. But that would be ridiculous.
Wouldn’t it?
What if they’ve been in a relationship this entire time?
What if she pity-fucked me, feeling guilty about how her show ruined my life, and then afterward, when they were alone together, provided him with a blow-by-blow of how our night had gone?
It wouldn’t be the first time a woman’s used me to entice a very male, very straight partner.
Spice up a romance that’s gone a little stale.
The storage room door slams.
“Please,” I beg. “Please come with me.”
Please choose me over him, I want to say, but she just shakes her head.
What now? I could leave, but it would be almost a full day before I reach town.
If I reach town. What could he do while I’m gone—to the other club members, to Greer?
If I stay here, I can at least try to protect her.
Footsteps on the stairs. I scan the room for something that could be used as a weapon before settling on the hobby knife on my desk, the one used to sharpen pencils.
I covertly shift it into my pocket, then position myself in front of Greer.
The footsteps grow louder and louder, my heart rate ticking up the closer he comes. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers to me.
He pushes open the door, arms loaded with gallon jugs of chemicals, a black fabric bag draped over his shoulder. “Here,” he says. “Give me the camera, and we’ll see if any of this still works.”
He reaches for it, but I wrench it away.
“I’m the one with a BFA; I should develop the film.”
I might not be a professional photographer, but I’ve taken enough undergraduate classes to feel confident. If we leave him alone with the camera, he’ll destroy whatever’s inside. All he’d need to do is expose the film to light.
“Not a chance,” he says. “I’ve done this thousands of times.”
Maybe I should let him destroy the evidence; after all, if we never see what’s in those images, he’ll have no reason to come after us.
We can feign ignorance and go our separate ways.
But what if, as Greer suggested, Steffani isn’t dead?
What if she’s alone and injured, or what if he has her locked up somewhere?
Letting him go would be the same as leaving her to die.
I match his glare. “Then you know how easy it is to make a mistake.”
“How about this?” Greer says, clearly trying to defuse the tension. “The bathroom’s large enough for all of us to fit inside. We can develop the film together, make sure no mistakes are made.”
A shudder erupts across my skin at the thought of being trapped in that tiny room with Connor, but she’s right. I nod my assent, and after a moment’s hesitation, so does he. We shuffle into the bathroom—Greer perching herself on the edge of the tub, Connor and me on either side of the sink.
I watch while he peels off the wrapper and cracks the back of the camera open, changing bag at the ready.
While he loads the film onto the reel, I mix the dilutions.
The entire time, I’m painfully conscious of how close he’s standing to me—how easy it would be for him to snap my neck, slam my forehead into the mirror.
Every time he shifts closer, pouring in the developer, agitating the film, my hand reaches for the hobby knife.
He checks the watch on his wrist. “Five minutes. That sound all right to you?”
I nod. The film goes through the stop bath, then the fixer.
The minutes stretch as water crashes into the canister, rinsing the negatives.
Greer offers me a reassuring smile from across the bathroom, but it does nothing to alleviate my fear.
Finally, the faucet’s switched off. Droplets cling to the film.
Connor uses a washcloth to wipe them dry before revealing the finished product.
The images are perfectly clear.
Each orange-tinted square contains a different club member: Hannah first, then Ros, Imogen, Kemy, and Connor. There’s even one of Steffani, captured through the crack in her door. “Fuck,” Greer murmurs, rubbing her forehead. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I can, but…”
I understand what she means. The notebooks were bad, but this feels like an entirely different level of offense.
The images switch to ones of her, then me—so many photos of me.
It’s surreal, trying to work out all the times Zach must’ve snuck away to take these photos from upstairs windows or around corners.
The next one is of a crumpled sheet of paper: the portrait of not-Claire still on my desk. “When exactly did you draw that?” Greer asks.
“Late, after midnight.” Which means these next photos must’ve been taken right before Zach was murdered. I wrap my fingers around the hobby knife.
Connor shifts the strip farther up, so we can inspect the final images. It takes me a moment to decipher what the shadows are:
They’re me.
“What the…” I reach for the negatives, to take a closer look, but he pulls them away. That can’t be me. The last time I saw Zach was downstairs in the kitchen, when he drunkenly sobbed on my shoulder. And yet, there I am: negative-white eyes widened in shock.
In the next image, my eyes have narrowed. My mouth has unlatched, and the inside glows with a terrifying light.
Dread fills my chest, as I realize what must’ve happened. Zach came upstairs that night and, finding my room empty, realized he had the perfect chance to search my luggage, capture some more photos for his book. I returned from the balcony, drunk, and stumbled in on him snapping away.
One more image, and as Connor lifts the strip to the light, my blood seems to thicken, then stop entirely. Shadow hands reach for the camera. My face blurs in violent outrage. I’m lunging for the camera, attacking the man holding it. Attacking Zach.
These negatives don’t incriminate Connor.
They incriminate me.