Somebody Knows
They think the story ends with the trip. Then a camera shutter snaps across the street.
They thought the story ended when they got home.
It was after dark on their first night back. Bob's garage door was open, the light inside was on, and the two of them were wheeling a large rolling bin up the driveway toward it. The bin was full. Some of what was in it had fallen out on the way up the drive and was lying on the concrete, green, in small banded stacks. Larry was standing in the garage doorway waving them in.
Across the street, in the empty lot facing the house, a man was standing at the edge of the pavement with a camera raised to his eye. He was bald, heavily bearded and wearing a brown leather jacket. He had a long lens on the camera, and it was pointed directly at the garage.
The shutter clicked.
The sound carries on a quiet street. Bob froze halfway up the driveway with his hands on the bin. Bill turned around to look for where it had come from.
Larry was the one who found him first. Larry looked across the street, past the parking lot lines and the curb stops, at the man holding the lens, and Bill says he could tell from the dog's face that Larry knew exactly who it was.
For the first time all season, Larry looked worried.
Nobody has said who the man is. Nobody has said what is in the photograph or where it went. Rocky Rivers has a way of not asking questions, and until this summer it had always worked.
To be continued.
All of Chapter 1: The Vegas Trip →