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"I'llgo see him," the corporal said."You read the fucking sign." He pointed to the sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY IN THE LAB.

"I'm surprised," Jason Washington said as he ducked inside the counter, "that an experienced, well-educated police officer such as yourself hasn't learned that there is an exception to every rule."

"You lost your fucking mind or what, Washington?"

That's entirely possible. But the essence of my professional experience as a police officer is that there are times when you should go with a gut feeling. And this is one of those times. I have a gut feeling that if I let you out of my sight, that roll, or rolls, of film are going to turn up missing.

What the hell are these two up to?

The corporal turned surprisingly docile when they were actually standing before the lieutenant's desk. His indignation vanished.

"Sir," he said, "Detective Washington has an unusual request that I thought you should handle."

"Hello, Jason," the lieutenant said. "Long time no see. How are things out in the country? Do you miss the big city?"

"I would hate to think the lieutenant was making fun of our happy home at Bustleton and Bowler," Washington said. "Where the deer and the antelope play."

"Who, me?" the lieutenant chuckled. "What can we do for you?"

"I'm working the DeZego job," Washington said.

"So I heard."

"Sergeant Dolan of Narcotics shot a roll of film. I need prints this time yesterday."

"You got the negatives?" the lieutenant asked the corporal, who nodded. "You got it, Jason. Anything else?"

"I want to take the negatives with me."

After only a second's hesitation the lieutenant said, "Sign a receipt and they're yours."

"And I may want some blown up specially," Washington said. "Could I go in the darkroom with him?"

"Sure. That's it?"

Since your face reflected a certain attitude of unease when you heard that I want to go into the darkroom with you, Corporal, and that I'm taking the negatives with me, I w

ill go into the darkroom with you and I will take the negatives with me. What the hell is it with these photographs?

"Yes, sir. Thank you very much."

"Anytime, Jason. That's what we're here for."

The corporal became the spirit of cooperation, to the point of offering Washington a rubber apron once they entered the darkroom.

If I were a suspicious man, Washington thought, or a cynic, I might think that he has considered the way the wind is blowing, and also that if anything is amiss, he didn't do it, or at least can't blamed for it, and has now decided that Dolan can swing in the wind all by himself.

There was only one roll of film, a thirty-six-exposure roll.

"Hold it up to the light," the corporal said. "Or, if you'd like, I can make you a contact sheet. Take only a minute."

"A what?"

"A print of every negative in negative size on a piece of eightby-ten."

"Why don't you just feed the roll through the enlarger?" Washington asked.

Jason Washington was not exactly a stranger to the mysteries of a darkroom. Years before, he had even fooled around with souping and printing his own 35-mm black-and-white film. That had ended when Martha said the chemicals made the apartment smell like a sewagetreatment station and had to go. He had no trouble "reading" a negative projected through an enlarger, although the blacks came out white, and vice versa.