The Camera Never Lies by David Rawlings

Author:David Rawlings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2019-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

The tiny bell above the door didn’t jingle. With a slight tinkle and then a metallic crunch, it smashed against the freshly painted white of the doorframe as Daniel stormed into the film lab.

Simon stood behind the counter, his hands behind his back, that infuriating smile pasted across his face as he rose on the balls of his feet.

Daniel flung the envelope onto the counter. The photographs spilled and skidded across the glass top. “What do you call this?”

Simon looked down at them, a concerned sadness in his eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean.” He picked up each photograph in white-gloved fingers and slipped them back into the envelope.

Daniel breathed hard and ragged, fueled by an anger that had percolated with every step from Crossroads. “You know exactly what I mean.”

Simon removed one glove and lifted a last photo from the glass with a fingernail. A waft of sharp chemicals drifted from the processing unit behind him. The smell of something developing. He offered it to Daniel—the group photograph. “But these are the people behind your success.”

Daniel’s blood boiled in his ears. “Some things in these photographs didn’t happen! Couldn’t happen! It must have been you, using Photoshop in some kind of blackmail attempt. Who are you working with? Give me a name! Someone from another practice? Or is it my wife?”

Simon brushed off Daniel’s anger like a bothersome fly, and then he leaned forward on splayed fingers. “The camera never lies, Daniel.”

There was a pause in the universe, a moment in time as Daniel’s subconscious stirred. The phrase from Gramps’s camera again. The pounding in his chest checked itself, and he threw his head from side to side to shake off a growing dizziness. “Why do you keep saying that?”

Simon smiled as he made his way around the counter and then took Daniel by the elbow. He stood proudly to one side of the frames. “You see all these people here? They all came charging into my shop claiming things weren’t as they seemed.”

He waved a hand to the framed altercation between the balding, ruddy man and the woman in the San Francisco sweatshirt. “He told me the girl at work needed a mentor.” A woman with cake falling from her mouth. “She was convincing everyone around her she was sticking to her diet.” A man engrossed in whatever swept across his phone’s screen while his wife slept next to him. “It was okay to watch some clips to spice up his marriage.” A sick child in a hospital bed. “This child could be in the hospital for any reason.”

Simon placed a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, his breath warming his ear. “These are people who need to know truth, and they share something in common. They’re hiding secrets that would be better out in the open where they could be dealt with. Surely you of all people would appreciate that?”

Daniel walked the length of the wall, now looking beyond the faces at the backgrounds. Telltale smoke curling from behind a back.

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