One Grave Less

at Cameron’s shoes as Gregory spoke. They had gotten soaked in the rain as he ran for the door. It was a shame. If she wasn’t mistaken, the blucher-style crocodile-skin shoes cost eighteen hundred dollars. She wondered if he was still married. Married men in bureaucratic jobs didn’t spend that much money on shoes.
    Frank caught her looking at the shoes. She smiled at him.
    Cameron’s clothes were nice too. Expensive. Diane decided he must have gotten a divorce.
    David came through the door just as Gregory finished bringing Cameron up to current events. He shook Cameron’s hand and pulled up a chair.
    “I just heard from Hannah Payne. Remember her, our photographer in South America? I just got an e-mail from her,” said David. He sounded excited.
    Diane was suddenly alert. News. Something. Maybe a piece of information they didn’t have.
    “Do you remember how she took photograph after photograph of the massacre that day?”
    Gregory, Diane, and Steven nodded. Cameron hadn’t been there. It was not his week to visit. He had come later, after the bodies were removed.
    “What did she say?” asked Diane.
    “Simone had asked her for all the photographs from the massacre she took that day. She said she mailed Simone a CD of them five months ago. She hasn’t heard from her since.”
    “You think that is the package?” said Cameron. “A CD?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s quite a storm out there,” he said. “I had to land in some place called Vidalia and drive up here. Traffic at the Atlanta airport was shut down. Does Rosewood have an airport?”
    Diane looked at him, wondering about the non sequitur. “No,” she said.
    “Hannah hadn’t really looked at the photographs she took,” said David, who also looked at Cameron a bit puzzled. “She just put them on a CD and stored them.”
    “Why weren’t they part of the investigative record?” asked Diane.
    “That’s a good question,” said Gregory. “Surely they were part of the record, though I never saw them. The group from the UN did a thorough job. They interviewed all of us for hours,” he said.
    “David, do you think that’s what’s in the package?” said Diane.
    “I don’t know. There’s something kind of wrong about it. There are more copies available. Why would this particular copy be so important? It’s not a one-of-a-kind set of photographs. That may be part of it, but I’m thinking there is more. Simone got them five months ago. Why didn’t she send them then? It wouldn’t have taken her this long to go through them.”
    Diane stood and paced a moment. She turned around. “I wonder why Simone requested the photographs. For whatever reason, perhaps it was something she saw in the photographs that made her want to open Oliver’s boxes, and that started this whole round of investigation,” said Diane.
    “Perhaps there was something she thought she remembered,” offered David, “but wasn’t sure. With Hannah’s photographs, she could check her memory.”
    “Unfortunately we don’t have Hannah’s photographs here,” said Cameron.
    “We will soon,” said David. “Hannah is e-mailing—”
    A loud crack of thunder reverberated through the building and the lights went out.
    “Damn,” said Gregory.
    “There goes the computing power,” said David. “They’ll shut down automatically and won’t come back up until the main electricity comes back on. They don’t take from the generators.” He shook his head and stroked the dark fringe of hair that was a horseshoe circle around his balding head. “I was really hoping we all could brainstorm over the photographs. I know that was going to be painful,” he said, “but we need to figure out if Simone is right.”
    Diane felt very relieved that David’s computers had shut down. She couldn’t face those photographs right now. She wasn’t sure she ever could. From the look on the others’ faces, they couldn’t either.
    “The generators will kick in in a moment,” said Diane.
    Just as she spoke the lights flickered and came up again. “We have a lot of experiments and other things going on in the building that require constant electricity,” said Diane. “David keeps his computers out of the loop to save on electricity.”
    “How long will your generators hold out?” said Cameron.
    He appeared to Diane to be uncomfortable, disconcerted.
    “Several hours,” she said.
    “You look like you’re not too good with severe weather,” Frank said to