I expected to see Brett and Louise but just not quite so soon. They were at my door not an hour after I left the Captain's office.

"Why the hell didn't you come to us?" Louise asked in an angry voice. Louise was about thirty pounds overweight, so could appear over bearing. That and the fact that she tended to get right up in your face when she was angry.

"You better back the fuck off bitch, or I will clean your clock. You might be a cop, but you are on my turf now. This ain't business it's personal you can't hide behind that fucking badge."

She took a step back and tried to lower the temperature in the room Brett spoke next. "Abba me and you go back a ways, not so far as you and Charlie, but a ways, why did you go to the Captain? It made it look like you didn't trust us."

"That's because I don't trust you politic playing partner. I tried to tell your bitch partner that Charlie's personal life might be the motive, but she went into protect the department politics mode. She is obviously an ambitious bitch. She wasn't going to look at anything but his old cases. Most of those cases, I worked on as well as Charlie. I would have heard something, if some punkass from the old days was after us. It just don't play that way."

"So how did you find these guys?" he asked.

"Just like I told the captain, Charlie asked if I had ever heard of them. I figured he was looking for some dirt on them for a reason. Probably something to do with the paid favors Charlie did for the fringe people.

"Fringe people?" Louise asked. She was fuming, but fighting it so that she could get back in the conversation.

"People whose activities are on the line, not quite illegal but damn close. Charlie was their go to guy. In and of itself nothing he did for them was illegal, it was just misuse of his badge. It was more a procedural thing than a real violation. That's how he rationalized it."

"So you think it was one of those things gone bad. These two found out he was checking on them and braced him?"

"No I think they were making their bones in the wrong place. More than likely they were moving into the extortion business, and Charlie was in the way."

"Could be?"

"Do you think they are connected?" Louise asked.

"They could be, or they might be just be wannabes. Either way I expect you will find some solid connection to Charlie, if you look hard enough. But dear god Brett make sure they actually are the right ones, who knows how many people Charlie pissed off with his favors."

There were more things said, but none of it was worthy of being remembered. They didn't question my lie. I hadn't expected them to do so. It was a well built lie, one that should pass even the deepest scrutiny.

After they left I decided to make an image with my big camera. I needed the practice. I sat a pair of old running shoes on the rail of my rear deck. I tool my time and was sure I had it the way I wanted. Only after I was sure did I go into the house to load the film. I sat at the kitchen table, where I loaded the homemade cardboard film holder into the homemade black bag. I also slipped the box of 4x5 film inside, followed by the trimming jig and scissors.

Once I put my hands inside the bag it was totally light proof. I trimmed the film sheet, then loaded it into the cardboard holder. I removed it and my hands from the bag but only after I had closed the film box to be sure that it was light tight.

I loaded the camera at the kitchen table, then removed the dark slide. Once I had the back of the camera shut it was ready to shoot. I went outside, where I carefully measured the light and guessed the distance from camera to shoes. After all that preparation shooting the picture was anti climactic.

When it was all done, I returned to the kitchen table where I slipped the camera into the dark bag along with my blacked out peanut butter jar. Moving the film from the camera and holder to the jar was simple.

Developing the film was also simple but a little time consuming. After all the steps involved and about thirty minutes later the negative was ready for viewing. I was surprised by how good it looked. Instead of the tiny little negatives from a 35mm camera, which one can not really get a feel for, the negative from the old Polaroid camera was exactly like a small photograph. I could see all the detail but in reverse. I couldn't wait to scan it.