Incriminating Polaroids

I had been staring at the photograph so long it was just a blurry smudge wobbling between my fingers. I tried to will my hand to stop shaking, but instead the tremor traveled up my arm and embedded itself in my core. I turned my attention back to the photo that I had retrieved from my vintage Polaroid moments earlier.

It had only just begun to develop, the image still fading into existence, the mild chemical stink of the development process still clinging to the film, the photo still pinched in the exit chute in the front of the bulky camera perched on top of my bookshelf. I set the photo on one of the shelves and stared at it, trying to make out any details at all.

It was a dark scene, with most of the photograph just showing a blob of deep blackness. The left edge of the photo had the washed out, inverted silhouette of the side of someone's head, their ear and jaw protruding from a mess of wild hair. The flash had gone off and everything that wasn't black was nearly white, except for a strange glowing orb in the distance.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It read 3:57 AM and despite my exhaustion I knew there was no way I was going to get any sleep. I had been yanked from my slumber by a noise, and my groggy investigative trip to the front window in the living room had caused me to discover the photo hanging out of my camera. My heart jumped as another sudden sound, a tiny click, echoed softly in my house, sending a shiver down my spine.

In a flash, my door burst in, swinging violently on its hinges as armed officers streamed into my house, leading with their guns at the ready. They moved quickly and several immediately trained their weapons on me, yelling for me to keep my hands where they could see them while two men moved forward swiftly and before I could make sense of the scene they had forcefully twisted my arms into their restraining device. It hurt. Everything heart. Their yelling stung my ears, their fingers dug deep into my muscles, and the cuffs clamped painfully around my wrists.

My heart pounded furiously, my head was throbbing. "What?" I managed weakly, my throat dry. I looked around at the various foreign faces in my home, trying to see if any of their expressions could shed some light on the situation.

A sharp, curt woman in a business suit approached while the two holding my arms jostled me viciously. She held up another developed Polaroid photo, nearly shoving it in my face. "Photos for your album?" She sneered, glancing past me at the camera up on the bookshelf.

I tried to focus my eyes on the new photo. This one was much more colorful than the one I'd found. It was a grizzly, awful scene. A woman lying on the floor next to a bed with wet, shiny blood on every surface, still gushing from freshly sliced gashes in her disrobed flesh. I gasped and closed my eyes, turning away. The woman stepped around me and the officers holding me and stared at the photo I'd left on the shelf, examining it silently.

Eventually she began barking orders and cops started dusting, photographing, and documenting my living room. My home... a crime scene? Who was the woman? Whose ear was in the photo on my bookshelf? I glanced at the woman in the suit and noticed her eyes darting between the photo and my head, presumably checking the shape of my ears. Did they match? I wasn't even sure. My untamed bed hair certainly matched the tangled mess of hair in the photo, and the overexposed, high contrast image gave no indication of hair color.

The realization hit my gut like a sucker punch and my scalp puckered while a cold sweat pooled on my forehead. I'm going to jail, I thought. "Wait," I started, but they were already reciting my rights. Of course, I knew I couldn't just start crying that I didn't do it. They were expecting me to deny everything, and my protests had no way to help my case. The only way to improve my situation was to help the police catch the actual murderer.

My mind raced. I tried to reach back into the foggy moments since waking up. What sound had I heard that had pulled me from my dreams? Could it have been the camera going off? I looked out the window of my living room and saw the distant sodium vapor street lamp, a soft, yellow glow... Whoever was setting the camera down on the bookshelf must have accidentally taken the photo then run. But there had only been one sound. No doors slamming or...

The second sound. What had it been? It was a soft click. Could it have been someone cocking a gun? No, it had to be a latch, perhaps on a door...

I took in a sharp, sudden breath of realization and my eyes went wide. "Hey," I breathed to the woman. She was talking to a man holding a camera. "Hey!" I whispered fiercely.

She turned to face me. "Why isn't he in a patrol car yet?" she asked the men impatiently.

"Wait!" I hissed. "I think you should check my pantry." I whispered. The men started to drag me away, but the woman's eyes followed me. I bulged my eyes at her expectantly and nodded toward the kitchen.

"Hang on," she said, squinting at me. She motioned to the kitchen with her head, raising her eyebrows questioningly and I nodded furiously. She pulled a handgun from her belt and tapped a nearby officer, making hand signals at him. He nodded and drew his weapon, following her lead.

I craned my neck to follow the action but the men holding my arms wouldn't let me get a good view. I waited, holding my breath, while the woman silently pulled a small group of men and women with her into my kitchen where I lost sight of them. All of a sudden I heard the door get flung opened accompanied by a flurry of shuffling feet and booming voices. "Freeze!" and "Put your hands where we can see them!" and a lot of other instructions that had been rattled off at me earlier.

I heard a terrible amount of crying and screaming as the man wailed, "It wasn't me! I didn't do anything! Oh please tell me she's OK!" I almost wanted to believe him, but it was too over the top. It was an act. As he was led out the front door I caught a glimpse of the guy, his sulking head hanging low between broad shoulders. Even in his pajamas he looked like a military man. Strong, composed, clean shaven.

To my dismay I was still packed into the back of a squad car and taken down to the police station. It was a long night, but eventually they let me go home, just in time for a late lunch. I couldn't eat though as the sequence of events played through my mind over and over again.

They cops were hesitant to tell me too much, but I was able to piece most of it together. They had responded to a call from a neighbor reporting screams next door. At the house they found a polaroid photo of the murder scene as well as a pair of bloody pants with my wallet inside (which, unfortunately, they could not return to me since it was evidence). They immediately hurried to my house with backup.

The thing that had me curious though was... why me? Why my Polaroid camera? Who was the woman? Her face had been mutilated beyond recognition. Even her hair was so drenched in blood that I... A violent shiver ran down my spine.

My camera... I remembered now. Just a couple days earlier I had been walking through the neighborhood and... Oh no. My heart was pounding. I raced to my photo albums, pulled one out, threw it on the coffee table, and flipped through to the photo I had taken that day. I felt lightheaded. There she was. That had to be her. She and a man with long, wispy hair were holding hands in the background of the photo.

My stomach twisted into a pretzel and I collapsed back into my couch. I was going to be sick. I needed to get out. I wasn't safe. But it was too late.

"Thank you," a gruff voice grumbled from behind me. A black gloved hand snatched the Polaroid from my fingers and a dark figure moved around into my field of view. It was the man in the photo. "I thought I was going to have to burn your house to the ground, but I guess I don't need to commit arson anymore." He held a knife to my throat and I held my breath.

This is it, I realized. I'm going to die. I felt numb and distant, preparing to become the only witness to my own murder.

He dug the point of the knife into my throat. I could feel the hot, sharp pain of my skin slicing open as he pressed slowly, teasing a fatal wound from the tiny pinprick of metal. I tried to back away, sinking into the couch cushions, but he pressed in harder.

"That photo could have ruined me," he growled. I glanced up to see who it was, but he wore a mask and hood that was cinched up tightly around his face, obscuring everything but his piercing blue eyes and a wisp of bangs. Of course, I knew who he was. Even if I hadn't recognized him in the photograph before, I knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was.

"Mayor Stephens!" an authoritative woman's voice called out.

The mayor whipped around to face my front door, where the sharply dressed female cop stood, gun drawn, ready to fire.

"Drop the knife and put your hands in the air!" she commanded.

The mayor dropped the knife and I clasped a hand to my throat. He hadn't yet severed anything important, but hot blood was flowing down my neck onto my chest and the wound was burning like I'd been stung by a bee the size of a horse.

Officers roughly cuffed the mayor and hauled him away while the woman in the suit brought a first aid kit over and took a seat on my coffee table, preparing to bandage me up.

"So," I said nervously, "that was good timing."

"Sorry," she said flatly. "I should have put it together quicker." She fumbled the gauze and glanced up at my face. "I'm detective Jefferson, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, detective," I said, wincing. "So, what made you come back?"

"Well," she sighed, pulling my hand away and applying pressure with the bandage. "I suppose I can tell you a couple of details, and you can work out the rest for yourself." She pulled away the gauze and seemed satisfied at what she saw. "It didn't go too deep," she said. "I think just..." she trailed off, digging through the first aid kit. Her eyes darted back up to my face. "Anyway, the guy hiding in your pantry claimed he was kidnapped and told to wait there quietly or his wife would be killed."

"Ah," I said. "The woman in the photograph."

The detective nodded sullenly, unpackaging another bit of gauze. "Of course a lot of killers pretend to be the victim, but our guy in the closet was practically bald."

"And the accidental Polaroid showed longer hair," I said, smiling.

"Right," she said, cutting a length of medical tape.

"But how did you figure out it was the mayor?" I asked.

"That's where you got lucky. I just so happened to be investigating the mayor for something entirely different. We'd been tracking his movements and I remembered that he had been making an awful lot of trips to your neighborhood. I didn't know why, until everything fell into place tonight. I'm sure you can work out the rest." She smiled and winked at me as she pressed the last length of tape onto my neck.

I nodded. "Well," I said, leaning back in my couch and taking a deep breath. "I owe you my life. Thank you."

"I was just doing my job," she said, packing up the first aid supplies. "By the way, you pieced things together pretty quick. Have you ever considered becoming a detective?"

I shrugged. "Hadn't crossed my mind."

"Well," she pulled a card out from her suit coat and handed it to me. "Give me a call sometime. I'll have you tag along and see if we can hone your skills." She stood up to leave. "Could be fun," she teased as she walked away, shooting me one more sly grin over her shoulder.