Read Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) for Free Online Page A

behind us.
    “Watch your head.” He ducked down a narrow flight of stairs. “This was the original servants’ quarters: The kitchen and pantry were down here. I had it made into my darkroom.”
    I followed him until we reached the bottom. Ilkka held the door for me and bowed. “Welcome to Valhalla,” he said.

 
    7
    There’s an old Van Halen album cover, a detail from a painting by an artist who went insane. The painting shows a cross section of his skull, compartments filled with gruesome Freudian nightmares and traumas—fleshless limbs, beatings, hobnailed boots.
    Ilkka’s house was like that. Upstairs was the tightly wound superego; the darkroom was like entering his reptilian forebrain. A faint, familiar smell filled the place—the vinegary scent of acetic acid; liquid gum arabic and ammonia; sulfur dioxide, silver intensifiers—chemicals used for film processing. There was an underlying odor of drains. Photos from Ilkka’s fashion spreads covered the walls: Haute couture models attacking each other with scissors; an ebony-skinned woman with a banana-yellow tree frog on her tongue; a girl slumped on a toilet seat, billows of white tulle obscuring her torso.
    All shared the extrasolar flare that had been Ilkka’s trademark—miniature novas blooming from eyes or scissors or a drop of water on a girl’s bare back. There were also a few pictures of heavy-metal bands, and some grainy black-and-white crime-scene photos.
    “That’s how I got started.” Ilkka indicated a newspaper clipping of a corpse stuffed in the trunk of a Volvo. “I was at university in Jyväskylä, doing art history, and the police needed someone to take photos for them. Their regular guy went on vacation to Ibiza, so I filled in for him. Then he never came back. I loved it.”
    “Why’d you quit?”
    “I didn’t want to stay in Jyväskylä. I decided to study archaeology, so I moved to Oslo and took some classes at university. That’s where I met Anton; I used to hang out at his club. He introduced me to Jürgen Borne—you know his work, right? Jürgen was looking for an assistant, and he hired me. I worked on that Vogue Italia spread, the one with Chira Hendrix and the reindeer. That was my idea. After that, it all came together.”
    I peered at another newspaper photo—a kitchen with a woman curled on the linoleum, hands clutched protectively around her head. There was a hammer beside her, blond hair caught between its claws. Droplets of blood glowed like liquid mercury spilled across the floor. He’d found his gift early on.
    “I still have it set up for film.” Ilkka flicked on more lights. “But mostly I do digital now.”
    Cabinets and shelves lined the walls, crammed with boxes and camera equipment. The enameled sink had been divided into sections for agitating and developing film. Photos and contact sheets were strewn across a counter beside a flat-screen monitor. There was a large table in the center of the room, and an old map chest was shoved into a corner.
    “I know.” Ilkka grinned. “It’s a mess.”
    “No, it’s great. It looks—” I started to say, It looks human . “It looks like a good place to work.”
    “Oh, it is. My wife hates it: She doesn’t want the children to see my pictures. One reason for all the locks. She hasn’t been down here since I built it. No one has, except for me. And now you.”
    He began to clear the table, moving glassine envelopes and contact sheets and finally a large camera with an old-fashioned flashbulb attachment.
    “That a Speed Graphic?”
    Ilkka cradled the rig against his chest. “Yes. My baby.”
    “Can I see it?”
    He hesitated before handing it to me. “Be very careful.”
    I was. The Speed Graphic’s the camera you see in old movies, toted by newspapermen at crime scenes, political campaigns, behind enemy lines during the war. Weegee had one. It’s an amazing rig—three viewfinders, two shutters, everything operated manually.
    You had to be fast to use