Orchid Blues

33

Holly had just come home from work when Ham let himself in through the beach door.

"Hey," she said, giving him a kiss.

"How you doing?"

"I'm okay. I got your message."

"Then where is Harry?"

"Come with me," she said, leading him out the door to the beach Daisy padded along behind, running through the dunes, sniffing out dune mice. Holly led him down the beach a hundred yards, then turned down a path through the dunes to the house next door.

"Whose place is this?" Ham asked.

"Just follow me, Ham." She rapped sharply at the door of the house and let herself in. Harry and two other men were sitting in the living room, drinking beer.

"Hi there, Ham," Harry said.

"You're living next door now?" Ham asked, shaking his hand.

"What you've found out so far about the people out at the lake has made me commit to a full investigation. We rented the place. It's convenient, and it keeps the heat off Holly."

"Good idea," Ham said.

"Ham this is Doug, one of our agents, and this is our ace techie, Eddie. Eddie the Hacker we like to call him."

Ham shook their hands, then he noticed that the dining-room table was filled with computers, printers and some equipment he didn't recognize.

"You want a beer?" Harry asked.

"You betcha," Ham said, accepting a cold Heineken.

"I want to hear about this John character," Harry said, "and Eddie is going to do up a computer-generated face for us."

"Okay," Ham said, and allowed himself to be sat down beside Eddie at the dining-room table.

"Let's start with height and weight," Eddie said.

"Six-three, a hundred and eighty pounds, about like me," Ham said.

Eddie made some entries into the computer, and a male figure, faceless, appeared on the large, flat-screen monitor before him. "Okay, hair color?"

"Gray."

"Short? Long?"

"Fairly short and very curly."

Eddie typed away. "Like this?"

"No, even curlier, almost like a sheep."

"Like this?"

"That's it."

"Face thin, medium or fat?"

"Thinnish, strong jaw."

"Like so?"

"Stronger."

"Better?"

"Very good."

"Nose: fat or thin, straight or curved?"

"Thin, straight and short."

"lips?"

"Thin."

"Color of eyes?"

"I'm not sure; maybe blue or green."

"We'll start with blue." Eddie typed some more, then a face appeared on the screen, very complete, almost like a photograph. "How's that?"

"Good, but he had pretty thick eyebrows, and they were black."

Eddie made the adjustment.

"Higher cheekbones," Ham said.

Eddie typed some more.

"And his ears were fairly small and lay flat against his head," Ham said.

Eddie made the changes.

"Jesus, that's good," Ham said, impressed.

Eddie hit some more keys, and the face turned to its left a quarter turn. "Does it still look good?"

"Yep."

Eddie turned the face to profile. "How about now?"

"The nose isn't turned up like that, it's straight, but the length is right. He looks older than your picture, too."

Eddie typed some more. "What age?"

"Fifty, maybe, or a young fifty-five. No, that's too old. He's fairly youthful-looking, no sagging chin or bags under his eyes."

"We'll make him fifty and well preserved," Eddie said.

Ham watched the changes in the image. "Try forty-five."

Eddie adjusted the picture.

"Eddie, that's the guy. Dead ringer. I swear, I didn't know it could be done that well."

"Okay, now let's compare him to the database," Eddie said.

"Just a minute, I forgot the glasses. They were round, steel-rimmed, on the small side."

"Like this?"

"Rounder. That's it. Now try your database."

Eddie typed for another thirty seconds, and the screen went blank. "This'll take a few minutes," he said. "It goes faster if you don't watch it happen." He stood up, walked back to the living-room sofa and retrieved his beer.

"Anything else you can tell us about this guy?" Harry asked.

"I'd say he was a natural-born leader, considering the respect he got from everybody. They seemed a little in awe of him. He was the first one to actually ask me to do something for the group."

"What did he ask you to do?"

"To train some of his people in shooting."

"Shooting of what?"

"He didn't say; just shooting. I gave them a little demonstration, and somebody asked me if I could shoot like that with the Barrett's rifle."

"What did you tell them?"

"I told them I could, if I had an opportunity to sight it in."

Eddie got up and went back to the computer.

"How's it going?" Harry asked.

"Coming along. It's a big database, remember, and a lot of John's features are common to a lot of other people. Give it a few more minutes."

"Does John live out at the lake with the group?" Harry asked.

"My impression-and nobody actually told me this-was that he didn't, that he was visiting. It was the first time I'd seen him there, but it's possible that he lives there, but had been away and had just returned."

Eddie spoke up. "We've got some faces," he said. "Come take a look."

Everybody gathered around the computer screen. Faces were materializing, some clear, others still filling in. Most of them were front and profile shots of people holding numbers under their chins.

"Same general types," Eddie said.

Ham pointed at a photograph. "Isn't that a woman?" he asked.

"Yes, but she answers the description," Eddie replied, "and she turned up, even though I specified male."

More pictures became clear, and Eddie slowly scrolled through them, more than two hundred. Then he stopped at the last frame.

"What does that mean?" Ham asked. The frame was empty and had the word "restricted" stamped across it.

"That means it's a face somebody doesn't want us to see," Eddie replied. "Could be someone in the witness protection program."

"John said he was retired, like me, and I asked him if it was from the military. He said not exactly. Could the restriction be because the guy worked for one of the civilian intelligence agencies?"

"Maybe. If so, his records would be in another database, one we don't have ready access to. The people in this one are people who have been arrested, done time or, at least, are suspected of a crime."

Eddie turned to Harry. "There's a file number here, Harry. You know somebody who might give us access?"

Harry was staring at the blank rectangle and rubbing his chin. "All I can do is try," he replied.