Anatomy of Fear

22

Over the past seven years I’d sat with hundreds of witnesses and victims making sketches, and I usually felt calm. But as I stood in front of a darkened briefing room, my hands were sweating. I had laid fresh copies of the sketches into four overhead projectors, the pictures now enlarged and cast onto the front wall.

“I’ve had the computer lab clean these up, remove all bloodstains and dirt so you can really see them,” I said. “And this may be the first time you’re seeing them all together.” I went from one sketch to another, pointing out similarities, how the drawings had been built up with a repeated side stroke that indicated the man was right-handed, his loose but sure handling of the images, the quality of the graphite-all of it adding up to my consensus that they were all drawn by the same person.

I was recounting this to Chief of Department Perry Denton, Chief of Operations Mickey Rauder, Special Agent Monica Collins, her two field officers, Archer and Richardson, a stenographer sent over from FBI Manhattan, division heads from the precincts working on the homicides, and of course Terri Russo and her team.

In the middle of it I noticed something I had missed before in the drawing of Carolyn Spivack, but didn’t stop to point it out. I just wanted to finish. Public speaking was not my thing.

When I sat down, Denton took over. He was a handsome guy, but a little too slick in his designer suit and shiny tassel loafers. His major emphasis was keeping the lid on the serial-killer aspect for as long as possible. The murders, though still getting attention, had fallen off page one, the drawings that connected them still unknown to the press. Denton reported that the PR Department had let it slip that Carolyn Spivack was a druggie and a hooker so her story didn’t get much play in the media, which must have made her parents really happy.

“Once the link is made in the press, we’ll have every crazy in the city calling in to use up their free Verizon minutes,” said Denton, “and we don’t have the manpower to log in all the calls.” He glanced at Terri, and I saw her stiffen, though I didn’t know why.

After that, both Denton and Collins attempted to make it clear it was their organization helping the other. Collins mentioned she was in constant communication with her Quantico superiors, and Denton brought up the fact that he spoke to the mayor several times a day. But there was something other than crime-fighting politics going on, if I was reading the body language correctly. Granted, faces were my specialty, but if Agent Collins had hiked her skirt up any higher or gotten her legs any closer, Denton could have performed cunnilingus on her by simply sticking his tongue out, which, personally, I’d have found a lot more entertaining.

Denton ceded the floor to Mickey Rauder, who addressed the division heads about individual strategy. Rauder was an older guy, face like a basset hound, amiable, and on a first-name basis with everyone, asking one department head how his wife’s operation had gone, congratulating another on his kid’s college scholarship. He seemed like the real deal, and he wrapped things up quickly.

I was glad the meeting was finally over, but it wasn’t for Terri. She insisted I go up and meet Denton. I think she wanted to show me off like I was a new blouse or something.

“I told you Rodriguez could add something,” she said to him.

“Yes,” said Denton, wearing an artificial smile, zygomatic major muscles stuck in neutral. “Nice job, Rodriguez. More proof we are looking for one man-just what we need, huh?” He forced a laugh. “But glad to have you on board.”

I said, “Thanks,” eager to get going, but Terri wasn’t.

“And he’s started a sketch,” she said.

“Really?” said Denton. “I’d like to see that, but how is it possible?”

“Rodriguez has a gift. He can see inside people’s heads.”

“No shit,” said Denton.

“Not really,” I said. “I just do my job.”

“He’s being modest.”

Terri was throwing me in Denton’s face and I was starting to get an idea why.

Denton looped his thumbs into his pant pockets and rocked back on his heels. “So what is it, Rodriguez, you read minds or something?”

“No, sir. Just faces.”

“Really? So what’s my face telling you right now?”

A couple of micro-expressions flashed over Denton’s features, ending with the telltale asymmetry of someone who has something to hide: a smile in direct contrast to a fixed glare, upper eyelids raised against a lowered brow, which almost always suggests the first phase of suppressed anger.

That you’re pissed about something-Me? Terri?-but trying to conceal it.

But I couldn’t say that, so I just returned his artificial smile.

Denton leaned into Terri in a way that made me think he was marking his property-this gal is mine, sort of thing. “Well?” he said.

“I would say that your expression is one of a successful and self-satisfied man.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

We stared at each other a moment, then Denton turned away from me and asked Terri to follow. I watched the door close behind them, then flipped on the overhead projectors to look at the drawing of Carolyn Spivack.

I played with the projector’s lens to enlarge it as much as possible.

What is it?

I slipped the picture out of the projector and remembered where I had seen it. But it didn’t make any sense.

Out in the hall Denton was nowhere in sight. Chief of Operations Mickey Rauder was talking to Terri, and he signaled me over.

“Nice work,” he said. “Your old man would have been proud.”

The sentence stopped me cold, though I could see he was waiting for me to respond. “You knew my father?”

“Yes, we were in the same division, Narcotics, way back when.” He squinted at me. “You look like him.”

Did I? I had never allowed myself to think so.

“Juan Rodriguez was a good man.”

I nodded, unable to locate my voice.

“Guess I’m one of the few cops who decided to stay way past when most cops retire, but it paid off. Here I am chief of operations. Some days I can hardly believe it, but if you stay in long enough you never know.”

I managed to say, “Uh-huh,” looked past the man’s basset-hound wrinkles to see he was younger than I’d originally thought, mid-fifties, like my father would have been.

“I think your old man would have stayed too.” He squinted at me again. “Can’t get over how much you look like him.”

I nodded again, hoping he would just stop talking.

But he wouldn’t quit. “I was thinking back there in the briefing room how your father would bring your drawings into the station and hang ’em up. He was so damn proud of you.”

Mickey Rauder waited for me to say something, but when I didn’t he slapped me on the back, said he hoped to see me around, to keep up the good work, and left me standing there with tears burning behind my lids and my heart in my throat.

You okay?” Terri asked.

“Yeah, fine.”

“Good. There are a few things I want to go over with you.”

“Later,” I said, and took off.

I headed out of the precinct with a picture of my father so strong in my mind that he could have been walking right beside me.