Unlucky 13

Chapter 72

As I watched the computer screen, the software digested the new input at some unimaginable speed, and when it stopped, I was looking at a composite of our three skinny guys without any facial fur.

Kellner’s program then did a global recognition search, and when no lights blinked and no bells rang, he pushed back his chair and looked up at us.

“I don’t know who he is, but this is a pretty good representation of what your man looks like.”

I asked Kellner to get up and let me sit close to the monitor, which he did. I stared into the eyes of the composite image, and I swore that face looked familiar to me.

Was that because I recognized him from watching the facial recognition process? Or did I recognize the actual guy?

I knew my brain was fried from viewing too many miles of gray-and-white surveillance footage, but still, pieces and parts of the man’s face matched a man I’d seen but didn’t know. Then I pictured him in action.

I recalled a barely registered image of a guy like this one stepping down from a Chuck’s refrigerated transport van. He’d been wearing a dark leather jacket and a dark scarf around his neck. No, not a scarf. It was a gray hoodie. He had opened the cargo doors, his back to the camera, then, head lowered, he’d carried a stack of white cartons to the back door at Chuck’s Hayes Valley location.

My mind saw it now, more vividly than when I’d watched the unending surveillance footage.

The skinny guy had delivered food to Chuck’s.

Then, having handed off a half dozen white cartons to the kitchen, he’d pulled up his hood and gone into the restaurant. I was staring at his composite image right now.

But even if my sketchy memory was dead-on, this might mean only that the delivery truck driver liked to buy lunch after he made a delivery.

But why hide his face?

If he was a deadbeat dad, or if there was a warrant out for him, and he wasn’t the stupidest person on earth, he might have fooled around with his facial hair to avoid detection by the security cameras.

Or else this guy, who had the means and the opportunity to deliver preformed frozen hamburger patties to Chuck’s restaurants, was no dead-beat dad.

He was Mr. Ka-boom.

“He works for Chuck’s,” I said to Conklin. “I’m sure of it. Richie? I think we have a suspect.”