Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

“That’s the past week,” Vinson said.

“Impressive,” Helen said. “All your miles?”

“Well, no.”

Vinson smiled and pressed a button on the treadmill, and the thing slowed down. He slowed with it, and didn’t step off until it had come to a complete stop.

“I didn’t forget,” he said breathlessly, “about our appointment with the sketch guy.”

“He’s on his way. I thought he’d already be here.”

The elevator door opened and Richard Warfield, the sketch artist, stepped out. He was a small man holding a cardboard contraption with three steaming paper cups. A broad strap across his right shoulder supported a leather attache case. It was the scent of doughnuts that commanded attention.

“Since I was taking the elevator up,” he said, “I thought I’d stop and get us something from that place around the corner.”

Vinson looked at Helen with a superior half smile. “You took the stairs.”

“You know me,” Helen said, though he didn’t. “An athlete.”

“You certainly look like one,” a woman’s voice said.

Emma Vinson, Charlie’s wife, had dismounted her bicycle and come over to them.

“How have you been, Mrs. Vinson?”

“Okay. Compared to how I could be.”

“Charlie looks like he’s well on the road to recovery.”

“The road’s a steep hill sometimes,” Vinson said. “The leg’s not all the way back. Arm’s almost there, though. I’m a tough guy, except for when I’m not.” He leaned over and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Helen’s taking me to see the sketch artist,” he said.

“You don’t have to go far to see him,” Helen said. She put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. She looked as if she might dribble him. “This is Richard Warfield, our best sketch artist.”

“She’s being polite,” Richard said. Helen thought that in the bright light he looked about twelve years old.

She said, “Richard’s modest.”

“Well, I am that.”

Everyone took a cup of coffee except for Emma, who said water wasn’t on her diet, and coffee was almost a hundred percent water.

Helen said, “What do you do for . . . liquid?”

Emma smiled. “It’s everywhere, in everything we eat. We’re even mostly composed of liquids.”

“So I’ve heard,” Helen said. Somehow without burning her tongue, she finished her coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and tossed it halfway across the room into a wastebasket.

“I thought so,” Emma said. “Basketball.”

“I could have kicked it in, too,” Helen said, hoping she hadn’t used up the next six months of good luck.

“I’d like to be there,” Emma said.

Helen looked at her. “In the wastebasket?”

“No. To see Richard do his work.”

“Your husband will be doing most of the work,” Richard said.

Half a dozen women entered the room and dispersed to various exercise machines. Seeing who could laugh the loudest seemed to be part of their regimen. They wore exercise outfits of various colors and fashion, all of it designed to make them look thinner.

“They look like starving cheerleaders,” Emma Vinson said, in a tone somewhere between jeering and jealous. “’Specially the ones with those boobs.”

Her husband, Charlie, seemed to view the exercisers in a different light altogether. He was leaning forward on his aluminum walker, and the expression on his face was so fixated it was almost comical. Helen wondered if there had been breast augmentation going on here.

Helen and company had come here to observe Charlie Vinson and hear what he had to say. They wanted to know how certain he seemed, or if there were any contradictions in whatever he said in conversation. While he was searching his memory to recall how someone looked, something he heard might bob to the surface of his thoughts.

“I have a department car in front of the building,” Helen said. “We can drive over to Q&A and get Richard set up. The air-conditioning’s been repaired, so it will be cooler there, and Quinn might have something to add.”

“Quinn has been wonderful through all this,” Emma said.

“Black Chevy,” Helen said, “parked near the corner.”

Everyone filed into the elevator, including Charlie Vinson. Excluding Helen. Vinson used his aluminum walker to help create standing room.

Helen stayed back.

“Are you taking the stairs?” Emma asked in disbelief.

“I’d prefer it,” Helen said. “That athlete thing. Builds endurance in the legs.”

Charlie Vinson, leaning on his walker, smiled at her. “We’ve got to learn to face our fears, Helen.”

Helen said, “Why?”

26

After the brief drive to Q&A it didn’t take Richard Warfield, the sketch artist, long to get set up. Quinn sat back and watched.

Warfield borrowed a small card table and two chairs. He placed the chairs so two people sitting in them would be directly across from each other. Then he removed two small laptop computers from his leather attache case. He placed the two computers in the center of the table, their screens facing away from each other.

The two people in the chairs would be facing each other. Warfield and Charlie Vinson would be looking at identical screens.

“So this is what sketch artists have come to,” Vinson said, understanding how this process was going to work. Warfield could not only get information from Vinson about what the perpetrator looked like; he could also watch Vinson on PIP react as the likeness on the screen before him took shape and went from pixel to person.

“This and a stylus are much more effective than a sketch pad and pencil, or a lot of false mustaches,” Helen said.

“It takes the same sort of talent and expertise,” Warfield said.

Helen could see that it would. She’d observed Warfield work several times and been impressed.

“I’ll use the stylus directly on my screen,” Warfield said. “And I’ll use it much as I’d use charcoal or pencil on a sketch pad.” He peered around his up tilted laptop screen. “I might ask you to do some basic drawing to get across what you’re trying to describe.”

“I can’t draw anything but water,” Vinson said.

“That’s okay. The process will concern your memory rather than any artistic talent. And mostly, I’ll be responding to your descriptions. I’ll fill in when I think you’ve been too light, but other than that, it’s your show. Then we’ll discuss what we have and hone and sharpen the likenesses.” He glanced around. “Is everybody comfortable?”

Everyone said that they were. No one switched chairs or positions. The only change was that two people asked for bottled water, which was supplied.

Warfield booted up and adjusted both computers. Their monitors showed blank backgrounds.

Warfield picked up his stylus and held it lightly, as he would a piece of chalk, or a flute he was about to play.

“Remember,” he said to Vinson, “what will be happening on my screen will be happening on yours. Much of what I say will be determined by the software. Don’t use your stylus unless I tell you.” He touched stylus to screen. “Ready?”

Vinson said that he was.

Warfield said, “We’ll begin with a perfect oval.”

Vinson watched a black line appear on his TV screen.

“Now I’m going to make it more egg-shaped.”

Before Warfield, the oval on the monitor became slightly smaller at the bottom. More like a real egg. But a perfect egg.

“That about right?” Warfield asked.

Vinson, knowing the figure was to be the basic shape of the killer’s head, said, “Maybe a little smaller at the base.”

“Okay. Pointed chin?”

“Yes!” Vinson said. “Now that you mention it. Definitely pointed. One of his ears was pointed, too.”

“One of his ears?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah. The right one, I think. It looked like he’d done some boxing. Or he mighta been injured or something when he was a kid. Like some bigger kid had him in a headlock and messed up the ear. Broke the cartilage.

“What about his left ear?”