“Okay. Computer split screen, keep current image and display image CB- 1.”
Working… Images displayed.
“Now what do you see?”
“Carter Bissel, split screen with Angelo.” She frowned, and though she understood immediately what direction Eve was taking, she shook her head. “I’ll go with the Angelo person being a disguise. I don’t see Carter Bissel in there. There’s no data on him being an expert on disguise. Buy a wig, slap on a mustache, sure. Even maybe manage the scar. But the line of the jaw’s off-an implant for the bucked teeth would change the shape of the mouth, but not the jaw. He’d need more for that, and even if Kade was working him, or with him for a few months, how’d he get so skilled in disguise?”
She scooped up more cobbler and continued to study and compare the two images. “And Carter Bissel’s ears are bigger. That’s the tip. Ears are a good giveaway. He could make them bigger for Angelo, but not smaller.”
“You’ve got a good eye, Peabody. But watch and learn.”
Chapter 18
Peabody ate cobbler and watched as Eve and the computer added the hair from image one onto the head of image two.
“You know, you can do it all with one command if you-”
“I know I can do it all with one command,” Eve said irritably. “It doesn’t make the same damn point that way. Who’s running this game?”
“You know, getting shot at with a short-range missile makes you really testy.”
“Keep it up, and the next short-range missile’s going straight up your ass.”
“Dallas, you know how I love that sweet talk.” Shifting to a more comfortable position, Peabody licked her spoon, then waved it at the screen. “Okay, you add the bad hair, but it doesn’t change jaw structure or ear size and shape. Also, the witness makes Angelo slimmer, considerably slimmer than Carter Bissel. Fifteen pounds, easy. Bissel carried some extra weight according to his ID stats. The witness said Angelo was trim, in good physical shape. Again, you can add weight in a disguise, but you can’t shave off fifteen pounds overnight. If you could, I’d be signed up for the program.”
“If you don’t want to play, take your cobbler and scram. Computer, replicate facial scar from image one onto image two.”
“The entry into Powell’s apartment, as in the Bissel home, was slick.” Peabody scraped at the bowl, looking for any escaping cobbler as the computer complied with the command. “Has to be someone with experience or training. And all the murders in this case have been particularly cold, even the first ones, which were staged to look hot-blooded. It’s the very staging that makes them cold.”
“Nobody’s arguing that. Give me motive. Computer, assume front top teeth of image one is an implant. Calculate and replicate same on image two.”
“Covert organization screw-up-either one. Or, I’ve been thinking about this-a kind of gang war. The worm is complete so Doomsday must want to utilize. They know a shield’s being created. HSO and its associates create havoc to slow technos down or circumvent, or destroy the worm. Doomsday creates havoc to scatter resources, create havoc, which is what terrorists do anyway, and circumvent the creation of the shield until they get some use out of all the time, trouble, and expense they’ve gone to. One side murders a couple of operatives, the other snips off a potential loose thread-McCoy. One side grabs operative’s brother. The other steals dead operative’s body, and does the overkill attack on the primary investigator. Escalated espionage,” Peabody said with a shrug. “Not as iced as Bond, but plenty convoluted. It seems to me spies convolute everything.”
“Look at the images, Peabody.”
Peabody complied, and tapped the spoon gently on her teeth. “I see a resemblance, largely superficial, between the two images. Dallas, you put my image up there and do computer composites, you could make me look like Angelo. But don’t, okay, ‘cause I just ate.”
“Still hung up on the variation of jaw-line and the ears?”
“If you tried to take this into court, they’d throw you out.”
“Guess you’re right. Computer, remove image two and replace with image three.”
Peabody’s brows knit when the split screen showed two images of Angelo. “I don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“Why are you projecting two images of the same guy?”
“Am I? You sure they’re the same guy? Maybe getting tossed around earlier’s messed up my vision.”
“You got Angelo up there side by side.” Concerned, Peabody shifted to study Eve’s face. “Look, if you don’t want to go to the hospital, maybe you could call Louise. She’d make a house call for you.”
“I don’t want to bother the busy Dr. Dimatto. Let’s just see what I… oh yeah, that’s right. Here’s what I meant to do. Computer, remove all replications from image three and display original.”
Eve sat back with a very satisfied grin as Peabody dropped the spoon. “That’s Bissel. That’s Blair Bissel.”
“It sure is, isn’t it? You know, I’m thinking reports of his death have been largely exaggerated.”
“I know you ran that theory, but I never thought you put real weight on it. The DNA, the prints, were Blair Bissel’s. His own wife ID’d him.”
“HSO training, several years on the job, even at a lower operative level, should give a guy the skills to doctor records, change his to his brother’s. Add overkill, the blood, the gore, the fact that Ewing was shocked, and the fact that in all probability Carter Bissel had undergone some recent surgery to enhance his fairly strong family resemblance to his brother. Body weight was high for Blair’s records, but not more than a lot of people lie about on official documents anyway. Nobody pays any attention to an extra ten or fifteen pounds.”
“I skim ten off mine. I don’t know why. It’s a compulsion.”
“We expect to see Blair Bissel, so we see him. Why should we question the identity of the victim?”
“But why would he go along with it? Carter? There wasn’t any sign of force, no ligatures. How do you induce somebody to undergo surgery, change appearance?”
“Could’ve paid him. Money, sex-probably both. Let’s screw with big brother and screw his girlfriend while we’re at it. No love lost between the brothers.”
“There’s a wide gulf between no love lost and deliberately, coldly murdering your brother and your lover. If Kade was helping to set Carter up-”
“Then Blair planned to do her all along. Yeah, that’s what I think. You want to fake your own death, do it in a big way. A vicious way that tosses the blood in your wife’s face, at least initially, and gets rid of the monkey on your back and one of the people who knew you intimately enough to muck the deal. They’ll say you were a cheat, a liar, a bastard. What do you care, you’re dead.”
“I have to think about this.” Peabody pushed away from the desk to pace. “With this theory, Blair and Kade did a number on Carter outside the HSO directive.”
“Maybe they started inside, probably did, but I figure they started coloring outside the lines at some point.”
“As a solution for the blackmail.”
“Partially. It’s money, it’s adventure, it’s risk. All those fit their profiles. But they had bigger goals. Keep going.”
“Crap. Blair was a liaison, doubling under HSO directive, as a liaison for Doomsday. Feeding them selected data for payment, and establishing himself as a source, a traitor, a free agent. Part of this cloak was his marriage to Reva Ewing, blueprinted by the HSO.”
“Corporate espionage on one hand-a lucrative game, and with so much privatization of intel- and data-gathering sources over the last couple of decades, the HSO has to compete with civilian companies for revenue.”
“Like Securecomp.”
“Like that, and the dozens of others on and off planet they arranged for Blair to plant his listening posts. And think about this, Peabody. You always have to have a backup plan. You require plausible deniability. What contingency plan do you suppose the architects of this blueprint drew up in the event one of the sculptures was detected?”