The man had murdered Lodge’s wife, key in the plot to manipulate the congressman’s rise to power, ultimately Lodge himself, and God only knows how many others. Taylor said it all after the inauguration of Lodge’s successor and running mate: “Find the assassin, and we’ll find the man behind him.”
First, Roarke needed to review whatever footage existed. The assassin had posed as a member of the Capitol Police, gotten access to the Rotunda, and at a key moment, made his shot. The still photographer at the Rotunda had nothing. Michael O’Connell, the New York Times reporter shooting a DV camera, only had the back of the killer’s head from twenty feet away. Roarke found one quick shot on the pool videotape coverage from the Capitol shootout. But the camera never really focused on him. He was barely visible in a wide shot that panned the room — certainly not enough to make a true ID. He was turned to the side, his hat covered his forehead. He was out of the light. But there he was.
Roarke tried to glean something from the man’s body language, his bulk, his posture. Upright. Stiff. Alert. Watching everyone in one glance. Probably military-trained. Half of the puzzle.
What do you look like? That was clearly Roarke’s primary problem. There were descriptions. But each one was of a different man — all presumed to be the same killer.
A 20-year-old gang member. A 40-something businessman. An insurance agent in his thirties. A fisherman of undetermined age. One dark-haired, another balding, another gray. The Capitol policeman.
No fingerprints. No DNA. No photographs. The only evidence in common with some of the murders, but not all, was the size 11 boot print. Maybe even that was a red herring.
A different identity with every role he played.
Roarke needed to give him a name — a working identity. He thought for weeks, and then it came to him. Depp, for Johnny Depp. He decided on naming his quarry after an actor who always transformed himself adeptly. He even played a master of disguises in the film Donnie Brasco.
Depp fit him perfectly. It showed proper respect for a man Roarke realized he could never underestimate.
Roarke actually had provided a description himself. He’d had fleeting eye contact with Depp in the Rotunda when the killer was disguised as the policeman. But it was more likely that the assassin could pick Roarke out of a crowd quicker than he could spot Depp. That worried the Secret Service agent because it would give his prey a definite advantage the next time they’d meet, and he was certain — deadly certain — they’d meet again.
Touch worked with sketches of each “identity.” They’d been drawn by FBI artists at the scene of Jennifer Lodge’s death in upstate New York and the other killings he could be tied to. Now, he was reconfiguring the sketch based on Roarke’s description. Once completed, it would integrate with the others in a computer program a Littleton, Massachusetts, firm, Viisage Technology Ltd., had provided after 9/11.
Clearly, all of the sketches portrayed vastly different men. But Roarke was personally certain he was looking for a lone accomplished killer. His goal was to come up with a reliable composite image, good enough to make Depp’s mother proud.
“More like this?” Parsons asked after he’d made the changes on the jaw.
“Not sure.” Roarke looked more closely. “No,” he said on second thought. “Split the difference.”
Parsons used his mouse to drag the jaw line out. Then he adjusted the shape of the chin to Roarke’s specifications.
“Once I mess with one thing, I have to adjust everything else. You know, keep the face in perspective. Let me just play with it a bit.”
“But his eyes still need…”
Parsons cut him off. “Do I tell you how to jump in front of the president or bust down a door?”
“No.” Roarke saw where he was going.
“Then let me do what I know how to do.”
“Your toys. Be my guest.”
Parsons worked on a number of things. Thinning the eyes, making them colder. Raising the ears. Lengthening the nose. Everything connected with the last set of changes Roarke requested.
“So what exactly are we looking for in all of the pictures?” asked the Secret Service agent.
“We?”
“Excuse me. What are you looking for?” It was always like this with Roarke and Parsons.
“I am looking for common denominators to all the descriptions. I try them out. I grow them on a face, the computer whirs a little and tells me if I’m full of shit.”
“And by the way, these are not pictures, so don’t expect perfection,” Parsons complained.
“Okay, drawings.”
Parsons typed in a new line of code and sat back. “Sketches,” he said, correcting Roarke again.
“Sketches. And?” Roarke asked encouragingly.
“And what?” Parsons replied.
“And now what’s happening? You stopped.”
“I stopped, but Ferret’s working on it.” Ferret was the Department of Defense’s name for FRT or “Face Recognition Technology,” the program pioneered in the early 1990s, principally researched at MIT’s Media labs. “The computer’s thinking. It’s scratching its hard drive.”
Roarke looked confused for the moment.
“Its head, you dumbass. Ferret is scratching its head looking for commonality. And if this little project of yours crashes my computer, well, if you break it, you bought it.”
“Uh-huh.”
Parsons displayed a holier-than-thou attitude most of the time. Roarke learned to accept it. The 40-year-old FBI expert lived in a world of algorithms. He questioned everything and everybody. He never seemed satisfied that he’d be given enough time or information to properly solve a problem.
“You’re all always in a rush. Every one of you spooks,” he said.
“I’m not a spook.”
Parsons ignored the answer. “Gotta have it now. Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie.”
At least Parsons was right about that. Of course, time was never on Roarke’s side, either. But the FBI graphic artist and programmer delivered, and that’s what made him Roarke’s go-to geek. Now the agent was back at Parson’s door.
“You realize we’d both be better off if you’d give me something reasonable to work with.”
“Sorry, but…”
“Photographs, Roarke. Photographs. Just once. Real pictures. Ever hear of film? Or maybe I can introduce you to a remarkable invention called a digital camera. Sony. Minolta, even Kodak’s got it. Four, five, six megapixels. Amazing things.”
Roarke knew this would go on for awhile. It was simply the cost of doing business with such a talent.
“What was I thinking?” Roarke sarcastically asked. “I’ll go out, find, and capture Depp. Then I’ll ask him to stand still for a second and say ‘cheese.’ Shouldn’t be a problem. After that I’ll pat him on the back and say ‘thanks’ and ‘oh, by the way, you can go back to killing important people now.’ Then I’ll post a real picture of him and see if I can track him down again. But wait. If I knew who he was and where he was, why would I be here?” It was time to re-ask his question. “What the fuck are you looking for?”
“All right,” Parsons said shaking his head. “Using biometric technology designed to ID a person from distinguishing facial traits, the computer is trying to determine if there are any signatures common to each sketch.”
“In other words?” Roarke asked, hoping to get a clearer description.