“Don’t be an idiot. I didn’t need you. I’m alive and well and I was face-to-face with our killer. That puts me a step ahead of where I was before.”
“Toward being a target.”
“Yes, but it was exactly what the bastard wanted, and I learned from it. You’d have slowed me down. Stay where you are. I’ll see you when you’ve plugged your leak. I won’t accept your help or presence before then. By the way, your assignment sounds terribly boring. I can’t imagine how a black-ops agent of your supposedly lethal reputation was ever drawn into it. How the mighty have fallen.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m hanging up now.” She pressed the disconnect.
She drew a deep breath and leaned wearily back against the aluminum side of the RV. She’d been wrong to add that last taunt at Lynch. But she’d wanted to get him annoyed enough at her so that he’d stop thinking of her as a victim to rescue and go about his own business. She’d noticed that Lynch had a few protective tendencies that had to be curbed on occasion.
And, on this particular occasion, she found herself too ready to accept and embrace those tendencies. She was feeling very much alone and vulnerable. Exposing herself as a lone target had all the advantages she had told Lynch, but remembering that confrontation still shook her. It had shattered her confidence in herself, and she was having to rebuild. It would have been comforting to have Lynch here until that restructuring was complete.
But when had she ever relied on anyone else to bolster her? It was a sign of weakness and not an emotion she would have wanted to show Lynch. He was megastrong, and she wanted his respect, not his pity.
But she wasn’t feeling very strong herself at this moment, she thought. She was beginning to be aware of aches and pains that she’d firmly suppressed. She had to get busy. She needed to straighten away from this vehicle, go find Griffin, and see what was happening. Surely he could—
“I prefer to work in a nice warm squad room, you know, Kendra. It’s too chilly out here.”
Kendra’s gaze flew to Bill Dillingham, who was approaching from the other side of the parking lot. He sported a white beard and one of the thickest heads of white hair she had ever seen. Bill was in his early-to-mid eighties and walked with a stiff, unsteady gait.
“Bill, what the hell are you doing here? It’s after midnight.”
“And it’s cold and damp. If I get sick and die of pneumonia, it’s all on your head. I got tired of waiting at the police station.”
“Sorry. We have a developing situation here.”
“Guess what? It would have continued to develop if you had deigned to meet me at the station for an hour or so. Lucky for you, I can bring my work with me.” Bill slightly raised the large pad he was carrying under his arm. “It’s important we do this right away.” He grimaced. “Considering the fact that you look like you’ve been run over by a truck, you’re probably not in good shape to remember much of anything anyway. Even in normal circumstances, memories fade, your recollections get all twisted up by the conversations you have in the hours after the event … This shouldn’t be a surprise to you, Kendra.”
“It isn’t. But you don’t need to worry about it with me.”
His faded blue eyes twinkled. “Of course not. The great and powerful Kendra Michaels is incapable of the cognitive errors that plague the rest of the mortal population…”
“Not fair. I’m not saying that.”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying. Sixty years of experience tell me that the ones who claim to be infallible are the ones I need to worry most about. Next thing I know, I’m sketching someone my witness actually saw on the Carson show the night before.”
Her lips twitched as she suppressed a smile. “I hate to tell you this, Bill, but I was in elementary school the last time Johnny Carson was on the air.”
“Aah, your ageist barbs don’t work on me. Those late-night hosts are all the same anyway. Take all the cheap shots you want. I’ve heard ’em already.”
“That was a comment, not a cheap shot. You’re the only sketch artist I wanted for this job, Bill. Of any age. This could be an unusual challenge for you.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not. But I need someone with imagination and creativity.”
“Hmm.” He studied her face. “You’ve piqued my curiosity. Not enough to make it worth crawling out of my nice warm bed, of course, but at least now I’m curious why I’ve been forced to do it.”
Kendra smiled even as she felt a pang as she noticed how frail Bill had become. Damn, it seemed as if he’d aged a decade in the two years since she had last seen him. Time could be so cruel.
“But I’m not staying out in this wet air.” He steadied himself by placing a hand on the mobile command center. “Do they have room for us to work in this monstrosity?”
“It’s a little noisy.” She gestured toward her car, which was parked a few yards away. “Is there enough light to do this in there?”
He raised a flexible-neck book light clipped to his pad. “I brought my own. Let’s get to it, young lady.”
They climbed into her car, with Kendra taking her place behind the wheel and Bill sitting in the passenger seat.
He rested his pad on his knees. “Okay, let’s start with the shape of his face. Square? Oval? Triangular? Some of each? Think. Give me a canvas, and we’ll work from there.”
“Sort of square … with high cheekbones.”
“Good.” He started to work, his pencil flying over the pad. “Like this?”
“No, chin more pointed.”
His graphite pencil moved lightning fast, correcting. “Like this?”
“That’s it.”
“Now we go to the eyes. How far apart?”
The next fifteen minutes flew by as Bill used his eraser as artfully as he did his pencil. Kendra had no sooner voiced a correction than it was incorporated into the sketch. He quickly generated a reasonable likeness of the man she had seen earlier. But after still another fifteen minutes of working together to refine the sketch, it became so real, so on the mark, that it actually chilled her to look at it.
“Amazing,” she finally said. “That’s him, that’s the man we’re looking for. You’re incredible, Bill.”
“Yes. But this is just another day at the office. So what’s with all the talk of imagination and creativity?”
She was silent. “I’ve been thinking. It’s hard for me to believe that he would actually let me see what he really looked like. There were moments tonight when I was vulnerable. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. That meant the game isn’t over for him. He has something else in store for me. I believe he’d try to keep me from knowing anything that might give me an advantage.” She looked down at the sketch. “I wonder … If he might have been wearing a disguise.”
“Like a fake nose?”
“No, I think I would have spotted that. But we need to look at this sketch and think about what he might be doing to throw us off. The minute this hits the airwaves tomorrow, he knows a family member or coworker may recognize his face and call the police down on him.”
Bill shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t care and is prepared to leave his old life behind.”
“It’s possible. But I think he does care. I think perhaps he’s somehow taken steps to change his appearance. But he’s done it in such a way that I wouldn’t be able to immediately spot it as a disguise.”
“I see what you’re getting at.” His pencil touched the hairline he’d drawn. “Maybe a good hairpiece, or hair coloring, possibly some false front teeth?”
“Maybe.”
“You wouldn’t have observed those things?”
“Not necessarily. He gives me a lot of credit, so he would have been especially careful. I can usually detect dentures from the effect it has on speech, but I didn’t get that from him. With some practice or expert help, he could have fooled me.”
Bill’s eyes were narrowed on the sketch. “These cheekbones could have been extended and rounded off with some silicone packs placed between the upper lips and gum. It’s amazing how much something like that can change the shape of the face.”