It turned out that Vinson had a blog, Splatter Chatter, that specialized in cubism and the impressionist masters. He gave everyone his card, on which was his blog’s web address and a tiny portrait of van Gogh with his ear bandaged.
All of this, Quinn thought, was apropos of nothing.
Maybe.
27
A slightly hungover Lido arrived the next morning at Q&A and situated himself at the main computer. He had the air of a man who was at home and alone—his world, his house, his investigation.
Quinn walked over and Lido acknowledged his presence with a languid wave. Two of the computer’s monitors were flashing head shots of males, one of which might be a match with the digital likeness of the suspect. It could happen any moment, suddenly. Or not at all. It was asking a lot of facial recognition software to match a photograph with a police artist’s sketch.
“Any luck?” Quinn asked.
Lido shot him a glance. “Not so far. It would be nice if we had a photo to match with a photo. Or, better yet, fingerprints.”
“In a dreamworld,” Quinn said.
Lido said, “Isn’t that where we are?”
“Sounds like a question that could lead to one of those existentialist arguments heard in dorm rooms around the world.”
“Dorm rooms, did you say?”
“Around the world,” Quinn affirmed.
“I been there,” Lido said, “and it’s not so great.”
The shrill first ten notes of “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” suddenly sounded from the computer
The frenetic movement on the monitor adjacent to the one that displayed only the artist’s and witness’s still, digital image of the suspect suddenly became motionless. It was as if that entire wall had ceased swaying.
Lido leaned forward. Quinn stepped forward. Attentions were riveted on the monitor.
Lido went to a split screen. The sketch of the suspect was next to a black-and-white newspaper photo of a scrawny teenage boy. Quinn wouldn’t say the sketch and photo were like a young and older image of the same person. Still, there was a strong resemblance. Even the cleft chins.
“This isn’t a mug shot,” Quinn said. “That’s what I was expecting.”
“If we had that,” Lido said, “we’d probably also have fingerprints we might match.”
Both men stared hard at the photos.
“What’s that behind him?” Lido asked, motioning toward the near image.
“Where the height chart should be?” Quinn moved closer. “Looks like a stairway. Inside somewhere, judging by the light and shadow.”
“No, that. It looks like a double exposure, or a shot taken with a cheap camera in incredibly bad light.”
Quinn saw what he meant. On the broad landing before the stairs, several people showed as shadowy forms in the background. A woman in a long dress. Two men, one of whom had his arm around the shoulders of the other. One of them was wearing a white shirt and dark tie. The upper body of another man, without a tie, was visible descending the steps. They were like ghosts.
“Could be the inside of a public building,” Lido said.
“Courthouse?”
“That would be nice. If our gremlin was messed up with the law, there should be an ID and photo of him somewhere. An account of the case—if there was a case.”
“I’ll narrow the parameters,” Lido said.
“What will that do?”
“We’ll be looking for a bigger needle in a smaller haystack.”
Pearl and Helen entered the office, letting in warm air with the hiss of the street door. Both women slowed down when they saw Quinn and Lido in the rear of the office, at Lido’s computer setup.
“We got something?” Pearl asked.
“Maybe,” Quinn said.
Helen moved closer, then bent at the waist to get a clearer view.
“Tell you the truth,” she said, “they don’t look all that much alike. I know Mr. Sketch, but who’s the other guy?”
“Maybe the Gremlin.”
“No, I mean who is he?”
“We were hoping he’d be a match with Mr. Sketch,” Quinn said.
Pearl said, “Good luck with that.”
“If we get him ID’d we might find a long sheet on him.”
“If the images match closely enough,” Pearl said.
Helen had moved very close to one of the monitors. “Can you zoom in on the other guy?”
“Other guy?”
“The one most obviously not Mr. Sketch.”
“Sure,” Lido said.
As Lido worked the computer like a mad scientist, the figure in the photo became larger and lost more definition. “All I can tell is he looks young,” Lido said.
“That’s lettering, there in the lower right,” Helen said. She pointed. “I think it’s a name.”
“I’ll zoom in on it,” Lido said, “but it’s gonna break up pretty soon.”
Helen reached into her purse and put on a pink pair of glasses. No one had seen her in glasses before.
She removed the glasses and stood up straight. “That’s okay, I got it.”
“The photographer’s name?” Lido asked.
“No, it’s not a photo credit. It’s the kid’s name in newspaper print: Jordan Kray.”
Lido pressed save and then ran printouts of what was on the monitor. Then he went to work with his computer, immersing himself again in his private digital world. Someday Lido might stay there, Quinn thought. Might even be trapped there in geek land, with all the other brilliant geeks who wear mismatched socks but can work complex equations in their heads.
“There’s no Jordan Kray that fits the characteristics we’re looking for,” Lido said, after a while.
“He doesn’t even have a Web page?” Fedderman asked. He had come in with Harold’s partner, Sal. They’d held their silence while Lido was working.
Fedderman’s wife, Penny, had been coaching him on the computer while trying to create a Web site. She had convinced him that everyone other than the Fedder-mans had a Web site, and that he was a natural. Already he had a tendency to store information on a cloud someplace that he could never access.
“The guy’s a troglodyte,” Fedderman said.
“Something like that,” Lido said.
They stared again at the blown-up digital image. Under Lido’s coaxing it was larger now, in sharper definition. The photo was obviously one of a young male teenager. Or maybe he wasn’t even in his teens.
“That’s a newspaper photo, so let’s find out which paper,” Quinn said.
“Small-town rag,” Fedderman said. “Maybe a giveaway. And not recent. You can tell by the print under the photo.”
“You mean the font,” Harold said knowledgeably. “That’s how they started calling front-page news in the early twenties. In newspaper slang, ‘big font’ meant big news. Since it was always on the first page, ‘font-page news’ gradually became front-page news.”
“Is any of that true, Harold?” Sal asked.
“Should be.”
“Get the enhanced sketch in circulation,” Quinn said, marveling as he often did that his bickering team of detectives could solve anything. What accounted for their success? Unconventional thinking, maybe. “Let’s follow it up with the photograph of the kid. Send both images out to the media, then hit the neighborhoods and shops where the victims lived or worked. Do it on foot, face-to-face, so you can see what reaction you get when they first lay eyes on the photo.”
“We need to find out more on that photo,” Sal said.
“More on the kid,” Harold said.
“It amounts to the same thing, Harold,” Sal rasped in his annoyed tone. Sometimes Harold could be intolerable.
“Don’t be negative,” Harold said.
There! Negative. Photography. Was Harold joking, or making fun of Sal? Or making Sal the joke? Or was Harold just plain dumb? Or so dumb he was smart?
“I’ll drive the unmarked,” Sal rasped, “and I’ll control the air conditioner. Think of me as the captain of the ship.”
Harold said, “Font news.”