“Didn’t get any sleep anyway. I got a good look at her, I did. It’s just harder to, like, see her now. The lights in there are whack, on purpose, so …”
“We’re getting there.” Yancy, only a few years Brad’s senior, offered the bartender an encouraging smile.
Eve imagined Yancy looked more like an artist than a cop, with the curly dark hair, the soulful eyes. But he was damn good at both.
“Let’s see what you’ve got so far.”
As Yancy worked both by hand and by comp, he turned his sketchbook around.
She’d worked with less, Eve thought as she studied the sketch. But she’d have judged the woman the face represented to be in her late twenties—and the hair dominated the face itself.
“We haven’t been at it long,” Yancy told her. “Just really getting down to it.”
“More than we had. Does this match your impression, Jake?”
“Well, she’s a good ten years older than she looks here. She’s got some wear—don’t mean any disrespect.”
“We’re not here to respect her,” Eve pointed out.
“Okay, so.” Head angled, he studied the sketch. “She’s got some wear, you know? Lines starting.” He started to reach for one of Yancy’s pencils, stopped himself. “Out from the eyes, beside the mouth.”
“Do you draw?” Yancy asked him.
“I fool around.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and show me?”
“I don’t want to mess it up.”
“It’s already comp-logged. Go ahead.”
“Okay, so …” Jake took the pencil. “I’d say her eyes are a little rounder. More like …” He rounded them subtly, smudged some lines at the corner with the side of a callused thumb. “And maybe a little broader nose. It seemed broader because her face is narrow, and it narrows more at the chin, like … that. Then the expression lines here. And I want to say she looked sallow. Like somebody who doesn’t get out much, in the sun.”
“That’s right,” Brad murmured. “That’s really right. Her mouth’s smaller than what I said, isn’t it?”
“I was going to say tighter, but yeah. Her features don’t really balance. It’s just a click or two off. She’s not—”
Jake passed the pencil back to Yancy. “It feels wrong to diss a woman in front of a woman.”
“A cop,” Eve corrected. “You want to say she’s not attractive.”
“Not like dead ugly, but not the sort you look at twice. A fader, if you get me. The hair was all ‘Look at me, I’m on it,’ but it didn’t go with the rest of her. She was trying to be what she wasn’t. Trying for younger, edgier, and just missing the mark.”
“Wanted to be with,” Brad supplied, “and she’s without.”
Yancy worked on the mouth, redefined the chin.
Eve studied the sketch. heavily lined eyes, darkly dyed mouth, the dreads falling on either side of the face, closing it in.
“It’s a good likeness,” Jake commented. “It’s a real skill to be able to draw a likeness that good of somebody just from other people’s bits and pieces.”
“We’ll run with it,” Eve said. “Log that, copy, and send,” she told Yancy. “And can you do another, take away the heavy makeup, the dreads? Jake says brown eyes, possibly hazel, so go with brown hair.”
“Playtime.” Yancy rolled his shoulders, swiveled to the computer, and began some tech magic.
On-screen the dreads vanished. He filled in temples, cheeks, and side jawlines. Layer by layer he brushed away the thick eyeliner, the thickened lashes, took the eyebrows from dark and bold to a calmer brown.
The lips went from hard red to pale, almost undefined.
“Yeah, a fader,” Jake murmured as her hair faded to a nondescript brown.
Before Eve could speak, Yancy held up a finger. “Gimme a second.”
He redefined here, smudged there, deepened some of the lines. “Naked face, they’d show more,” he muttered.
Eve leaned over his shoulder, studied the result. “There you are, bitch. There you fucking are.”
Satisfied, Yancy nodded. “I can start facial recognition here.”
“Do that, send it to me, and I’ll back that up. Damn good work. Go home, Brad, get some sleep.”
“I helped?”
She wanted to get to it, to start this part of the hunt with the scent inside her. But she took a moment. He looked so damn young, and so damn tired.
“You helped now, you helped last night.”
“The Flash is still dead.”
“Not a damn thing you could’ve done to change that. There’s another life on the line now, and what you did last night, what you did right here, could help save that one. Tagging me, that was smart. Chasing after her, that was brave. Coming here, that was responsible. You hit all three marks. Go home and sleep.”
“Will you let me know when you get her? I’ll sure sleep better when you do.”
“I’ll let you know. Do you need transpo?”
“No, no thanks. Thanks, Detective Yancy.”
“Back at you, bro.”
“I know it’s whack timing and all, but, man, it’s like the ult meeting you, Jake.”
“Another back at you.” Jake shook his hand and Brad walked off grinning.
“Gotta book. Again, good work, Yancy,” Eve said.
“Nice meeting you,” Jake added to Yancy.
“I’ll go with whack timing, the ult, and add ‘Night Run’ still bangs all the bells.”
“Appreciate it.” Jake had to stretch his long legs to keep up with Eve’s. “What do you do now?”
“The job. Sorry,” she said quickly. “You were a big help, more than usual, so we got this likeness nailed fast.”
“There’s another life on the line? That wasn’t bullshit to make Brad feel better—because it did. The idea that he helped, I mean.”
“He did help, and no, it’s not bullshit. You’re in line on helping save that life, too.”
Nadine came clicking along in her high-heeled boots before Eve reached the glide. “I got hung up,” she began. “And you were fast. Don’t tell me you got her. You got her?”
“You said don’t tell you.” Eve hopped on the glide.
Nadine reversed course, hopped on behind her. “Let me see her.”
“No.”
“Goddamn it, Dallas!”
“You can’t broadcast the sketch unless the commander gives that a green. And he’s not going to give it a green at this time.”
“If I broadcast it, odds are somebody’s seen her, can lead you to her.”
“Odds are shorter she rabbits. If I don’t have her in the box or a cage within thirty-six, that’s another story.”
“It’s my story.”
“My case.”
“Your case, my story. They’re not opposed. I damn well helped you get this far this fast.”
“You’ll get your story when I close my case.”
“Jesus, you guys are sexy. Sorry,” Jake said without a hint of remorse when they both blasted him with stares. “Thinking out loud. But facts are facts. Sexy is sexy. Do you ever go at each other like that when you’re, you know, more … casually attired?”
“Don’t respond,” Nadine said. “It only encourages him.”
“Run with what you’ve got,” Eve advised, “and within thirty-six”—less, she thought, less—“you’ll have the rest.”
With that, she vaulted over the side of the glide, dropped down two feet, and bolted.
Nadine hissed after her.
Jake grinned. “I like her.”
Eve double-timed it into Homicide.
“We’ve got a face,” she snapped at Peabody as she continued straight into her office.
She pulled up the file Yancy sent, programmed for facial recognition, then printed out hard copies.
When Peabody hustled in, Eve slapped the sketch on her board.
“That’s her? She looks …”
“Harmless,” Eve finished. “Part of her arsenal, looking harmless. Being so bland she can morph into anyone. A ‘fader,’ Jake said, and that’s just right. She can fade into the characters she chooses. And right now she’s got some rich woman in her crosshairs. We are not going to let her take that shot.”
“McNab tagged me, said they’re working on a search for you, and have a first pass.”
“Where is it?”
“They’re refining it. He says it’s too broad, and they’re working on narrowing it.”
“How fast will she move?” Pacing the confines of her office, Eve kept that face in her line of vision. “That’s the question. She won’t be in the system, so the facial match may take longer. She won’t have done anything up until now to get noticed. Maybe we’ll find some mental, emotional treatments in her medicals when we nail her down, but that’s no given. Nothing to stand out.”
“She’s a good seamstress. Better than good.”
“Yeah, you do that alone. And to make a living, you do it for other people who get to wear what you make, or alter, right? Do they notice you? Do they give you a second thought—like the line chef in a restaurant who’s sweating it out to make the meal you order? Behind the scenes, under the radar. Writing, now, you get your name out there. Bullshit Book by A. E. Strongbow. You get recognition, praise, maybe some fame and fortune. Here I fucking am. It’s her turn, god-damn it. Finally her turn.”
Eve swung around, drilled a finger into Strongbow’s face. “How does she gain access to the rich woman? In the book, the greedy son argues with the rich mother, ends up shoving her. She falls down the stairs, breaks her neck. He manages to pin it on his sister because said sister had a public tiff with the dead mother just that afternoon. How does she get into the house?”