Saint and Scholar (3 page)

She quickly learned there was a bit of a learning curve to producing police sketches on demand. The first few times, when she had a witness in front of her feeding her details to transfer to paper on the spot, she became easily frustrated and felt she was being judged for each correction she had to make. Her problem was trying to draw too quickly, thinking the witnesses would become impatient, but her concept of time was skewed because she was on the spot. What she thought was minutes while fleshing out the shape of a woman’s cheeks were really just seconds.

The first few tries were rough, but she learned to just go with the flow after realizing editing on the fly was par for the course. She slowed down and became less concerned with speed and more so with accuracy.

Freelance work suited her fine. She contracted with departments in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, and worked by appointment only. When she wasn’t working with the police, she taught art part-time at a couple of local private schools. She wasn’t in love with either gig, but didn’t know many people who really loved their jobs…except for maybe her friend Sharon. Sharon made a living being the life of the party. Literally. She got paid to plan parties and then liven them up when all the celebrating started to fizzle out. Given Carla’s dislike and mistrust of most people she encountered, she didn’t envy her socialite friend’s career path.

Today, the small police force of her alma mater had called her in to create a composite sketch of a man who’d been burglarizing cars parked outside the dorms. Ten vehicles had been broken into and only two students had managed to catch a glimpse of him over the course of his weeklong spree. She had already completed one sketch and returned to coordinate with the second student, who had been unusually difficult to pin down due to his overly ambitious course load.

He sat beside Carla with his eyes squeezed shut, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers.

She sat with her pencil poised over paper, ready to sketch. She was there physically–ready to do her job whenever the kid started talking–but her mind was elsewhere. Ever since Grant left her there on the history department’s stairs, she’d been racking her brain trying to remember his last name. It wasn’t important information; she just wanted to know it. While she waited for the witness to get his act together, she tried on different names in her mind to see if they fit.
Grant Jones? Grant O’Donnell? No, I think that’s Scottish. Grant Evans? Why can’t I remember?

“He was kind of short for a guy,” the student said, massaging his head some more.

She tuned back in and pushed thoughts of the raven-haired Irishman aside. “That’s useful information, but it won’t help me with a facial sketch. What do you remember about his
face
?”

He made a clucking sound with his tongue as he thought, and she suddenly pitied the poor undergrads who had to share space with him during an examination. “I’m pretty sure he was dark.”

“Okay. That helps. How dark? Give me a point of reference.”

Cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck
. “Um, like, not white. Maybe Hispanic. No, wait. Hispanic is white, right?”

“Let’s move on and come back to that at the end. Did he have any prominent facial features?”

“Yeah, yeah!” He opened his eyes and snapped his fingers. “His eyes were really small. Kind of reminded me of a rat. Sort of close together and dark, and he didn’t seem to have eyebrows.”

She raised a brow of her own.

“I remember that distinctly because when I pushed open the dorm door out to the parking lot, he whipped around and looked at me all evil before he grabbed his tools and ran off. It was like he was trying to melt me with his gaze. Where his eyebrows were supposed to be were tattoos. I think they were supposed to look like staples…you know, like on Frankenstein’s monster.”

She did a rough sketch of the particulars onto her pad. “Like that?”

“Yeah. That’s perfect. Also, the bridge of his nose was kinda wide. He had one of those hook noses that you see on guys in, like, South American pottery.”

“Okay.”

The student closed his eyes again and made that clucking noise. “He had really thin lips and a wide mouth like a puppet. Come to think of it, his chin was wide, too. His head was kind of square and boxy.”

She drew a tentative shape around the features the student described. “Like that?”

“Yeah, but he had more prominent cheekbones than that. Like, really high and sharp. Almost made his eyes look sunken like a zombie’s.”

“Okay.” She added some shadows to his face. If the man materializing on her sketchpad hadn’t had some features very similar to another sketch she’d recently done, she might have wondered if she was drawing a cartoon character the student had fallen asleep watching.

“Yeah yeah yeah, like that.” He tapped his index finger on the sketch.

“Anything else?” She doubted anything he told her from there on out would be useful. The picture was very like the one she had sketched based on the female witness’s observations, minus the staple tattoos. The suspects were obviously the same. She wanted the witness to be the lead, though, and acted as if everything he was saying was unique. Perhaps he’d caught small details the other witness hadn’t, some physical tic, perhaps.

He leaned back in his swivel seat and looked up at the ceiling, clucking some more. “Well, he was wearing a hood, but it was a sunny day so that’s the only reason I saw as much as I did.”

“Right.” She put down her pencil and laced her fingers together. The most crucial part of her job was patience. With each sketch, she seemed to acquire a bit more. She’d acquired a
lot
the time she dealt with a witness who tried to withhold useful information until he’d negotiated some type of reward. That had been at her mother’s station, and fortunately Mom had swooped in to mediate.

Sometimes a witness would tell her to sketch something the complete opposite of what they had told her five minutes prior, only to come back around full circle. Usually it was a case of the witness not knowing what words to use to describe a person’s looks in simple terms. She understood the challenge. Remembering features clearly was something people trained themselves to do, and to do it they had to behave as if everyone around them was a potential suspect for a crime that hadn’t yet been reported.

“I’m pretty sure it was a black hoodie. Does that help?”

She shook her head. “Unless it had some sort of gang insignia on it, it’s too common a clothing item.”

“Good point. Oh! I know.” He sat upright again and jabbed his right index finger at her for emphasis. “He had one of those bull piercings, you know, like a hoop through here?” He pointed to his septum. “It was big.”

The other witness hadn’t caught
that
, either. She had been on the phone and distracted. She picked up her pencil and drew a large-gauge circular barbell.

“Yeah, yeah–that’s him. That’s the guy. Give him a really short, fat neck and put a slim jim in his hand and I’ll swear that dude would walk right off the page.”

She thanked the student and released him to his torturous class schedule.

“Looks like the two witnesses definitely saw the same guy,” she said, handing over her sketches and notes to the desk sergeant on her way out.

“Wait, wait–” Sergeant Monroe called her back as he stood over the drawings and peered down at them. “I know this guy.” He walked to the bullpen door opening and shouted into the back of the station. “Hey, Norwood, Gill! Come here a minute.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. Norwood she could stand on most days. Gill? Not so much. She’d hoped to get out of the substation without him knowing she was there.

Tall, wiry Officer Norwood appeared with a sub sandwich in tow and a paper napkin tucked into his shirt. Next her brother Tony, the self-proclaimed half-Italian stallion, darkened the doorway holding a little paper cup of coffee. Monroe moved out of the way and pointed the other men to the sketches.

“That freak look familiar to you?”

“Yeah, I know that guy. I’d remember him anywhere. I had nightmares about that jackass’s face after I saw him on the news. He out already?” Norwood took a bite of his turkey and cheese and started one-handedly inputting information into Monroe’s computer.

“Guess so. He’s the one who witnesses saw busting into all those cars. I don’t know what he thought he was going to get. Almost no one has an aftermarket stereo at this point and most of these kids are too savvy to leave change in the cup holders and ash trays.”

“GPS units, probably,” Tony said as he walked around to the front of the counter and put an arm around Carla’s shoulders.

She dipped out from beneath it and muttered, “Quit it,” while narrowing her eyes to slits.

Her brother ignored her distress and slung his heavy arm around her neck once more. “Sometimes people will take the units out of the car but leave the cord dangling, so the crooks probably figure it can’t hurt to see if they just tucked it into inside the center console.”

“Huh,” the sergeant muttered.

She knew it had been a long time since he’d been in the field, and he was a slow adopter of technology. Monroe was way out of the loop.

“Car break-ins are what he got locked up for last time,” Norwood said. He turned the screen around so to display the inmate information page. The mug shot picture looked stunningly similar to her drawings, except the man in the picture had two long black braids and a neck tattoo. The witnesses probably wouldn’t have been able to see that through his black hoodie.

“Musta got smarter,” Tony said before using his free hand to raise his coffee to his lips.
 
“I guess he learned to wear gloves while he was in prison, or else his prints would have turned up. I’m glad so many inmates are getting solid educations behind bars. Tax dollars are a wonderful thing.”

Monroe grunted and picked up his phone. “Well, let’s get the city police in on it, since their jurisdiction overlaps ours. Maybe they can pick him up and see what other tricks he learned in the slammer.”

“Great. Since I’m all done, I’ll be going.” She ducked out from Tony’s muscular arm yet again and started toward the door.

“Hey, Miss Gill?” Norwood called.

She turned to watch him set down his sandwich at Monroe’s desk and yank the napkin out of his collar to wipe his hands clean.

Tony smirked and leaned onto the countertop to watch the show. She didn’t like that smirk–it had always preceded very bad things when they were kids. He knew something.

She tried to wear her most cheerful smile and hoped the twitching corners of her mouth didn’t give her away. “Yeah?”

“Say, listen. I saw your mom at some certification stuff last week. Nice lady. I miss working with her.”

She arched her eyebrow up to signal Norwood to just get on with it. Tony’s smirk turned into an all-out smile. Yup. He was in on it for sure.

“Well, she said you weren’t seeing anyone and that you’d probably like to go to a movie. Tony said he wouldn’t hurt me if I asked.”

Her phony smile wilted at the corners, and she didn’t care if he noticed. Norwood was a nice enough guy. He always gave her a cheerful hello when she was at the substation, and he looked pretty good in the spandex bike shorts he wore as part of the bicycle patrol. Still, there was no tingle–no
spark
. When Grant had taken her arm earlier, she’d felt a little bit like a chocolate bar left in a hot car: melting inside her wrapper. If he could do that just by guiding her down a path…

She swallowed hard and widened her smile. “Thanks a lot for asking, Norwood, but–”

“Alex. Call me Alex.”

“Oh.
Alex
. You’re sweet for asking, but I’m sort of tied up in projects for the next few weeks.” She cut her gaze back to Tony as a warning, and he scoffed silently behind his peer.

Alex chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, I’m not sweet. Every unattached guy in the station wants to ask you out. You should watch out for those guys. They’re like piranhas, unlike me. See, I went through your mom and bro like a good boy.”

Her smile snapped back in as if it were a stretched rubber band finally being released. The guys at the campus police had always been so damned friendly to her. Now she knew why. “Hey, maybe when my schedule clears up, huh?” she offered. “Ask me again the next time I come into the station.”

“Hey, you got it! Maybe we can go bowling or somethin’.”

“Right. Bowling.” She waved goodbye and hurried out with as much grace as she could muster. She had made it all the way to her car, had the doors locked and seatbelt on before Tony knocked on her window and made her jump from fright. She’d been looking down trying to stab her key into the ignition.