Spencer tried the Pending file with the same result. Valerie Ann Keene was unknown to the Nevada gaming authorities.
For a moment he stared at the screen, despondent because his only clue had proved to be a dead end. Then he realized that a woman on the run was unlikely to use the same name everywhere she went and thereby make herself easy to track. If Valerie had lived and worked in Vegas, her name almost surely had been different then.
To find her in the file, Spencer would have to be clever.
While waiting for Nella Shire to find the scarred man, Roy Miro was in terrible danger of being dragooned into hours of sociable conversation with David Davis. He would almost rather have eaten a cyanide-laced muffin and washed it down with a big, frosty beaker of carbolic acid than spend any more time with the fingerprint maven.
Claiming not to have slept the night before, when in fact he had slept the innocent sleep of a saint after the priceless gift he had given to Penelope Bettonfield and her husband, Roy charmed Davis into offering the use of his office. “I insist, I really do, I will listen to no argument, none!” Davis said with considerable gesturing and bobbing of his head. “I’ve got a couch in there. You can stretch out on it, you won’t be inconveniencing me. I’ve got plenty of lab work to do. I don’t need to be at my desk today.”
Roy didn’t expect to sleep. In the cool dimness of the office, with the California sun banished by the tightly closed Levolors, he thought he would lie on his back, stare at the ceiling, visualize the nexus of his spiritual being — where his soul connected with the mysterious power that ruled the cosmos — and meditate on the meaning of existence. He pursued deeper self-awareness every day. He was a seeker, and the search for enlightenment was endlessly exciting to him. Strangely, however, he fell asleep.
He dreamed of a perfect world. There was no greed or envy or despair, because everyone was identical to everyone else. There was a single sex, and human beings reproduced by discreet parthenogenesis in the privacy of their bathrooms — though not often. The only skin color was a pale and slightly radiant blue. Everyone was beautiful in an androgynous way. No one was dumb, but no one was too smart, either. Everyone wore the same clothes and lived in houses that all looked alike. Every Friday evening, there was a planetwide bingo game, which everyone won, and on Saturdays—
Wertz woke him, and Roy was paralyzed by terror because he confused the dream and reality. Gazing up into the slug-pale, moon-round face of Davis’s assistant, which was revealed by a desk lamp, Roy thought that he himself, along with everyone else in the world, looked exactly like Wertz. He tried to scream but couldn’t find his voice.
Then Wertz spoke, bringing Roy fully awake: “Mrs. Shire’s found him. The scarred man. She’s found him.”
Alternately yawning and grimacing at the sour taste in his mouth, Roy followed Wertz to the data processing room. David Davis and Nella Shire were standing at her workstation, each with a sheaf of papers. In the fluorescent glare, Roy squinted with discomfort, then with interest, as Davis passed to him, page by page, computer printouts on which both he and Nella Shire commented excitedly.
“His name’s Spencer Grant,” Davis said. “No middle name. At eighteen, out of high school, he joined the army.”
“High IQ, equally high motivation,” Mrs. Shire said. “He applied for special-forces training. Army Rangers.”
“He left the army after six years,” Davis said, passing another printout to Roy, “used his service benefits to go to UCLA.”
Scanning the latest page, Roy said, “Majored in criminology.”
“Minored in criminal psychology,” said Davis. “Went to school year-round, kept a heavy class load, got a degree in three years.”
“Young man in a hurry,” Wertz said, apparently so they would remember that he was part of the team and would not, accidentally, step on him and crush him like a bug.
As Davis handed Roy another page, Nella Shire said, “Then he applied to the L.A. Police Academy. Graduated at the top of his class.”
“One day, after less than a year on the street,” Davis said, “he walked into the middle of a carjacking in progress. Two armed men. They saw him coming, tried to take the woman motorist hostage.”
“He killed them both,” Shire said. “The woman wasn’t scratched.”
“Grant get crucified?”
“No. Everyone felt these were righteous shootings.”
Glancing at another page that Davis handed to him, Roy said, “According to this, he was transferred off the street.”
“Grant has computer skills and high aptitude,” Davis said, “so they put him on a computer-crime task force. Strictly desk work.”
Roy frowned. “Why? Was he traumatized by the shootings?”
“Some of them can’t handle it,” Wertz said knowingly. “They don’t have the right stuff, don’t have the stomach for it, they just come apart.”
“According to the records from his mandatory therapy sessions,” Nella Shire said, “he wasn’t traumatized. He handled it well. He asked for the transfer, but not because he was traumatized.”
“Probably in denial,” Wertz said, “being macho, too ashamed of his weakness to admit to it.”
“Whatever the reason,” Davis said, “he asked for the transfer. Then, ten months ago, after putting in twenty-one months with the task force, he just up and resigned from the LAPD altogether.”
“Where’s he working now?” Roy asked.
“We don’t know that, but we
Staring at the address, Roy said, “You’re sure this is our man?”
Shire shuffled her own sheaf of papers. She produced a high-resolution printout of a Los Angeles Police Department personnel fingerprint ID sheet while Davis provided the photos of the prints they had lifted from the frame of the bathroom window.
Davis said, “If you know how to make comparisons, you’ll see the computer’s right when it says they’re a perfect match. Perfect. This is our guy. No doubt about it, none.”
Handing another printout to Roy, Nella Shire said, “This is his most recent photo ID from the police records.”
Full-face and in profile, Grant bore an uncanny resemblance to the computer-projected portrait that had been given to Roy by Melissa Wicklun in Photo Analysis.
“Is this a recent photo?” Roy asked.
“The most recent the LAPD has on file,” Shire said.
“Taken a long time after the carjacking incident?”
“That would have been two and a half years ago. Yeah, I’m sure this picture is a lot more recent than that. Why?”
“The scar looks fully healed,” Roy noted.
“Oh,” Davis said, “he didn’t get the scar in that shootout, no, not then. He’s had it a long time, a very long time, had it when he entered the army. It’s from a childhood injury.”
Roy looked up from the picture. “What injury?”
Davis shrugged his angular shoulders, and his long arms flapped against his white lab coat. “We don’t know. None of the records tell us about it. They just list it as his most prominent identifying feature. ‘Cicatricial scar from right ear to point of chin, result of childhood injury.’ That’s all.”
“He looks like Igor,” Wertz said with a snicker.
“I think he’s sexy,” Nella Shire disagreed.
“Igor,” Wertz insisted.
Roy turned to him. “Igor who?”
“Igor. You remember — from those old Frankenstein movies, Dr. Frankenstein’s sidekick. Igor. The grisly old hunchback with the twisted neck.”
