The only distinctive images they had of the assassin showed gloved hands, a chin, and a portion of one ear. Everything else was under a hat, a scarf, in boots, or beneath loose-fitting clothes. Even the skin color was unreliable. Kendra was a very light-skinned Asian woman. The woman in the elevator had a dark chin, but that could have been caused by the shadow of the hat.
'This lady sure knew what she was doing,' Viens said. He had walked over to have a look.
'Darrell figures she cased the hotels before going in,' Hood said.
'I don't think so,' Viens said. 'At least, not in the way that you're thinking.'
'Why not?'
'She knew where the cameras were, and she apparently knew what kind of lens they were using,' Viens said. 'She would not know that simply by eyeballing the cameras, since they were probably behind a two-way mirror.'
'What kind of lens were they using?' Hood asked.
'The elevator at the Hay-Adams was using a thirty-seven millimeter wide-angle lens,' Viens told him. 'It foreshortens the center of the image and distorts the periphery so you can cover one hundred and eighty degrees of vision.'
'A fisheye lens,' Hood said.
'Colloquially, yes,' Viens replied. 'Elevator security uses either regular or wide-angle lenses, depending on the size of the carriage, the lighting in the corners, and whether the hot spot for crime is in the doorway or in the corners. There are also privacy issues about camera placement. Some counties will only allow a straight-down view on the top of the head. The way our lady is standing, the brim of the hat is positioned to block as much of the camera's view as possible.'
'I'm still not sure what you're saying,' Hood told him. 'Wouldn't you stand the same way regardless of the lens?'
'No,' Viens said. 'A regular lens would not have fattened the brim to cover the nose this way. It's very likely that our assassin saw actual security images generated by this camera.'
While the men spoke, Mae Won made a phone call.
'And it probably was not Ms. Kendra Peterson,' Stoll declared. The thumbnail 3-D constructs were complete, along with the superimpositions. There were some two-dozen pictures. Stoll set up a slide-show presentation of the full-size images. 'There is a match total of six percent based on available security cam viewing surface of seven percent of her anatomy.'
'Does that mean there is not enough to go on or that she is not the one?' Hood asked.
'It isn't her,' Stoll declared. 'We have a series of click points,' he said. He used the cursor to highlight parts of the visible physiognomy. 'There are small bulges in bone, cartilage, flesh, even minute wrinkles. Some of them we can see, some of them we can extrapolate from the shadows. Ninety-four percent of these two faces is dissimilar in just the small area we can see. Unless she had facial surgery, the woman in the elevator can't be Ms. Peterson. And she did not have surgery, since I took a few of the older images that Bugs sent over and compared them to the lady at the press conference this morning. Those are identical.'
'Mr. Hood?' Mae Won said.
'Yes?'
'Hay-Adams security says they only save those camera images for two days,' the young woman said as she hung up the phone. 'They already did their own comparison of the images. I thought if we scanned that picture library we might see which of the women went to the hotel.'
'Can't we find out who visited the security office?' Stoll asked.
'Politicians have benefits in the hotel ball room. They must send advance security teams to check out the cameras.'
'Actually, Darrell has already looked into that,' Hood said. 'The Hay-Adams does not keep a record of visits by Congressional advance staff. Even if they did, that might not help us. There could be a chain of people involved in passing information to the actual assassin.'
'Including Ms. Peterson, if she is involved in any of the senator's security,' Stoll pointed out.
'Possibly,' Hood agreed.
