Justin at Five
– 20 -
Before Jackie stopped pretending she knew her husband well enough to properly shop for him, she bought him a new home computer for his birthday (the one he had, obsolete three times over, was hardly used). She thought it might help Davis with his hobby, which devoured nearly all his free time now. At least she assumed he was still working on his family project down there; she passed by the blue room only on the way to the laundry and back or into the unfinished crawl space where she stored many of her gardening tools.
Davis connected the wires, plugged in the peripherals, and started to input the history of his dead family, but it felt like starting over to him. The special reports and hyperlinked organization offered by the computer seemed redundant, and not better than the paper system he’d spent years refining. However, he found it useful for research on the Internet (research he had been doing previously in spare moments at work), and for an occasional hand of virtual bridge. He and Jackie used to play two Saturdays a month with Walter and Nancy Hirschberg, but they’d fazed out the regular game around the time of Jackie’s breakdown, and Davis hadn’t partnered with his wife over an actual deck of cards in more than seven years.
On a Sunday afternoon, while he was listening to the Cubs and Cards on WGN and skimming Internet message boards for info about an elusive great-uncle on his mother’s side, a software advertisement snared his attention.
THINK IT’S FUN LOOKING INTO YOUR FAMILY’S PAST? NOW TRY GAZING INTO YOUR FAMILY’S FUTURE WITH SIX BRIDGES SOFTWARE’S NEW FACEFORGER 6.0!
He clicked through to the Six Bridges Web site and read only a few paragraphs on the product before confessing his Visa number to the company’s secure server. He was given a password and downloaded the program and manual to his computer.
He installed the software and experimented with scans of Anna Kat as a baby. He ran the program through trial after trial, aging her to seventeen after entering dozens of variables: Will the subject be a drinker? A smoker? How much? Will the subject spend time outdoors? In the sun? Unprotected? How much? In one week, he had a result good enough to print. Davis held the paper next to a photo taken of AK the Christmas before she was killed. It wasn’t perfect – the eyes weren’t quite right – but it was pretty damn close. Any friend of hers would recognize it as AK for certain.
The following day he purchased a digital camera at an electronics store and rescheduled two appointments to free up the afternoon. The street where the Finns lived curved east of their home, and Davis parked his car on the other side of the bend, where he still had a good view of the front door and driveway. He waited there, the engine running, listening to public radio. Hours passed with no sign of Martha or Justin. He dozed briefly. Around five-thirty, a Mercedes sedan pulled into the driveway. Terry Finn, home from the office. Alone.
In the past year Davis had started to feel foolish and guilty about Justin, and if it hadn’t been for the boy’s regular checkups with Joan, he’d have tried to forget about him altogether. What had he been thinking? Temporary insanity was the only way he could rationalize it, and in doing so he actually felt some empathy for his wife’s history of emotional illness. It would be another ten or more years before Justin even remotely resembled AK’s killer, and her killer would be ten or more years older as well. Possibly even an old man. In all likelihood, they’d be impossible to match by sight, even if he could get them in the same room. He was playing a game of catch-up he would never win. And what if the Finns moved away? How had he planned to keep track of the boy then? It shamed him to think that he had started such a radical experiment without giving two serious thoughts to any of it.
Of course, logic had never been a constant in his equation. Only in his most dreamlike fantasies had he expected to use Justin as a means to capture AK’s murderer. Even if Justin grew up, and Davis or someone else recognized the face, how would he explain it to the police? What would he have to offer as proof? Certainly not his reputation as a respected physician, which would be shattered the instant he confessed to such an insane plot.
All Davis longed for on the day he exchanged the stuff in his credenza with Eric Lundquist’s DNA was a chance to look into the eyes of his daughter’s murderer. Or, in Justin’s case, a simulacrum of his daughter’s murderer. Over the past year, the day when he could satisfy that desire had begun to seem more and more remote. The new software had fanned those smoldering embers again. If he could just get a good photo of the kid, he could plug a dozen variables into the machine, find the face he’d been searching for, and extinguish this latent compulsion once and for all. Davis could finally accept Anna Kat’s murder, Justin Finn could live a healthy life unaware of the machinations that had created him, and Jackie could have her husband back whole. Their marriage had been strained since AK’s death and hyper extended since Jackie’s breakdown. Their latest bout of conjoined misery had been the result of his neglect, not her instability, and Davis was convinced he could make her happy again. Once he stopped torturing himself, he could stop torturing his wife.
When it became clear the Finns had retired for the evening, however, he realized none of this would happen tonight.
He waited until Saturday morning to try again. After half an hour Terry, Martha, and Justin pulled away in a Chevy minivan and he followed at a conservative distance. They drove less than a mile, parking the car in the moderate bustle of downtown Northwood, and Davis found an angled spot on the street about half a block away. He followed them into Starbucks.
The coffee shop was packed from rear to window, and when the door shut it trapped Davis inside with the fresh-brewed aromas. There were half a dozen people here he knew. He should have set up across the street and tried to sneak a picture from there when the family walked out, but now that he was in, he couldn’t turn around and leave.
“Hi, Dr. Moore,” Libby Carlisle said to him. Libby had a stout athlete’s build with thick, strong legs, and her hair was kinky and rust-colored. She wasn’t pretty, but her toothy smile reminded Davis of a famous actress and so he found her looks compelling by association. Libby had been a friend of AK’s. At one time, maybe her best friend. Davis hadn’t seen her since the funeral.
“Hi, Libby,” said Davis. Positioned by the only exit, he was certain the Finns couldn’t escape. “What are you doing home?”
“I’m married now, in case you didn’t know,” she said, patting the handle of the baby stroller at her side. “Thom and I moved back here about six months ago. Weird, isn’t it? When you’re in high school all you want to do is get the heck out of town. Then something always pulls you back.” She wasn’t at all self-conscious about the loss they both shared and Davis appreciated that. Talking with AK’s old friends was usually an exhausting chore.
“Yeah. Funny,” Davis said.
“Say hi to Mrs. Moore,” said Libby, backing out the door, pulling her child behind her.
Davis stood in line and practiced his order, tall skim latte. The Finns were three customers in front of him. Terry had picked Justin up into his arms to keep track of him in the crowded shop, and the boy was staring back in Davis’s direction, running a toy car across his father’s shoulder. His blond hair had thickened, and his parents had let it grow long in back, probably the result of a tantrum he’d thrown at the barber. His face had thinned. His nose was red from a bug; his eyes were royal blue. He giggled at something his father whispered in his ear, and Justin whispered something back and giggled some more. Davis tapped the bulge of camera in his pocket. How strange would it look for a local (and somewhat renowned) doctor to be taking photographs of customers at Starbucks?
When it was Davis’s turn to order, he got change from his five and joined the waiting crowd at the end of the counter.
“Dr. Moore!” Martha Finn said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Martha, thanks.”
“Terry, you remember Dr. Moore.”
“Of course,” Terry said. He shifted Justin in his arms so he could extend a hand for shaking. This would be almost the last time Justin could be held this way. In a few months he would be too big for his father’s thin arms to handle. “Good to see you.”
“How’s Justin doing?” Davis asked.
Terry turned the boy around, and Justin pressed his chin to his father’s chest, shyly.
“Just great. He’s getting over a little sniffle now, but he’s been terrific.” Martha wiped Justin’s nose with a
