Death Mask

“Do you think he could have been wearing a mask?”

“Oh, no. That was his real face. But it was just so red.”

“Did you smell alcohol on his breath?”

“No. But he did have a smell. It was kind of sour, and burned. Like burned hair.”

“Okay. he had a red face and eyes like slits. Could you take a guess at his ethnic origin? Did he look Oriental, maybe? Or Native American?” Molly’s pencil was already at work, and the man’s disembodied eyes were peering up at her from the page, as if they were emerging from another dimension.

“I don’t know what he was. He looked dangerous, that’s all. You ever see men like that? They’re all full of tension, like those pit bull terriers, you know?”

“Okay. how tall would you say he was?”

“At least six feet. Six feet two. Maybe a little over.”

“And how was he built?”

“Heavy, with very broad shoulders. And a thick neck. And the way he stood. Even that was threatening. Kind of leaning toward me, as if he was itching to be let off the leash.”

“How would you describe the shape of his face? Oval, round, or squarish?”

“Squarish. Definitely squarish. And his forehead was kind of slabby.”

“How about his nose?”

Jane Becker closed her eyes. Molly waited for her with her crayon poised over her sketchbook, saying nothing. She knew that Jane Becker could see her attacker’s face as clearly as if he were standing right in front of her, and she didn’t want to interrupt that moment of intense visualization. She wished only that she could share it.

“Jane?” she coaxed her. “His nose? Was it a long nose or a snubby nose? Getting the nose right — that’s real important. If you think of the way that cartoonists draw people — they always exaggerate their noses.”

Jane Becker opened her eyes again. “I don’t want to make a mistake, that’s all. I was so freaked out when he was stabbing that poor man. But what if they arrest somebody and it wasn’t him?”

“Jane, seriously, that’s down to me. I’m the forensic artist, it’s my responsibility to get it right.”

Jane Becker hesitated for a moment longer, and then she said, “Okay, then, his nose was pointed, with kind of a bump in it. And he had very high cheekbones. And a big chin, with a cleft in it. I remember that. A really deep cleft.”

Molly’s pencil made the softest of chuffing noises as she shaded and filled and structured, and the perpetrator gradually began to materialize in front of her, as if he were coming toward her through a hazy white fog.

“What was his hair like?” she asked.

“Reddish. reddish, but turning gray. And cut very short. Bristly.”

Molly took out her box of pastel colors and went on sketching and shading for a few moments more. A red face, with touches of green and blue to give it depth and emphasis.

“You didn’t see what color his eyes were?”

“Like I say, they were slits. All I can think of is black.”

Molly lifted up her sketchbook up and turned it around so that Jane Becker could see what she had drawn.

Jane Becker covered her mouth with one bandaged hand. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God, that’s so much like him.”

“You’re sure?”

Jane Becker peered at the sketch more intently. “Maybe the cheekbones not so sharp. His cheeks were kind of fuller, not so hollow. And his eyebrows were thicker. I remember his eyebrows, because they were bristly and red like his hair.”

Molly lightened the shadows under the cheekbones and made the face smoother and rounder. She quickly scribbled in some denser eyebrows, too.

“That’s it,” said Jane Becker. “That’s the man who stabbed me. I can’t believe how you did that.”

“I listened to you, that’s all,” Molly told her. “You told me what he looked like, and here he is. But you told me — Jane Becker, legal secretary who lives with her parents in Lakeside Park, and that was very important.”

She didn’t say that she had made the suspect much less aggressive in his appearance than Jane Becker had described him. In spite of her prettiness, she suspected that Jane Becker had some problems relating to men. Probably not serious problems — no more than a lack of confidence, or a recent relationship that had suddenly turned sour. But witnesses’ personal prejudices could dramatically distort their description of a perpetrator’s appearance. Black suspects were frequently described by white witnesses as being much more dark skinned and much more physically intimidating than they actually proved to be when they were arrested. Looking “dangerous” didn’t affect the length of a suspect’s nose, or the positioning of his ears, or the color of his hair.

Molly had also made the suspect look flushed, rather than scarlet. A witness’s perception of color was always intensified by fear, because it widened the pupils.

She closed her sketchbook and packed away her pencils and her crayons. “Thanks, Jane. You’ve been very brave and very helpful.”

“What happens now?” Jane Becker asked her.

“Right now I’m going over to police headquarters to put some finishing touches to this composite, ready for the media. It should be on the TV news later tonight, and in the papers by tomorrow morning.”

“Do you think you’ll catch him? I couldn’t bear to think this could happen to anybody else.”

Molly opened her sketchbook again and looked at the face of Jane Becker’s attacker. “If this sketch is as accurate as you say it is — then yes, I’m pretty sure we’ll catch him.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure, of course you can.”

“Where did you find that fantastic necklace? I haven’t been able to take my eyes off it.”

Molly lifted it up. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I got it at the Peddlers Flea Market on Kellogg. I don’t suppose it’s worth anything much, but I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. It has everything, doesn’t it? Suns, moons, even little animals.”

On the way out of Jane Becker’s room, she showed the sketch to the policeman sitting outside. “This is the guy. just in case he tries to get in here and finish the job.”

“Dead ringer for my Uncle Herman,” said the cop. “Be glad to pull him in for you, on suspicion.”

CHAPTER SIX Hunt a Killer

By the time Molly arrived back home in Blue Ash, Sissy and Trevor were sitting in the yard (so that Sissy could smoke).

“Are you hungry?” asked Sissy. “There’s some hummus in the fridge.”

“No, I’ll just have a drink, thanks. I’m pooped.”

“How did it go, hon?” asked Trevor, pouring her a glass of wine.

“It was sad, as usual. Sad and horrible and pointless.”

“So how did it happen?”

Molly sat down. “The girl was going out to get a box lunch, that’s all. She got onto the elevator on the twenty-first floor. She went down to the nineteenth, and this guy from one of the realty offices got on, too. But on the next floor, they were joined by the perpetrator.

“They went down as far as the fifteenth, and then the perpetrator stopped the elevator and jammed it. He stabbed the guy from the realty office twenty-eight times, all over, including his face. Then he turned on the girl. She tried to fight him off, and then she tried to escape by pulling the doors apart, but the perpetrator stabbed her three times in the back.