Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

The face ages in a fairly specific manner, and from looking at the photo, the deepening of the eyes, the early signs of creasing at the outer corners, and the very slight fleshiness beneath the jaw, she put the men in their early thirties, figured that would be right around the time period when all this first started. Twenty-two years ago was right when Robert Orozco fled to Baja, and since he was in this picture, she figured that was two years before her father was killed. .. She drew her gaze from her father’s face, instead concentrated on the one unidentified man, his dark skin, high forehead, which probably foretold even thinner hair on the crown than the norm, more than likely gray.

In her mind she went over the aging process, because she’d have to add all the steps to age the face properly. At forty-five, he’d be dealing with the forming of crow’s-feet wrinkles at the outer eye, and the area beneath the chin would start to look fleshy, less firm. At fifty, thinner hair, upper lids starting to sag, deeper set eyes, and the pouch beneath them becoming more noticeable. It was here where the definitive signs of aging often sent people scurrying for Botox and facelifts. This was the age when they noticed the wrinkles appearing mid-forehead, the flesh sagging in the cheeks and along the jawline.

At fifty-five the pouch beneath the eyes was more decisive, the zygomatic arch and the cheekbone more apparent, the temporal wall and the brow corner more pronounced. This was what she needed to add to bring this man, this stranger, to age, and she couldn’t help but look at her father in the photo, try to imagine him the same way, that somehow if she drew his face, progressed his age, he would seem… more real. Not just a memory.

She shook the thought from her mind, worked on the age progression sketch of the black man. Finished him so that he was now a man in his fifties, guessing that he’d have a conservative haircut, a somewhat high forehead, with thinning hair. When she finished, she looked at him, knew right away where she’d seen him before. Well, not him, but someone who looked very much like him.

In prison. He was a dead ringer for Johnnie Wheeler.

Jared Dunning sipped at his coffee and eyed the side mirror before turning his attention back to the house. It was one of those beautiful mornings in the city, the sort that made you want to pick up, move here, the rest of the world be damned. Well, he’d certainly be damned. His pregnant wife would shoot him, was close to it now, though whether that had something to do with him being gone so long, or her screwing their next-door neighbor these past couple of years, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure the kid was his. But he wanted kids. And he wanted this one, so damn his neighbor. And damn his wife, too.

How the hell anyone working for the Agency stayed married was beyond him. At least anyone working covert ops, and it was moments like this that made him wish he’d chosen to go into something like encryption analysis, or some support staff position, where he would have a nice cozy little office in the basement of the Puzzle Palace in Virginia, getting off at five, instead of peeing in a fucking bottle because they didn’t dare leave for a moment. Not after the near disaster the other night when Sydney Fuck-You-Guys-I’ll-DoWhat-I-Want Fitzpatrick decided to take off in the middle of the night on a motorcycle, then disappear for two days.

Whatever it was she’d done, it sure had the brass scrambling for cover. He’d give his eyeteeth to know the whole story. All his other teeth were reserved for offerings to whatever gods were watching over him the night McKnight ended up dead-fifteen minutes before Jared’s watch started. As thin as the ice he was currently skating on seemed to be these days, he was damned lucky. So were the agents who had the misfortune of sitting on McKnight’s house at that inopportune time. For the moment it was listed as suicide. The good hits usually were, and right now they didn’t even know if it might have been a hit.

He looked over at Mel, sucking down a Diet Coke, trying to stay awake. Their relief shift should’ve taken over a couple of hours ago. God only knew where the hell they were, and how the hell he and Mel were going to get any sleep as wired as they were, all so they could be back by ten tonight. “I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?” Mel said, not daring to take his eyes off the

Fitzpatrick place, not after their reaming for losing her. “About the McKnight suicide. You really think it was one?”

Mel shrugged. “I heard that guy had so much shit in his background, it could’ve been suicide. Public humiliation would’ve done the guy in.”

“But it could’ve been a hit.”

Mel drained the last bit out of his Coke, then tossed the empty can in the back. “I can’t even begin to guess what the hell this is about, but whatever the Bureau dug up on

McKnight when they were doing his background, it sure as hell had our guys on Mahogany Row scrambling to cover some serious ass.”

“Sometimes it’s nice to be a peon. Hard to fall far when you’re already at the fucking bottom,” Jared said as a Lincoln Town Car turned the corner.

He glanced at the driver, his senses going into overdrive as he grabbed the radio, while Mel said, “Oh shit.”

“Gnoble’s car just pulled onto the street,” he radioed. “I see it.”

“Can you move in on foot, without being seen?” “We’ve got it.”

To Mel, he said, “Get Scotty on the phone. Now.”

Sydney stared in shock at the sketch, telling herself she should have seen it earlier, but knowing precisely why she hadn’t. One didn’t look at Johnnie Wheeler and see past the scar that cut across his face, or the cloudy white eye that saw nothing. Clearly this man wasn’t Johnnie Wheeler. But remove Johnnie’s scar, his blind eye, and it certainly resembled him in every sense of the word. She tried to think of the conversation she’d had with him in the jail. Why her father had decided to take him in; his “church project,” Wheeler had called it. Something about Wheeler’s father being in the army, getting killed-that her father knew what it was like.

And there was something about Wheeler having a new baby at the time…

The endless possibilities swept through her, kept her rooted to the spot. Her father knew Johnnie Wheeler’s father. Johnnie Wheeler was in prison for murdering her father.

He said he was innocent.

She wasn’t sure which was worse. That he was or that he wasn’t.

If he was guilty, it was the worst sort of irony.

If he wasn’t, then someone out there knew so much more about this. McKnight. His suicide. The note he’d mailed to her with the photo.

Before she had a chance to contemplate what any of that meant, she heard someone on the steps.

She glanced toward the door. A bit too early for Carillo with their lunch. Scotty probably. She got up to look.

Topper gave a low growl, and she hesitated.

He’d never been wrong yet.

She knew better than to ignore Topper’s instincts and she walked over to the door, peered through the peephole.

Donovan Gnoble and his aide walked up the steps, Donovan carrying flowers.

Her breath caught. She stepped away, thinking this couldn’t be good. Where the hell were the spooks, the guys who were supposed to be watching her place?

She looked around, saw her things, the drawing, the notes, the photo. Okay. Stop, think. Not the time to panic. Surely, if what Scotty said was true, that Gnoble or someone in his office was really trying to kill her, they wouldn’t do it in broad daylight.

Like she was going to sit around and find out?

She grabbed her gun from the counter, shoved it in the waist of her jeans at the small of her back, then pulled her sweatshirt over it.