Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

He continued to ramble for a bit, then said, “And I park around the corner and wait, figuring your old man gotta be gone by then, you know? He was just ’bout ready to leave when I saw him that first time, maybe that’s who was waitin’ for him in the parking lot. His ride. And I decide to walk up the back, see the windows. And I figure, you know, the place is closed up for the night, so I can just climb in the back. No one’s gonna be back there.”

“Do you remember hearing any noises?”

“Nothing. Quiet. Figure it’s closed. Quiet’s good.”

“So you break in. What was the room like around you?”

“Dark. Lots of cans. Stuff around. And then I hear, ‘What are you doing here?’”

“Okay. You hear that and you…”

“I look out the door.”

“At what point did you see the other guy’s face? The killer?”

“When he tells your father he ain’t gonna lose it all. It’s like he was lookin’right at me. Like he saw me, knew I was there. That’s when I turn to leave. That’s when I’m thinkin’, yeah, he’s that same guy sittin’ in that parking lot when I walk in. Ain’t no customer. He’s waiting for your old man. Waitin’ to kill him. That’s why I think he set me up.”

“I want you to look at that face, that moment when he looked right at you. What was the shape, the outline of the head?”

He drew a circle in the air. And so it began. He described, Sydney drew. If he hesitated, she would bring him back to that moment. The moment she didn’t want to relive, but had to over and over. Look at his face. Tell her what he saw. All to get a sketch, a sketch that may or may not be the face of the man who killed her father.

And as Sydney sketched, she wondered how she would know. How would she know if he was telling the truth? How would she know this was the face of a killer?

She needed to keep her mind open. Needed to not prejudice the drawing with her own beliefs, because she didn’t yet know the truth. And eventually she saw it begin to take shape.

And her heart skipped a beat.

Had she drawn this, or was it his sketch?

Was it something she wanted to believe, or was it the truth?

She had to be sure. And so, on purpose, she lengthened and squared the chin, made it different. She had to know that this was coming from his mind, not hers.

“Yeah,” he said, and her heart sank. Her drawing, she thought. Not his. Why should she be surprised he had lied? This was his last shot at freedom. Tomorrow was his last day on this earth. “Yeah,” he said again, nodding. “That’s the man that killed your father.”

She’d witnessed numbers of false sketches over the years, someone trying to conjure a suspect in their mind to clear themselves, agreeing that the sketch she’d done was “perfect.” Another dead end, she thought, and, to prove her point, asked him, “Is there anything you’d do to make it look more like the man you saw? Any changes?”

She expected none, and sure enough he shook his head, saying, “Nothing. Looks just like him…” She gave a perfunctory smile, started to put the sketchbook away, when he said, “Except the chin ain’t his. Wasn’t square. Like, maybe shorter and more round, like this,” he said, taking his finger and tracing it where he thought it should be.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Didn’t want you to think, you know, that you’re a bad artist, but that ain’t his chin,” he said, and her heart started pounding.

His drawing after all…

She changed the sketch. Showed it to him.

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s him. That’s the man that killed your father.”

Gnoble.

Back before he’d ever grown that trademark goatee.

His wife had just been arrested. And if she knew his secrets, he had to be worried. Desperate. And he lived in the same town as her mother. Her sister.

She called for the guard, grabbed her sketchbook, then took out her phone, punched in Dixon’s number. “You know that case I wasn’t investigating…?”

“You know,” Carillo said, keeping pace with her as they crossed the parking lot, “this is the second time you’ve tried convincing me this guy is innocent.”

“He is.”

“He was guilty when we drove in this morning. You sure he’s not yanking your chain?”

Sydney stopped suddenly, and Carillo nearly ran into her. “No,” she said, handing him her sketchbook, so she could dig her keys and her cell phone from her purse.

“It’s Gnoble?”

“Before he grew his goatee. How many people do you know who could describe him like that? What I think is that he grew it after Wheeler saw him there. Gnoble framed him from the get-go. I think Gnoble was waiting out front to kill my father for helping Wheeler, because it was going to reopen all sorts of nasty things.”

“Like how Wheeler’s father was killed during an unsanctioned black op that may have ties to BICTT?”

“Exactly. And I think that when he saw Wheeler walk in there that night, he figured he’d be leaving prints, knew he had a record, so why not set him up to take the fall for my father’s murder? It just worked out better than he planned, because Wheeler broke in to rip off the place anyway. That’s what I think,” she said, unlocking the car doors. They both got in and Sydney said, “No one would’ve been the wiser, until I showed up here to talk to Wheeler. And that’s what started all this. Not McKnight and his photo and his suicide because of his damned guilty conscience about running the country’s budget when he’s got millions of stolen black funds tucked away. It started the moment my mother called Senator Gnoble, and told him I was thinking about going to the prison.”

“Pretty elaborate setup, don’t you think?”

“Look at Gnoble’s background. They were all working special ops. Everything they did was elaborate. A man like Gnoble doesn’t get where he is by doing something halfassed.” Sydney flipped open her phone to call Jake. “He gets there by taking advantage of any opportunity. Wheeler’s presence that night twenty years ago was the perfect opportunity.”

“So what’s the story with this photo McKnight sent to you?”

Jake didn’t answer the phone. She started the car, let it idle. “That by itself was really nothing. Had the suicide note been included with it… The note sure as hell shook up the CIA. They jumped on that quick, cleaned it up so nothing could come back to haunt them. Gnoble might have been worried, but he was smart enough to know that the CIA was not going to let any of that information out, because his wasn’t the only reputation that could be harmed. It had nothing to do with why Gnoble wanted me dead. It was only when I showed up in Baja, started stirring up a hornet’s nest that the CIA got worried.”

“They’re trying to sanitize the past, and you’re trying to bring it out in the open.”

“Which means that Scotty was right in one respect. It wasn’t about the photo. Never had been. At least as far as Gnoble was concerned.”

“I’m not sure I entirely understand…?”

“It was about Cisco’s Kid. Wheeler. Not the boat. And my deciding to go to San Quentin and interview him, find out why he did what he did, that shook up Gnoble, and no doubt his wife. Cisco, Frank White, was probably killed on an unsanctioned black op that Gnoble was responsible for. One that ties Gnoble, and a lot of top government officials and businesses, into the BICTT scandal, some of which could still be operating today, assuming Orozco’s information proves correct. And Orozco said my father probably would’ve been killed later if he hadn’t been killed in the robbery. Why? Because he’s a tie to Gnoble’s involvement. Gnoble’s cover-up of Cisco’s death. My father’s threats of exposing them. All of which Gnoble eliminates by killing him. And the pure genius is that Gnoble sets it up to look like a robbery, which keeps the safeguards that he and Orozco put in place in case of their suspicious deaths.”