Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

She stopped and I tried to see it too, images starting to come together in my mind. “You mentioned the man’s wife; how did you know it was his wife?

“Because the police were questioning me and she was there being questioned too, poor thing.” Adele Rubenstein leaned toward me and whispered, “They were one of those mixed marriages. Very common these days. Me, personally, I have nothing against it, but what about the children? It can’t be easy for them.”

I didn’t bother to remind her that she was talking to a half-breed because she’d already accepted me as one of the flock. But it struck me that no one had mentioned that pertinent piece of information-that the black victim had a white wife. I glanced over at Terri, then at Adele. “So let’s go back to what you saw?”

“What else could there be?”

“You never know, Adele.” I patted her arm and asked her to close her eyes, which she did. “As you got closer, did the standing man see you?”

“He…” She was squinting, looking inward and reliving it, the pars orbitalis muscles of her cheeks flicking under her loose flesh, an anxious grimace setting in.

“Just relax, Adele. I’m right here with you. You’re safe. Now, think back to the standing man.”

“One minute he was there, the next-” She shook her head.

“It’s okay.” I touched her arm again. “Stay with the picture in your mind, a man standing over the dead man. Trust it, Adele.”

She let out a breath and her facial muscles relaxed with it.

“Now tell me, did you see his face?”

“Yes. No. I saw something, but…I’m not seeing it now.”

“Take your time.”

And she did. Two full minutes passed, me staring at Adele Rubenstein’s wrinkled punim, as my Grandma Rose would call it.

“Adele, are you with me?”

She nodded.

“Remember, you’re perfectly safe now, but I need you to go back to that street. You’re taking a walk. Sam is by your side. You look down the street and you see the two men-”

“Yes…”

“You’re getting closer now. The standing man looks up and sees you coming-and you see him.” I saw her expression change, no longer afraid, her incisivi labii muscles puckering her lips with determination. “His face,” I said. “You can see it, I know you can.”

“Yes! I see it! He was colored. Just like the dead man! No, wait, wait. That wasn’t it. He wasn’t colored at all. I’m wrong. I’m dead wrong. I see it now. He was wearing a mask!”

“Tell me about the mask.”

“It was a knit one, not like on Halloween, but the kind you can pull down over your face, with the holes in it.”

“A ski mask?”

“That’s it exactly! He had on a ski mask.”

“Totally covering his face?”

“Total.”

I spent a minute adding that to my drawing.

“Have a look at this, okay?” I turned my pad around.

“Oy vey.” Adele Rubenstein shivered and rubbed her arms. “Goose bumps. I’ve got goose bumps. You’re a regular Houdini, you know that, Nathan? It’s like a photograph, you made.” She pointed an arthritic finger at my sketch. “That’s the man. That’s the man I saw.”

Terri and I were out on the street heading to the spot where the victim had been slain.

“Sorry if I stepped on your toes in there. I just thought-”

“No, it was okay. You were good, the way you drew it out of her. It’s like you’ve got your own kind of interrogation technique.”

“It sort of evolved over the years. I’ve been dealing with witnesses for a long time.”

“Well, it worked.” She smiled. “I’m just sorry I missed your bar mitzvah. I do a damn good hora. ”

“Too bad I missed it too. Never had one. My mother’s totally assimilated, and my father-”

“Juan the Just.”

I stopped and turned toward her. “You know about my father?”

“Only what I’ve read. That was his nickname, right?”

“What the cops called him, but I didn’t find out until-”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. Must have been tough, losing your dad so young.”

I didn’t want to talk about it and turned the conversation around. “What about you?”

“What about me?” she said, her outer borough accent going a bit harsh.

“I hear your father’s a cop too.”

Her eyebrows pulled together and the corners of her mouth turned down, a combination sad-disgust face, a blend, as Ekman would call it. “He’s retired, but still alive, if you call staring at the TV all day alive. Maybe he should come and watch with Sam the blind man.”

“I hear the feds are coming in.”

She nodded, the disgust factor lifting her upper lip. “That’s right.”

“So, we wasting our time?”

“The case is a collaboration,” she said, disgust in her voice matching her face. “And I’m still working it. By the way, there’s a total media blackout around this.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that? All three murders have been on page one.”

“All three unrelated murders. Get it? Nobody but Hollywood likes a serial killer.”

“The media is going to get it from somewhere. They always do.”

“Just not from us, okay?”

“Wouldn’t tell my mother.”

“You’ve got a mother, Rodriguez?” Russo smiled. “By the way, and you’re going to love this. The G has given the case a code name. They’re calling it-and the unsub-are you ready?-the Sketch Artist.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Afraid not. The G loves their code names.”

“The newspapers are going to love it too.”

“When they get it,” she said.

We had reached the corner where Harrison Stone had been shot and killed. I glanced at the warehouse that ended the street in a dead end, then down at the concrete. I could make out a few places where it was stained darker, possibly from blood, and a shadow slid across my unconscious.

“You mind if I try and draw something?”

“That’s why you’re here. You want me to take a walk, or-?”

“Just give me a few minutes.”

I watched Terri walk toward the corner, her gait determined, but with a slight swaying of her hips, sexy without trying. Then I stopped looking and opened my pad.

I drew for about ten or fifteen minutes.

It was the same shadowy figure in the long coat and ski mask. Something more of the face had materialized, though I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t inventing it. Maybe I’d allowed the witch doctor concept to go to my head.

Terri leaned in for a look. “Wow, you’re fast, Rodriguez.”

“You have to be in my line of work. No agonizing over perfection allowed if you want to get something on paper before it fades from the witness’s memory. “Could be I’m seeing what the witnesses planted in my head.”

“Well, I didn’t hear Adele Rubenstein say anything about the unsub’s eyes. Did Acosta’s wife?”

“No. But there was the other eye I drew. It’s in my mind, but…” I didn’t know where it had come from, and I said so.

“Could be that transference thing you talk about.”

“Could be. But it’s just an eye. Not enough for an ID.”

“Maybe not,” said Terri, looking up at me. “But it’s a start.”

He pores over the newspaper looking for some mention of his early work. But there is nothing. All they write about is the new one, the dead man on the Upper East Side. He cuts the story out, pins it above his desk, reaches for a pencil, still staring at the article, no longer reading it, the muscles around his eyes beginning to ache, type blurring. Then a picture starts to swirl in his mind like an eddy gathering force and he needs to draw it, to capture it on paper.