Carol Ericson - The Bridge

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I doubt your geometry teacher is moonlighting as a criminal in San Francisco from...wherever it is you’re from.”

“Montana. Is it so obvious I’m not from the city?”

It was to him. She lacked that brittle edge so many urbanites had. But far be it from him to stoke the image she had of herself as the country bumpkin in the big, bad city.

He shrugged. “Not at all. I think you mentioned living here for just a year.”

Nodding, she relaxed her shoulders and slumped against the back of the chair.

Sean picked up the receiver of his phone and punched the button for one of the interrogation rooms. Tony Davros, the sketch artist, picked up. “You’re already there. You must be ready for the witness.”

Sean pushed back his chair as he stood up, dropping the receiver back in the cradle. “Let’s see what you can give us on this guy.”

Elise followed him to the interrogation room, her head cranking from side to side as they waded through ringing phones, shouts across the room and people crisscrossing the space with papers or files clutched in their hands.

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s noisier than a kindergarten classroom in here.”

“Probably about the same level of maturity, too.” He pushed open the door to the interrogation room and ushered her inside.

Davros stood up and extended his hand. “I’m Tony Davros, Ms. Duran. Wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.”

Sean raised one eyebrow in Davros’s direction. That’s the most words he’d heard from the artist’s mouth in almost two years. Davros had even pulled out a chair for Elise.

First Jacoby and now the sketch artist. He got it. Elise’s fresh-faced, angelic appearance spurred men on to chivalrous deeds, prompting them to pull out chairs and hand over jackets. Even the typically surly Davros wasn’t immune.

“Me, too.” She shook Davros’s hand and dropped onto the wooden chair. “I’m afraid the man was wearing a disguise—beard, wig, glasses, even a phony accent.”

“That’s not uncommon.” Davros swept his palm across a piece of sketch paper and caressed his pencil. “We’ll start with the shape of his face—what you could see of it.”

The two of them went back and forth for several minutes, the artist coaxing and praising as his pencil moved swiftly across the page in front of him.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Sean sauntered to where Davros sat hunched over his sketch pad, the tip of his tongue lodged in the corner of his mouth as he further defined the nose of the suspect.

Sean squinted at the face. Would someone be able to recognize him without the beard and moustache? Davros’s job entailed drawing another picture without the facial hair and glasses, perhaps with shorter hair.

“That’s close to what I remember.” Elise tossed her ponytail over her shoulder as she leaned over the drawing.

A sharp rap at the door interrupted them, and before Sean could even offer an invitation, it swung open and banged against the wall.

Sergeant Curtis from homicide, his eyes bugging out, thrust his head into the room. “We just got a call from patrol about a dead body, and I think you’re going to want to head out there, Brody.”

Sean’s heart slammed against his rib cage. “And why is that?”

“It’s the girl in the picture.”

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