when people ask me if I have nightmares, I say no. Not usually, anyway. The dead-eyed mug-shot stares of the killers and criminals whose faces I draw don’t stalk my dreams, because I know that, as the Apostle Paul put it, “faith is the evidence of things unseen.”
I’ve worked with the victims of those criminals and together we’ve taken something unseen—their tortured memories—and created evidence: a likeness of their attacker. I have faith, then, that law enforcement officers can take that likeness and use it to track down the bad guys. When they do, then I have empowered those victims and helped them to become something they never thought they would be: survivors.
Through my gifts and my labors, these survivors find, to their surprise, that they have been able to think what had been—up until then—the unthinkable and to take control of what had been uncontrollable. And when news comes that we’ve caught the bad guy, believe me, I sleep like the proverbial baby.
I haven’t just done my job; I’ve fulfilled my calling.
However, there is one aspect of my work that does haunt me sometimes, especially when the job involves a child.
Sometimes, I am called upon to help identify a murder victim.
And there’s only one way I can help with that task.
Many times, over the years, I’ve been asked to go down to the medical examiner’s office—which is just a euphemism for a morgue—and do a portrait of an unidentified murder victim. Over time, I’ve grown strong when asked to do this, because the way I see it, this is my way to help someone who can no longer speak or even cry out.
In many cases, I’ve learned that if the unidentified victim is an adult or a juvenile, then they were probably murdered by an enemy.
If that victim is a nameless child and none of the available databases turns up anyone missing who fits that general description, then most likely this child was killed by someone he or she loved, someone the child trusted to take care of him or her, someone who betrayed that trust. And when you see what has been done to the bodies during their brief, tormented little lives, then you know that death has often come as a relief.
They bring me photographs.
Big, strong detectives looking sad and depressed bring me color crime-scene photographs of tiny children they have found brutalized unto death and thrown out like so much trash on the side of the road, in a ditch or mud puddle or crammed in a dumpster. Sometimes the bodies have been exposed to the elements and it has become almost impossible to make out a face.
They bring me photographs. They ask if I can use the pictures as references, and transform them into a portrait of a child, smiling.
“If the victim’s smiling,” they say, “then maybe somebody, somewhere will recognize your portrait and help us figure out who this child is and who did this terrible thing to them.”
And so they bring me their grotesque crime-scene photographs and when it’s a child, well, I’ve never yet seen a detective who could hand them over without tears welling up.
You ask me if my job gives me nightmares.
The British poet, Dylan Thomas, wrote a poem after the horrors of the blitzkrieg bombing of London during World War II called “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.” In it, he eloquently told how overwrought outpourings of sentiment at such tragedies sometimes worked the opposite of what was intended, only cheapening the stark power of the event, which should stand alone.
Wordless, for there are no words.
He said, “After the first death, there is no other.”
I know what he means. Every time I hold in my hands a sacred photograph of the remains of another mangled little life and the sweet young voice cries out to me from dumpster or ditch or whatever else passes for a grave, then I know it is not the time for tears and mourning. Not yet.
“Never until...” writes Dylan Thomas, “...the still hour is come...Shall I pray the shadow of a sound...”
Never until the ghastly photograph in my hand has been transformed into a portrait of a smiling child on my drawing board and from there into someone’s heart, motivating them to go straight to their photo album, and from there to the police department... never until what’s left of a body becomes a once-breathing child who loved and was loved... never until then do I let myself mourn.
Never until then do I let myself weep.
I braced myself early one morning when a rookie homicide detective, Darcus Shorten, came to my office and asked if I could do a reconstruction of a little girl who had been found half-submerged in a watery ditch, her body wrapped in a blue fleece blanket decorated with happy little polar bears and reindeer.
Darcus, a young, vibrant African-American woman, had been teamed up on this case with Clarence Douglas, a seasoned veteran homicide investigator. Sergeant Douglas was the best partner a young detective could have. Kind and caring, with an intelligent, calm manner, he hadn’t let the cynicism of the job creep in over the years the way some police officers do. I knew he would never quit until this child could find her name and be laid to peaceful rest.
Still, I ached for Darcus, whose initiation into working on crime cases would be so gruesome. Some investigators go their entire careers without ever having to gaze upon the horrors she and Sgt. Douglas came upon in the ditch that day. It was a trial by fire, but I knew she was strong. She could and would handle it.
“Some kids found her,” Darcus told me. “And the patrol officers who responded to the scene figured she was about four years old, because she was so small. She only weighs forty-seven pounds and is less than four feet tall.”
“But?” I prompted, though I knew what Darcus was going to say.
“Clarence thinks she may be older than that, but that she was starved.”
“To death?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head and I could see the weariness this job can give reflected in her young eyes. “Medical Examiner says she was hit in the head with something that probably caused her death,” she continued and after a short pause, added, “but you can tell from the bruises and cigarette burns and other old injuries all over her body that she suffered for a long time before she died.” Darcus struggled hard to blink back the tears.
“I’m sorry you have to face such a tough case so early in your career,” I said soberly. She nodded and left without saying another word.
I didn’t tear right into the envelope containing the hellish photographs. For a while, I busied myself with other tasks. They needed to be done, but mostly, I was working up my courage.
Ask any cop or emergency worker and they will all tell you that when it comes to
