guys, again?”
“Killers, rapists, batterers.”
She flinched and jerked her hand back from the page. “Why are they out on the streets?”
“They did the crime and then did their time.” His hand tightened around his coffee cup. “I rounded up a sketch artist for you. Do you want to give it a try after you finish looking at those mug shots?”
“Sure, although I don’t know how much help I’m going to be. It was dark, and he wore a disguise—I’m positive about that. I should’ve realized that much facial hair was concealing something.”
Elise seemed determined to blame herself and her naïveté for the attack. He couldn’t sit back and allow her to browbeat herself.
He pushed away his coffee, and it sloshed over the edge. “The majority of men who have beards and moustaches are not criminals or trying to hide anything. That’s not a clue that anyone would’ve picked up on.”
Her face awash in pink, Elise smacked the book of six-packs closed. “None of these guys looks even vaguely familiar to me except one who’s the spitting image of my geometry teacher, and I’m probably just projecting because I hated geometry.”
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.”
The blood rushed to Elise’s head and she gripped the edge of the table as the room spun. She had a picture of a dead woman on her phone.
He’d killed her. He abducted her, took her picture and murdered her. And he sent that picture to her.
“How do you know it’s the same person?” Detective Brody had straightened up to his full height and his body seemed coiled for action. The waves of his tension reverberated off the walls of the small room.
The cop who’d delivered the news gripped the doorknob. “As soon as you forwarded the picture to us, we sent it out to patrol. When the unit discovered the body, they checked the picture. It’s a match.”
“Do you have any details, Curtis? Cause of death?”
“Not yet, but she didn’t drown even though the fishermen found the body at the edge of the bay.”
“The bay? Her body was found in the bay?” Detective Brody shot Elise a quick glance.
“Not in the bay, at the edge. Right over that small incline that borders the parking lot for the Golden Gate. That’s why we know she didn’t drown unless it was recent.” His eyes shifted between Elise and the sketch artist, and he cleared his throat. “No bloating.”
Elise covered her mouth and clenched her teeth.
Detective Brody stepped in front of her as if to shield her from the other detective’s words and the image they’d already created in her head.
“We’ll discuss the rest of this on the way.”
Sergeant Curtis dipped his head. “Sorry, Ms. Duran. I’ll ride with you, Brody.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Detective Brody made a half turn toward her.
“I’m fine.” Elise held up her hands. “I’m going straight to my friend’s house after this.”
“How will I reach you? We have to keep your phone.”
“I should hope so.” She
