“I’m ready,” I say, taking a seat across from her. In addition to her laptop and a tablet, numerous binders are scattered on the surface of the table. The memory of talking to a sketch artist right after Mama’s shooting comes back to me as if it were only yesterday. The binders are filled with reference images that will help me pinpoint the features of the man I saw with Scott and help Brenda build her facial composite.
“Babycakes, I’ll be back shortly,” says Pops. “Don’t hold back. Brenda is top notch.” My eyes follow him out the door.
Brenda turns her laptop so that the screen faces me. I watch as she lays a sheet of paper over the tablet.
“Don’t you have a sketch pad?” I ask, remembering how fascinated I was by the sketch artist I met with when I was five-years old.
“You’re looking at it,” she says, adjusting the sheet of paper. “We’re going to do this digitally. While I draw on my tablet, you’ll be able to see the image on the laptop screen and let me know if I need to make adjustments.”
“Cool!” Just like on Kurt Kussler! LAPD has joined the twenty-first century.
Brenda begins her interrogation. Not only do criminal sketch artists need to have drawing skills, but they also need people and listening skills.
“So, Zoey, tell me about the man you saw. What did he look like?” Brenda’s voice is warm and immediately puts me at ease.
With my eidetic memory, I picture him clearly in my mind’s eye. “He had a broad, pockmarked face with a squashed nose. Oh, and a really thick neck.”
As I talk, Brenda sketches, and an outline of the suspect’s face materializes on my computer screen.
“Like this?” she asks.
“Kind of. His face was squarer and his nose more spread out. Like it’s been broken a few times.” I flip through one of the reference books to show her what I mean. She modifies the sketch.
“Yes! Like that!” Excitement colors my voice.
“Tell me about his eyes.”
“They were dark and beady. Very close together.”
“And his brows?”
“Dark and bushy. Very close to his eyes.”
“Did they cross the bridge of his nose?”
“Yes. They met in the middle.”
“And what about his hair?”
“Reddish brown. Very short. Almost a buzz.” I flip through another notebook until I find an almost identical hairline.
“And his mouth?”
“Like a pair of sausages.”
My eyes grow as wide as saucers as I watch the face take shape. And then as Brenda fills in the lips, I gasp at the image on the laptop screen.
“Oh my God! That’s him!”
“Are you sure, Zoey?”
“I’m one hundred percent positive.”
“Let me call your father.” My eyes stay on the composite while she uses the tabletop phone to summon Pops. Every nerve in my body is buzzing with anticipation.
Two minutes later, Pops rejoins us. A thick accordion folder is in his hand. It’s marked: Case #1567: Angela Hart. My mother’s file. It’s now considered a cold case though Pops has never stopped searching for Mama’s murderer. He plops down on the chair next to mine and sets the file down next to the laptop. Reaching inside it, he withdraws a sheet of paper and lays it flat on the table. I recognize it immediately. It’s the police sketch of the man who fired a gun at me twenty years ago. My eyes bounce from it to the computer screen with the new sketch and then flick to my father.
“Pops, they’re one and the same!” Even though the man I just described is substantially heavier and now has a receding hairline and facial lines that show his age, they are undoubtedly the same person. The same ugly monster. My heart is racing.
“Brenda, can you run your new sketch through our data base and see if we can get a match?”
“Absolutely.”
With baited breath, I wait for the results. This is something that wasn’t possible to do twenty years ago. Computer technology has allowed for so many breakthroughs in criminology.
In a matter of seconds, a mug shot appears on the screen next to the sketch. My heart skips a beat.
“Pops! That’s him! The man I saw with Scott! Mama’s murderer!”
Wordlessly, Pops presses a couple of keys on the laptop keyboard. In a few rapid heartbeats, the suspect’s name pops up.
Pops reads it aloud.
“Frank Donatelli. Age 51.”
Hastily, he puts the phone on speaker and punches a four-digit extension.
“Mancuso,” booms a deep voice on the first ring.
“It’s Pete. I’m with Brenda.” Pops’s voice is urgent. “Get me everything you can on Frank Donatelli. I need it NOW!”
“On it.” The call ends.
Five minutes later, Lieutenant Mancuso, one of Pops’s favorite and most reliable officers on the force, joins us, with a printout in his hand. He hands it to Pops. Pops slips his reading glasses that are on top of his head over the bridge of his nose. With lips pressed tight, he reads the material.
“f*ck
.”
“What, Pops?”
“Donatelli is a loan shark who works for the Mob. He’s known as ‘The Finger’—for both his f*ck
-you attitude and his trigger-happy skills.”
“You should be able to find him.”
“Babycakes, it’s not that easy. He’s a ghost.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s invisible. Off the grid. No address. No social security number. Uses fake identities and only burner phones. In other words, he’s untraceable.”