Face of a Killer

by Robin Burcell

  “The truck!” she shouted. Before anyone could act, the vehicle sped from the delivery doors. Its headlights blinded her. Its wheels screeched across the wet pavement.

  And headed straight for them.

  2

  Officer Harper dove between two cars. Sydney jumped up on the hood of the nearest car, felt the cold metal through her clothes, the wet droplets soaking her knees. The truck sped off, its red taillights fading in the distance. She saw no rear plate, wondered if he’d removed it recently, or if it hadn’t been there when he’d first pulled into the lot.

  “Damn it,” she said, sliding from the hood. She checked it for dents, didn’t see any, but on the off chance, tucked her business card in the windshield. Two officers jumped in a patrol car and sped off after the vehicle, and she heard them on Harper’s radio, calling out they were in pursuit of a newer model Chevy utility truck. A moment later, they were asking Harper on the radio what the suspect was wanted for. Translation: How hard were they going to search for him?

  “Stand by,” he said, then looked to her for guidance.

  She glanced over at Dixon’s car, saw a few smears in the raindrops on the driver’s window, but no apparent damage. All she really had was some suspicious activity, not enough for SFPD to waste their time. “I wouldn’t mind knowing who he is, but unless he’s got a pocket full of burglar tools, I’ve got nothing,” she said, quite simply because other than no license plate on his car, maybe speeding at them through the parking lot, she had bigger fish to fry. And rules were rules.

  Any crime would’ve been the SFPD’s jurisdiction anyway. As busy as they were tonight, she doubted they were interested, a fact confirmed when Harper nodded, then into the radio said, “FI, only.” Field investigation. Which basically meant if they caught him, they’d identify him and hope for something more concrete to make an arrest from, like an outstanding warrant.

  “Ten-four,” the officer radioed back.

  “You think he was trying something?” Harper asked her, as they walked back into the ER.

  Sydney thought about that feeling of being watched. “Hard to say what he would’ve done if we hadn’t gotten out there.”

  “What’re you here for?” he asked her.

  “Rape case we picked up from your office.”

  “Yeah. Heard about that. Tough case. All the way from Reno. Got any leads on, what’dya call your suspects? UnSubs?” he asked, referring to the FBI term for unidentified subject.

  “Not yet. I’m going up to do a sketch of him now.”

  “Good luck. We’ll keep an eye on the parking lot in case this idiot decides to return. Couldn’t be real bright. Not like you can’t tell that’s some sort of cop car once you look inside the thing.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  She gave him her card with her cell number on it, then returned upstairs.

  Dixon was waiting just outside the victim’s door. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Not much.” She glanced into the room. Tara Brown looked like she was asleep. “I saw some guy in a white utility truck, newer model Chevy. Thought he was about to smash your car window, called out, and he took off.”

  “You crawling around in puddles?” he asked, eyeing her wet knees.

  “A few. She talk to you yet?”

  “When she wasn’t sleeping. The only thing I got from her was that our UnSub stole a ring she wore, when he left her for dead. Wouldn’t say a word after that. I was hoping you could work your magic.”

  She brushed at her clothes, tried for an appearance of calm as she walked in. Her briefcase was right where she’d left it by the door, and she picked it up and walked over to the bed, shaking off the bit of adrenaline from her chase outside. Tara appeared to be sleeping still, and when Sydney thought she seemed calm enough, she called out her name, pasting on her best soft smile, steeling herself against the mental drain of empathy needed for a drawing, the feeling that every time she completed a sketch, she was leaving a small part of herself on the paper with the victim. Sometimes it surprised her that she had anything left to give after all the drawings she’d done. “Hi, Tara. My name’s Sydney. I’m an artist for the FBI, here to do a drawing of the man who hurt you.”

  Tara made an attempt to shake her head. “I told the other guy that I can’t remember what he looks like…”

  Sydney waited, not wanting to push her just yet, but when it seemed Tara wasn’t about to continue, she asked, “Did you see the face of the man who hurt you?”

  “Only for a minute. He-I was blindfolded after… He pulled my shirt up…”

  “It’s okay,” Sydney said. “But you’d be surprised what you really do remember. And I’m here to help you.”

  “I can’t describe him. I don’t want to.”

  “Well, let’s start off with something easier. I just want to know what you were doing before you were attacked.”

  That seemed to relax her. “I was with my boyfriend. We were in a bar-I’m not going to be in trouble for that, am I?”

  “No, Tara. You’re not in trouble. We’re only interested in who hurt you. Tell me what you were doing, maybe an hour before you were attacked.”

  “We-we were drinking. I, um, had a fake ID,” she added quietly, and Sydney knew she was blaming herself for the events. If only she hadn’t done this. If only she hadn’t done that.

  “Go on,” Sydney said, trying not to think of her own past.

  “The bar was closing, and I had to use the bathroom, and he was there, hiding inside it, and he grabbed me.” She didn’t speak for several seconds, and just when Sydney thought she might have given up, she said, “He tried to rape me, and I told him my boyfriend, Eric, was there and would come after me, and he said-he said he hoped he did, because he’d kill him.” She looked up at the ceiling, tears streaming down the sides of her face. “I was so scared. Eric was-he was waiting in the bar when all this was happening. And then the man bit me. My breast. He said it was his mark. He had my mouth covered, but I tried not to scream. I didn’t want Eric to hear. I-I didn’t want him to be killed…” And then she started sobbing, and Sydney let her, not wanting to upset the fragile balance of tumultuous emotions.

  When her crying subsided, and her breathing became more even, Sydney asked, “Did you see his face? There in the bathroom?”

  Tara nodded. “But I can’t describe it. I don’t ever want to see it again.”

  “Tara. I know this is hard for you.”

  “How can you know?”

  She blazed right past that question with “Trust me when I say that you have it in your power to help us catch this person and stop him from hurting anyone else. But we can’t do it without your help.”

  “I can’t-”

  “How old was he?” Sydney cut in, not giving her a chance to think about what she was doing.

  “Um, late twenties, early thirties.”

  “What race?”

  “He was white.”

  “You’re doing good, Tara. How tall?”

  “A few inches taller than me. I’m five-six.”

  “Weight?”

  “Just regular.”

  “Was there anything about him that stuck out in your mind? Anything about him that reminded you of someone or something?”

  She nodded, and seemed to shiver. “He smelled like fire. Like smoke from a fire.” Then, placing her finger along her right cheek, she said, “And there was something on his face. A scar, a wrinkle. I don’t want to remember. I want to forget what he looks like. Please. ..”

  Sydney stared at her sketch pad, the tiny descriptive notes she’d jotted in the corner, trying to ignore the stirrings of things she never wanted to remember at the mention of this man’s scar. And now she didn’t want to look at Tara, didn’t want to see the pain in her eyes, didn’t want to tell her that, though they’d suffered completely different crimes, even after twenty years, there were some things you never forget…

  She shook it off, took a breath. “We’re just going
to do a simple sketch. Real basic at first.” Sydney took her pencil, held it to the paper. “Now how would you describe the shape of his face?”

  “Oval.”

  And so it began. While Dixon stood by the window, trying to remain unobtrusive and watch for wayward vandals in the parking lot, Sydney drew the shape, showed it to Tara, and Tara nodded. Again and again, Sydney drawing, Tara nodding, or shaking her head no, a back-and-forth dance, meeting of the minds, wider, shorter, higher, less, more. What started out as a simple sketch slowly, feature by feature, began to take shape. Two hours and several short breaks later, the sketch nearly complete-all but the shading of the shadows and planes-she showed it to Tara one more time and asked, “If you could make one change on this, what would it be?”

  Tara bit her lip, studied the drawing. “The nose… I think it’s too pointed. And I don’t think the scar was that long… if there even was one.”

  She rounded the nose tip, then stopped, her eraser poised over the scar. She stared at the drawing, the scar on the cheek, her stomach twisting. This wasn’t something she was supposed to remember. Not after twenty years…

  “Syd? You okay?” Dixon moved from the window, walked toward her.

  She closed her eyes, took a breath, then shortened the scar, lightened it to where it looked more like a wrinkle or mark- who knows what it could have been-then held up the drawing, saw her victim’s face crumple, tears streaming down her cheeks as she said, “Yes. That’s him. That’s the man who raped me.”

  And as it usually did at this point in the process, it struck her, the difference between her father’s case and Tara’s, the difference in all the cases for all the drawings she’d done over the years.

  There was no guarantee that her work would result in an arrest. In her father’s case, an arrest had been made almost immediately. It had allowed her to live these past twenty years with the firm belief that justice prevails, and she couldn’t imagine the pain of living otherwise, never knowing if the man who had committed that crime was out there still. What if that Good Samaritan hadn’t copied that license number, called it in to the police? What if her father’s killer had never been caught?

  She supposed it was this last thought that made her look twice at the drawing she’d just finished. Perhaps she was being too empathetic. Trying too hard to see the suspect as Tara saw him. She stood, handed the drawing to Dixon, surprised her hands were steady. “I, um, need a minute. Ladies’ room.” Sydney walked out, not waiting for a response, her gaze taking in the long gray hallway, looking for a sign indicating the restroom. She found it, stepped in, closed the door, trying to figure out just why this drawing had affected her so, and she eyed her pale face in the mirror, the darkening circles beneath her eyes. Her heart was beating as if she’d been running, her hands were sweaty, her stomach nauseous. She knew the reason, told herself there was no other explanation for such a reaction. That milestone. Twenty years. Here Sydney was, doing a drawing of a rapist, not even the same type of crime. And all this time, she wanted it to be him. The face she must have blocked from her conscious mind for twenty years. The man who’d killed her father.

  But it wasn’t. That man was sitting in a jail cell and he was never getting out.

  3

  The night air was refreshing, washed clean. A few stars peeked through the breaks in the clouds, and the cars around them glistened with droplets beneath the parking lot lights, as Sydney and Dixon navigated the puddles to his car. They walked around the vehicle, giving it a good look, making sure nothing had happened since they’d chased off the would-be car burglar, and for a short time she actually thought that maybe Dixon hadn’t noticed her reaction to that drawing. The moment he unlocked the car, gave her that look, she knew otherwise.

  “Something going on that I should know about?”

  There was no way Sydney was going to tell him what the anniversary of her father’s murder was doing to her head, so she gave a slight shrug. “It’s nothing. Really.”

  His gaze held hers for several seconds before he replied, “Whatever that nothing is, make it gone by the time you get back to work.”

  One could only hope, Sydney thought, giving him a smile of reassurance. Conversation over. He drove her home in silence, and as they neared her street, in the midst of the neighborhood called Inner Sunset, wisps of fog started to thicken. When Sydney transferred to the San Francisco field office the only thing she remembered about the city was that the traffic sucked. Hence Sydney contacted a real estate agent, put her life in the woman’s hands, telling her she’d take anyplace as long as she didn’t have to deal with the commute. When the agent came up with a rental in a large house that had been divided into two apartments above the landlord’s home “just three miles from the Pacific Ocean,” and “very near Golden Gate Park,” never mind the clincher, a real garage, Sydney figured it was perfect. What she didn’t realize was that the neighborhood suffered from some of the worst weather in the entire Bay Area all year round. It could be sunny three blocks over, but not in the Inner Sunset. Some days Sydney never saw the sun. Some nights Sydney wasn’t sure the stars were in the sky. She happened to live right smack in the middle of the fog zone.

  Damned good thing she liked the fog, she told herself as Dixon pulled onto her street. He stopped the car in front of her driveway, about to say something, no doubt about tonight’s incident in the hospital, her odd reaction to the drawing.

  She didn’t give him a chance. “See you at work,” she said, before he decided to question her anew. With a quick wave, she exited the vehicle, then hurried up the stairs to her apartment. She let herself in, closed and locked the door behind her, glad the night was over. Her throat was parched, and she made a beeline for the kitchen, filled a glass of water, then took a long drink. Her answering machine flashed. Four messages, according to the prompt, the first from one of her girlfriends, Kate Gillespie, a San Francisco PD homicide inspector, who wanted to set her up with a friend, an ex-cop or ex-attorney turned bartender-Sydney couldn’t really remember which-not that she was in the market. “And do me a favor?” Kate finished. “Call me with your new cell phone number? It’d be nice to get in touch with the real you, not some machine.”

  Two days ago, her FBI-issued cell phone had suddenly stopped working, and for whatever reason, the powers that be couldn’t issue her a new phone with the same number. Typical government bureaucracy, always making things more difficult than they were.

  The next message was from her mother. “I need to know if you can watch Angela overnight next week. Jake’s taking me to a bed-and-breakfast up in Bodega. Let me know. If you can’t, maybe I can call your neighbor, Rainie. Angela seems to like her.”

  Nothing about their argument two days ago. Not that she’d expected anything. It was the same each year, had been ever since Sydney brought up the idea of going to San Quentin and facing her father’s killer. A little over four years ago, when Sydney had joined the FBI, a psychologist who was teaching one of her academy classes on the psychology of murder had posed the question, asked her if she’d ever thought about facing her father’s killer, finding out why he’d done what he’d done, not just from a victim’s standpoint, but also from that of a special agent.

  At first the thought horrified her, but then, the more she thought about it, the more she realized he might be right. Go to San Quentin, face him, find out his reasons for committing the murder, find out why he continued to deny his guilt when the evidence was overwhelming. Carefully she’d broached the subject with her mother. And while she hadn’t expected well-wishes for what she’d suggested, she had hoped for a modicum of understanding. Instead it turned into an emotionally disastrous argument, with her mother insisting that Sydney be examined by a psychiatrist, and even her stepfather, Jake, declaring that her entrance into law enforcement was a mistake.

  Perhaps she could have gone, not told her mother, but that somehow seemed dishonest, and so she put it off each year, reminding herself that she wasn’t the only vic
tim here. Her mother’s feelings should also be taken into account, though Sydney knew that part of those feelings were simply her mother’s attempt to protect her in the best way she knew how.

  But this year had been different, perhaps because of the impending execution, now just ten days away. Her mother, worried that Sydney was going through with what she called her “insane idea,” had enlisted outside help. She’d called an old family friend, Donovan Gnoble, who just happened to be a U.S. senator, and told him what Sydney had planned. That resulted in a call to her office last Friday from his office in Washington, D.C., begging her not to go through with this idea. “For your mother’s sake,” he’d said. “She deserves some peace after all these years. If nothing else, think of her and how she feels. And if you just let it alone, in a couple weeks he’ll be gone.”

  Exactly my point, she thought, jabbing the button to play the next two messages. Both were from Scotty telling her to call him, that it was urgent.

  When they were living together, he was hardly ever home, and it seemed they never had the time to sit down, talk, but the moment she moved to the opposite side of the country, it was like he had her number on speed dial.

  They’d met at the academy in Quantico, where he’d been assisting with the firearms training, though they hadn’t started dating until after she’d graduated. To say he was ambitious would be an understatement. Scotty had his entire life planned out, knew where he was going, what he wanted to do. And she’d liked that about him, because in many ways it reflected how she preferred to live her own life. Structured, planned, scheduled. Black and white. That was, in essence, how she’d survived since her father’s murder. There was no chaos with order.