Dead Write: A Forensic Handwriting Mystery

by Lowe, Sheila

  The matchmaker held up a hand like a traffic cop, letting her know that it was still not time to talk business. She leaned down and produced a gold foil-wrapped box from under the cocktail table. As Grusha removed the lid, Claudia noted the Godiva logo embossed on the top. Nestled inside were a dozen or so multicolored chocolates of various shapes and colors.

  Grusha slid the box across the table and pointed a French tip at an amber-colored piece. “You must try the Wild Bolivian. Goes very good vit the wine; you vill see.”

  Feeling slightly decadent, Claudia took the chocolate she indicated and bit into it. She nearly moaned as rich cocoa flavor melted and slid down her throat like liquid velvet. Mouthgasm. She popped the rest of it into her mouth, acutely aware of how easily one could be seduced by these little luxuries; sidetracked with fine wine and fancy chocolate.

  She dabbed her lips on a cocktail napkin. “That was amazing. Thank you. Now, I’d really like to hear about your concerns with Andy Nicholson’s work. What kinds of mistakes did he make?”

  “You must have another sweet.” Grusha picked up the box of chocolates and offered it to her again, tempting her like the Edenic snake offering forbidden fruit.

  Wondering why her client was so reluctant to discuss the business she had brought Claudia here to handle, and at great expense, too, Claudia shook her head. “No, thank you, Grusha, really. I think it’s about time I got a better understanding of what my assignment here really is, don’t you?”

  Grusha pushed to her feet, her hands stretched out, her tone almost angry, as if Claudia had breached some social etiquette. “Your assignment is to tell me what you find in the handwriting of these clients I give you. Forget about Nicholson! I know he is your enemy. This is why you agreed to come, yes? I do not care about that. Does not matter what Nicholson think.”

  Her vehemence was startling. She had obviously investigated Claudia’s background and learned of her ongoing animus with Nicholson. “Any bad blood between Andy Nicholson and me won’t contaminate the work I do for you, I can assure you,” Claudia said firmly.

  “You must make sure it does not. I cannot have you distracted by your hatred for this fool. I am not going to influence you. Just tell me what you find—no report. When you can give me answers?”

  What have I gotten myself into now?

  “If you just want a few notes about the personalities, tomorrow afternoon,” Claudia said. “I can give you something at least preliminary on these samples by then.”

  A bellman brought the heavy box of file folders up to her hotel room on a luggage cart. Claudia tipped him and unloaded them onto the bed. Her meeting with Grusha Olinetsky had left her with more questions than answers. She had felt all along that there was a subtext to the conversation with the matchmaker. Clearly, there was something important that Grusha wasn’t sharing with her. And her instincts told her that whatever the matchmaker wasn’t saying went beyond a simple desire to avoid biasing her opinion.

  She thought about Jovanic’s suggestion that something illegal might be going on. Maybe something that had gone off the tracks and now Grusha needed a fixer. Claudia decided that since Grusha had investigated her, she would eat a little crow and ask him to do a background on Elite Introductions and the alleged baroness who ran it.

  As if he had caught her thoughts across the miles, Jovanic called on her cell phone. “How’s it going with the mad Russian?”

  Hearing his voice made her long for him. She reminded herself that she needed some distance. “You mean my new best friend? She plied me with Cabernet and Godiva.”

  “Is that all it takes to lead you astray? I’ll have a bottle of Cab and a box of chocolates waiting. When are you coming home?”

  Claudia laughed. “I only just got here. She’s already introduced me to one of the clients and she’s given me a whole load of samples to analyze.”

  “So, why did you have to go to New York?”

  “You know, she’s kind of a character. I was wondering whether you could—” She checked the phone display as the call waiting beep sounded in her earpiece. “Hey, Annabelle’s on the other line. Can I call you back in a minute?”

  “It’s okay. I gotta go meet Alex. I’ll call you later if I get a chance.”

  Alex was Alexandra Vega, his partner. His leggy, blond partner, upon whom Annabelle had offered to spy. Alex, who, in the last couple of weeks, Claudia had begun to suspect wanted to share more with Jovanic than detective work.

  “How can you let him do that to you?” Annabelle Giordano’s voice held the kind of indignation only a teenager can muster, somehow overlooking the fact that she was the reason Claudia had ended her call with Jovanic. “Alex is a babe,” she added sagely.

  “Knock it off, Annabelle. I told you, there’s nothing personal between them.”

  Annabelle’s snort was worth at least a dozen words. “Well, if it was me, I wouldn’t be so laid-back about it. He’s your dude. Even if he is a cop.”

  “I’m on the East Coast right now. What would you suggest I do?” She immediately regretted asking the question. Knowing Annabelle, she might suggest phone sex, just to be outrageous. The girl had been through so much in her short life. She’d had far more experience than her fourteen years warranted.

  “I could scope out his apartment for you,” Annabelle offered, as if they hadn’t already had that conversation.

  “Don’t even think about it. You promised you’d stay out of trouble while I was away. Spying on Joel and Alex is not what staying out of trouble means.”

  “But he deserves it if he’s being a manwhore.”

  Claudia rolled her eyes, even though Annabelle wasn’t there to see the gesture. “Manwhore? He is not—where’d you get that word? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Tell me how it went at school today.”

  She spent the next ten minutes listening to an account of who the biggest badasses were at the school Annabelle was attending with Monica. She understood that the choice of topic was deliberate. Annabelle was letting her know that she wasn’t about to give up her rebellious habits without a fight.

  Before they ended the call, she extracted a weak promise from the girl not to get in Jovanic’s face. After a rocky start, he and Annabelle had formed a truce and Claudia couldn’t bear to see it broken. Besides, she really did trust him. Alex she wasn’t so sure of.

  Chapter 4

  Before settling down to work on the handwriting samples, Claudia called room service and ordered a hideously expensive French dip and fries. She switched on the laptop and waited for it to boot up, beginning to feel the effects of the long day of travel. Apart from the traffic noise from down on the street, the room was too quiet, the stillness making it too easy for her mind to wander into areas where she would rather not go. TV would be too much of a distraction. Deciding on music, she selected an Il Divo playlist on the laptop and sat there, listening to the voices of the four men soar. In my fantasy I see a just world, / Where everyone lives in peace and in honesty.

  Like poking at a sack of snakes, something in the soulful words of “Nella Fantasia” awakened the feelings that Claudia had been struggling so hard to keep buried.

  It’s a fantasy all right, she thought bitterly. This is a world where good people are kidnapped and murdered. Where’s the justice in that? Someone you care about can be here one moment and gone the next. Some murky evil force in human form can change the direction of your life in a nanosecond.

  Nothing. You control nothing . . .

  The long-suppressed emotions felt alien, agonizing, like nerves coming to life after being burned. Tears welled up and coursed down her cheeks, splashing onto her knit top and leaving little wet splotches.

  Anger was easier to deal with than sadness, but Claudia couldn’t seem to stop weeping. “What the hell am I doing?” she muttered at the empty room. Crying is a useless waste of energy. It won’t bring back the dead. She stomped into the bathroom, trying to get back to the anger, and snatched a tissue from the holder. She scrubbed
it roughly over her face, blew her nose, and was ordering her blotchy image in the mirror to knock it off when room service arrived.

  Averting his eyes from her tearstained face, the kid who brought the food set up the meal and departed. It smelled good, and Claudia munched on the sandwich, delaying the time when she would have to open the file folders and begin her analyses.

  Deciding that a long, hot shower was what she needed to get back into work mode, she stood under the pulsing massage head until the water worked the kinks out of her neck and shoulders. She dried off quickly with the skimpy hotel towel and threw on a pair of flannel drawstring pants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and woolly socks, then went back into the bedroom and folded back the bedspread.

  She piled the pillows high and settled on the bed. Despite the generally dismal tone of the room, the pillows felt soft and welcoming. At this moment, what Claudia wanted most was to lie back against them and think of nothing at all. Another five minutes and she would be so relaxed that she would fall asleep. But that was not why she had spent the day flying almost three thousand miles, and that was not what Grusha was paying her to do.

  She grabbed Shellee Jones’ folder from the top of the stack at the foot of the bed and turned the pages to the handwriting sample. A more detailed inspection affirmed the initial impression that she had formed earlier at Grusha’s office. Shellee’s gregarious personality leapt off the page.

  The strong rhythm and showy capital letters reflected a love of life. The inflated loops on her l’s and h’s pointed to a flamboyant but sensitive personality. Her feelings could easily be hurt. The loops on the g’s and y’s were long and wide, symbolic of strong physical drives and a need to be center stage. The handwriting portrayed Shellee as the type of woman who did not simply walk into a room; she danced in. Life was a party to be enjoyed and shared with as many friends as she could cram in.

  In her handwriting sample, Shellee Jones had written,I want someone who recognizes all of my wonderful qualities and is supportive of all the creative things I do. This man must see life as a great adventure and he will have to understand that a relationship with me is a blessing that is worth fighting for.

  One important piece of data Claudia noted was that the upper loop of the personal pronoun I had been formed with a sharp angle. When added to the other characteristics, this feature suggested to her that Shellee carried long-term frustration directed at her mother. That could be translated to anger and expanded to include other women whom she perceived as being in a position of power over her. Like Grusha?

  She flipped the page to Nicholson’s analysis of Shellee’s handwriting. The bulk of his report dealt with her social style and her potent sexual needs, but precious little else. He hadn’t said anything about her potential for conflicts with women in authority, which was an important omission.

  Claudia closed the file, concluding that his analysis wasn’t balanced. His comments made Jones sound like an airhead bimbo. He had omitted any reference to her intelligence, which she had in abundance, or her ability to plan ahead, or anything else of much substance.

  She was surprised to find that the next folder belonged to Avram Cohen. Why had Grusha requested her to take a sample from this client when she already had his handwriting? Here was the original in the folder, along with Andy Nicholson’s analysis. Was Avram one of the problems she had alluded to?

  He was smiling in the picture, but the three-quarter pose he’d adopted gave him a shade of mystery, as if he were saying, I see you, but I will not allow you to see all of me.

  Reaching over to the armchair where she’d left her briefcase, Claudia retrieved the handwriting sample Avram had prepared for her that afternoon. Placing the two specimens side by side to compare them, she observed that the handwriting in both tended to be small and simplified. A scientific mind, she thought. The samples were congruent with no major changes between them, so why the need for a second analysis?

  The spatial arrangement of the words and lines was wide, the margins large. Unique connections strung one letter to the next, which attested to Avram’s innate intelligence. His biographical notes indicated that he was the CEO of a computer graphics company. In light of the handwriting, that made sense.

  Since she’d already met him, Claudia knew that Avram had charisma and was at least outwardly comfortable in social situations. Seeing it in black and white only verified what she had felt at their meeting. Now she was able to add to that intuitive sense the knowledge that, as charming as he was, Avram was more of an intellectual than a social creature.

  The way he had arranged the handwriting on the page, the way he laid out the margins and spaces between the letters, words, and lines, were all symbolic of his need for what Claudia thought of as elbow room. He was not the type of person who would take kindly to someone hanging over his shoulder, breathing down his neck. Getting to know him on more than a superficial level would not be easy.

  Like peeling the layers off an onion, Claudia decided. It would take a long time and not a little effort to gain his confidence to the degree that one would be allowed into his trust.

  Something jumped off the page at her: The punctuation looked too heavy, too round.

  Getting off the bed, she laid the sample on the desk and withdrew from her briefcase the small padded velour bag that contained the pieces of her portable inspection microscope.

  She unzipped the bag and quickly assembled the microscope. After removing the protective lens cap, she placed the scope over the sample Avram had written in English and slowly moved the objective lens from left to right until it came to the end of a sentence. When the lens was positioned exactly where she wanted it, she took a penlight and pointed it into the rectangular cutout in the acrylic base to illuminate what she was seeing through the eyepiece.

  What Claudia had eyeballed now became clearer as she adjusted the rotary focus ring. She followed the same procedure throughout his English sample, moving the scope around until she found several heavy-pressured commas and periods. Dot grinding. The result of spending too long with the pen pressing on one spot.

  The Hebrew script had a different kind of punctuation, but the pen pressure on the points and accents was as heavy as it had been in the English sample. Claudia slid the microscope off the page, feeling a keen disappointment.

  She didn’t deceive herself into believing that a person’s handwriting could reveal everything about them, but one thing she had learned from her years of observation and experience was that handwriting did not lie. Dot grinding was a red flag that was often a demonstration of guilt feelings, and it pointed to the potential for abusive behavior, even violence. It could be that he had been harshly treated as a child and as an adult would take out the unresolved feelings on others. Coupled with the wide spaces between words, which meant that he didn’t feel strongly attached to other people, the dot grinding hinted at potential problems.

  Had Avram Cohen used a different type of pen, she might not have as readily picked up on the dot grinding. A roller ball or gel pen would have been less apt to produce the same level of intensity on the ink line. But given the amount of pressure she was seeing in those dots, a fountain pen nib would have been wrecked. If she had asked to examine his pen after he wrote the sample, she would without question have been able to see the damage.

  As Claudia continued her microscopic examination of the handwriting, something else came to her notice: tiny tics at the bottoms of the letter g that indicated sexual frustration and often pointed to problems with impotence.

  Avram was a young man for that type of problem, yet there were many causes of impotence. She leafed through the pages until she came to Andy Nicholson’s analysis, expecting to see some mention of the red flags she had spotted. But as he had done in Shellee Jones’ report, Nicholson focused largely on Avram’s sex drive, which he had concluded was about average. There was no mention of anything troublesome, like possible violent acting out or sexual frustration. Had Andy not noticed the heavy punctuation
or the tics? Or had he noticed and put a different construction on them?

  If the potential for violence was something he had observed and for some specific reason failed to mention, his rationale was lost on Claudia. Part of the handwriting analyst’s job was to alert the client to possible problem areas.

  If Grusha was going to make a successful match for Avram, it would be important for her to introduce him to an independent woman who would not expect him to make her a whole person. Because his locus of control was internal, Avram would have less interest in making the emotional needs of a demanding partner a high priority. He might know how to behave in social situations, but he was more likely to give the bulk of his time and energy to intellectual pursuits.

  And there was the larger, more important issue: Under stress, he might well strike out physically at someone weaker. If indeed he was experiencing sexual potency problems, his frustration level was already high. A woman who was particularly emotional and demanding might be attractive to him at first, but she would soon press his hot buttons and then the situation could be dodgy.

  Claudia continued to graze on her sandwich as she thought about Avram’s handwriting. She asked herself, given the level of aggression she was seeing, what sort of problems a woman might face in a relationship with a man like him.

  It would have been helpful if she could see into handwriting like a crystal ball, but the truth was, handwriting reflected past behavior and the potential for future behavior. There was no way to know for certain whether all the conditions needed for the writer to act on that potential would come together in just the right mix at just the right time.

  She recalled a client who had submitted samples of her own and her future husband’s handwriting for analysis. The droopy rhythm in the bride’s handwriting had marked her as having emotional dependency of a type that attracted her to abusive partners. The groom’s rigid, muddy-looking writing was that of an explosive personality seeking someone to abuse. True to type, the bride had ignored the warnings in the handwriting analysis report. When she later contacted Claudia, hysterical and running for her life after coming close to being beaten to death by this man, it came as no great surprise.