The Face of Deception (10 page)

“Fair enough.”

“And I won't be held incommunicado. I'm calling Mom and Joe every day I'm here.”

“Have I ever tried to stop you? You're no prisoner. I hope we can work together.”

“Not likely.” She threw open the door of the lab. The lead box occupied the center of the desk, and she moved brusquely toward it. “I work alone.”

“May I ask how long it's going to take you?”

“It depends on the condition of the skull. If it's not a jigsaw puzzle, two, maybe three days.”

“It looked pretty intact to me.” He paused. “Try to make it two, Eve.”

“Don't push me, Logan.”

“I have to push you. I don't know how much time I bought. Timwick won't assume the skull he has is the right one. He'll have it examined by one of your forensic counterparts. He's bound to find out he's got the wrong one.”

“According to you, he wouldn't want to take the chance of having the skull identified.”

“He'd have to. He wouldn't risk tapping DNA or dental records, but he'd do this. There are always ways to dispose of people who know too much. So if the sculptor's good . . . two days?”

“It depends if he works on a cast of the skull or the skull itself. And if he's willing to push himself.”

“He won't have to push himself, Timwick will be doing it for him. Who's good enough?”

“There are only four or five top forensic sculptors in the country.”

“So I found out when I was searching for one. My attorney had an easy job gathering the shortlist.”

She opened the lead box. “I wish to hell you'd picked someone else.”

“But you're the best. I had to have the best. Who's second best?”

“Simon Doprel. He has the touch.”

“Touch?”

She shrugged. “You do the measuring and the judgment calls, but when you get down to the final stages of the sculpting, it's pretty much instinct. It's as if you
feel
what's right and wrong. Some of us have it, some don't.”

“Interesting.” He grimaced. “And maybe a little eerie.”

“Don't be stupid,” she said coldly. “It's a talent, not some kind of paranormal idiocy.”

“And Doprel has it too?”

“Yes.” She carefully lifted the scorched skull out of the box. Caucasian. Male. Facial bones almost entirely intact. A good portion of the back of the skull was missing.

“Not very pretty, is he?” Logan said.

“You wouldn't be pretty either if you'd gone through what he did. Donnelli was lucky. The brain could have blown forward instead of backward and then there wouldn't have been any blackmail . . . or any reconstruction.”

“The fire caused the brain to explode?”

She nodded. “It happens almost all the time with fire victims.”

He went back to the previous conversation. “So Doprel would be a reasonable first choice?”

“If Timwick could get him. Most of his work is done for the NYPD.”

“Timwick can get him.” He looked at the skull. “Two days, Eve. Please.”

“It will get done when it gets done. Don't worry, I'm not going to waste time. I want this over.” She moved over to the pedestal and placed the skull in the center. “Now, get out of here. I've got measuring to do and I have to concentrate.”

“Yes, ma'am.” A few moments later the door closed.

She hadn't taken her eyes away from the skull. Shut Logan out. Don't let anything get in the way. Every measurement had to be exact.

But not yet. First she had to establish a link, just as she usually did. It was probably going to be harder since this was an adult and not a child. She had to remember that he was also a lost one. She measured different parts of the cranium and wrote the numbers down on her pad. “You're not who he says you are, but that doesn't matter. You're important in your own right, Jimmy.”

Jimmy? Where had that come from?

It could be Jimmy Hoffa or some Mafia goon.

Grinning, she remembered the reasons she had told Logan she shouldn't take the job.

But here she was doing it.

And Jimmy was as good a name as any.

“I'm going to do all kinds of undignified things to you, but it's all for a good cause, Jimmy,” she murmured. “Just hang in there with me, okay?”

CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND
TUESDAY EVENING

“I've no time for this, Timwick,” Simon Doprel said. “You've pulled me away from an important case that's going to trial next month. Find someone else.”

“It's only a few days. You agreed to do it.”

“I didn't agree to leave New York and come down here to the country. Your men practically kidnapped me. Why couldn't you bring the skull to me?”

“It had to be kept confidential. Don't back out now. Finding out if this is the terrorist we've been looking for is more important than a murder case.”

“What's the Treasury Department doing chasing terrorists?” Simon asked sourly.

“We always get involved if the threat concerns the White House. If you need anything, just ask Fiske. He'll be closer than your shadow until you finish the job.” Timwick smiled. “We want to make you as comfortable as we can while you're with us.” He walked out of the room and closed the door.

It was just as well Doprel was so reluctant to do the job, he thought grimly. He would work at top speed, and speed was what they needed.

When Timwick had been told how the skull had been tossed from the limo, he'd been immediately suspicious. The retrieval might have been a little too easy. Fear for their lives could have made Logan sacrifice the skull, but it might also have been a diversion. Why not take out the skull before throwing out the coffin? Panic?

Logan wasn't a man to panic, but he'd been driving. Kenner had said it was the woman who had thrown out the coffin. At any rate, they would know soon.

And the surveillance would go on at Barrett House until they did.

“You're awake.” Logan came into the room and dropped down in the chair beside Gil's bed. “How are you feeling?”

“A hell of a lot better if that doctor hadn't doped me up,” Gil growled. “My shoulder's fine, but I've got a jumbo headache.”

“You needed the rest.”

“Not twelve hours.” He struggled to sit up. “What's happening?”

Logan leaned forward and adjusted the pillows against the headboard. “Eve's working on the skull now.”

“I'm surprised. I thought your decision to take her along was a mistake. You could have scared her off.”

“Or made her mad enough to dig in her heels. It could have gone either way. But I didn't have a choice. I needed to make them think that what we were doing was important. I wasn't expecting them to get that close.”

“You mean you were hoping they wouldn't.” He smiled sardonically. “Don't bullshit me. You would have done it anyway.”

“Probably.” He added soberly, “That doesn't stop me from being sorry about letting you take the heat.”

“That's why I was there. We agreed that I'd run interference while you took care of the red herring.” Gil made a face. “But I was clumsy. I would have been toast if it hadn't been for our bone lady. She was damn good.”

“Yes, very good. It seems Quinn thought she should know how to protect herself from the Frasers of the world.”

“Quinn again?”

Logan nodded. “He always seems to be in the background, doesn't he?” He stood up. “I'm going to go down and take Eve a sandwich. She hasn't left the lab yet.”

“I'm sure she'll be grateful you're going to allow her to eat.”

“Drop the sarcasm.”

“I wasn't being sarcastic. I meant it. Now that you've got her on the job, I imagine you'll crack the whip until you get what you want.”

“She wouldn't let me. Anything I can get you?”

“My CD player and discs.” He grinned. “How thick are these walls? I was thinking about tormenting you with Loretta Lynn's ‘Coal Miner's Daughter.' ”

“If you do, I'll ask Margaret to come in and play Florence Nightingale.”

“You wouldn't dare, I'm a sick man.” His smile disappeared. “How much time do you think we have?”

“Three days maximum. Once they find out they've got the wrong skull, they'll launch an all-out war. We've got to be out of here by that time.” He headed for the door. “So get well and on your feet.”

“Tomorrow. I'll be up and functioning and back at the carriage house. I'm tempted to loll in bed with Loretta and Garth Brooks, but it's not worth the chance of Margaret nursing me.”

Logan closed the door and went downstairs to the kitchen. Fifteen minutes later he was knocking on the lab door, a ham sandwich and bowl of vegetable soup on a tray in his hand.

No answer.

“May I come in?”

“Go away. I'm busy.”

“I have food. You've got to stop and eat sometime.”

“Put it down and I'll get to it later.”

Logan hesitated and then set the tray on the table beside the door. “Try to make it soon. The soup will get cold.”

Christ, he sounded like a nagging wife. How far the mighty had fallen. It's a good thing Margaret wasn't nearby to hear that curt rejection. It would have amused the hell out of her.

TEN

“You didn't eat your dinner. You can't work if you don't eat, Mama.”

Eve slowly raised her head from the desk.

Bonnie was sitting on the floor by the door, her arms linked around her knees. “And it's dumb to fall asleep at your desk when you have a bed to go to.”

“I was going to close my eyes for only a minute,” she said defensively. “I have work to do.”

“I know.” Bonnie looked at the skull on the pedestal. “Good work.”

“Good?”

“I think so.” Bonnie's forehead was creased in a puzzled frown. “I'm not sure. I think it's important. That's why I called you up to the cemetery.”

“You didn't call me. It was an impulse.”

Bonnie smiled. “Was it?”

“Or maybe all those flowers on the graves stirred some kind of subliminal message. I knew Logan was devious and maybe I suspected he was— Stop smiling.”

“I'm sorry. I'm actually very proud of you. It's nice to have a mom who's so smart. Wrong, but still very smart.” She looked back at the skull. “You're getting along pretty well with Jimmy, aren't you?”

“Fair. There are some problems.”

“You'll solve them. I'll help you.”

“What?”

“I always try to help you in whatever you do.”

“Oh, now you're my guardian angel? And I suppose you were looking out for me when I was in that limo the other night.”

“No, I couldn't do anything. It scared me. I want to be with you but not yet. It's not your time and it would upset the balance.”

“Bull. If there was any sense or balance in the universe, you would never have been taken from me.”

“I don't know how it works. Sometimes things go terribly wrong. But I don't want it to go wrong for you too, Mama. That's why you have to be very careful now.”

“I'm being careful and trying my darnedest to get out of this mess. That's why I'm working on Jimmy.”

“Yes, Jimmy is important.” Bonnie sighed. “I wish he weren't. It would be easier.” She leaned back against the wall. “I can see you're going to push yourself to exhaustion in the next few days. If you won't go to bed, lay your head back down on the desk and go to sleep.”

“I am asleep.”

“Of course you are. Sometimes I forget I'm only a dream. Well, will you do me a favor and lay your head back down on the desk? It's a little weird sleeping sitting upright in that chair.”

“You're the one who's weird.” She laid her head on her arms on the desk. After a moment she asked in a low voice, “Are you leaving now?”

“Not yet. I'll stay awhile. I like to watch you when you're sleeping. All the kinks and worries kind of flow away. It's nice to see you that way.”

Eve could feel the tears burn her eyes even as her lids closed. “Weird kid . . .”

BARRETT HOUSE
WEDNESDAY MORNING

“You didn't eat anything last night.” Logan opened the door and strode into the lab carrying a breakfast tray. “I hate to have my labor wasted. I'm going to stay and watch you polish off this meal.”

Eve looked up from the skull. “Your concern is touching.” She went to the sink and washed her hands. “Except I know you just don't want me to keel over and waste time.”

“Exactly.” He settled himself in the visitor's chair. “So humor me.”

“The hell I will.” She sat down at the desk and took the napkin off the tray. “I'll eat because I'm hungry and it's sensible. Period.”

“That's putting me in my place. I don't care as long as you eat.” He was studying her face. “You look surprisingly rested but your bed hasn't been slept in.”

“I took a nap here.” She drank the glass of orange juice. “And stay out of my bedroom, Logan. You've invaded too many parts of my life as it is.”

“I feel a sense of responsibility. I want to help.”

“To speed up the work?”

“Only partly. I'm not a complete bastard.”

She took a bite of omelette.

He chuckled. “That was a weighted silence. Well, at least you're not openly attacking me. That nap was good for you. I sense a slight mellowing.”

“Then you sense wrong. I just don't have time to try to analyze your good and bad points. I'm busy.”

“Even that's a concession.” His gaze went to the pedestal. “I see you've gotten to the voodoo doll stage. Did you name him too?”

“Jimmy.”

“Why did—” He chuckled again as he understood. “It's not Hoffa, Eve.”

“We'll see.” To her surprise, she found herself smiling. After the tension of the hours of work it was good to relax for a few moments . . . even with Logan. “Though I don't think you'd be this involved with a labor leader.”

“Well, let's just say I wouldn't regard resurrecting him of paramount importance.” His gaze returned to the pedestal. “Interesting. It seems impossible you can rebuild a face with that little to go on. How do you do it?”

“What do you care? As long as it gets done.”

“I'm cursed with an inquiring mind. Is that so odd?”

She shrugged. “I guess not.”

“What are those little sticks called?”

“Tissue-depth markers. They're usually made of ordinary pencil erasers, the kind you use in a mechanical pencil. I cut each marker to the proper measurement and glue it onto its specific point on the face. There are more than twenty points of the skull for which there are known tissue depths. Facial tissue depth has been found to be fairly consistent in people the same age, race, sex, and weight. There are anthropological charts that give a specific measurement for each point. For instance, in a Caucasian male of average weight, the tissue-depth thickness at the mid-philtrum point is—”

“What?”

“Sorry. I mean the space between the nose and top lip is ten millimeters. The architecture of the bone beneath the tissue determines whether someone has a jutting chin or bulging eyes or whatever.”

“And what do you do next?”

“I take strips of plasticine and apply them between the markers, then build up to all of the tissue-depth points.”

“It sounds like a connect the dots game.”

“Sort of, only in three-dimension and it's a hell of a lot more difficult. I have to concentrate on the scientific elements of building the face, like keeping true to the tissue-depth measurements as I fill in between the plasticine strips and considering where the facial muscles are located and how they affect the contours of the face.”

“But what about the size of the nose? Old Jimmy doesn't have one.”

“That's a toughie. The width and length is determined again by measurements. For a Caucasian like Jimmy, I measure the nasal opening at the widest point and add five millimeters on each side for the nostrils. That gives me the width. The length, or projection, depends on the measurement of the little bone at the base of the nasal opening, called the nasal spine. It's very simple. I multiply the spine measurement by three and add the mid-philtrum tissue-depth measurement.”

“Ah, the dreaded mid-philtrum again.”

“Do you want to know this or not?”

“Yes, I always joke when I'm faced with something a little out of my depth.” He made a face. “Honest, I didn't mean it. Go on.”

“The nasal spine also determines the angle of the nose. It will show me if the nose is turned up, angled down, or very straight. Once you've got the nose, the ears are easier. They're usually as long as the nose.”

“It sounds very precise.”

She shrugged. “I wish it were. Even with all the formulas and measurements and scientific data about what makes up a nose, there's no way I can be sure I'm reconstructing the original nose. I've just got to do my best and hope I come close.”

“And the mouth?”

“Measurements again. The height of the lips is determined by measuring the distance between the top and bottom gum line. The width is generally the distance between the canine teeth, which usually coincides with the distance between the centers of the eyes. Thickness of the lips comes from the anthropological charts for tissue depth. Like the nose, I have no clues about the unique shape, so I have to use instinct and judgment to—” She pushed the tray away and stood up. “I don't have time to talk anymore. I have to get back to work.”

“Then I assume I'm dismissed again.” He rose to his feet and picked up the tray. “Would it be all right if I come in and watch you sometime, or would that be invading your space?”

“Why? Do you think I'm really going to make him look like Jimmy Hoffa?”

“No. But could it happen?”

She shook her head. “Haven't you been listening? The bone structure tells the tale.”

“What about the smoothing and filling-in process and the judgment calls on the nose and mouth and—”

“Okay, if you have a preconceived idea of identity, it might influence what you do. That's why I never look at photos until I'm finished. During this period I don't allow myself any creativity. Pure science has to guide the basic foundation for the face. When the technical development is complete, then I can consider the face as a whole and give artistic judgment full rein until it's finished. If I didn't do it that way, the product would just be a sculpture and not a facial reconstruction.” Her lips tightened. “You can bet I wouldn't let that happen. Jimmy's not going to look like Hoffa unless he's Hoffa. So you don't have to keep an eye on me, Logan.”

“That wasn't my intention.” He grimaced. “If I admit I'm tense and maybe a little worried, would you please let me come?”

“Doubts? I thought you were so sure it was Kennedy.”

“I want to see that skull come to life, Eve,” he said simply. “I know that I don't deserve any consideration, but will you let me?”

She hesitated. She was still annoyed and resentful. After all he had done, she should tell him to go jump in the lake. On the other hand, a truce might be necessary for getting out of this predicament safely. She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I don't care if you don't talk to me. I probably wouldn't know you're in the room. If you open your mouth, you're out.”

“Not a word.” He headed for the door. “You won't even know I'm here. I'll bring you food and coffee and then curl up in the corner like a docile pussycat.”

“I don't know any cats that are docile.” She moved toward the pedestal and was already closing him out. “Just be quiet . . .”

CHEVY CHASE
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

“You don't seem to be progressing very fast, Doprel,” Fiske said. “And you're not even working on the skull.”

“I never work on the skull,” Doprel said. “I'm making a cast and I'll do the work on that.”

“Does everyone? It seems like a waste of time.”

“No, but I prefer to do it that way,” Doprel said with irritation. “It's safer. I don't have to be so careful of the skull.”

“Timwick wants the work done quickly. This cast is—”

“I work the way I work,” Doprel said coldly. “I find it goes even faster when I don't have to be cautious.”

“Timwick doesn't care if the skull is damaged. We don't have time for the cast.” He paused. “I'd think you'd want to get this done fast so you can go home.”

“It's not the way I—” He hesitated. “Screw it. What the hell do I care if the damn thing gets broken? I'll work on the skull. Now leave me alone, Fiske. You're supposed to bring me meals and get me what I need, not criticize my methods.”

Arrogant prick. He was treating Fiske like a lousy servant. Fiske had seen those scientific types before. They thought they were better and smarter than everyone else. Doprel with all his training and brains couldn't do what Fiske did in a million years. He wouldn't have either the cunning or the guts.

But maybe Doprel would learn his mistake before this was over. Timwick said it depended on the results. Fiske smiled. “I didn't mean to offend.” He started to leave. “Let me go make a pot of coffee for you.”

BARRETT HOUSE
WEDNESDAY
10:50
P.M
.

Done.

Eve stepped back, took off her glasses, and wiped her stinging eyes with the back of her hands. The meticulous work of laying the clay strips was finished, and her eyes were strained badly. She didn't dare do anything else right now; she couldn't risk making a mistake. She'd sit down, rest for an hour or so, and then begin again.

She crossed to the desk, dropped down in the chair, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked.

She jumped, and her gaze flew to the far corner of the lab. Jesus, she had forgotten he was in the room. In the past twenty-four hours, he had moved in and out of the lab like a ghost, and she couldn't remember him even speaking to her.

Maybe he had. She had been so absorbed with Jimmy that she didn't remember much of those hours. She vaguely recalled she had called her mother once but had no idea what she had said.

“Okay?” Logan repeated.

“Of course I'm okay. I was just resting. I don't have the best vision in the world and my eyes are strained.”

“With good reason. I've never seen anyone work with that much intensity. Michelangelo probably was less tense when he was sculpting
David
.”

“He had more time.”

“How's it coming?”

“I don't know. I never know until it's done. I'm through with the donkey work. Now comes the hard part.”

“A little rest might help.” He was sitting with apparent ease, but she was suddenly aware of the tension in him.

“I
was
trying to rest,” she said dryly.

“Sorry. And I was trying to help.” He smiled crookedly. “I've been expecting you to collapse any minute.”

“But you didn't stop me.”

“I can't. The clock's ticking.” He paused. “How long?”

“Twelve hours. Maybe a little longer.” She wearily leaned back in the chair again. “I don't know. As long as it takes. Don't nag me, dammit.”

“Right.” He rose jerkily to his feet. “I'll leave you alone to rest. Why don't you lie down on the couch? When do you want me to wake you?”

“I don't want to sleep. I just have to rest my
eyes.”

“Then I'll come back later.” He added as he moved toward the door, “If you don't mind.”