Chapter 2
“Can you spell your last name for me?”
The lady at the police station clacks away on her keyboard as she questions me. She’s got wire-rimmed glasses and a pleasant voice. When we arrived, she gave me a soda to ease my nerves. I guess sugar does that in these situations.
“L-O-N-N-R-O-T.”
People always ask how to spell my name. It’s European and looks pretty unusual, but it’s easy to pronounce: Lawn-rot. Some family down south owned my ancestors back in the slave days, and the name stuck.
“And Edmund is your son?” she asks my father with a smile, polite like it’s obvious and yet . . . there’s doubt. I share my dad’s dark skin and need for thick glasses, but the genetics end there. He is a mammoth, and I am a chipmunk.
“That is correct.”
“Sir, we’d like to take your statement soon, but your son is a priority due to his—”
“Photographic mind, yes,” my father replies, beaming with pride. Oh brother, here we go.
Before he can get to talking about how I’m enrolled in a school for gifted kids, the policewoman vanishes and reappears with an older man whose big fuzzy blond mustache makes him look like Sherlock Holmes. But instead of a pipe, he pulls out a fancy coal pencil and a sketchpad.
“Edmund, this is Mr. Wright. He’s a sketch artist, and will be drawing the man you saw. Just describe him the best you can.” She gestures to an empty desk with two seats. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Mr. Wright shakes my hand and sits, motioning for me to follow. His blue eyes crinkle at the corners. “You can call me Phil,” he says. “Let’s start with any striking details you remember, okay? And then we’ll think about the shape of his face, his eyes, if his nose was long . . . things like that. Sound good to you?”
I nod, picturing the man’s face in my head. My dad is distracted, talking to another cop a few feet away, which is just as well or he might seriously interfere with this process.
We work on the picture for twenty minutes. I describe, Phil draws.
“How’s this?” Phil asks. He leans forward, sliding the picture across the table. In this close proximity, I become painfully aware of the tufts of hair growing out of his ears and nose.
“The eyes aren’t quite right,” I reply. “They were a different shape, and farther apart. It’s like he was Chinese, but not. More almond-shaped, I guess.”
Phil nods and pensively begins to erase some markings. I don’t have the heart to tell him that none of it looks right. The beard is too full, the hair not stringy enough. And don’t even get me started on the nose and forehead.
I fiddle with a pen and zone out as he labors away. I can hear what my dad is saying two desks over:
“There were two men fighting. I pulled them off each other. One was clearly hurt. Knife wound, I think. He was probably the one who yelled for help. He was clean-shaven, Caucasian, and completely bald. A young guy. Shaved his head so it shined. Not in a skinhead way, though. He seemed pretty preppy to me. Probably one of those guys who’s prematurely bald so he decided to just shave it all off.”
My dad starts to pontificate about the guy’s background, but the cop gently steers him back to the task at hand. My father could talk all night if they let him.
“All right. Well, the bald, wounded man took off running once I separated them. An extremely tall fellow. I’m a big guy and he had some inches on me. Six foot six at least. Very thin. And then there was the man with the long hair and beard, the one my son saw.”
My dad moves his head in my direction when he mentions me. Quickly I pretend to be engrossed in what Phil is doing. Or not doing, which is the case. He has completely botched my description of the eyes, going from bad to worse.
“Anyway, the guy with the beard . . . I’ve decided his name is Marco, by the way. He sort of looked like an Asian Marco Polo.” My dad chuckles at his joke. No one else laughs.
Clearing his throat, he continues: “Marco had a knife in his hand, so I put my fists up, ready to punch. I’ve taken self-defense classes. He saw me preparing to defend myself, and I probably outweighed him by a hundred pounds, so he ran. I chased after him but then I saw my son under the bench, so I stopped.”
I’m pretty sure my dad stopped because he hasn’t jogged for twenty years, let alone sprinted, but I stay quiet and let him keep his dignity.
“How about this?” Phil’s voice interrupts my thoughts.
“The mustache had a different shape, thinner in this area,” I say, grabbing a pencil and making a few line adjustments on the paper.
Phil gasps as if I just marked up an original Picasso.
He snatches the sketchpad back, and his arm tenses as he erases the lines in angry, jerking bursts. I sigh. We’re going to be here all night.
By the sixth round of show-and-tell, Phil is beyond annoyed, a grimace twisting his once friendly mouth. I try to be helpful:
“Sir, I’m pretty good at drawing. Do you mind if I try? In addition to your picture, I mean. For backup.” Backup? Is that even the right word in this situation?
“Kid, this is a professional job, not some project for school.”
I paste on my most charming smile. “Please, I won’t get in the way. I think it could be helpful. I won an art contest last year. Your picture is great and all . . . It’s just to have a different perspective.”
He eyes me for a moment, his fuzzy mustache twitching like an irritated caterpillar. “Fine. Let’s see what you can do.”
I know a dare when I hear one. He slaps a fresh sheet of paper down on the table and walks away chuckling as if he’s humoring the silly boy with his silly art ideas. I notice he takes his writing instrument with him. No cool police sketching coal for me.
I pick up a pencil from the desk and quickly start to sketch, imagining I’m in art class. If I think about how the man I’m drawing had a knife and could have left me fatherless, I get rattled. So I pretend he’s just a long-lost weirdo relative who I have to draw for my grandma’s birthday gift. So what if he’s white and has bizarre facial hair? He’s adopted. Marco Lonnrot. Every family has one.
I grip my pencil from the side to make quick, fluid strokes. I sketch an oval head, centering the eyes, nose and mouth. Marco’s mouth was wider than normal, his cheekbones protruding. I measure the proportions mentally, his face as clear in my mind as if he were standing in front of me.
Phil walks by and snickers. The picture looks weird with its rough scribbles and geometric outlines, but I’m not done yet. Darn you and your fancy charcoal, Phil.
I speed up, loosening my shoulder and making big sweeping motions on the paper.
Eyes were big but angled at the corners. Wisps of hair flowing from his chin. Hair on head stringy, straggling down to his shoulders. Shading behind the eyes so they don’t pop from the paper. Shade and erase. Shade and erase. I wish I had charcoal. Much easier to work with.
A group of people has gathered behind my shoulder, whispering. I try to ignore them.
“Hey, Chief! Come take a look at this,” a guy calls out from my right.
An older man in a sharp navy blue uniform walks over, the top of his left shoulder lined with four gold stars. His weather-worn face is stern but his eyes curious.
The chief of police is watching you! Don’t mess this up! Swallowing my nerves, I put final touches on everything with crisper lines. One more rub of the eraser . . . proportions correct, photograph complete. Welcome to the room, Marco.
Someone whistles; a couple people clap.
I can tell my father is about to explode with pride as several onlookers compliment him on his gifted geek son. I sit back and admire my work. Not my best, but not bad, under the circumstances. It took about ten minutes.
Phil examines my drawing for a moment, then gazes down at his own, a warped, hollow imitation of the real thing.
“Beginner’s luck,” he snaps. He turns on his heel and stalks away, head held high as if he has much more important places to be. I overhear the nice cop lady say, “Don’t worry, Phil. You’re still the best artist in the precinct. In the whole city, in fact.”
I don’t think there’s one person in the room who believes that, considering the way they are all looking at me now.
Sorry, Phil.