The photo of Neville Cook was up from the lab by the time Mars got back from court. With the photo in hand, Mars spent the better part of two days setting up the photo lineup. Glenn Gjerde harped at Mars about the lineup.
“I’m gonna wanna see—at an absolute minimum—no less than a couple dozen other faces in the lineup. And I’m gonna want those guys’ mothers to have a hard time telling their boys from Cook.”
Mars made a face at Glenn. As any cop could tell you, part of the reason Glenn had never lost a case was that Glenn only took airtight cases to court. Most cops wished Glenn would take a flyer once in a while—go into court with a case that required perfect lawyering instead of perfect cop work.
Glenn caught Mar’s look. “Mars, I’m telling you. Even with what it looks like right now, this is going to be a hell of a tough case to prosecute. It’s all circumstantial. Every bit of it. Your one witness—provided she IDs the right guy—is a junkie who made a deal. And your suspect has resources to come back at us both barrels. This isn’t gonna be your typical murder suspect shuffling into court in orange cotton, his hair all flat in back from not being washed in a month. In addition to which, he holds a foreign passport. We could have serious problems getting him extradited to stand trial, assuming we
can get him indicted to begin with. So I want what we’ve got to be un-im-peach-a-ble. I mean un-im-peach-a-ble. You hear me? And I want to have to a look at that lineup before your witness gets near it. Understand?”
The photo lineup Glenn approved included thirty-one photos. All black-and-white. They’d printed Bobby’s photo black and white from the color film. All candid shots, like Bobby’s snap. No portraits. As much as possible, the subjects were face forward: to match Bobby’s shot of Neville and to avoid the problems you ran into with left/right side differences in people’s faces.
Mars got a little sweaty looking through the pics. They were too good. A couple of times he’d passed by Cook, had to stop and go back to find the right photo. And he knew exactly what he was looking for. Damn.
Evelyn Rau’s back was to him as he walked into the same interrogation room where he’d first met her. From the back, her hair looked cleaner. From the front, Evelyn’s face had the same expression of quiet composure that he’d found disconcerting first time around. This time, her eyes were clearer, and she was a shade easier, less touchy than she’d been. He guessed whatever she’d been taking when they brought her in was out of her system. And it showed.
Mars looked up to see if the video camera was running. The small green light was on. Outside, the rain, which was now into its third day, pounded on the windows. Lightning and thunder added drama to their little photo show. Mars glanced at Glenn Gjerde who’d just come in, then sat down across from Rau.
“I’ve got some pictures I’d like you to have a look at.” He slid the stack of photos over to her. “I’d appreciate your going through those to see if there’s anybody who looks like the guy
you saw with Mary Pat Fitzgerald on the Father Hennepin Bluffs the morning of April third.”
She looked across at him before looking at the pictures. “How’s my deal doing?”
Mars made an effort not to wince. That question now on tape, he decided he’d better deal with it. Get his answer on the record while they were at it. “Too soon to say. The license plates you gave us were stolen before Mary Pat was murdered. So that looks like it’s a dead end.” Mars paused. “But it fit. And it got us started again. You’re still in the game.”
Evelyn kept her eyes on Mars’s face for another moment. Then she pulled the pictures in front of her. She went through the stack at an even pace, boring in on each picture intently before sliding it to the bottom of the stack. She didn’t blink much. Her hands, which Mars remembered liking from their first meeting, were shown to good advantage, the long fingers moving gracefully as she shifted from one photo to the next.
Neville Cook was the eleventh photo down, and Mars hadn’t been able to stop himself from counting. His heart tightened at number nine and took a jolt when Evelyn flipped passed number eleven without breaking her pace. A seeping sense of disappointment started deep within his gut. To staunch the rise of the poison, Mars rose and walked casually around the table until he was standing behind Evelyn, a couple of feet back. He jammed his hands tight into his pants pockets, concentrated on trying to breath normally, and squashed the cigarette box in his pocket into a wad.
She’d gone through the stack once. She immediately recognized the photo she’d started with. She stopped, restacked the photos, and cracked them square on the table, like getting ready to deal a deck of cards. Then she started through the pile again. Faster, this time. She stopped at a picture that had stopped Mars first time he’d seen it, and looked at it closely, for maybe a half minute. Then, using the little finger on each
hand, she blocked off parts of the face: first the eyes, then the nose, finally the mouth. She shook her head, and said, “Nope. Close, first time you look at him. But the eyes are spaced differently, the nose is a little short, and the mouth is thinner.”
Mars looked over at Glenn, whose mouth was slightly open in admiration.
Evelyn resumed her sort through the photos, this time even faster than before. Mars had lost count, so he wasn’t ready when she stopped and pulled one photo from the stack. She flipped it out and onto the table.
“That’s him. I’m sure of it.”
Faceup, on the center of the table, was the picture—cropped to show just the head and shoulders—that Bobby Fitzgerald had taken of Neville Cook.
Mars, still standing behind her, folded his arms across his chest. Reaching up with one hand, he pinched his tear ducts tightly with his thumb and index fingers to keep the tears from coming.