Bloodsworth by Tim Junkin Read Free Book Online Page A

manner. He and Ramsey worked well as a team. It’s a cliché, the Mutt and Jeff routine, but Capel came across as easygoing and naturally friendly. Ramsey could employ a cold, tough demeanor. People tended to trust and open up to Capel, if only to avoid Ramsey’s rough questions and icy stare. Capel was probably the best suited of the two to deal with children.
    Ten years earlier, Capel had attended a three-day seminar on the art of working with witnesses to create composite drawings of suspects, and since that time he had prepared around two hundred such sketches, most during his tour as a robbery squad detective. Since Chris Shipley was the older of the two boys and seemed to be more certain of what he’d seen, Capel decided to work with him first in an effort to arrive at a likeness of Dawn’s probable killer. He took Chris into a room alone and gently asked him some questions about his age, school, family life, even fishing, trying to put the boy at ease.
    Capel learned that Chris had been in the fifth grade at Park Elementary School, that he liked to watch cartoons in the summer such as
He-Man
and shows with motorcycles such as
Knight Rider
. Chris particularly enjoyed fishing and spent hours at the pond. He had his own pole and also used a hand string and had sometimes caught smallmouth bass in the pond as well as the bluegill that were always taking the worms he used as bait.
    When Capel felt Chris was comfortable, he asked him to remember carefully the man he’d seen at the pond and to provide the most accurate description he could. Chris reiterated that the person was a white male, six feet five inches tall, slim to medium build,dirty blond, very curly hair with a light brown mustache, tanned skin, and spoke with no accent. He said he was wearing an Ocean Pacific short-sleeved T-shirt with three stripes around the upper chest: orange, red, and purple. He wore light tan shorts, calf-length socks, and tennis shoes. Chris mentioned that he had an uncle who was six foot five and that the man by the pond was the same height as his uncle. When Capel opened the door and motioned for another detective who was six foot three to come inside, Chris said the man at the pond might have been a little bit shorter than the detective. Even upon hearing that the detective was six foot three, though, Chris insisted that the man he’d seen with Dawn was six foot five. This experiment, along with the other available evidence, convinced Capel that the assailant was closer to six feet tall than six foot five. Chris Shipley said nothing about seeing orange or reddish hair. He also said nothing about the man being muscular or about seeing sideburns.
    Capel then brought out a book of drawings of black and white facial parts to show Chris, explaining that by using the drawings, they would try to create a likeness of the man who went into the woods with Dawn. He told Chris, in order to further relax him, that the composite wouldn’t be used to identify anyone but only to eliminate potential suspects. Capel had been taught to create composites by using a series of facial parts previously drawn on clear foils by Walt Disney Studios. Each transparency contained representations of different facial characteristics: facial outlines, noses, eyes, hair, chins, lips, cheeks, and facial hair. The foils could be placed on top of one another to form a complete face.
    Capel began by showing different facial outlines to Chris. Was the face round, oval, angular, fat? There were a set number to choose from. Eventually, Chris selected the one he thought most closely resembled the facial outline of the man he had seen with Dawn. Capel then showed him various hairstyles. Chris picked ahairstyle but was never completely comfortable with it. He thought the man’s hair was more unruly and lighter than the drawing reflected. He chose a chin line that seemed right but again could not find a pair of eyes that he thought was accurate. He