Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online

“Only if I put it on eBay for ten bucks.” He turned to Robin. “I looked up your website. Beautiful instruments. Someone who can do that, my guess is they can draw pretty good.”
    “Not good enough,” she said.
    “Show me what you’ve produced.”
    Robin handed him the sketches of Princess and Black Suit.
    Shimoff studied them for several moments. “If the proportions are okay, this gives me plenty to work with. Describe them like you would to a stranger. Start with the guy because he’s the easy one; once we’re in the groove, we’ll work our way to her.”
    Milo said, “Why’s he easier?”
    “Because women are complex.” Shimoff climbed onto his stool, faced a blank piece of white Bristol board, flexed his neck as if preparing for a wrestling match. To Robin: “Even though we’re just doing the face, tell me how tall he is.”
    Robin said, “Six one or two. Heavily built, but not fat.”
    “Football, not sumo,” said Shimoff.
    “Not a tackle. Maybe a halfback. Thirty to thirty-five years old, he could be of Nordic or Germanic extraction—”
    “Could be or probably?”
    She thought. “There could be some Celtic in there—Scottish or Irish. Or maybe Dutch. But if I had to bet, I’d say Nordic. Definitely nothing Mediterranean and that includes northern Italian.”
    “You drew the hair light. We talking blond?”
    “It was at night. What I saw was pale.”
    Shimoff touched his own steely coif. “Plenty of good-looking silver dudes. But you’d bet on blond, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Eye color?”
    “Couldn’t tell.”
    “He’s blond, we’ll go with anonymous pale.” Scanning her sketch. “The eyes, you got them as kind of piggy.”
    “They were piggy,” said Robin. “But wide-set, maybe even wider than I drew them. Squinty, which could’ve been him trying to look tough, or they really are squinty. One thing I remember now that I didn’t include is he had a heavy brow—a shelf right here. Low hairline, too. His hair didn’t stay down like yours, it stuck up.”
    “Mousse or gel?” said Shimoff.
    “Quite possibly. No sideburns, he clipped them way up here. Pug nose, possibly even smaller than I showed.”
    “Possibly broken?” said Shimoff. “Fits with the football build.”
    “Good point,” she said.
    “Pug as well as high-bridged.”
    “Not as high as Milo’s but definitely on the high side.”
    Milo measured the space between his nose and upper lip with two fingers. Shrugged.
    Robin said, “His ears were really close-set.” She frowned. “I keep remembering things I omitted. He had no lobes. And they were a little pointy at the top. Right here. Elfin, I guess. But there was nothing cute about him. The lips I got pretty accurately: the upper really was this thin. Almost invisible and the lower was full.”
    Shimoff picked up a pencil. “Wish they were all this easy.”
    He worked slowly, meticulously, stepping back from the drawing to take in a long view, rarely erasing. Forty minutes later, two likenesses had materialized. To my eye, stunningly accurate.
    Robin said, “What do you think, Alex?”
    “Perfect.”
    She studied the drawings. “I’d lift her eyebrow a bit on the right side. And his neck could be a little thicker, so there’s a bulge where it feeds into his collar.”
    Shimoff tinkered, sat back, appraised his work. “Beautiful girl. Now back to Picasso.”
    Milo said, “Picasso looks finished to me.”
    Shimoff smiled. “You are spared the pain, Lieutenant.”
    “Of what?”
    “Being an artist.”
    Milo called LAPD Public Affairs from the Seville, put the phone on speaker.
    “Got a couple artist renderings I need on the media A-sap. A Jane Doe 187 and a possible suspect.”
    The P.A. officer said, “One second,” in a voice that said nothing mattered less.
    For the next four minutes a public service announcement on domestic violence took the place of live speech.
    A new voice said, “Hi, Lieutenant Sturgis. This is Captain Emma Roldan