Sketchy Behavior

by Erynn Mangum

  “Go take a break,” I said, filling a paper cup with water. “I’m fine.”

  DJ left.

  Deputy Slalom nodded to the chair next to the easel. “The witness is on her way in. Let me explain a little about how this works.”

  I sat down and took the rubber band off my pencils. Deputy Slalom sat in the chair opposite me.

  “We don’t give out the witness’s last name,” he started. “But this woman’s first name is Carol. She was at the parade with her three kids when she saw the shooting.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Probably forty. Maybe forty-five. With all these new creams women are putting on their faces, it’s getting harder to tell.” Deputy Slalom nodded to the huge binder. “In that book are nearly a thousand different facial components. Everything from noses, ears, and moles. Our former sketch artist liked to use it to try and draw out the memory from the witness.”

  Former sketch artist. I sighed. Poor Larry.

  I picked up the heavy binder and flipped through about ten pages of eyebrows before even I was confused at what I was looking at. They started looking more and more like dead centipedes.

  If I were asked to describe someone after looking at one thousand different facial features, I don’t think I’d even be able to accurately describe my mother, much less someone I’d seen for barely a minute.

  No wonder Larry’s sketches always came out wrong.

  “Do I have to use this?” I asked, closing the binder.

  Deputy Slalom shook his head. “You can do whatever you want to. Normally, I wouldn’t give that much freedom to an artist, but considering how much that sketch of John X was picture quality, who am I to judge your methods?”

  There was a rap on the door and a policeman I hadn’t met stuck his head in. “She’s here, boss.”

  “Send her in,” Deputy Slalom said, standing.

  A short woman with cropped brown hair walked in, clutching her purse nervously. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, just some eyeliner and mascara as far as I could tell. Her cheeks were flushed though.

  I was hoping it was from the nerves and not the flu. Getting sick right now wasn’t a high priority for me.

  “Hi, Carol. Thank you for coming in,” Deputy Slalom said in a nice, soothing voice. He ushered her in and had her sit in the chair opposite me.

  She just stared at me. “You’re okay?” she said quietly, in a sweet Southern accent.

  I nodded. “I’m okay.”

  “And the policeman who was shot?”

  I looked at Deputy Slalom, imagining he had the more up-to-date information.

  “He was discharged today,” he said. “A couple of cracked ribs and a few stitches. You have to love bulletproof vests,” he said, lightly. I knew he was trying to lessen Carol’s anxiety, but I think just the sight of me was enough to send her back into a fit.

  She only nodded.

  “Carol, Kate here is going to draw what you remember. Okay? You two take as much time as you need, and let us know if we can get you anything.”

  Deputy Slalom’s secretary brought in a plate full of cookies, brownies, and fruit then. “Here you go, ladies,” she said, setting it on the table in between us.

  Deputy Slalom looked at me. “You good?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll send Kent in here in a minute.”

  He left.

  The room was very quiet. Carol was alternating between staring at me, the easel, and the plate of food.

  I was trying to figure out what to do next.

  “So, uh,” I started strongly, just like my speech teacher loved. “Um, what do you do?”

  Carol blinked and looked away from the cookies and up to my face. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “What do you do for a job?”

  “I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

  I nodded. “That’s neat.” Evidently, her daughters don’t have to worry about going on imaginary adventures like that story about the little kid who was home too much by herself. “How old are your kids?”

  She took a deep breath, relaxing her iron grip on her purse slightly. “Nine, seven, and four. The older two are at school right now. The baby is with my husband.” She dug into her purse and pulled out a wallet-sized photo. There was a huge Christmas tree in the background and a bunch of little blonde girls, a blond man, and Carol in the picture.

  “Aw, they are cute,” I said, taking the picture and staring at it for the appropriate amount of time before handing it back.

  “Thanks.” She managed a small smile at me. “If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “You are young.”

  There are only a few statements that put a complete end to a conversation, but that is one of them. What was I supposed to say to that? Yes, I am? No, not really?

  I cleared my throat. “So, um, I’m actually not sure why they wanted me to come draw for you, but I’m trying to do anything I can to help this investigation,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come forward. My girls …” She looked away and shook her head. “Well. You understand.”

  I didn’t, but I nodded like I did. “Did your girls …” I winced. “Did they see …?”

  She shook her head immediately. “No, they were with their father. I was trying to find the stand with those corn dogs.”

  Oh, the corn dogs. Which I hadn’t tasted.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t find the stand and I was over on the side of the street, and there were a bunch of people cheering for you, so I walked over to get a better look at you.”

  “Did you ever get one?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “There was a tall man in front of me, so I kind of caught a side profile of you.”

  I shook my head. “No, I meant, did you ever get a corn dog?”

  A tiny smile crossed her face. “No. The parade was canceled.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Me too.”

  She looked more at ease. She even set her purse on the floor instead of clutching it tightly in her lap.

  I arched my back in the uncomfortable, hard plastic chair. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point. When I sketched John X, Miss Yeager just read me a long description of what he looked like. I didn’t have to do the probing thing.

  It felt weird asking a woman I barely knew a million questions, though. Sort of rude, even.

  “What are your daughter’s names?” I asked, just trying to get to know her better.

  “Meghan, Rachel, and Elise,” she said.

  “Pretty.” I smiled.

  “Do you have any siblings, Kate?”

  I nodded. “I have a brother. He’s not around very much. He’s in college in California. He’s going to be an engineer, so he can’t take very much time off school.” I shrug. “We don’t talk much.”

  She nodded, knowingly. “I have a brother like that. He lives in Maine and we never talk unless I’m in labor.”

  “You had a long stretch of not talking then, between your second and third girl,” I said. “Is he an engineer too?”

  She laughed. “No, he’s working as a technical support something or another. He’s in charge of a bunch of wires, basically.”

  “Do you want a cookie?” I asked, pointing to the tray. I wasn’t starving, but breakfast had been early morning and it was nearing eleven thirty. Almost lunchtime. I pulled a chocolate chip cookie off the plate and Carol picked a brownie.

  “I really don’t need this,” she fretted, rubbing a hand on her hip.

  I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. All adult women are the exact same. I was just thrilled that there was real — or fake, according to my mother — sugar in the cookies. I hadn’t had a real chocolate chip cookie for far too long.

  “Careful,” Carol said, smiling at me. “You’ll worry about it too.”

  Apparently I wasn’t as good at hiding
the eye roll as I thought I was.

  We talked about nothing and everything for the next thirty minutes. She grew up in Arkansas, which explained the accent, married her husband in Georgia, and then moved to South Woodhaven Falls when her husband got a job in the St. Louis outskirts.

  “I hate that he commutes so far to work every day, but I love living in a small town,” she said. “It’s so good for the girls.”

  We finally got back around to the parade after noon.

  “I guess I first noticed him because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and had the hood on,” she said, pulling a pineapple chunk from the tray. “And it was very sunny, you remember. And warm. You definitely did not need a hood on.”

  I looked away from Carol nibbling on the pineapple so I could start imagining the man.

  “He wasn’t very tall,” she continued. “He was probably close to Steve’s height.” Steve was Carol’s husband. She’d already told me he was five-eight and therefore had solidified their daughters’ shortness forever.

  “And he was wearing sunglasses,” she said. “Those kind that look like something Tom Cruise would wear in Top Gun. Wait, is that too old of a reference for you?”

  I grinned. “My mom loves Top Gun.”

  “Meg Ryan was adorable in that movie.”

  I nodded.

  She talked for the next hour and I listened carefully. The man she’d seen had what looked like short brown hair under the hood, the aviator sunglasses, a five o’clock shadow, and a sharp chin. She hadn’t seen his ears, but he had nice cheekbones.

  “He was probably around thirty, I’d guess,” she said.

  I still hadn’t drawn anything. There was no point to drawing something I’d only have to erase later.

  “How about his nose? His lips? Is Elise excited to start kindergarten?” I prodded her with questions about the man and about her family whenever she stopped talking.

  Detective Masterson came in and out during the meeting, and when he came in at one, he brought hamburgers.

  At two, I picked up my pencil and pulled the sketchpad off the easel. Carol was still talking about how she’d kind of thought something shifty was going on with the man.

  “He kept looking back and forth and back and forth,” she said. “And he kept both of his hands in the front pockets of his sweatshirt. Like I said, it was much too warm to be wearing something like that.”

  I started drawing. I closed my eyes and saw the face of the man she had described. But it’s not just physical description that mattered. There were indefinable qualities that played into how someone looked. How they acted, what they lived through.

  I worked on the sketch for almost an hour. Carol would lean over and look at it and make a few comments.

  “His nose was a little more straight,” she said.

  I fixed the nose and kept working.

  “Kate?” she asked about thirty minutes later when I took a break to stretch.

  “Yeah?”

  She fidgeted and I braced for a hard question. “Why did you lean forward?” she asked quietly.

  The question of the week.

  I put my pencil down. “I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. “I needed my sunglasses, so I leaned forward to get them because my purse was in the backseat. But I have no idea why it was exactly at that time.”

  She looked at me and nodded. “Okay.”

  I picked up my pencil and looked at my half-finished sketch. The man’s forehead and eyes were done, his nose was coming along.

  “Carol?” I asked.

  “Yes, Kate?”

  I set the pencil back down. “Do you believe in God?”

  She pursed her lips, eyes going a little bit dark. She didn’t answer me for a long minute, and then she let out her breath. “I don’t know, honestly.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “You think that’s the reason you leaned forward right then?”

  I shrugged. “Well. I don’t know. I mean, if I hadn’t, I would have been shot. And I wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest, so the odds are good that I could have died. So, for me to bend over at exactly that time …”

  I let my voice trail off, and I picked up my pencil again.

  Carol didn’t say anything.

  It took me another forty-five minutes before I finished the drawing. We didn’t talk as much during the last part of it.

  I held it up when I finished. “What do you think?” I asked quietly.

  She looked at the drawing and then closed her eyes. “That’s him.”

  Detective Masterson walked in.

  “How are we doing, girls?” he asked.

  Carol picked up her purse. “That’s him,” she said, pointing. “That’s him and it’s time for me to go.” She looked over at me as she stood. “Thank you, Kate. Stay safe.”

  She left.

  I looked at the drawing. A man in his early thirties wearing a hood and aviator glasses looked back at me.

  “Think it will help?” I asked Detective Masterson.

  He picked up the pad. “I think you are a very talented artist. And beyond that, you have a natural affinity toward forensic sketching, Kate.”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.”

  “You put the witness at ease, you asked questions that went beyond the description, and you really made her feel comfortable enough to tell you what she saw.” Detective Masterson was smiling proudly at me. “I think you did great.”

  I smiled.

  I stretched my hands out in front of me, popping my knuckles. My fingers were sore, but my headache was worse. I chugged another cup of water and stood, stretching.

  “Well, how did it go?” Deputy Slalom asked, walking in.

  “She did great, sir. Here’s the sketch.” Detective Masterson handed the pad to the deputy.

  Deputy Slalom took it and studied it for a minute, eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” he said. “Send this to all the news networks and let’s get some flyers made. I want the hermit who lives four counties over to know what this guy looks like. Got it?”

  Detective Masterson grinned at me. “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE SKETCH WAS ON THE FIVE O’CLOCK NEWS WHEN WE got back to my house. Mom had apparently just gotten home; her car was making those weird popping and hissing sounds like when you first turn the engine off. Dad still wasn’t there yet.

  She was sitting in the living room watching Ted Deffle on KCL when DJ, Detective Masterson, and I walked in.

  The picture I drew was plastered on the TV. Mom looked over at me from the sofa.

  “Your work?” she asked.

  I nodded and sat next to her. She put her arm around me.

  Ted was talking. “This is the description of a man thought to be the shooter at last Sunday’s parade, which left a member of our fine police force in the hospital. If you recognize this man, please call the hotline number listed on the screen. All calls are considered anonymous.”

  The picture changed back to Ted’s fake-sun-tanned face. “In other news, people are still talking about the devastating events that occurred at the May Day parade …”

  “So,” Mom said, turning Ted to mute. “You skipped school and went to ‘the dentist.’ “ She looked at DJ and Detective Masterson, then back to me. “Your idea or theirs?”

  “Mine,” I said. “The skipping school part, at least.”

  “Uh-huh. Remember last year when you caught mono? You refused to stay home and sleep? I basically had to tie you down in bed because you were so worried about missing school.” She looked at me in the eyes. “Today doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Does anything that’s happened in the last week sound normal?” I asked. “Other kids’ parents are flipping out about their kids’ safety now. There was like a third of school who wasn’t there today, thanks to me.”

  Mom sighed. “So, you left.”

  “Maybe it’s better if I just stay here for a while. Maddy can bring me my homew
ork and I’ll keep up with everything here.” I gasped. “Maddy!” She was supposed to come over today after school and I totally forgot about it.

  I don’t have a cell phone. What if she waited on my front porch for an hour before finally giving up? Or worse, what if a news crew was here and they made her give an interview?

  Or much worse …

  I shut my eyes, not wanting to think about that scenario.

  “She left a message saying she wasn’t going to be able to come over today after all,” Mom said, patting my arm. Then she looked at me wryly. “She had a dentist appointment.”

  Detective Masterson started laughing. DJ smiled.

  Mom just smiled and sighed. “Your father is on his way home, so I’m going to go start making dinner. We can talk about the you-staying-home-from-school idea when he gets home.” She ran her hand through the back of my hair, like she used to when I was a little kid, before she stood and left the room.

  Detective Masterson sat down in the recliner. “So, no more school for you?” he asked.

  I sighed. “What if the other kids’ parents are right and I’m just a big bull’s-eye to all of them?”

  The muted TV was flashing the picture I’d just drawn again, along with the hotline number.

  “How many calls do you guys usually get on stuff like this?” I asked.

  DJ sat on the opposite end of the couch from me and sighed, looking over at Detective Masterson. “Um … maybe a good two hundred? Three hundred depending on how publicized the case is.” He shrugged. “Most of them are from people who swear they saw that man in front of them in the grocery store.”

  “Do you go check all of them out?”

  Detective Masterson nodded. “Unless they are completely ridiculous, then yes, we do.”

  It seemed like a lot of busywork to me, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I reached for the phone, because I needed to tell Maddy to get my homework for me.

  She answered her cell phone on the second ring. “Well, if it isn’t Kate Escape,” she said, and I could hear the grin in her voice.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Kate Escape. It’s what everyone at school is calling you since you left this morning. Personally, I think it’s kind of catchy.” She sighed. “Wish I’d come up with it.”