“What color was it?” the artist asked.
“Sorta red.”
“She was a redhead?”
Hammond felt himself drawn forward by Daniels’s words, as though they were working hand-over-hand on a rope, inexorably pulling him in.
“She wasn’t a carrot-top.”
“Dark red, then?”
“No. I guess you’d just say brown, but with lots of red in it.”
“Auburn?”
“That’s it,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I knew there was a word for it, I just couldn’t think of it. Auburn.”
Hammond swallowed a sip of coffee that had suddenly turned bitter inside his mouth. He inched toward the hospital bed with the reluctance of an acrophobic approaching the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Corporal Endicott made rapid pencil strokes against the paper in her tablet. Scratch, scratch, scratch. “How’s that?” she said, showing Daniels her work.
“Hey, that’s pretty good. Except she had, you know, strands around her face.”
Hammond moved a few steps closer.
“Like this?”
Daniels told Endicott that she had nailed the hairstyle. “Good. That just leaves the mouth,” she said. Setting aside the magazine, the artist flipped the sketchbook open to another section. “Do you remember anything distinctive about her mouth, Mr. Daniels?”
“She was wearing lipstick,” he mumbled as he studied the myriad sketches of lips.
“So you noticed her lips?”
Raising his head, he darted an uneasy glance toward the door, as though fearful that Mrs. Daniel
s would be standing there eavesdropping. “Her mouth looked kinda like this one.” He pointed to one of the standard sketches. “Except her lower lip was fuller.” Endicott consulted the drawing in the book, then replicated it on her own sketch.
Watching, Daniels added, “When she glanced at me, she sorta smiled.”
“Did her teeth show?”
“No. A polite smile. You know, like people do when they get into an elevator or something.”
Like when eyes accidentally connect across a dance floor.
Hammond couldn’t work up enough courage to look down at Endicott’s handiwork, but in his mind’s eye he saw an alluring, closed-mouth smile that had been deeply impressed on his memory.
“Anything resembling this?” Endicott turned her pad toward Daniels to afford him a better look.
“Well, I’ll be doggone,” he said in awe. “That’s her.”
And no more than a quick glance confirmed to Hammond that indeed it was. It was her.
Smilow and Steffi had been engrossed in their own conversation. Hearing Daniels’s soft exclamation, they rushed to the bedside. Hammond allowed Steffi to elbow him aside because he didn’t need to see any more.
“It’s not exact,” Daniels told them, “but it’s pretty damn good.”
“Any distinguishing marks or scars?”