Shoot Him If He Runs (Stone Barrington 14)

“Come in and take a seat,” he said, dragging a chair next to him behind his desk, so they could both look at the laptop. “What have you got?”

Mona opened the laptop and pressed a button. “Here are the three photographs you gave me; I’ve run multiple tests on them. I have eliminated Robertson from consideration as Teddy.”

“Why?”

“First, because the Agency people I showed the photographs to unanimously agreed that he is not; too young, wrong facial features. Also, I have been able to confirm that he is, in fact, one Barney Cox, one of four British subjects sought for questioning in a robbery of cash from a company at Heathrow Airport, in London, some months ago. Confidence is extremely high, to the point of certainty.”

“Thank you for confirming that,” Lance said. “I’ll see that the information is passed along to the appropriate authority.”

“Now,” Mona said, “about the other two. At first, the photos seemed to be ordinary British passport shots, the kind you’d get at a dozen photographers’ in the West End of London. I analyzed them right down to the dot level, or rather, the pixel level on the computer, and there were a number of similarities, so much so that I began to think that they might have been taken by the same photographer. What kept throwing me off was that the light was different in the two shots-a slightly different color temperature and with the light coming from a different direction.”

“Is there some way to identify at which studio they were taken?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not there, yet; I’m just walking you through what I found.”

“Of course, go ahead.”

“It turns out that where they were taken isn’t really relevant, though I suspect London. They were taken with a Polaroid camera, the kind that takes four shots at once; very common in photo shops.”

“Not digital?”

“No, that’s what you’d expect if they were taken in a large U.S. city, where the conversion to digital photography may be a bit farther along than in England, but again, that’s not the point. After I had taken that analysis as far as I could without identifying a specific shot, I started to do multiple comparisons of the faces.”

“And…?”

“Well, look at the two faces: you see,” she said, pointing, “the man on the right, Weatherby, has had his nose broken at some point, and his jawline is a little firmer than the other man, Pemberton.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Mona hit a few computer keys. “Now, here I’ve enhanced and enlarged the Weatherby photo: look at his Vandyke.”

“Right, I’m looking at it.”

“What do you see?”

Lance gazed at the enlargement. “A mustache and goatee.”

“But look at what appear to be the roots of the hairs: they seem to have a tiny, thicker dot at the root of each one.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that it’s a false beard, though a very good one.” She moved to another enlargement. “Same at the hairline; it’s a wig.”

“So Weatherby is disguising himself.”

“Yes, but still not the point.”

“Get to the point, Mona.”

“Now look at an enlargement of the broken nose,” she said, moving to another photo. “What do you see?”

“Come on, Mona, tell me.”

“All right.” She pointed at the place where the nose seemed broken. “No pores in the skin,” she said.

“So it’s a false broken nose?”

“Just a clever application of spirit gum, a common theatrical makeup substance.”