Sketch Artist

For years — going back to my academy days — I had heard stories about the forensic sketch artist whose drawings came to life. Elusive murderers, robbers, rapists finally caught because this woman’s supposed ability to gather the blurry fragments of traumatic memories and make them clear and whole. The first time I heard about her was shortly before my graduation, during drinks with Tommy at the Tank. Tommy was a buddy from my ROTC days, and he had been in the force for a few years already. Listen, he said, hushed over pints, so close I could smell the hops in his breath. This poor woman. Dude rips her out of the front seat of her Aston Martin in broad daylight. Entire face covered with a black scarf; all she sees are his dark brown eyes. They bring in this sketch artist, and she talks to the woman and draws something up, and it ain’t much. ‘Cause you know, his face was covered. But then this artist reaches in the drawing and pulls his mask off and shows his face. Tommy’s eyes were bloodshot and he had a thin sheen of saliva over his lower lip, just like my pa used to when he hit the liquor a little too hard. You listening, bro? Tommy leaned closer. You understand what I’m saying? She put her hand inside the paper and took his mask off, like it wasn’t a drawing, like he was a real flesh-and-blood person, right there, and revealed his face. They put an alert out and we caught him in 12 hours. I nodded, just to make him happy. That's crazy, man.

They put me in the 95th. Not my first choice. Most of the time I was chasing meth-heads through the park. You want to see the bottom of the barrel of humanity? These guys were degenerates. Scum of the earth. The hours were absolute shit, but it worked with my custody schedule, and it was stable, so it couldn’t complain. But it wasn’t what I dreamt of doing when I was a boy in Staten Island, hell no. I dreamt of the military. I had a Go Army poster above my bed. No drinking, no drugs, bed at 10pm every night. Guess I was kind of a weird kid. My ma was depressed and my pa was at the bar all the time, so I learned self-discipline at an early age, I suppose. But then I had my daughter and needed to stay local for her. I’m not complaining. My daughter was the best thing that ever happened to me. Although the custody battle with her mother was the longest eight months of my life, Jesus Christ. But I digress. What I mean to say is, even back in the 95th, there were rumors about the sketch artist. We’d run out of things to talk about, during those long stakeouts, watching the sky fade from dark gray to lighter gray. My buddy over in CT saw this woman draw the guy who drugged a young woman, she barely remembered him, but the sketch was as detailed as a photograph. Or, I heard someone in CSU caught this sicko pedo-ringleader because they simply asked the sketch where he was hiding. And he told them! I didn’t know what to make of it, but figured, hey, anything to pass the time.

Eventually, they promoted me to detective in the Homicide Squad. That was a good day. It was the first warm day of spring, and I took my daughter out for ice cream. My first case was a brutal one: little girl, just 12 years old, found dead in a trash bag, red marks of strangulation around her neck. They brought me to the morgue, where they were conducting her autopsy. Now, I have seen a lot of dark shit, but this was something else. I excused myself, then ran to the bathroom to throw up. I was afraid that I wasn’t cut out for this. But I stared in the mirror and smacked myself in the face and said, I got this. I was gonna catch the bastard that did this to her. It was a sad story: mom was a drunk who off’d herself a few weeks back, deadbeat dad skipped town. He was our number one suspect. We found him 42 hours later across state lines, at a gas station in New Jersey. I thought I had this one in the bag. Everyone was congratulating me. Chief slapped me on the back, which was the greatest compliment you could get from him. You did good, kid, he said.

Then another girl died.

Same age, same circumstances. Garbage bag, dumpster, choked. We released that piece of shit father later that day, and I still remember the smirk he had on his face as they escorted him out of his holding cell. Chief called an all hands-on-deck meeting and said, Looks like we got us a serial killer.

That’s when they brought in the forensic artist. Chief said she was something special, that they only used her for the most difficult cases. Oh, I said, is this the “magic” sketch artist? Chief looked at me seriously and gave me instructions: she was going to meet a witness in interview room seven. I was to supervise through the one-way mirror, then collect the sketch. That was all standard. Except I was also told that I was not to talk to the artist, and I was to bring the sketch immediately to the evidence warehouse without looking at it. Chief seemed kind of nervous about it. Don’t worry, I got it, I told him. I was looking forward to seeing what the hullabaloo was all about. But mostly, I was hopeful.

The sketch artist was already in the room by the time I got there. She wasn’t what I expected. About 5-foot-2, Brown, cropped hair. Glasses that took up most of her face. I introduced myself, then brought in the witness, an elderly schoolteacher, and let them go at it. I watched the witness, pale-faced, recount the creepy guy she saw by the dumpsters. When the witness was done, I came back into the room. The sketch artist was waiting for me patiently. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk to her, but this was my case, and I was curious. She showed me the sketch: an extremely well-drawn, middle-aged guy with hoodie and sunglasses. I was impressed. Nice job, I said. I’ll take this back. But she didn’t give me the sketch. She took her hand — and I swear to the lord, Jesus Christ, Mother Mary and the Holy Ghost — what she did next defied all sense of reality I had. She took her finger and pushed the hoodie down, the sunglasses off his face, like he was a flesh-and-blood man right in front of us. And the man looking back at me was a splitting image of me.

What kind of sick joke is this? I said, and she said, it’s not a joke, that’s the man the witness saw. I blinked again. No, I said, she must have saw me on the way over here, got confused. The sketch artist shook her head. Nope, not confused. This is the man by the dumpster. He had the same scar above the eyebrow, that I got on the playground when I was five; the same pale eyes that my ex said made her fall in love with me; the big ears I inherited from my pa. I didn’t murder those girls, I said, defensively. I didn’t say you did, she replied. I was pissed off, so I grabbed the sketch from her hand, and said I’ll deal with this and brought it back to Chief. At first, he was annoyed I didn’t listen to his instructions. Then he was as shocked as I was. But he took her side. We all have a doppelgänger, he said. Doppelgänger my ass, I replied. We were going to need to release this sketch soon. What would my family think? My daughter? I begged Chief to hold off. Then give your friends and family a heads up, he said. I could imagine my ex getting a kick out of this. But I can’t tell everyone I’ve ever met! I thought of everyone I went to school with, every girl I dated. Chief agreed to hold off for a few days, but that was it.

I worked non-stop the next three days. I was going to find the real killer, and I needed to find him before we released that sketch. I looked the case file over hundreds of times, re-reviewed about 20 hours of surveillance footage. I looked at every detail we gathered about the father. Yes, he was locked up when the second girl was killed, but maybe he had help. I needed to find the sketch artist, I needed to talk to her again, to get answers. Where did she come from? How did she do it? I begged Chief to give me her contact info, but he said no can do. She went to the Pentagon for some top-secret government project. He refused to tell me anything more specific. What about her name, I asked, can you give me her name? He shook his head. No one knew her name. She was untraceable.

Sleeping was impossible. I came home for a few hours and tried to rest, but couldn’t. Did I have a twin brother I didn’t know about, or even a cousin? I thought about calling my ma but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wiped down the floors, ironed every uniform in my closet, made and remade my bed. Maybe the witness saw me while I was out running an errand, and mixed things up in her head? But I wouldn’t have been awake at that hour. I looked back through my meticulously kept calendar, my texts, my emails. I was surprised how hard it was, to account for every hour, every minute of my day. Was something happening to my memory? I googled the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. I told myself I was being ridiculous. But was I? I ordered my favorite club sandwich from the 24-hour diner to calm myself down, but when it came, it tasted bitter and dry. I cracked open a soda and spit it out. Nothing I liked tasted good anymore. So I didn’t eat anything at all.

The night before we were going to release that sketch, I had made no progress in my investigation. Pacing in my kitchen at three in the morning, I couldn’t take in anymore. I put on my uniform and went to the station. Kendra was working the night shift at the reception desk, and she nodded at me as I passed her. No one questioned me, or where I was going, because I belonged there. I walked down several winding hallways, all the way back to evidence room number 10. This was the most protected room with the highest security, but because I was the lead detective on this case, I had access. I used my key fob to get in without a problem. I didn’t turn on the light, and it took a moment to adjust my eyes to the darkness. The room smelled like blood and disinfectant. I used my iPhone flashlight to find my case number, frantically through the boxes, filled with manila folders and plastic bags. My case was all the way at the end of the room, on the bottom shelf. I lifted the box off the shelf and onto the floor, shuffled through the folders. There it was: my face on the paper. He was sleeping, but once I shone my light on it, he startled awake.

What the hell am I doing here? He looked around at the edges of the paper, as if just noticing them.

I held the paper stiff in my hands. Who are you?

Who are YOU?

Answer me! I shone my light closer to his eyes, and he squinted.

I ain’t telling you shit.

You kill those girls?

Did YOU?

My voice was trembling. I didn’t kill anyone!

The portrait laughed, cold and flat. No one will believe you.

It was like a gong went off in my head. I ripped the paper into tiny pieces, until I could not rip them anymore. Either he screamed, or I did. My breath heavy, realizing what I had done, I gathered all the pieces of paper and ran out of the evidence room. I ran down the hallways, under the unsteady fluorescent lights, until I got to my office. My new office, with all the shelves neatly stacked with books, the color-coordinated file cabinet, the pens neatly lined on my desk. A framed photo of my daughter, next to my computer, laughing on a carousel. I sat in my chair, tried to catch my breath. My office felt smaller than it did, was it always this small? The night janitor walked by my door, looked at me curiously, and kept going.

A buzzing jolted me. My phone. I let it ring three times before I took it out of my pocket. It wasn’t my ex, it was Chief. When I slowly raised the phone to my ear, I did not say hello. You alright kid? I breathed into the speaker. Someone saw you in the evidence room. You know we monitor it, right? I did not say a word. I could hear the worry in his voice. This doesn’t make you look good, kid. It doesn’t make you look good at all. I could hear footsteps down the hallway. It would be only a few minutes until they were in my office. I noticed that I was still holding the ripped pieces of paper, tightly in my fist, and I dropped them into a crumbled pile on my desk. Any drawing was gone — all the pieces were blank. My hands collapsed before me; my fingers covered in ink. And a consuming heaviness fell over my body, down to my bones, like I could fall asleep for a hundred years. I sunk deeper into my chair and looked out the window, watching the sun bleach the sky, right on time, just like it always did.