Eve imagined Yancy looked more like an artist than a cop, with the curly dark hair, the soulful eyes. But he was damn good at both.
“Let’s see what you’ve got so far.”
As Yancy worked both by hand and by comp, he turned his sketchbook around.
She’d worked with less, Eve thought as she studied the sketch. But she’d have judged the woman the face represented to be in her late twenties—and the hair dominated the face itself.
“We haven’t been at it long,” Yancy told her. “Just really getting down to it.”
“More than we had. Does this match your impression, Jake?”
“Well, she’s a good ten years older than she looks here. She’s got some wear—don’t mean any disrespect.”
“We’re not here to respect her,” Eve pointed out.
“Okay, so.” Head angled, he studied the sketch. “She’s got some wear, you know? Lines starting.” He started to reach for one of Yancy’s pencils, stopped himself. “Out from the eyes, beside the mouth.”
“Do you draw?” Yancy asked him.
“I fool around.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and show me?”
“I don’t want to mess it up.”
“It’s already comp-logged. Go ahead.”
“Okay, so …” Jake took the pencil. “I’d say her eyes are a little rounder. More like …” He rounded them subtly, smudged some lines at the corner with the side of a callused thumb. “And maybe a little broader nose. It seemed broader because her face is narrow, and it narrows more at the chin, like … that. Then the expression lines here. And I want to say she looked sallow. Like somebody who doesn’t get out much, in the sun.”
“That’s right,” Brad murmured. “That’s really right. Her mouth’s smaller than what I said, isn’t it?”
“I was going to say tighter, but yeah. Her features don’t really balance. It’s just a click or two off. She’s not—”
Jake passed the pencil back to Yancy. “It feels wrong to diss a woman in front of a woman.”
“A cop,” Eve corrected. “You want to say she’s not attractive.”
“Not like dead ugly, but not the sort you look at twice. A fader, if you get me. The hair wa
s all ‘Look at me, I’m on it,’ but it didn’t go with the rest of her. She was trying to be what she wasn’t. Trying for younger, edgier, and just missing the mark.”
“Wanted to be with,” Brad supplied, “and she’s without.”
Yancy worked on the mouth, redefined the chin.
Eve studied the sketch. heavily lined eyes, darkly dyed mouth, the dreads falling on either side of the face, closing it in.
“It’s a good likeness,” Jake commented. “It’s a real skill to be able to draw a likeness that good of somebody just from other people’s bits and pieces.”
“We’ll run with it,” Eve said. “Log that, copy, and send,” she told Yancy. “And can you do another, take away the heavy makeup, the dreads? Jake says brown eyes, possibly hazel, so go with brown hair.”
“Playtime.” Yancy rolled his shoulders, swiveled to the computer, and began some tech magic.
On-screen the dreads vanished. He filled in temples, cheeks, and side jawlines. Layer by layer he brushed away the thick eyeliner, the thickened lashes, took the eyebrows from dark and bold to a calmer brown.
The lips went from hard red to pale, almost undefined.
“Yeah, a fader,” Jake murmured as her hair faded to a nondescript brown.