Page 100 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“I didn’t know there was such a thing. You mean with artificial intelligence?”

He looked annoyed. “No, Dad. There are people who are born with super-recognizing abilities. They did a whole thing on them on one of Nana Mama’s favorite shows,Sixty Minutes. We did the test and I got them all correct.”

“Which makes you a super-recognizer?”

He nodded, tapped the screen. “They are all the same person, Dad. Shoulders hunched forward. The hair color and cut changes. So do the beard and mustache. The clothes and sunglasses try to fool you, but the cheekbones and jawline are absolutely the same.”

I could see what he was talking about, but it wasn’t enough to be definitive. At least not in my mind.

Until Ali tapped on the picture of the older man at the Masters crime scene. He blew up the right side of his head.

“Look at the ear,” he said, magnifying it more. “He’s got like half an earlobe sticking out from under the hair.”

I squinted. It was true. I said, “But the photographs of the other men are from the wrong angle.”

Ali nodded. Then he called up another photo he’d taken of the crowd at the McCoy crime scene. In it, the guy with the tight military haircut was almost broadside to the camera. I didn’t need him to blow the picture up to see the man had half an earlobe.

I studied the pictures, seeing in my mind the silhouette of the driver of the blue Dodge Ram pickup that had gone past me and Sampson earlier in the morning. Was half his right earlobe missing?

“You believe me, don’t you, Dad?” Ali said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I believe you’ve got something,” I said. “But he seems awful old for a killer.”

“And he limps,” Ali said. “But he gets around fine. I have video of him beyond the baseball fence at the McCoy scene.”

“Good video?”

He brightened. “Really good. You see him from every angle, Dad. He even takes off his hat. I’ll bet you could use full-on facial-recognition software on him. Figure out who he is and why he keeps showing up.”

I smiled and gave him a hug. “We just might try that once I’ve had some sleep.”

CHAPTER 84

BREE KISSED ALEX ONthe cheek and headed to the bedroom door. “So, if Ali is right, is he still grounded until graduation?”

“Sophomore year,” Alex grumbled. “Can you turn out the lights?”

Bree clicked them off and shut the door softly behind her, then checked her watch and swore softly. She ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, which was empty. She poured herself a go-cup of coffee, grabbed two of Nana Mama’s muffins, and got her rain jacket out of the closet.

She’d no sooner gotten out on the porch and zipped her jacket against the dreary day than a dark sedan pulled up. The window rolled down, revealing Fairfax County police detective Marcia Creighton.

“Taxi’s here,” Detective Creighton called.

Bree went down the steps to the street and the car. She got in and laughed. “These new squad cars all smell the same, don’t they?”

“Every one of them,” Creighton said. “I think it’s a mandatory spray.”

“Did you check the Airbnb?”

“Last night,” she said. “You were right.”

“Thank God for bad housekeepers. Paxson?”

“Paxson,” the detective investigating Iliana Meadows’s murder said. “There were a few people I did not get to speak with the other day — the three coaches, actually.”

“What about the roommate?”

“Kerrie Mountain. Nice kid. Very forthcoming, even after I went through their dorm room. Said she knew nothing about a sex tape or blackmail, but she did say Iliana had become irritable in the past two weeks. You said in your text that you had another theory?”

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