Catch and Release

Chapter 10

Chapter 10Sheppard continued scrolling through the various crime scene photos looking for more similarities. He was drawing a blank. It seemed as though the only commonalities between the three crime scenes that they couldn’t account for were the mystery paramedic and the graffiti. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. The computer screen had a way of straining them. He had read somewhere that you blink less when you’re looking at a computer screen. He guessed the author of that article had a point. He swiveled in his chair to face Haley. “How’s the sketch going?”

Haley put her pencil down and let out a frustrated sigh as she slid the pad across the table. “What do you see?”

Sheppard picked up the pad and examined the sketch. “I see a man with thick eyebrows, a long, downward sloping nose, full lips, and a tight jawline. Basically a Middle Eastern man who shaves.”

“Hence my frustration. It doesn’t really narrow down our suspect pool much.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. It’s still something to go on, which is more than we’ve had so far.”

Haley stood up without saying a word, kicking her chair back slightly, and reached for another cup of coffee. As she sat back down, Sheppard’s computer let out a short tone alerting him to a new email. He clicked the mouse button a few times and opened the attachment.

“And besides, it looks like you did about as well as the photo lab,” Sheppard said while turning his computer toward Haley. She picked up her pad and held it next to the screen, a smile spreading across her face as she said, “Not bad.”

The door at the far side of the room swung open, and an agent who looked like he was fresh out of high school came into the room, handed Riley a USB drive, and left as quickly as he’d entered.

Riley plugged the USB drive into his computer, clicked the mouse a few times, and several photos appeared on the smart board with fingerprints underneath each one.

“Listen up, everyone. Out of the hundreds of fingerprints we’ve recovered from the latest crime scene, we’ve been able to identify these people. Forensics is currently trying to match them against fingerprints from the first two scenes. Hopefully, that’ll lead to us having someone to talk to.”

Sheppard turned toward Haley, who was already looking in his direction. He nodded at her pad and then jerked his head toward the board. She snatched up her pad while rising from her chair, walked to the front of the room, and held the pad against the third image from the left. “No need to wait for forensics.”

Riley looked at the photo on the board and compared it to the sketch. “Well, that’s hard to deny. Haley, Sheppard, go pick up Abu Sayif.”