Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 28

He nodded, moving the mouse some more, adjusting the gray tones.

“Is this live?”

“No. The video camera's already captured the impressions and they're saved on the hard disk. But don't touch the paper. I haven't processed it for prints yet. Im just getting started, keep your fingers crossed. Come on, come on.” He was talking to the enhancer now. “I know the camera saw it fine. You gotta help us out here.”

Computerized methods of image enhancement are a lesson in contrasts and conundrums. A camera can differentiate more than two hundred shades of gray, the human eye less than forty. Just because something isn't there doesn't mean it isn't there.

“Thank God with paper you don't have to worry about background noise,” Vander went on as he worked. “Speeds things up considerably when you don't have to worry about that. Had a time of it the other day with a bloody print left on a bed sheet. The weave of the fabric, you know. Not so long ago the print would have been worthless. Okay.”

Another tint of gray washed over the area he was working on. “Now we're getting somewhere. You see it?”

He pointed at slender, ghostly shapes on the upper half of the screen.

“Barely.”

“What we're trying to enhance here is shadow versus eradicated writing, because nothing was written and erased here. The shadow was produced when oblique light hit the flat surface of this paper and the indentations in it- at least the video camera perceived shadow loud and clear. You and I can't see it without help. Let's try a little more enhancement of the verticals.”

He moved the mouse. “Darken the horizontals just a tad. Good. It's coming. Two-oh-two, dash. We've got part of a phone number.”

I pulled a chair close to him and sat down. “The area code for D.C.,” I said.

“I'm making out a four and a three. Or is that an eight?”

I squinted. “I think it's a three.”

“That's better. You're right. Definitely a three.”

He continued to work for a while and more numbers and words became visible on the screen. Then he sighed and said, “Rats. I can't get the last digit. It's just not there, but look at this before the D.C. area code. 'To' followed by a colon. And right under it is 'from' followed by another colon and another number. Eight-oh-four. That's local. This number's very unclear. A five and maybe a seven, or is that a nine?”

“I think that's going to be Jennifer Deighton's number, “I said. “Her fax machine and telephone are on the same line - she had a fax machine in her office, a single sheet feed that uses ordinary typing paper. It appears she wrote out a fax on top of this sheet of paper. What did she send? A separate document? There's no message here.”

“We're not finished yet. We're getting what looks like the date now. An eleven? No, that's a seven. December seventeenth. I'm going to move down.”

He moved the mouse and the arrows slid down the screen. Hitting a key, he enlarged the area he wanted to work on, then began painting it with shades of gray. I sat very still while shapes began to slowly materialize out of a literary limbo, curves here, dots there, and t's boldly crossed. Vander worked silently. We barely blinked or breathed. We sat like this for an hour, words gradually getting sharper, one shade of gray contrasting with another, molecule by molecule, bit by bit. He willed them, coaxed them into existence. It was incredible. It was all there.

Exactly one week ago, barely two days before her murder, Jennifer Deighton had faxed the following message to a number in Washington, D.C.:

Yes, I'll cooperate, but it's too late, too late, too late. Better you should come here. This is all so wrong!

When I finally looked up from the screen as Vander hit the print button, I was light-headed. My vision was temporarily blurred, adrenaline surging.

“Marino needs to see this immediately. Hopefully, we can figure out whose fax number this is, the Washington number. We've got all but the last digit. How many fax numbers can there be in Washington that are exactly like this except for the last digit?”

“Digits zero through nine.”

Vander raised his voice above the printer's rat-a-tat-tat. “At the most, there could be only ten. Ten numbers, fax or otherwise, exactly like this one except for the last digit” He gave me a printout. “I'll dean it up some more and get you a beer copy later,” he said. “And there's one more thing. I'm not having any luck getting my hands on Ronnie Waddell's print, the photo of the bloody thumbprint recovered from Robyn Naismith's house. Every time I call Archives, I'm told they're still looking for his file.”

“Remember what time of year it is. I'll bet there's hardly anybody there,” I said, unable to dispel a sense of foreboding.

Back in my office, I got hold of Marino and explained what the image enhancer had discovered.

“Hell, you can forget the phone company,” he said. “My contact there's already left for the vacation, and nobody else is going to do shit on Christmas Eve.”

“There's a chance we can figure out who she sent the fax to on our own,” I said.

“I don't know how, short of sending a fax that reads 'Who are you?' and then hoping you get a fax back that reads 'Hi, I'm Jennifer Deighton's killer.'“

“It depends on if be person has a label programmed into his fax machine,” I said.

“A label?”

“Your more sophisticated fax machines allow you to program your name or company name into the system. This label will be printed on anything you fax to someone else. But what's more significant is that the label of the person receiving the fax will also appear in the character display window of the machine sending the fax. In other words, if I send a fax to you, in the character display of my fax machine I'll see 'Richmond Police Department' right above the fax number I've just dialed.”

“You got access to a fancy fax machine? The one we got in the squad room sucks.”

“I've got one here at the office.”

“Well, tell me what you find out. I've gotta hit the street.”

Quickly, I made up a list of ten telephone numbers, each one beginning with the six digits Vander and I had been able to make out on the sheet of paper found on Jennifer Deighton's bed. I completed each number with a zero, a one, a two, a three, and so on, then began trying them out. Only one of them was answered by an inhuman, high-pitched tone.

The fax machine was located in my computer analyst's office, and Margaret, fortunately, had begun her holiday early, too. I shut her door and sat down at her desk, thinking as the minicomputer hummed and modem lights blinked. Labels worked both ways. If I began a transmission, the label for my office was going to appear in the character-display window of the fax machine I had dialed. I would have to kill the process fast, before the transmission was completed. I hoped that by the time anyone checked the machine to see what was going on, “Office of the Chief Medical Examiner” and our number would have vanished from the window.

Inserting a blank sheet of paper into the tray, I dialed the Washington number and waited as the transmission began. Nothing materialized in the character-display window. Damn. The fax machine I had dialed did not have a label So much for that I killed the process and returned to my office, defeated.

I had just sat down at my desk when the telephone rang.

“Dr. Scarpetta, “I answered.

“Nicholas Grueman here. Whatever you just tried to fax, it didn't transmit.”

“Excuse me?”

I said, stunned.

“I got nothing on this end but a blank sheet of paper with the name of your office stamped on it. Uh, error code zero-zero-one, 'please send again; it says.”

“I see,” I said as the hairs on my arms raised.

“Perhaps you were trying to send an amendment to your record? I understand you took a look at the electric chair.”