The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,74

the hurricane was thirty miles across. Katrina was advancing inexorably toward New Orleans.

Surprised by the fury of the rain lashing against the windows, Amaia looked up and wondered if the brown paper and duct tape the firefighters had used to cover the glass would protect them if the windows imploded.

Loading the negative had taken just a few minutes, and she’d spent only a little longer with a program that isolated and identified the marks. It yielded a cryptic image.

The program evaluated parameters of continuity, morphology, constancy, and dimension. All suggested that the marks might correspond to writing or some kind of inscription. The mark could still be only a random scrape, as Johnson had guessed, but it could be more. Amaia thought it looked like a truncated inscription, or perhaps there was a space between this scribble and something that followed. She shook her head, regretting the lack of clarity, and felt defeated. “Maybe it’s a scratch after all.”

They telephoned Emerson and Tucker. Dupree indicated that Amaia should take the lead.

“I found very little on record concerning Martin Lenx’s activities before he murdered his family. He didn’t serve in the military, and few students took personality tests back in the sixties and seventies when he was in high school and college. No record that he was ever treated by a psychologist or psychiatrist. Employer records aren’t particularly revealing. Regular medical checkups, nothing really of note. The psychological profile we have was drawn up after the murders, largely from witness statements, since by that point he’d disappeared. Experts’ opinions differ. Some think he probably killed himself after the murders. But I find nothing to substantiate a contention he was suffering from guilt, despite the confession he wrote to his pastor. His character, as far as we can understand it, seems consistent with the assumption that he made a new life for himself after the murders. He was a perfectionist. Starting over and building a new, unblemished life would be the approach of an obsessive-compulsive personality. I suspect Martin Lenx and the Composer may be the same person.”

Tucker strongly agreed. “We definitely have to keep that in mind.”

Dupree encouraged Amaia to continue.

“Okay then,” she said. “If Lenx is indeed our man, I have a different idea of what he might have been doing for those eighteen years. Agent Tucker, you said he could have radically changed his life, his image, his appearance. But if the Composer is the same man who had himself photographed with his family just days before murdering every one of them, his fundamental character won’t have changed. The way he set up that group portrait gives us a clue to his thinking. He moved them and rearranged them over and over, and he even tried to remove the youngest son altogether. Only when he saw that his wife was surprised by his erratic behavior did he agree to accept the initial pose. Two days later, he came back for a solo portrait—one for which he didn’t change his clothing, his appearance, the way he combed his hair, or his glasses. He even struck an identical pose. The solo portrait looks as if he’d just eliminated everyone else from the group portrait. The only difference is that in the solo portrait, he’s smiling.”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this,” Tucker objected.

“Martin Lenx did away with his family because they didn’t conform to his ideal. He had no awareness of his own faults or shortcomings and no concept of evil. He saw nothing in himself that needed correcting or changing. Martin Lenx considered himself perfect in every way. If Martin Lenx has made a new life for himself, he’ll have done his best to control his surroundings. He won’t tolerate imperfections.”

She expected Tucker to contradict her, but the reply from Florida was positive, thoughtful, and analytic. “So you’re thinking our Composer will be a man of about fifty-five, the age Lenx would be now . . . married, conservative, and traditional. Is he likely to have the same number of children?”

“Probably. A conservative type like Lenx would try to re-create his family, but this time without flaws. And, remember, he assumes no personal responsibility for any of his own shortcomings.”

Johnson took it one step further. “Following that reasoning, you’d assume his wife wouldn’t stand out, and neither would his car. He’d have a middle-class house and a middle-management job, and he’d still be religious. Lenx went to church several times a week, insisted his children attend confirmation classes, and