from the start. But Liam, the little fella, well, let’s just say it’s not so easy for him. Your handwriting reflects your personality, and my little guy has a lot of that. But Liam’s teacher doesn’t think the way I do, so she’s always marking up Liam’s work with comments about his handwriting and the way he holds his pencil.”
Amaia nodded, inviting him to continue.
“Last week my son’s teacher put another of those notes at the bottom of an exercise he’d written. I’d seen her comments before, and I’d noticed the way other teachers write. But that note really annoyed me. I took a closer look and saw she didn’t close off her s’s or her a’s, and in fact she inverted the curves on her m’s and n’s. I do the same thing. The thing is, if an adult writes like that, it’s acceptable, just a quirky little peculiarity, but a kid gets told off for sloppy handwriting. She wrote something like, ‘Liam needs to improve his penmanship, because it’s hard for me to understand.’ I wrote a reply: ‘Excuse me, teacher, but I can’t decipher your handwriting.’”
Amaia laughed aloud. “How did she take it?”
“Oh, really well, actually; she thought it was funny. That afternoon when Liam got home from school, I saw she’d written back: ‘Touché, but Liam still needs to improve his penmanship.’”
Smiling, Amaia studied the scrawl shown on the monitor. She turned back to Bull and fired a shot across his bow. “How did you and Agent Dupree get to know one another?”
The detective was taken aback for a second or two but quickly regained his composure. “You were there yesterday morning when they introduced Bill and me.”
She smiled and clicked her tongue, tilting her head to one side to signal her disappointment at his evasiveness.
A ping from the computer announced an incoming email. It was a message from Tucker with attached files. Amaia glanced at Bull, who took the opportunity to get to his feet.
“I’ll let you work.”
“You didn’t answer my question!” she said sharply to his retreating back.
When the image came up on the screen, she understood why Agent Tucker had said Nelson’s headshot might not be of much use.
Brad Nelson matched Martin Lenx in terms of height, complexion, age, and hair and eye color, but his face was terribly scarred. She zoomed in for a closer look, knowing already that her facial recognition program would be of no use. The scars were from burns, third and maybe even fourth degree, undoubtedly from a fire. Thick scars ran from his forehead to his chin. His nose and left cheek were disfigured. He must have had several skin grafts. Suture marks had altered his hairline. She could tell that the scars were old, for they were dead white. Brad Nelson had been burned many years earlier. He wore wire-rimmed glasses so light they were almost invisible, and he was smiling. His zygomatic muscle had been injured, so she wouldn’t be able to read from the lines around the eyes whether that smile was real. Scar tissue to the right of his mouth pulled it slightly downward and distorted his smile. But in this headshot, he looked relaxed and confident, a man who loved his job.
She opened the other attachments. Tucker and Emerson hadn’t found a Nelson family portrait. The children’s pictures were taken from school yearbooks, and the wife’s picture was probably from her driver’s license. Despite the mediocre quality of the image, it was obvious that Sarah Nelson was good looking. She was meticulously made up, and her carefully brushed hair had a gentle wave. She smiled directly into the camera. Anyone who was that particular about her appearance at the DMV would surely take good care of herself all the time. Except for her obvious interest in grooming and makeup, she was the polar opposite of Martin Lenx’s spouse.
The two boys, Dylan and Jackson, resembled their mother. They were both handsome, with dark hair and large eyes. The older boy was grinning, the younger one had an earnest expression. The girl, Isabella, looked nothing like the rest of the family. Her hair was a curly chestnut mop with reddish highlights. Amaia wondered if Isabella’s features came from her father or somewhere further back in the family line. She duplicated the picture of the girl, planning to compare her features with those in the Lenx family portrait, even though she knew the program wasn’t designed to detect inherited characteristics. Lenx’s sons had had the