Page 15 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Well, we nar­rowed it down to highly skilled plas­tic sur­geons who, um, were good with ears.” She took a gulp of wa­ter and watched him over the rim of her glass.

She winced in­wardly when he reached up to touch his ear­lobe. “Be­cause the sur­geon left ex­actly what was nec­es­sary to cre­ate a new ear,” he said in a flat state­ment of fact.

“Yes.” She hur­ried on to less fraught pa­ram­e­ters. “Con­firmable lo­ca­tion at the time was im­por­tant. As was any money trail, al­though that was less im­por­tant since sur­geons make a fair amount of in­come from var­i­ous sources. And fi­nally, which ones had less than ster­ling rep­u­ta­tions for in­tegrity. All of that re­quired many hours of re­search.”

“Which you guided.” Gabriel picked up a black olive.

“That’s why Mikel hired me.” She un­der­stood the crim­i­nal mind. From per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, un­for­tu­nately.

“And only three doc­tors fit your pa­ram­e­ters.”

“More than three did, but I used other fac­tors to elim­i­nate them.” Ones that were too te­dious to ex­plain.

“You are very good at your job.” Gabriel pushed his plate aside, the tapas barely touched. “Show me the doc­tors.”

Quinn took an­other swig of wa­ter to hide her grat­i­fi­ca­tion at his com­pli­ment. Then she woke up her lap­top. “All I’m go­ing to show you are their hands. I’ve re­moved back­grounds, cloth­ing, au­dio, and any­thing else that might evoke a false sense of fa­mil­iar­ity. When pos­si­ble, I’ve in­cluded pho­to­graphs of their hands in sur­gi­cal gloves. The or­der of the pho­tos and videos is ran­dom.”

She an­gled her chair so that she could see both her com­puter screen and Gabriel. She would be ob­serv­ing him for phys­i­cal re­ac­tions that he might not even be aware of. “If you want me to stop at any par­tic­u­lar im­age, just say so, but I won’t speak un­til we’re fin­ished with the en­tire pre­sen­ta­tion. I don’t want to in­ad­ver­tently bias you in any way.”

She didn’t want him to think, just re­act.

Gabriel’s gaze rested on her. “You will be watch­ing me too.”

“I may catch some­thing in your body lan­guage.”

“I hope you do. I’m not sure I’ll be much help oth­er­wise.” He turned to­ward the screen. Be­cause she was fo­cused on him, she saw the slight move­ment as he braced his shoul­ders.

She touched her lap­top screen, and the first pair of hands flashed up. She’d started with still pho­tos. Mixed in with the hands of the three doc­tors were the hands of two oth­ers who were not sus­pects in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She’d put video clips at the end of the se­quence. The en­tire slide show would last just over a minute.

He sat with his hands folded on the ta­ble while the shift­ing im­ages re­flected as flick­ers in his eyes. Un­til he barked, “Stop!” and leaned for­ward. Gabriel’s knuck­les were white with pres­sure.

Quinn paused the slide show and glanced at the photo. One la­tex-gloved hand gripped an in­stru­ment that Quinn had blurred out so Gabriel wouldn’t be trig­gered by the im­ple­ment as op­posed to the hand. The way the fin­gers held the in­stru­ment high­lighted the dis­tinc­tive con­cave shape of the doc­tor’s first fin­ger joint.

Dr. Paul Ricci, an Amer­i­can who prac­ticed his trade in Switzer­land.

She looked back at Gabriel. He sat hunched for­ward with­out ap­pear­ing to breathe.

He could be fo­cused on try­ing to re­mem­ber the doc­tor’s hands. Or he could be feel­ing the re­mem­bered ter­ror of a par­tic­u­lar mo­ment.

His nos­trils flared as he drew in a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

She gave him a cou­ple of sec­onds to re­cover be­fore she restarted the mon­tage. His shoul­ders re­laxed, and he sat back in his chair, al­though his fin­gers re­mained twisted to­gether.

An­other photo of Ricci’s hands flashed on the wall, but Gabriel didn’t re­act to it. The slide show tran­si­tioned to the video clips.

“That one!” Gabriel nearly shouted. “Run it again.”

It was Ricci’s hands again, al­beit the video was grainy be­cause she’d had to zoom in. No gloves this time. How­ever, he was mov­ing his thumb in a way that showed it was hy­per­mo­bile, the joint be­low the knuckle bend­ing in­ward so that it looked un­nat­u­ral, yet the sur­geon flexed it re­peat­edly.

“He did that when I asked him what he was go­ing to do to me,” Gabriel said, his usu­ally smooth voice sand­pa­per-rough. “Like he was an­tic­i­pat­ing the surgery.”

“I sus­pect it’s an un­con­scious tic, pos­si­bly when he’s ner­vous,” Quinn said, try­ing to re­mem­ber the con­text of the video she’d taken the clip from. She thought that Ricci had been stand­ing be­hind a podium, so he must have been mak­ing some sort of pre­sen­ta­tion. He could have been anx­ious about it.

“You’re talk­ing to me,” Gabriel said with a sharp glance at her. “Does that mean the slide show is over?”

She nod­ded, and he slumped back into the chair, his head rest­ing on the high cush­ion at the top. “Who is it?” he asked.

“I’d pre­fer to do more re­search be­fore I re­veal his iden­tity,” Quinn said. “The hy­per­mo­bile thumb is dis­tinc­tive but not that un­usual. Fif­teen to twenty per­cent of men ex­hibit it.” Al­though Gabriel’s recog­ni­tion of both the video and the still photo had her nearly con­vinced that Ricci had been the sur­geon.

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