Page 21 of Ambush

***

Saturday afternoon Blake didn’t have to bang the fence and call for Serena. She grunted and stood at the sight of him and Paradise, and her cubs nosed toward them. The woman in jeans and a tee that readHave Pencil Will Travelhad introduced herself as Gwen Marcey. Blake liked her based on her T-shirt alone, but her open, sunny expression cemented it.

“So we were here in the bus.” Blake gestured to the safari bus they’d brought to the grizzly enclosure. “We got out to feed Serena on the encounter tour when the shooting started.”

Gwen headed back that way. “Let’s sit on the bus to chat. It might help your memories.”

He and Paradise followed the forensic artist back to the vehicle. The safari vehicle was equipped with long rows of seats in a giant U along the perimeter of the bus and two long benches back-to-back in the middle.

Gwen slid onto the middle bench facing the bear enclosure. “Since you have both been separately interviewed by the police, it’s fine to do this together. It will probably be easiest if you sit next to me.”

Paradise settled beside Gwen, and Blake sat by her.

Gwen patted Paradise’s hand. “Sweetheart, I’m not feeding you to the lions.” When she coaxed a smile from Paradise, she continued. “That’s better. Let me start by saying this sketch won’t get anyone falsely arrested. It’s simply a tool for the police to use in finding people who have the features you remember. They could find several suspects who resemble this sketch, but no one is arrested without actual evidence. We can rest if you become tired—in fact, we will likely take several breaks. I brought granola bars and water with me in case we get hungry. And if you really press me, I’ll dig out my stash of peanut M&M’s.”

“I’d take a handful of those now,” Blake said with a grin.

Gwen pulled out a jar of candy from the plastic tub she’d brought, and he dug out a handful. He offered the jar to Paradise, and after a hesitation, she took a handful too.

“Is this going to be a party?” Paradise asked. “Here I thought it would be uncomfortable.”

Gwen opened the cover of her sketch pad and took out a pencil. “The only thing uncomfortable here is my prosthetic bra, and when I get home, it’s coming off. Now which suspect do you remember best?”

“The man,” Blake said in unison with Paradise. “They were necking there.” He pointed to the bench seat across the back of the bus. “I only saw the woman’s side view.”

“I was at an angle where I saw her face from the front once when I was exiting the vehicle,” Paradise said. “But I saw the man better. I’m not sure I would even be able to describe her.”

“So we’ll start with his drawing.” Gwen pulled out a batch of photos. She separated them into two piles and handed one to each of them. “I want you to study each picture and make two piles. One for people who are nothing at all like the shooter and one for people who remind you of the man in some way.”

“Got it.” Blake went through his stack. He put the discards—men who were not like the guy at all—in one pile and the others who had a similar nose or haircut or facial shape in another pile.

Paradise was slower than he was, but her maybe pile was bigger.

“You’re flipping through yours quickly, Blake. You sure about all the discards?”

“I was a Marine paramedic and I tend to make snap decisions, but I’m sure.” When Gwen nodded, seemingly content with his answer, he went back to the task.

One picture held him up. It was a white male in his thirties with blond hair and a sneer on his stubbly face. The guy on the tour didn’t sneer, but he did have stubble. His had more of a red hue though. Blake placed the picture in a third pile to talk about.

“These are fresh stacks.” Gwen handed them more photos. “These are the pictures your cohort in crime here already went through. You know the drill.”

They switched stacks and went through the process again. Blake kept catching whiffs of Paradise’s plumeria scent, and it brought back distracting memories he had to keep pushing away.

When they were finished, Gwen took their maybe stacks and began to go through them. She laid multiple photos in her own pile until she’d examined every picture. “These are the pictures you both chose. Let’s go over why you put them in your pile. Age, haircut, other things that caught your attention. We’ll see if you both set them aside for the same reason.”

With her skilled coaxing they finished a composite of a man in his thirties with longish hair that curled over his collar. His broad face had bold brows over wide-set eyes. He wore jeans and a green tee with a ball cap that covered the top of his head.

Paradise tapped the picture. “That looks just like him.”

“One small thing.” Blake reached for the picture he’d put in a third pile. “Did you see this guy?”

Paradise studied the photo. “He was in my discard pile. I thought about putting him in the maybe one though, but I couldn’t figure out why.”

“It’s his hair.” Blake didn’t want to feed her any information in case his slight niggle of familiarity was wrong.

“The stubble,” she said finally. “The guy had a five o’clock shadow. Only his was kind of reddish, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what I remembered too.” He handed the picture to Gwen. “Book ’em, Danno.”

---