given a password and downloaded the program and manual to his computer.
He installed the software and experimented with scans of Anna Kat as a baby. He ran the program through trial after trial, aging her to seventeen after entering dozens of variables:
Will the subject be a drinker? A smoker? How much? Will the subject spend time outdoors? In the sun? Unprotected? How much?
In one week, he had a result good enough to print. Davis held the paper next to a photo taken of AK the Christmas before she was killed. It wasn’t perfect — the eyes weren’t quite right — but it was pretty damn close. Any friend of hers would recognize it as AK for certain.
The following day he purchased a digital camera at an electronics store and rescheduled two appointments to free up the afternoon. The street where the Finns lived curved east of their home, and Davis parked his car on the other side of the bend, where he still had a good view of the front door and driveway. He waited there, the engine running, listening to public radio. Hours passed with no sign of Martha or Justin. He dozed briefly. Around five-thirty, a Mercedes sedan pulled into the driveway. Terry Finn, home from the office. Alone.
In the past year Davis had started to feel foolish and guilty about Justin, and if it hadn’t been for the boy’s regular checkups with Joan, he’d have tried to forget about him altogether. What had he been thinking? Temporary insanity was the only way he could rationalize it, and in doing so he actually felt some empathy for his wife’s history of emotional illness. It would be another ten or more years before Justin even remotely resembled AK’s killer, and her killer would be ten or more years older as well. Possibly even an old man. In all likelihood, they’d be impossible to match by sight, even if he could get them in the same room. He was playing a game of catch-up he would never win. And what if the Finns moved away? How had he planned to keep track of the boy then? It shamed him to think that he had started such a radical experiment without giving two serious thoughts to any of it.
Of course, logic had never been a constant in his equation. Only in his most dreamlike fantasies had he expected to use Justin as a means to
capture
AK’s murderer. Even if Justin grew up, and Davis or someone else recognized the face, how would he explain it to the police? What would he have to offer as proof? Certainly not his reputation as a respected physician, which would be shattered the instant he confessed to such an insane plot.
All Davis longed for on the day he exchanged the stuff in his credenza with Eric Lundquist’s DNA was a chance to look into the eyes of his daughter’s murderer. Or, in Justin’s case, a simulacrum of his daughter’s murderer. Over the past year, the day when he could satisfy that desire had begun to seem more and more remote. The new software had fanned those smoldering embers again. If he could just get a good photo of the kid, he could plug a dozen variables into the machine, find the face he’d been searching for, and extinguish this latent compulsion once and for all. Davis could finally accept Anna Kat’s murder, Justin Finn could live a healthy life unaware of the machinations that had created him, and Jackie could have her husband back whole. Their marriage had been strained since AK’s death and
hyper extended since Jackie’s breakdown. Their latest bout of conjoined misery had been the result of his neglect, not her instability, and Davis was convinced he could make her happy again. Once he stopped torturing himself, he could stop torturing his wife.
When it became clear the Finns had retired for the evening, however, he realized none of this would happen tonight.
He waited until Saturday morning to try again. After half an hour Terry, Martha, and Justin pulled away in a Chevy minivan and he followed at a conservative distance. They drove less than a mile, parking the car in the moderate
He installed the software and experimented with scans of Anna Kat as a baby. He ran the program through trial after trial, aging her to seventeen after entering dozens of variables:
Will the subject be a drinker? A smoker? How much? Will the subject spend time outdoors? In the sun? Unprotected? How much?
In one week, he had a result good enough to print. Davis held the paper next to a photo taken of AK the Christmas before she was killed. It wasn’t perfect — the eyes weren’t quite right — but it was pretty damn close. Any friend of hers would recognize it as AK for certain.
The following day he purchased a digital camera at an electronics store and rescheduled two appointments to free up the afternoon. The street where the Finns lived curved east of their home, and Davis parked his car on the other side of the bend, where he still had a good view of the front door and driveway. He waited there, the engine running, listening to public radio. Hours passed with no sign of Martha or Justin. He dozed briefly. Around five-thirty, a Mercedes sedan pulled into the driveway. Terry Finn, home from the office. Alone.
In the past year Davis had started to feel foolish and guilty about Justin, and if it hadn’t been for the boy’s regular checkups with Joan, he’d have tried to forget about him altogether. What had he been thinking? Temporary insanity was the only way he could rationalize it, and in doing so he actually felt some empathy for his wife’s history of emotional illness. It would be another ten or more years before Justin even remotely resembled AK’s killer, and her killer would be ten or more years older as well. Possibly even an old man. In all likelihood, they’d be impossible to match by sight, even if he could get them in the same room. He was playing a game of catch-up he would never win. And what if the Finns moved away? How had he planned to keep track of the boy then? It shamed him to think that he had started such a radical experiment without giving two serious thoughts to any of it.
Of course, logic had never been a constant in his equation. Only in his most dreamlike fantasies had he expected to use Justin as a means to
capture
AK’s murderer. Even if Justin grew up, and Davis or someone else recognized the face, how would he explain it to the police? What would he have to offer as proof? Certainly not his reputation as a respected physician, which would be shattered the instant he confessed to such an insane plot.
All Davis longed for on the day he exchanged the stuff in his credenza with Eric Lundquist’s DNA was a chance to look into the eyes of his daughter’s murderer. Or, in Justin’s case, a simulacrum of his daughter’s murderer. Over the past year, the day when he could satisfy that desire had begun to seem more and more remote. The new software had fanned those smoldering embers again. If he could just get a good photo of the kid, he could plug a dozen variables into the machine, find the face he’d been searching for, and extinguish this latent compulsion once and for all. Davis could finally accept Anna Kat’s murder, Justin Finn could live a healthy life unaware of the machinations that had created him, and Jackie could have her husband back whole. Their marriage had been strained since AK’s death and
hyper extended since Jackie’s breakdown. Their latest bout of conjoined misery had been the result of his neglect, not her instability, and Davis was convinced he could make her happy again. Once he stopped torturing himself, he could stop torturing his wife.
When it became clear the Finns had retired for the evening, however, he realized none of this would happen tonight.
He waited until Saturday morning to try again. After half an hour Terry, Martha, and Justin pulled away in a Chevy minivan and he followed at a conservative distance. They drove less than a mile, parking the car in the moderate
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