CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
Paddy reached for his phone immediately. “I want every security recording from the bar over the last week pulled up in the next ten minutes. If that man was inside the bar, we’ll find him.”
I nodded. “Do it. Send someone to bring in Carter. I want a sketch artist here as soon as possible.”
Paddy was already dialing as he stood.
Nora looked at me, uncertainly creeping into her voice. “What if I’m remembering it wrong? What if I’m mixing the man up with someone else because I’m scared?”
I moved my chair closer to her before answering.
“You’re not making this up, Nora. You noticed something about the man before you found the message, and now your memory is connecting the pieces.
We’re not asking you to be perfect. We’re asking you to tell us what you remember about the man, and we’ll build from there. ”
We didn’t find anything meaningful on the camera feeds.
Either Nora was making a mistake or this man was good enough to avoid being spotted by the cameras.
I had a feeling it was the latter. Twenty minutes later, Carter arrived with a sketchpad and a small case of pencils.
He was a man in his fifties who’d worked with us before, and he understood how to keep people calm when they were trying to remember something difficult.
He sat across from Nora and opened the sketchpad.
“Miss Walsh, we’re not trying to create a photograph,” he said gently. “We’re trying to capture the details that stayed with you about the man. Start with the shape of his face. Was it narrow, broad, or somewhere in-between?”
Nora swallowed before answering. “Somewhere in-between. His jaw was strong. He had a small scar near his chin. I didn’t notice it at first because it was faint, but once I saw it I couldn’t stop noticing it.”
Carter began to draw the man. The room remained silent except for the scratch of pencil against paper.
Nora described the man’s hair, his eyes and the way the man’s smile never quite reached them, and the calm, measured way the man carried himself.
Each detail seemed to pull another memory loose, and with every answer the sketch of the man became clearer.
I stayed beside Nora the whole time. I didn’t interrupt or answer for her. Whenever she hesitated, I simply rested my hand lightly against the back of her chair to let her know she wasn’t alone. After an hour, Carter turned the sketchpad around.
The rough drawing of the man wasn’t perfect yet, but it was close enough to make everyone in the room go still. Nora stared at the face on the paper, her own face draining of color.
“That’s him,” she whispered. “That’s the man from the café...the same man who was watching me at the bar.”
For several seconds, nobody spoke. The sketch rested in the center of my desk like a challenge none of us had expected to face so soon.
Nora kept staring at it, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, while Diggs and Michael exchanged the kind of look that passed between men who understood the situation had become far more serious than a threatening note.
I picked up the drawing and studied it carefully.
The man had an ordinary face. He wasn’t the kind of person people would remember from a crowded room, which was exactly what made him dangerous.
He could sit quietly at a bar, drink his coffee in a café, and disappear into a crowd without leaving a strong impression behind.
“Make copies of this immediately. I want every trusted contact we have in Boston to see it before the hour is over, and I want checks made at hotels, bars, restaurants, train stations, airports, and anywhere else a man like this could blend in without being noticed.”
Diggs took the sketch with a sharp nod. “I’ll have it distributed straight away. If he’s still in the city, someone will recognize him, and if he’s been moving around Boston for days, there’s a good chance he’s already crossed paths with someone in our network.”
Michael stepped closer to the desk. “I’ll pull some strings and get the security footage from the café. We may be able to track where he came from before he entered and where he went after he left.”
“Do that, and don’t limit yourself to the footage from the hours we already know about. I want every entrance, every exit, and every background frame checked, because if this man has been watching Nora for days, he may have appeared in the footage long before we noticed him.”
Paddy was already moving toward the filing cabinet near the wall. “What about the message? We can have the handwriting analyzed, check the paper, and look for prints if he handled it carelessly, although I doubt a man this careful would leave something behind by accident.”
“Send it to Carter’s people and have every possible trace examined, but don’t rely on that alone. A man who planned this carefully probably expected us to look for fingerprints, so I want every other lead pursued at the same time.”
Nora finally looked up from the sketch. “What are you going to do now? Please tell me you’re not going to treat this like another warning that we can simply wait out.”
I met her eyes. “I’m going to find out who he is, why he threatened you, and who sent him. This stopped being a random threat the moment you recognized his face from the bar.”
The room fell quiet again, and I turned to Paddy.
“I want you to start digging into Nora’s mother and stepfather.
Pull their phone records, financial activity, recent travel, known associates, and any contact they’ve had with people in Boston.
I don’t care how small the connection seems, because if there’s a link between them and this man, I want it uncovered tonight. ”
Nora stiffened slightly. “My mother and stepfather? Liam, do you really think they could be connected to this somehow?”
“I’m not accusing them of anything yet, but whoever sent this man is probably connected to your past. I’m no longer willing to ignore any possibility that could explain how he found you.”
Paddy nodded once. “I’ll have the records pulled immediately. Give me an hour, and I’ll know whether there’s been any recent contact worth looking at, no matter how insignificant it appears at first.”