“Only case I ever drew on.”
We moved closer to him, and Cassie held up the file, flipping to a page that featured one of his sketches. “So this is your work?”
“Damn straight,” he said. “If it looks different than other police sketches, it’s probably ’cause I wasn’t a regular and didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
“This was the first and last time you drew?”
“For the cops, yeah,” he said. “I started my career in Hollywood making Marvel posters. Work got old, so I busted a nut southeast. Did odd jobs in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.”
“How did you get involved in this case?” Cassie asked.
“I was making illustrations for a tattoo shop. Met a cop there. He told me this fed was looking for help, and Shilo Police would pay two hundred bucks a sketch.”
“So for these sketches specifically,” I said, motioning at the drawings. “The women who described this man—you met them at the Shilo precinct?”
“No, no. I drove around with this guy…” He searched for a name.
“Offerman?” Cassie said.
“Offerman.” He pointed and nodded. “Big guy. Talked a lotta shit. And these witnesses were all women. Mostly poor. A couple pros. To Offerman’s credit, he was smart enough to see they didn’t like him. He left me there and went out for a pop while I worked.”
“He went out for a drink?” Cassie said, blinking.
“I don’t want to get him in trouble or nothing.”
“He’s retired,” I said.
“Well, okay. Yeah. He’d have me text him when I was done. And he’d come back smelling like gin.”
“And the witnesses?” Cassie asked.
“We’d talk for a bit,” Walker said. “At some point, I’d tell ’em, ‘Let me sketch you.’”
“You’d sketch the witnesses?” Cassie confirmed.
“You know…” He winked at Cassie. “Put the ladies at ease.”
“Then you’d transition to the sketch of this man they remembered?”
“Exactly,” Walker said to me. “But this thing—” He held up the last page. “I didn’t know my drawings would get merged into some super-sketch. To be honest, I would’ve changed my approach if I did.”
I wanted to know how well Walker remembered this time. “Do you recall these women, William?”
“Hell yeah.” He took the file from Cassie. “The gal I interviewed for this one—” He held up one of the drawings. “The missing woman was her best friend. I’d lost my pop the year before that. The pain she talked about was real. We sat for two hours. Cried for a solid twenty minutes. Then I got to work. But she didn’t remember the guy that well.”
“The man you sketched?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Walker nodded. “But Offerman told me if they couldn’t recall the eyes or nose, I could fill it in from one of the other drawings.”
Cassie gave me a look. This was not proper police procedure. It was also what had probably created some of the inconsistencies between the four drawings.
“Plus, two of the women couldn’t see his mouth,” William added.
“What do you mean?” Cassie said.
“He was wearing a mask.”
“Like a surgical or N95?”
