Dark Rivers of the Heart

folder, Melissa removed another photograph. "This is him.
        From the front, straight on. His full face."
        Roy looked up from the new photo, surprised. "I didn't know we got a shot like this."
        "We didn't," she said, studying the portrait with evident pride.
        "This isn't an actual photograph. It's a projection of what the guy ought to look like, based on what the computer can determine of his bone structure and fat-deposit patterns from the partial profile."
        "It can do that?"
        "It's a recent innovation in the program."
        "Reliable?"
        "Considering the view the computer had to work with in this case," she assured Roy, "there's a ninety-four-percent probability that this face will precisely match the real face in any ninety of one hundred reference details."
        "I guess that's better than a police artist's sketch," he said.
        "Much better." After a beat, she said, "Is something wrong?"
        Roy realized that she had shifted her gaze from the computer portrait to him-and that he was staring at her mouth.
        "Uh," he said, looking down at the full portrait of the mystery man, "I was wondering… what's this line across his right cheek?"
        "A scar."
        "Really? You're sure? From the ear to the point of the chin?"
        "A major scar," she said, opening a desk drawer. "Cicatricial weltmostly smooth tissue, crimped here and there along the edges."
        Roy referred to the original profile shot and saw that a portion of the scar was there, although he had not correctly identified it. "I thought it was just a line of light between shadows, light from the streetlamp, falling across his cheek."
        "No."
        "It couldn't be that?"
        "No. A scar," Melissa said firmly, and she took a Kleenex from a box in the open drawer.
        "This is great. Makes for an easier ID. This guy seems to've had special-forces training, either military or paramilitary, and with a scar like this-it's a good bet he was wounded while on duty. Badly wounded.
        Maybe badly enough that he was discharged or retired on psychological if not physical disability."
        "Police and military organizations keep records forever."
        "Exactly. We'll have him in seventy-two hours. Hell, forty-eight." Roy looked up from the portrait. "Thanks, Melissa."
        She was wiping her mouth with the Kleenex. She didn't have to be concerned about smearing her lipstick, because she wasn't wearing any.
        She didn't need lipstick. It couldn't improve her.
        Roy was fascinated by the way in which her full and pliant lips compressed so tenderly under the soft Kleenex.
        He realized that he was staring and that again she was aware of it. His gaze drifted up to her eyes.
        Melissa blushed faintly, looked away from him, and threw the crumpled Kleenex in the waste can.
        "May I keep this copy?" he asked, indicating the full-face computer-generated portrait. withdrawing a manila envelo e from beneath the file folder on the desk, handing it to him, she said, "I've put five prints in here, plus two diskettes that contain the portrait."
        "Thanks, Melissa."
        "Sure."
        The warm pink blush was still on her cheeks.
        Roy felt that he had penetrated her cool, businesslike veneer for the first time since he'd known her, and that he was in touch, however tenuously, with the inner Melissa, with the exquisitely sensuous self that she usually strove to conceal. He wondered if he should ask her for a date.
        Turning his head, he looked through the glass walls at the workers in the computer lab, certain that they must be aware of the erotic tension in their boss's office. All three seemed to be absorbed in their work.
        When Roy turned to Melissa Wicklun again, prepared to ask her to dinner, she was surreptitiously wiping at one corner of her mouth with a fingertip. She tried to cover by spreading her hand across her mouth and faking a cough.
        With dismay, Roy realized that the woman had misinterpreted his salacious stare. Apparently she thought that his attention had been drawn to her mouth by a smear or crumb of food left over, perhaps, from a midmorning doughnut.
        She had been oblivious of his lust. If she was a lesbian, she must have assumed that Roy knew as much and would have no interest in her. If she wasn't a lesbian, perhaps she simply couldn't imagine being