J is for Judgement

manila envelope with a photograph inside. "Lieutenant Whiteside sent this over for you. Looks like he included an address for the guy's wife." He handed me a slip of paper, which I tucked in my pocket.
    "Thanks. That's great. It'll save me some time."
    "This the dude who interests you?" Rupert passed me the picture. I glanced at the grainy eight-by-eleven black-and-white head shot. "That's him. His name is Wendell Jaffe. I've got a few more here just to give you some other views."I pulled out the collection of shots I'd been using for ill purposes and watched as Rupert sorted through them with care, arranging them according to some system of his own. "Good-looking fellow. What'd he do?"
    "He and his partner were into real estate development, some of which was legitimate until the bottom dropped. In the end, they ripped off their investors in what's commonly known as a Ponzi scheme, promising big returns when they were really just paying off the old investors with the new investors' money. Jaffe must have realized the end was in sight. He disappeared off his boat in the course of a fishing trip and was never heard from again. Until now, of course. His partner served some jail time, but he's out again."
    "This is ringing a bell. I think the Dispatch ran an article about Jaffe a couple of years ago."
    "Probably. It's one of those big unsolved mysteries that capture the public imagination. An alleged suicide, but there's been a lot of speculation since."
    Rupert studied the pictures. I could see his eyes trace the contours of Wendell's face, hairline, the distance between his eyes. He brought the picture up close to his face, angling it toward the window where the light was streaming in. "How tall ?"
    "About six four. Weight maybe two thirty. He's in his late fifties, but he's in good shape. I saw him in a bathing suit." I wiggled my eyebrows. "Not bad."
    Rupert moved over to the copier and ran off two copies of the photograph on what looked like rough-textured beige watercolor paper. He dragged a stool over to the window. "Grab a seat," he said, nodding to- ward a cluster of unpainted wooden stools.
    I hauled one over to the window and perched beside him, watching while he sorted through his drawing pens and pulled four from the jar. He leaned forward and opened a drawer, taking out a box of Prisma color pencils and a box of pastel chalks. He had an air of distraction, and the questions he began to ask me seemed almost ritualistic, his way of preparing for the task at hand. He secured a copy of the photograph to a board with a clip at the top. "Let's start at the top. How's his hair these days?"
    "White. It used to be medium brown. It's thinner at the temples than in the photograph."
    Rupert picked up the white pencil and masked out the dark hair. The immediate effect was to make Wendell seem twenty years older and very tanned.
    I found myself smiling. "Pretty good," I said. "I think he's had his nose trimmed down. Here at the bridge and maybe some shaved along here." Where my finger touched the nubby paper, Rupert 'would shade and contour with fine strokes of chalk or pencil, both of which he wielded with an air of confidence. The nose on the paper became narrow and aristocratic.
    Rupert began to chat idly while he worked. "It's always amazed me how many variations can be wrung from the basic components of the human face. Given that most of us come equipped with the standard-issue features. . .one nose, one mouth, two eyes, two ears. We not only look entirely different from one another, but we can usually identify each other on sight. Do portraits like I do and you really begin to appreciate the subtleties of the process." Rupert's unhesitating pencil strokes were adding years and weight transforming a six-year-old image to its current-day counterpart. He paused, indicating the eye socket. "What about the fold, in here? Has he had his eyes done?"
    "I don't think so."
    "Droopiness? Bags? Five years would etch in a few lines, I should think."
    "Maybe some, but not a lot. His cheeks seemed more sunken. Almost gaunt," I said.
    He worked for a moment. "How about this?"
    I studied the drawing. "That's pretty close."
    By the time he was finished I was looking at a reasonable facsimile of the man I'd seen. "I think you got it. He looks good." I watched as he sprayed the paper with a fixative.
    "I'll run off a dozen copies and get them over to Lieutenant Whiteside," he said. "You want some yourself? I can run you a