An Image of Death by Libby Fischer Hellmann

their task. Practiced. Ski masks to hide their faces. No hesitation before they attacked. As far as I could tell, they hadn’t even talked to each other while they were killing her. And there were two of them. Someone wanted her dead badly enough to use two men for the job.
    I stood under the hot water, rinsing off soap. If only the quality of the tape were better. A sharper image might have revealed the woman’s face, or at least some distinguishing feature. Something in the room might have told me where it was.
    The police said they were sending the tape to the crime lab. But they didn’t say how long it would take. The lab serves all of Northern Illinois’ law enforcement agencies, including Chicago’s. There could be dozens of videotapes waiting for forensic analysis. It might take weeks, even months, to get anything back. What if the man driving the van wasn’t the innocent I was trying to convince myself he was? Did I want to wait a month or more to find out?
    I toweled off, got dressed, and went into my office. A tiny purple ceramic shoe sits on top of my computer monitor, a birthday present from Susan. She’d attached a card to it that said: “No one will ever fill yours.” I sat down, booted up, and went online.
    A few minutes later, I found an article about video forensics written by someone in the Chicago area who started out as a videographer but was later “certified”—whatever that meant—as a forensic analyst by the Cook County Sheriff’s Department. When I looked him up, he turned out to be in Park Ridge, a village about twenty minutes away. I punched in his number.
    A gravelly voice answered. “Mike Dolan.”
    I put on my most charming voice. “Good morning, Mr. Dolan. My name is Ellie Foreman, and I have a digital tape that needs some work. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”
    “What law enforcement agency are you with?”
    “I—I’m not.”
    “You with the press?”
    “No.” I hesitated. “I’m a video producer.”
    He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was even more scratchy. Years of smoking, probably. “If you have evidence that a crime has been committed, you should be talking to the police.”
    “I did,” I blurted out.
    “And?” His voice sounded stern.
    “I—I was just wondering, if I wanted to have it looked at privately, how much are we talking about?”
    “Four hundred an hour,” he said, not missing a beat. “And another five for setup.”
    “Are you kidding? Nine hundred just to walk in the door?”
    “You’re a video producer, you say?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You’ve got a client, right? It’s not coming out of your pocket.”
    “But I—I don’t have—my budget doesn’t have that kind of flexibility. I can’t afford nine hundred dollars.”
    “Sorry.” He sounded almost cheerful.
    “I can tell.” I disconnected and tossed the phone onto the chair.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    I thought I’d stepped back in time when I walked through the door in Evanston the next day. Tucked away in an alley off Sherman Avenue, the building looked like an old carriage house that had been renovated once before but needed another go-round. The entry hall had high ceilings, crown moldings, and a massive door, but the moldings were chipped, the walls needed paint, and the carpeting looked like it had been there since the Vietnam War.
    It wasn’t just the architecture that evoked an earlier era. The walls were papered with colored fliers advertising everything from adoption counseling to yoga for couples. As I squeezed past a couch so battered even the Salvation Army would reject it, I imagined a Movement office next to the Organic Food Coop, which would be next to Benefits for Returning Vets.
    A sign on one of two offices down the hall identified the occupant as Jordan Bennett, PhD, MASC. Underneath his credentials was the word Transitions . The door was partially open, so I pushed through, anticipating a guy with a full beard in scruffy