Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn’t mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything.
It was no different with Cooper’s gift. It often felt like intuition: he could go through a subject’s apartment, look at their photographs, the way they organized their closet, whether there were dishes in the sink, and from that he could make a leap, oftentimes a leap that banks of computers and teams of researchers could not. But it wasn’t a matter of visions from the Almighty, and it couldn’t be forced. Without data, he was just as clueless as anybody else looking at the photograph of the ball.
All he had right now was one Dusty Evans, a man he’d never even heard of yesterday. A loser with no prospects, no special skills, no connections that made him valuable. He seemed an unlikely conspirator for someone like John Smith. On the other hand, he was a pissed-off young man—young abnorm man—which was a demographic Smith fared well with.
Philadelphia had grown large out the window. Cooper checked his watch; about half an hour till they landed. They’d know soon enough if Evans had anything to offer them. He turned, saw his partner looking at him. “What?”
“There’s something else.” Quinn scratched at a temple. Uncomfortable, Cooper could see, and stalling.
“Am I supposed to guess?”
“Right. Let me send it to you.” Quinn tapped at his own datapad, and then a notification box appeared on Cooper’s, asking if he would accept a file. He clicked yes, and a photograph filled the screen.
It didn’t capture the fluidity with which she moved, the graceful transfer of weight in each step, the elegance of her posture. But the girl talking on the cell phone was still very, very pretty. Probably about twenty-seven, full lips, brown hair in a chic cut that highlighted a dancer’s shoulders. Skin color said Mediterranean, or Jewish, maybe. Her mascara was thick, but as she wore no other makeup it seemed exotic rather than cheap. She was slender enough he could mark her clavicles beneath her fitted T-shirt.
Very, very pretty indeed.
“That’s our bomber,” Quinn said. “The photo is from an ATM security camera. Thankfully, all the major banks use newtech lenses these days to discourage fraud, so the quality is good. Five years ago she would have been a black-and-white blur. Anyway, Val checked the time stamp against the cell tower logs and the GPS coordinates. It’s her.”
Cooper said nothing, just looked at the woman. She had the hint of a smile on her lips, like she knew a secret.
“Thing is…” Quinn hesitated.
“I was right beside her.”
“Yeah.”
Cooper laughed through his nose, then took a deep breath. “I was afraid of that.” He caught Quinn’s look and said, “Yesterday, when we found out where the call came from, I was thinking back, and I thought I might have been.”
“Did you notice her at the time?”
“Look at her.”
“But you didn’t…”
Cooper shook his head. “Not a clue.” He laughed again and saved the photo to his desktop. “We got anything on her?”
“Nothing.”
“What about the phone she used?”
“It belonged to a woman, dental hygienist, named Leslie—” Quinn checked, “—Anders. We talked to her; she noticed her phone was missing last night, thought she’d left it somewhere. We’re confirming, but I think she’s clean. My guess is Foxy Brown there lifted it from her purse.”
“We recover it?”
“Nah. Probably in the sewers.” Quinn shook his head. “She whupped us good, boss. Twenty agents, an airship, cameras all over the place, snipers, and she strolled right in and blew up our witness.” His partner didn’t explicitly mention that the girl had stood beside Cooper while she triggered the bomb, but that was only because the words were in parentheses.
Cooper sighed. Crushed his d-pad into a square and jammed it in his pocket. “Well, one thing’s for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“Roger Dickinson is having a better day than I am.”