Chapter 14

Betty was asleep when he got home. She had fallen asleep on the bed with her clothes on. Ed got a blanket and covered her, left the room and pulled the bedroom door shut. The laptop was on and the screen saver was moving through its gyrations. The fact that the laptop had not gone into the sleep mode told Ed that Betty had only recently gone to bed. He moved his finger over the touch pad and the screen jumped to life and one of the pictures on the disk materialized.

Ed poured himself a glass of iced tea and sat at the laptop. He slowly went through each picture that was captured on the disk. He studied each picture, searching for any item that he had missed before. He took care to scrutinize every item in the picture. The last picture on the disk came up and Ed started studying each detail as he had on the other pictures. He still had no clue who the woman with the butterfly tattoo was. Ed started examining every item in the picture.

Ed finished examining the picture and pushed away from the table. Something in the back of his mind told him that he had missed something. Ed's suspicious detective mind questioned everything. He started scanning the picture again. He again checked every item in the picture. Nothing! All of a sudden Ed saw it! He had been looking at the picture without really looking at the faces of the men in this picture because all of the other pictures showed the same faces, picture after picture. One man in this picture was not on any of the other pictures. The man had the side of his face to the camera. The photo was taken from about 20 feet away and the resolution of the photo was grainy. The man looked familiar, but Ed could not place the man's face. Ed picked up the magnifying glass and studied the picture. The picture was so grainy that he could not make out the man's face.

Ed pushed him self away from the table and went to the phone. He dialed Hy Symington's number and left a message for him on his answering machine. Hy called back about 25 minutes later.

"Hy, I need some help," Ed said, "We missed something on the last picture on the disk. One of the men on the last photo is not on any of the other photos. The photo is so grainy that I can't make out who the guy is. He looks familiar though. Is there any way that your people can clear up the photo?"

"Sure," Hy replied, "We do it all of the time. We can computer enhance a photo to make it clearer. It will take me 24 to 48 hours to get the results though. I have to have a copy of the disk. If you'll make me a copy I'll swing by your apartment in about an hour and pick it up."

Ed agreed and sat back down at the laptop. He pulled up the last photo. Ed went into the bedroom he used as an office and got a blank disk. He inserted the disk into the computer and copied the photo to the disk. He pulled up the photo showing the man's hand and the ring and, using the photo software, copied the man's hand and the ring to the disk. Ed didn't copy the other photos. He was not ready to have any of the other photos in anyone else's hands just yet. The photo that he had just copied for Hy didn't show the woman's face and he knew that Hy couldn't do anything with the photo until he had the identity of the woman.