Page 113 of Protecting Peyton

I shook with him. “Zane March. I work for Hawk. Lucas is inside.” I stepped aside for him.

“March. You were on the call. Primary protection, he said. Mind if I park these here?” he asked, leaning his suitcases against the wall.

“Sure thing. This way.” Inside, I introduced him to the group. “This is Sergeant Detective James O’Connor.”

“Jimmie, or hey you, works for me,” O’Connor said.

One by one, the people around the circle gave their names.

O’Connor waved. “Without my notepad, there’s no way I’m passing the name test today.” That got a few kind giggles.

“We expected one of your detectives,” Lucas noted with a slight squint to his eyes. The sergeant had said as much on the call.

“I decided to come because this case is personal to me. My ex-wife was his third victim.”

Winston frowned. “You can’t?—”

O’Connor’s hand shot up. “Hold on. We stayed on the right side of the ethical line here. My team and I caught the first case, and then the second with the obvious similarities. But another team handled the investigation of my Nancy’s murder, not me.”

Constance nodded.

“When the fourth body dropped, and then the fifth, the chief thought it best that my team continued chasing this guy. I mean, I’m the most motivated man on the whole force to nail this asshole.”

“Did you bring the file?” Lucas asked, getting right to the meat of the matter.

“Sure tried,” O’Connor said. “I’ve got two suitcases full of case files.”

Duke chuckled. “You could have brought an electronic copy.”

“That’s not the way my department operates.” O’Connor shrugged. “Maybe you guys will see something these old eyes missed.”

I went back to my place next to Peyton.

“Sergeant, take a seat,” Lucas suggested. “We’re about to go over how we can catch your strangler.”

O’Connor sat in an empty chair.

Lucas waved at the TV. “Okay, Jordy, run us through what you’ve been up to.”

Since we’d moved on to Jordy’s work, it seemed Pete wasn’t joining us,which I considered a shame. I made a mental note to stop in to see him as soon as I had some time. He was at a stage where being alone wasn’t the healthiest thing for him.

Jordy tapped his laptop, and the TV shifted to image after image. “This is a sample of what I’ve got so far.” They were mostly face-on shots.

“You’re going too fast,” Peyton said.

“These aren’t the real images,” Jordy said. “They’re training images for the algorithm.”

My angel slumped back.

Lucas held up a hand and smiled. “Peyton, we need everyone in the field to understand how this works, if we’re going to catch him. Let Jordy explain.”

She nodded.

“Normal facial recognition works on distances and angles between points in facial geometry, which can be extracted from various perspectives, but for this dude, all we have to go on is a difference in iris color. Most of the cameras around don’t get face-on shots close enough to see a bi-color difference. ATM cameras are an exception.”

O’Connor raised a hand. “Sorry to come in on this late, but what’s this about eye color?”

“That’s the target’s most identifying feature,” I answered. “One blue eye, one brown.”