Brad starts the clip, and the man who comes on the big screen is once more Ondowsky… but he’s different. Thinner. Younger than “Paul Freeman,” and younger than the version of Ondowsky doing his report near the blown-out side of the Macready School. But it’s him. The face is different, the face is the same. The microphone he’s holding has the letters KTVT attached to it. Three women are standing with him. One of them is wearing a Kennedy political button. Another has a placard, crumpled and somehow forlorn, that reads ALL THE WAY WITH JFK IN ’64!

“This is Dave Van Pelt, reporting from Dealey Plaza, across from the Texas School Book Depository, where—”

“Freeze it,” Dan says, and Brad does. Dan turns to Holly. “It’s him again, right?”

“Yes,” Holly says. “I’m not sure anyone else would see it, I’m not sure how you saw it so long after the plane crash report, but it is. My father once told me something about cars. He said the companies—Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler—offer lots of different models, and they change them from year to year, but they’re all from the same template. He… Ondowsky…” But words fail her and she can only point to the black-and-white image on the screen. Her hand is trembling.

“Yes,” Dan says softly. “Very well put. He’s different models, but from the same template. Except there are at least two templates, maybe more.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll get to that.” His voice is rustier than ever, and he drinks some more tea to lubricate it. “I only saw this report by chance, because I was a Huntley-Brinkley man when it came to the evening news. But after Kennedy was shot, everyone turned over to Walter Cronkite, including me. Because CBS had the best coverage. Kennedy was shot on a Friday. This report was on the CBS Evening News the following day, the Saturday. What news people call a backgrounder. Go ahead, Brad. But take it from the top.”

The young reporter in the horrible plaid sport coat begins again. “This is Dave Van Pelt, reporting from Dealey Plaza, across from the Texas School Book Depository, where John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was fatally shot yesterday. I’m here with Greta Dyson, Monica Kellogg, and Juanita Alvarez, Kennedy supporters who were right here where I’m standing when the shots were fired. Ladies, can you tell me what you saw? Miss Dyson?”

“Shots… blood… there was blood from the back of his poor head…” Greta Dyson is weeping so hard she can barely be understood, which Holly supposes is sort of the point. Viewers at home are probably weeping right along with her, thinking that her grief stands for theirs. And for the grief of a nation. Only the reporter…

“He’s eating it up,” she says. “Just pretending to be concerned, and not doing a very good job of it, at that.”

“Absolutely,” Dan says. “Once you look at it the right way, it’s impossible to miss. And look at the other two ladies. They’re crying, too. Hell, a lot of people were crying that Saturday. And in the weeks that followed. You’re right. He’s eating it up.”

“And you think he knew it was going to happen? Like a mosquito smelling blood?”

“I don’t know,” Dan says. “I just don’t know.”

“We do know he only started working at KTVT that summer,” Brad says. “I wasn’t able to find out much about him, but that much I did get. From a history of the station on the Internet. And he was gone by the spring of 1964.”

“The next time he turns up—that I know about, anyway—is in Detroit,” Dan says. “1967. During what was known at the time as the Detroit Rebellion, or the 12th Street Riot. It started when the police raided an after-hours bar, a so-called blind pig, and spread city-wide. Forty-three killed, twelve hundred injured. It was the top news story for five days, which was how long the violence went on. This is from another independent station, but it got picked up by NBC and ran on the nightly news. Go ahead, Brad.”

A reporter is standing in front of a burning storefront, interviewing a black man with blood running down his face. The man is almost incoherent with grief. He says that’s his dry-cleaning business burning down across the way, and he doesn’t know where his wife and daughter are. They have disappeared into the city-wide melee. “I have lost everything,” he says. “Everything.”

And the reporter, this time calling himself Jim Avery? He’s a small-city TV guy for sure. Stouter than “Paul Freeman,” verging on fat, and short (his interviewee towers over him), and balding. Different model, same template. It’s Chet Ondowsky buried in that fat face. It’s also Paul Freeman. And Dave Van Pelt.

“How did you tip to this, Mr. Bell? How in heaven’s name—”

“Dan, remember? It’s Dan.”

“How could you see the resemblance wasn’t just a resemblance?”

Dan and his grandson look at each other and exchange a smile. Holly, watching this momentary byplay, thinks again, Different models, same template.

“You noticed the pictures in the hall, right?” Brad asks. “That was Grampa’s other job when he was on the cops. He was a natural for it.”

Once again, the penny drops. Holly turns to Dan. “You were a sketch artist. That was your other police job!”

“Yes, although I did a lot more than sketch. I was no cartoonist. I did portraits.” He thinks, then adds, “You’ve heard people say they never forget a face? Mostly they’re exaggerating or outright lying. I’m not.” The old man speaks matter-of-factly. If it’s a gift, Holly thinks, it’s as old as he is. Maybe once it blew his mind. Now he takes it for granted.

“I’ve seen him work,” Brad says. “If not for the arthritis in his hands, he could turn around, face the wall, and do you in twenty minutes, Holly, and every detail would be right. Those pictures in the hall? All people who were caught based on Grampa’s portraits.”

“Still—” she begins doubtfully.

“To remember faces is only part of it,” Dan says. “It doesn’t help when it comes to getting a likeness of a perpetrator, because I’m not the one who saw him. You understand?”

“Yes,” Holly says. She’s interested in this for reasons other than his ID of Ondowsky in his many different guises. She’s interested in it because in her own work as an investigator, she is still learning.

“The witness comes in. In some cases—like a carjacking or a robbery—several witnesses come in. They describe the doer. Only it’s like the blind men with the elephant. You know that story?”

Holly does. The blind man who grabs the tail says it’s a vine. The one who grabs the trunk thinks it’s a python. The one who grabs the leg is sure it’s the bole of a big old palm tree. Eventually the blind men get into a brawl about who is right.

“Every witness sees the guy in a slightly different way,” Dan says. “And if it’s one witness, he or she sees him in different ways on different days. No, no, they say, I was wrong, the face is too fat. It’s too thin. He had a goatee. No, it was a mustache. His eyes were blue. No, I slept on it and I guess they were actually gray.”

He takes another long pull of O2. Looking more tired than ever. Except for the eyes in their purple pouches. They are bright. Focused. Holly thinks that if the Ondowsky-thing saw those eyes, he might be afraid. Might want to shut them before they saw too much.