Iced!: The 2007 Journal of Nick Fitzmorgan Read Online Free Page B

had come up empty–handed. There were no concrete clues as
     to what had happened to my dad.
    Now she was perched on the edge of Dad’s desk, watching me work. “I think you might be wasting your time. Your dad’s probably
     just at the store or the movies,” Maura said. “He wasn’t expecting you to be home for another week. Maybe he went out of town.”
    “I hope so,” I said, gently pushing a piece of clay onto the skull. “But Judge spoke with him this morning. She told him I’d
     be home today.”
    Finally, the head was done. I took a step back and looked at my work: It was a man. And he had a face that looked familiar
     to me.
    “Does this look like anyone you know?” I asked Maura. “Or knew?”
    She stood and moved closer to examine the head. “I can’t put my finger on it,” Maura said thoughtfully, “but his face is ringing
     a bell.”
    I nodded in agreement. Bells were definitely ringing. But who was he?
    I grabbed my digital camera, snapped a quick pic, and downloaded it to my computer.
    “What are you doing?” Maura asked.
    “My dad got us this cool facial recognition software,” I told her. “You just put in a photograph of someone’s face. The program
     looks at skin texture and facial characteristics, like the distance between the eye sockets or the point of a nose. Then it
     tries to match the face you put in to others in the database. It’s not as good as a fingerprint. But since the skull is all
     we have to work with …”
    “I didn’t think there was a central database with everyone’s faces” Maura observed.
    “There isn’t,” I agreed. “So I just told my computer to check with the different databases around the world that do—including
     those in museums. It’s going to take a while to go through all those photos.”
    JUST THE FACTS
    In the early 1990s, researchers developed EIGENFACES, a facial recognition program that zeroes in on 128 different points on a person’s face (from photos, video, or sketches). It compares those points to other people’s faces and looks for a match.
    The United States Marshals Service recently used the Illinois facial reconstruction database to track down info on one of their 15 Most Wanted fugitives. After entering the booking photo of Daniel Escobedo, the system scanned over eight million driver’s license images in the database. The man’s license popped up first within seconds.
    I USE A VERSION OF THIS SOFTWARE
    With my computer working away, I examined the face again. “How do I know you?” I asked it.
    In a flash, something popped into my head. “My dad always says, ‘Nick, you can tell a lot about a person by where they look
     when you’re talking to them.”
    Maura looked at her watch, as if she wasn’t sure how long she’d have to be here. “That’s a nice saying.” Her tone was one
     you would use with a little kid.
    “How about the mystery wan?” I wondered out loud. “Where is he looking?”
    I grabbed a tape measure. I hooked one end to the top of the face and extended the tape, following the face’s gaze across
     the room as if it were a straight arrow. The face’s line of “vision” traveled over the mess on the floor to the bookshelf.

    On a whim, I removed one of the books from the general area in which the skull was looking. It was a book about trains in
     1906. I flipped quickly through the pages and then gave the book a shake. No secret note fell out. I took another book down
     from the same area and got the same results. Nothing.
    I was just turning away from the bookshelf, when something caught my eye.
    BAM!
    The polished metal corner of some kind of door shone through the space I had made in the bookshelf. There was something hidden
     behind the other volumes. Maura noticed it, too. Together, we removed the rest of the books from that shelf.

    Soon we were looking at the door of a hidden safe.
    My heartbeat kicked up a notch.
    “You didn’t know this safe was back there?” Maura asked.
    I