Faces of Evil. Lois Gibson
that a failure at this point would make me feel worthless.
At that point, as I continued to agonize, Diane’s baby started to get fussy. I struggled to pull myself together before Diane returned. That little ten-minute trip of hers felt as if it took an hour. When she got back, I went to fetch my drawing materials, which I always kept in the trunk of my car, and returned, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“Okay,” said Diane, clearly into what was for her a cool game. “I saw a black guy. He had a round face.”
I stared at the blank sketchpad I’d laid flat on the table—which I soon figured out was a mistake—and I couldn’t visualize what she was saying.
How do you start? Where?
Eyes blurred with tears, I shoved back from the table. “I can’t do it,” I said. “This is too hard. It’s impossible.”
But Diane knew how to get things done. She was relentless. She simply would not let me quit. She bossed, pushed and would not take no for an answer. “You can do it,” she insisted. “Keep working. It’ll come to you.”
I’ll always be grateful to her for that.
She described the guy’s hair and eyes, nose and ears, constantly making me rework and make changes. By the time I’d worked my way down to the mouth, I was completely drained.
“He’s the kind of guy who never stops grinning,” she said.
“Mouth open or closed?”
“Open.”
“Does he show his upper teeth and his lower teeth?”
Surprised, she said, “Yeah!”
For the first time, I felt a smile creep across my face. The eighteen months I’d spent in dental school were going to come in useful after all. One of the things we’d had to do was memorize the placement of teeth.
I drew the grinning mouth, even showing a touch of tongue behind the teeth.
Diane threw up her hands and said, “That looks like him! That’s him!”
My heart was beginning a slow thud in my chest. “Don’t say it looks like him if it doesn’t,” I said solemnly. “I mean, don’t flatter me. This is too important.” She had no idea the emotional investment I had in this one drawing.
“No! I’m not just saying it. It really looks like the man at the gas station.” She grabbed up her car keys and the baby. “C’mon, let’s go down to the gas station and I’ll show you.”
It was three blocks from Diane’s house to the station and I turned my face to the passenger-side window, eyes squeezed shut, willing myself not to cry. The short trip was almost unbearable.
We drove up and got out of the car. I pulled out the 18” by 24” piece of drawing paper on which I’d drawn the portrait. The attendant walked out of the little office.
A total match.
It looked as if he had posed for the portrait.
Handing the picture to Diane, I placed my hands on the top of the gas pump, hung my head between my shoulder blades and sobbed, wailed, in joyous relief.
While my tears poured out and Diane stood, dumbstruck, I stared at the oily concrete of the gas station tarmac and saw my whole future laid out for me.
I will catch them, I realized. All the killers and rapists and thieves and haters like the one who attacked me and the one who assaulted that dance teacher. I will give crime victims back their lives and, in so doing, they will give me back mine.
At this realization, I laughed a little and looked up to see the gas station attendant, staring at the drawing. He recognized Diane from her earlier visit and asked, “Did you do that?”
Grinning, Diane shook her head and pointed at me. “She did it.”
He glanced from me to the drawing. At first, his expression was one of disbelief and then, amazement, followed by genuine anxiety. He said, “But you weren’t here!”
I could see that he was spooked. In fact, he began to inch backwards away from me, holding up his hands as if to fend off a curse. Narrowing his eyes, he said, “Why would you want to do that?”
I couldn’t begin to imagine how weird this whole thing must have seemed to this man, if for no other reason than because of my own behavior, which must have seemed bizarre to him. But I could also understand how it would worry him that someone he’d never seen before could appear out of nowhere with a dead-on drawing of his face.
I didn’t know how to answer him without going into the criminal angle of the whole thing, so I just said, “C’mon Diane; let’s go.”
It was a profound, powerful, energizing moment in my life. All I had to do now was contact the police.
When I realized that I could draw people’s faces without looking at them, from descriptions alone, I guess I thought the hard part was over.
Little did I know that it was only just beginning.
“Houston Police Department. How may I direct your call?”
“Um...hi. My name is Lois Gibson. I’m an artist, and I can draw faces really well, just from descriptions, and I was wondering...”
“You need to call the television stations. They set up courtroom artists.”
“No, no. I’m not a courtroom artist. I mean...I’m offering to draw faces of suspects from witness descriptions.”
“You need another department. Why don’t you try Homicide? Their number is...”
“Thank you.”
“Homicide.”
“Hi. My name is Lois Gibson. I’m an artist and I can draw faces really well, just from descriptions and I was wondering...”
“Well...hmmm...I’m not sure who you should speak with about that. Have you tried Robbery?”
“Okay. Would you mind giving me the number?”
“Sure. It’s...”
“Thanks.”
“Robbery.”
“Um, hello. My name is Lois Gibson and I’m an artist who can draw faces really well. I could do drawings of suspects from witness descrip—”
“You need to call Homicide.”
And so it went. Basically, nobody seemed to know what to do with me and so everyone wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible. Most said they had never heard of using an artist. One detective with whom I spoke said they did use an artist but couldn’t describe what he or she did and didn’t want to let me speak to the person. The thought of spending money on anything that they did not regard as essential was considered a ridiculous waste of scarce and valuable resources.
And hiring some flaky woman artist to come draw criminals was, to their way of thinking, absolutely not essential.
I was sure they were missing out. Following my emotional meltdown in my friend Diane’s house and my drawing of the gas station attendant, I was glued to the evening news, night after night.
Rapes, murders, kidnappings, robberies and assaults flashed across my television screen with nauseating repetition. Houston was now one of the most crime-ridden cities in the nation. There were more homicides than there were days in that year. Every night I watched and waited to see if any of the news outlets would display a forensic sketch of the suspect, but they never did.
Over