Faces of Evil. Lois Gibson
sir,” I said. “They’re real good. They taste better than any cookies I ever had!”
“All right. They’re great cookies. Let me ask you this. Do they have to pay for the cookies right then?”
I shook my head. “We take their order and they don’t have to pay until we deliver the cookies.”
“Uh, huh.” Nodding, he glanced over at me and asked slyly, “Do they have to pick up the cookies?”
“No!” I cried. “We take the cookies right to them, to their door.”
“That sounds pretty good. Do you think these people might buy cookies anyway, say, at the grocery store?”
I agreed that yes, most people did buy cookies at the grocery.
Taking me by my little arms, he said, “Honey, I want you to remember this for the rest of your life. Don’t think that these people are doing you a favor just because they buy these cookies from you. Remember, they would be buying cookies anyway and these are delicious cookies. They don’t even have to pay for them right away and you will deliver them right to their door! You see, you are doing them a favor, aren’t you? Now, here is what I want you to say when you go up to someone’s door.”
I leaned closer.
“Say, This is your lucky day!”
He told me that I should use that approach for everything from a job interview to getting ahead in life.
I did just that and I sold more cookies than any other rookie Girl Scout in Kansas City.
Now, sitting in my rocker, watching my active infant son scramble and scoot around on the floor (trying to find a way to bust out of the joint, no doubt), I thought about what my dad had said. I decided that I needed to change my approach. I needed to convince the police department that this was, indeed, their lucky day.
So I made another call to them.
“Robbery,” I said firmly.
This time they put me through.
“Hello. My name is Lois Gibson. I am a portrait artist and I can draw the faces of suspects from witness descriptions,” I rushed on. “I’d like to offer—”
“Well...”
“I’ll bring all my gear down to HPD myself. I’ll set it up in your office. All you have to do is send somebody down to the jail, look at someone there, then come back and describe the person to me.”
“Hey,” interrupted one detective before I could finish my rehearsed speech, “We’ll fix you up with a guard and you can go down to the jail yourself and draw all the perverts you want!”
I heard him laughing as I hung up.
Sometimes I sat in my rocker, stared up at the ceiling, cried and talked to God. I told Him that I understood, now, why I had been attacked and that I knew what my purpose was on this planet and how I could use such a terrible thing for good, to help others. And I prayed for His help in breaking through the hard shell of a major metropolitan bureaucracy. But there were a lot of times when it just seemed impossible.
Every day, when I put Brent down for his long afternoon nap, I got on the phone and went through my rehearsed speech.
“If my drawing is good,” I said as persuasively as possible to a reluctant cop, “then think what a wonderful thing that would be to help with your investigations. And if I’m no good, then hey, I’m just a housewife, right? You guys are armed, after all. I’ll leave. What have you got to lose?”
One day, I launched wearily into my act, to a lieutenant. And when I was done, the policeman said, “You need to call Lieutenant Don McWilliams.”
Okay. Fine. I’ll call the damn detective, I thought and redialed the police department, hoping the big sarcastic sigh I was heaving couldn’t be heard over the phone.
Finally I had the name of the right person.
“Lieutenant McWilliams,” I said. “Hi. My name is Lois Gibson. I’m a practiced portrait artist and I am positive I can draw a good resemblance from a description given by a witness who has seen a face,” I recited. “I can prove it to you. I’ll bring my gear down to your office. You send somebody over to the jail and have them look at anyone they want. Have them come back and describe one of the inmates to me and I guarantee you I can draw the guy just from their description.”
And without hesitation, Lt. McWilliams said, “Well, come on down, girl! Let’s see you do it!”
I almost dropped the phone. I wasn’t even sure I had heard correctly. Had he just said come on down, like some kind of game show announcer?
I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t say anything for a moment or two.
Lt. McWilliams went on to set up a date and time and when I offered to drive there myself, he said, “Nah, no problem, I’ll send someone to come pick you up.”
And just like that, I got my first opportunity to perform.
I was nervous on the sunny afternoon when I handed the baby over to Momma Nadine and got ready to leave for the Houston Police Department. I was just so ready to show what I could do. After all, I’d been doing it in my head for more than two years and not only that, but with Sid’s help, during that time I had been practicing on unwitting “suspects,” drawing their portraits using only Sid’s description—and that didn’t even count the thousands of quick portraits I’d done with watercolors and pastels along the River Walk and in malls all over Texas.
I was ready, I told myself. I could do it. All I had to do was convince a bunch of hard-nosed cops that they needed me and that this was their lucky day.
Officer Howard White picked me up and helped me load my cumbersome easel and my drawing supplies into the squad car. He was funny, entertaining and personable on the drive to the police department. He acted as if he did this sort of thing every day and it helped me to feel as if it was something I did every day, too.
The Robbery Division was housed in a 1950s-era building that was spartan but serviceable and Lt. Don McWilliams worked in a small office. When I first met McWilliams—whom I’ve since come to love and refer to, like everyone else who knows him, as “Mac”—he reminded me of the actor Wilford Brimley in his younger days. He had large, powerful legs, a firm handshake and a soft-spoken, homey demeanor. There wasn’t a great deal of room to set up my easel in his office, but I was not deterred. I made myself a little corner studio adjacent to the open doorway.
Years later and still grateful, I asked Lt. McWilliams what had motivated him to take a chance on an unknown like me—a female artist.
His answer was pure cop: “Aww, my captain didn’t want to deal with you. He told me to let you come on in just so we could get rid of you.”
We laugh about that even now.
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