I intently studied the photograph he’d attached to the email. Oh, it wasn’t so much what each of the eight arranged squares depicted, rather what I honed in on were the letters in the tiny copyright that appeared on every one of them in the montage. ‘Course it was easy to make out “Anthony” -- given he’d already told me that was his first name. But what was the rest of it? C… u… t…? C… a… l…?
I dragged the picture into Photoshop, where I gave enlarging it a stab: Ctrl +. First letter… C… C… Ctrl + Ctrl + Too pixilated. Ctrl - Ctrl - I zoomed back out. Hmm… I adjusted the brightness levels. I fiddled with the contrast. I flipped it horizontally.
He had boasted he’s Italian. What are some Italian surnames? Meh. This is gonna get me nowhere.
Last ditch, hoping to find a larger original, I plugged what he’d titled it, “mod,” into an image search engine. Thousands upon trilloids of results. I’d have better luck if I just rang up the Virginia State Police and demanded they me who all their Italian officers are.
I would sporadically revisit the paste-up as I acquired more details the prolific policeman -- which I, by then, one hundred per cent. believed he was -- supplied.
Even after learning his last name, I still didn’t see it in that darn collage.
