“Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears? Well, look at mine,” Harrison belted out the Steely Dan lyric.

Music waltzed around Harrison’s sunny studio. He stepped back from the nearly finished bust. With a clay covered hand, Harrison stroked his graying beard. He looked from the police artist sketch to the e-fit back to his creation. Two eyes, one nose, a mouth, a face is so much more than three dots and a curved line. Something was missing.

Grabbing his pigment smeared iPad, Harrison went looking for the missing piece to make his bust come to life. He hummed “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” as he read eyewitness accounts of the Foxglove Killer. He’d started working with Philly PD by happenstance. He’d been wooing a cute police officer who patrolled the beat where his old studio was. At a coffeehouse, Harrison had drawn a sketch of her with his phone number. He left it under her patrol car windshield wiper. When she called Harrison thought he was getting lucky instead she asked him to work with a witness on a sketch of a creep bashing oldsters in Chinatown.

Based on his sketch, the criminal was caught. Harrison was hooked. Something about working from descriptions sparked inside him. Gradually he moved from sketching to clay work with hand painted porcelain eyes. Learning about tissue markers and working on skulls, he gave faces to the nameless dead. Harrison pored over anatomy and ethnicity tomes to make monsters into men. Over the years his methods refined. Harrison crawled inside the head of each alleged criminal. With gentle strokes he carved smile lines into the killer’s face. Harrison smiled back.

“Lover man, my class is breaking up. Are you ready to head home?” Raven said.

Cupid’s bow lips, full, with a perpetual curve against a dimpled cheek, formed beneath the artist’s fingers. Harrison jumped at the sound of her voice, tilting the blonde wig on the bust. Quickly Harrison set the hairpiece right. His wife gave a low whistle.

“He’s kinda hot, babe. Why am I finding this sicko attractive? Those hazel eyes are soft; eyes that don’t belong to a killer,” Raven said.

“He’s a lover. He selects his targets from dating apps and charms them to go to a second location with him even though he doesn’t match the photos on his profile. He has to be handsome, harmless, trustworthy. Witnesses to these first dates never notice anything off about the guy. Afterwards the bodies are tidied, faces covered, hands folded over their hearts. The Foxglove Killer loves those men,” Harrison said. “In his way.”

Absentmindedly his fingers stroked the side of his killer’s dimpled cheek. Harrison caught his wife’s incredulous stare and quickly went to scratch his head. She took his clay coated fingers from his hair and laid a hand on his chest. With the edge of her smock Raven dabbed at her husband’s smudged jawline.

“It’s time to go home. You’re tired. Clean up my Dirty Harry. We’ll eat cheese stuffed pizza in bed and watch something wholesome like the Real Housewives. I’ll finish up straightening the studio and meet you in the car.”

“Make it Forensic Files.”

“Hey Nineteen” trailed off from his speaker. With a wink, Raven left. Harrison stretched and adjusted his figure. Impatiently his unfinished commissions waited under damp wraps. He was just too close to stop working. Just a little more work around the eyes to capture that twinkle. Harrison reached for his fine shaper. Suddenly the drums of “Time Out Of Mind” kicked up from his Bluetooth speaker. Torn between the killer and the wife, Harrison hesitated. The Foxglove Killer gave Harrison a beckoning smile as it was wrapped and put away.