She stared for a second, pushed it away. “Okay, you’ve grossed me out, that’s utterly repugnant. However, even being grossed out doesn’t stop me from raising the cardinal question: If she doesn’t have a face, how could you possibly match her to someone in our data bank?”

Rosalynn said, “Let me see it, Suk.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to.”

“If you saw it, I need to see it, Suk, otherwise I’ll be hungry for dinner by seven and you won’t have any appetite and we’ll get on a different schedule and we’ll be messed up for days.”

Suki played with her hair. Passed the photo.

Rosalynn stuck out her tongue. “Beyond repugnant. Hard to believe it’s real, there’s almost a special-effects quality.”

“It’s real,” said Milo.

“I’m just saying. It’s so gross, it’s almost like it’s phony.”

Suki said, “We respect the police, our great-great-grandfather was a police chief in Armenia. But without a face—it’s beyond tenuous, it’s remote.”

Rosalynn held the picture out to Milo. He took his time retrieving it, searched the case, and came up with Alex Shimoff’s portrait.

Suki Agajanian frowned. “If you have an intact face, why did you show us that monstrosity?”

Her sister said, “Obviously for shock value, Suk, in order to jolt us into compliance. You don’t need to manipulate us, guys. We’re on your side.”

Suki said, “We’re not First Amendment–obsessed dweebs ready to fight you in court for every shred of data. Give us a name and we can tell you in seconds if she was one of ours. If she was, we’ll also tell you who she linked with. But absent a name, there’s nothing we can do and no logical reason for us to release our data bank. Like we told you, it’s almost twelve thousand names, most of them Sweeties.”

Milo said, “I’m a patient guy.”

“You’d go through that many photos? That sounds incredibly inefficient.”

I said, “Do you subdivide by personal characteristics? Our victim was blond with dark eyes.”

“We do subclassify,” said Rosalynn, “but that won’t help you because nearly eighty percent of our Sweeties are blond so we’re still talking thousands.”

“Apparently, fair hair connotes youth and vitality,” said Suki, fluffing her own raven coif.

“Same for small noses,” said Rose, wrinkling her aquiline appendage. “Anything that evokes childhood in an overall sexually mature package does the trick with the male animal.”

Her sister laughed. “Apparently guys are all pedophiles at heart.”

I said, “What percentage of your blondes have dark eyes?”

“Uh-uh,” said Suki. “You’re not getting in through the back door.”

Milo said, “Five four, a hundred and five.”