variety.â
âForensic pathology.â
âIn that general area. But more specialized. Profiling serial killers, thatâs still important, but weâre pioneering some new territory.â
âIf this is a recruiting pep talk, you wasted your trip. Iâm a police officer, plain and simple street cop. I have no other professional aspirations.â
He gave her an empty smile.
âMy teamâs responsible for everything from forensic archaeology to the paranormal.â
âOh, come on. ESP? You guys believe in that horseshit?â
âWe believe in what works, whatever it may be based on. Skills like yours, for instance, may appear to be clairvoyant at first glance, but they arenât. Theyâre simply skills. Highly developed, perhaps. But still skills. Youâre a gifted code cracker. Only your codes are human and emotional. It may be instinctive for you, but itâs nevertheless a very, very rare talent.â
He ate more of his salad. Took a long swallow from his mug. He patted his mouth with the napkin and looked around at the room full of cops and secretaries. A couple of her friends were looking over at her curiously.
âLet me ask you a couple of questions, Monroe?â
âThe answer is no. Iâm happy doing what Iâm doing.â
âI understand that. But would you say that your ability to anticipate behavior and read body signals and facial expressions has benefited your police work? Perhaps even kept you safe at times?â
âMaybe. That and good training.â
âThink about it, Monroe. If we could learn more about these skills you possess and improve our methodology in teaching them to others, the applications would be immense. Take a Customs official at the airport, stamping passports, making eye contact, asking a couple of innocuous questions. He has maybe ten seconds to make a judgment about each person passing before him, an individual entering the country. Heâs the last line of defense.What if that official was able to correctly distinguish honest answers from dishonest ones seventy, eighty percent of the time? Think of the impact, what catastrophes that might avert.â
Charlotte was silent. Weighing his argument, but not buying it fully. Catching liars at airports was a long way from preventing catastrophes.
âCould you do something for me right now, Charlotte? A small favor.â
âIâm listening.â
âWhen you look at me, at my face, my eyes, my mouth at this particular moment, what do you see?â
âHey, Iâm off duty. Itâs lunch, okay?â
âOfficer Monroe, from the results Iâve seen, I donât think youâre ever off duty. Yours is the kind of gift that doesnât shut down. I believe youâre always watching, evaluating, making highly informed judgments. Maybe itâs happening just below the surface of your awareness, but itâs there.â
âEverybody does it.â
âBut few do it so well.â
âTwo weeks of tests. What does that prove?â
âWhat Iâm guessing is that youâre relieved to know you have this skill. Most of the time it probably feels like youâre eavesdropping on peopleâs thoughts. Invading their privacy. Thatâs how Iâve heard it described by one of the other members of our team. A man whoâs incredibly good at reading faces and body language. Our most gifted associate. That is, until you cropped up. The best results weâve ever come across, by the way, are from a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Thousands of hours of meditation have apparently given him the empathy and focus to detect and decode those fleeting facial expressions that can give away true emotions. Forty milliseconds, thatâs how fast they come and go. But he can see them. And apparently so can you.â
Charlotte put down the rest of the chip and looked into Mearsâs eyes.
âFedderman said prison inmates