CHAPTER TWO #2
Sounds were louder at night. They bounced off the precinct walls and vaulted ceiling like ping-pong balls without the swell of motion, of bodies, of life, to absorb them.
Larkin hadn’t ever liked making personal calls from his desk—had been especially wary of nosy neighbors during the last year of his marriage, when it’d gotten rather volatile between him and Noah—but the officer downstairs, still regaling his buddy with his misadventure starring Miss Bradshaw, was a reminder that the building’s museum-like quality at one o’clock would basically broadcast anything he said.
Larkin stood and headed back downstairs.
The heels of his derbies loudly clipped the tile floor. The two men in uniform stood near the front desk. They stopped talking, waiting until Larkin had walked past, pushed open the front door, and stepped into the night. Their shared laughter was abruptly cut off by the closing door.
The sweltering heatwave that’d been blanketing the city for the last three days wasn’t supposed to break until tomorrow, so the night was punctuated with the steady hum of window units from surrounding buildings on the block.
The air was thicker here than it’d been along the Hudson, and the heaviness pressing against Larkin’s chest felt like the promise of a summer storm.
He pulled his cell from his pocket. The home screen illuminated, displaying the time and temperature against a backdrop of Ira Doyle’s sunshiny face.
Larkin had snapped the photo while on their walk last weekend.
Doyle wore his beloved Mets cap backward and offered the camera his trademark, suck-up-all-the-surrounding-oxygen smile.
Green vegetation and gold sunshine made his skin glow bronze and brown eyes sparkle.
The screen timed out.
Larkin tapped the power button a second time.
He didn’t want to make a call this late when Doyle had to work in the morning like everyone else, but after the events of June 12, Larkin was haunted—truly haunted—by the memory of Sal Costa holding a Maglite to Doyle’s throat, trying to crush his windpipe, ready to beat Doyle to death, to crack open his skull and let free all that trauma and love and grief and joy because someone calling themselves Adam Worth had commanded it so.
The event had caused Larkin’s already erratic sleep to get worse, and he’d recently gotten into the habit of pacing at night, falling into bed only when he’d exhausted his body beyond its means, never telling Doyle he counted his boyfriend’s breaths in bed like they were talismans to keep evil at bay.
Doyle had been under the impression that Larkin was struggling to adjust to his new medication.
But the Prozac wasn’t the problem.
In fact, the Prozac was pretty good. Larkin was surviving the detox and withdrawal from Xanax, and had been feeling more levelheaded, more who he’d been before the benzos had further complicated his already perpetually fucked-up life.
It really was just that goddamn Maglite.
“We have to be a team from the onset or this won’t work.”
The growing complexity of the investigation, as well as his and Doyle’s positions within it, had allowed for paranoia to take root, like an invasive species, in Larkin’s brain.
How was he supposed to translate this wordless dread that kept him awake into something rational for another cop to understand—another detective—the very man who’d been instrumental in solving the previous three cases?
How was Larkin supposed to keep his partner both involved and out of reach from danger when Doyle represented what a partner was both on and off the clock?
Larkin knew that if he begged Doyle to step aside, to let him handle the case on his own, the request would blow up in his face.
This was his job, his career—Larkin could practically hear Doyle’s words, hear the upset but never the raised voice—that one threat wasn’t going to scare him away, that he was armed too, and Larkin just couldn’t find it in himself to tell Doyle that his weapon wasn’t a gun, it was a pencil.
That he was hope, he was happiness, he was so gentle, and someone—Adam Worth—was going to take advantage of him.
But Doyle had been fighting for years to be taken seriously as an investigator, to be seen as more than a middleman struggling with burnout, and if Larkin chose to once again not disclose certain particulars he felt were too sensitive to Doyle’s well-being, it’d be seen as a betrayal and nothing more.
No matter how noble his intention.
Everett Larkin was one of sixty known individuals worldwide with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, and of those, the medical community regarded his condition to be in the top percentile—the textbook definition by which all others were to be diagnosed.
As such, Larkin’s long-term memory was nearly infallible.
He could recall the total layout of a room he’d only been inside of once, right down to the number of unused tealight candles collecting dust on the mantel, and he was able to recite entire conversations with the accuracy of a court transcript.
Larkin’s brain was a Rolodex stuffed beyond capacity, every trivial detail, every significant event, all of them analyzed and memorized, his mind a battlefield of the unforgotten—the good, the bad, the violent, the cruel—roiling waves of grief eroding his sanity bit by bit, always one association away from a freshly broken heart.
For his entire adult life, Larkin had had to forge a path alone in a world that didn’t understand him, that laughed and mocked and became frustrated with him because his personality was too abrasive, his words too curt, his stare too intense.
None of them understood what it cost to get out of bed some days, what it took to function while just under the surface, Larkin was reliving an assault that had taken his identity—memories as intense and vivid as if it were all happening for the first time.
His parents were embarrassed by his trauma.
His doctor was fascinated.
His ex-husband was disgusted.
And then on March 30, Larkin had met Doyle, and for the first time since August 2, 2002, he’d felt different.
He’d felt better .
Larkin tried to swallow the wedge of emotion stuck in his throat. He tried to breathe through it, but he felt like he’d stepped on a landmine. Adam Worth, that psychopath, thought he could touch even one errant hair on Doyle’s head?
No.
Fuck no .
—pacing the night, identifying and cataloguing every creak, every groan, every sigh indicative of a hundred-year-old walk-up, waiting for the whisper that didn’t align, waiting to put a bullet between Adam Worth’s eyes, and then glass breaking on the street below, his sleep-deprived brain hearing instead a clap of thunder, Doyle’s face transposed over Patrick’s—dead in the mud, haloed by his own brains and blood—the baseball bat coming down on Larkin, and then his knees cracking as he dropped to the tile floor in the dark bathroom, vomiting into the toilet—
Larkin shook himself hard, like a dog coming in from the rain. He thumped his chest, coughed, dislodged the painful knot, and took a few shaky breaths. He couldn’t afford to get overwhelmed now, not when his night’s work had only just begun.
Count to ten , Doyle would say.
At six, Larkin was able to admit that from a policing standpoint, it’d be a huge misstep to not continue requesting Doyle’s assistance on these cases.
Seven, Doyle possessed the artistic skills, mourning knowledge, and gut instinct that Larkin didn’t.
Eight, Doyle knew when to ask questions and how to redirect a conversation. Nine, Doyle knew how to handle people.
He knew how to handle Larkin.
Ten.
Until Worth and his verifiable army of miscreants were caught, Larkin would just have to remain armed at all times.
He’d require constant check-ins from Doyle, would watch over him while he slept, but most important of all, Larkin would have to take every terrifying nightmare his damaged brain could envision happening without complaint.
He’d throw up, rinse his mouth, then return to his safeguarding of the man he loved beyond words, beyond comprehension, because what other choice did he have?
Every compulsive behavior.
Every debilitating association.
Every fucked-up, neurotic, intrusive thought.
He could handle them. They’d been a part of life every day for eighteen years, after all.
Adam Worth would not beat Larkin.
COME FIND ME
Larkin whispered, “I intend to.” He tapped Doyle’s name in his list of contacts before putting the phone to his ear.
Doyle answered on the second ring. He sounded sleepy. “Hey.”
“Hi. I’m so sorry to wake you.”
“That’s okay.” The bedsheets rustled and Doyle bumped something—probably the alarm clock—before saying, “I take it you’re not calling because you’re on your way home?”
“Unfortunately not. Listen… there’s been—” Larkin faltered, tripped over the words. There was no coming back from this.
“What’s wrong?” Doyle sounded more alert.
“A body was found at Pier 34. It’s Matilde Wagner.”
“Holy shit.”
“There was a message, as well as an artifact found on her body. It’s Adam Worth—the sender.”
“I’ll get dressed.”
Larkin shook his head and said, “No, that’s not necessary.”
“Evie—”
“I’m neck-deep in paperwork. There’s no reason to forgo sleep just so you can watch me cross t’s and dot i’s. I felt it was necessary to tell you now because of out-in-the-field rule five. That’s all.”
Doyle’s smoky baritone was like a balm as he said, “I appreciate that.”
Larkin studied his shoes for one, two, three seconds, then raised his gaze to the murky black sky. There weren’t any stars visible in Manhattan. “Did you lock the door.”
“Yeah.”
“Including the chain lock.”
“How’re you supposed to get back in?”
Larkin knew he wouldn’t be seeing a bed tonight. “Ira.”
Doyle sighed. “Sometimes investigations are marathons, not sprints.”