CHAPTER SEVEN
“I swear,” Doyle was saying, but there was barely suppressed laughter in his words.
“You should never lie to the police.”
“It’s the truth, officer.”
Doyle leaned in, squinted at the screen, and then said with feigned thoughtfulness, “So strange….”
“Did you intentionally take the long way.”
“That wouldn’t make any sense.” But then Doyle grinned. “How was your nap?”
Larkin’s heart beat a little too hard under the steady gaze of those pyrite eyes. “It was good.”
Doyle pinched the black hair tie around Larkin’s still-raised left wrist, gave it a light snap, then started for the bank of elevators busy with administrators and uniformed and plain-clothed officers coming and going in all directions.
He pressed the Up button on the nearest panel before looking over his shoulder and motioning Larkin to join him.
It’d have been easy, Larkin thought, to walk away from his domestic problems. To get in that elevator with Doyle and leave behind the lawyers, the arguments, the tears. He could drop the dispute over finances, give Noah half of his life, and become strangers again.
—’til death do us part.—
But their love, like all loves, had been a conscious decision of vulnerability, of unfettered access to the soul, of trusting one person above all others with the parts of ourselves that were the most difficult, the most scared, and the most ugly.
And yes, their love hadn’t lasted, hadn’t endured, hadn’t separated them only in death, but whether fault could be blamed or fingers pointed, it didn’t negate that Larkin and Noah had once tried to nurture and cultivate something beautiful together, had laid bare their inner workings to each other, and had forged memories that no other person would share.
Paperwork was easy.
Tying off a bleeding heart was hard.
The elevator doors opened and people exited, parting to either side of Doyle. He was still looking at Larkin, brows now raised expectantly.
Larkin raised his phone in response.
Doyle looked a little resigned, maybe a little worried, but he nodded once and then got on the elevator.
The doors shut.
Larkin turned right, away from reception, and walked down a long hall until he could hear the cafeteria, that familiar cacophony from his childhood school days of competing voices bouncing off too-high ceilings, chairs dragged across high-traffic linoleum, stacking lunch trays, banging pots and pans, the ding , ding , ding of the register.
Coming to a stop at the wall opposite the cafeteria entrance, Larkin leaned back against it, tapped a few buttons on the phone, and put it to his ear.
Noah answered on the second ring. “I’m so glad you called—”
“Explain yourself,” Larkin interrupted.
Noah sounded a bit taken aback as he said, “I—I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”
“I can’t always drop what I’m doing to take your call. I’ve told you this I don’t know how many times.”
“But you never take my call. That’s the whole problem .” Noah swore, his voice becoming distant, like he’d lowered the phone, and then he returned and said in a strained but civil tone, “I don’t want to fight.”
“I’m not convinced of that.”
“You’re being an ass.”
“I just sat through my mother calling my partner a homewrecker and then accusing him of what very much sounds like stalking, Noah. I’m a little irritated with you.”
“I’m sorry I resorted to calling your mom, but you weren’t answering and—no, don’t interrupt me, Everett. I’m telling you, he was outside our—my—apartment last night.”
“No, he wasn’t. Ira’s been with me, at work, since 3:48 in the morning.”
Noah countered, a little smug, “It was around one o’clock when I saw his car.”
“1:00 a.m. is not ‘last night.’”
“Last night—this morning— who cares . The point is, I woke up, got a drink of water, couldn’t fall back asleep, and that’s when I noticed his car was parked directly across the street.”
Larkin was quiet, considering.
For the last eighteen years, he’d been held at gunpoint by his interpersonal relations, his back to a wall of societal expectations, wearing a mask not of Melpomene’s tragedy or Thalia’s joy, but a paper bag with a drawn-on smiley face placating, pacifying, pleasing— I can’t see —don’t disagree, don’t disappoint, don’t disgrace— I can’t breathe —a neurotypical poison of Just Keep Smiling for a world that wasn’t perfect nor beautiful nor noble, but instead, one that was entirely indifferent to the inevitability of his death.
The world would see the same sunrise tomorrow.
The world wouldn’t care about the suffering Everett Larkin had endured at the hands of the firing squad, wouldn’t care if Larkin would even be alive to see the first early rays over the horizon, because the world was unaffected by morals and murder, beliefs and brutality.
The world simply was .
But Larkin wondered if, perhaps, his interpretation of Nietzsche’s existentialism was too… literal.
Because yes, this world, with its seven billion people, really wasn’t perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble.
But Ira Doyle was .
And Ira Doyle was Larkin’s world.
“You still there?”
Larkin squared his shoulders and said into the phone, “Do you know what shape the Earth is.”
Noah’s uncertainty was nearly deafening. “What?”
“It’s spherical.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A sphere has no ends,” Larkin explained. “When someone says they’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth, that means they have every intention of being at your side forever.”
“Everett—”
“Ira hasn’t been skulking outside your apartment.”
“I know what I saw.”
“A blue Honda Civic.”
“Yes!”
“Honda Civics are among the ten most common cars driven in New York City.”
“Don’t start with your goddamn statistics.”
“What reason could Ira have for watching you.”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d say, you tell me , but you fucked first and asked questions never, didn’t you?”
“Stop it.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve seen his car,” Noah protested, almost shouting now. “Everett, it’s scaring me. What if he does something? What if he hurts you?”
—a patient in the care of a father trained in the doctoring of childhood scrapes and bruises, seven stitches bandaged with such tenderness, such gentleness, his touch like butterfly wings—
Larkin rubbed his forehead, the gash he’d gotten from when Earl Wagner had shot at him outside Precinct 9 now a healed, slightly pink scar that’d fade with time. “Did you see him.”
“Not—no. I mean, he was in the car the entire time.”
“Did you get a plate number.”
“No.”
“Ira is not a vindictive, insecure, or jealous man.”
“You can’t just—”
“I’ve seen this car too,” Larkin said over Noah.
“Wh-what?”
“Last night, a little after one in the morning.”
“Where?”
“Outside my precinct.”
“And where was Ira ?” Noah asked pointedly.
“At home.”
“Maybe he wasn’t.”
“He was,” Larkin confirmed with unwavering finality.
“Then you tell me—what the fuck’s going on?”
“I need to know the dates and times and where you’ve seen this car.”
“I’d have to think.”
“I need you to be exact.”
Noah blew out a breath, and its shakiness could be heard even as it distorted over the line. “Can I call you back?”
“About this, yes. Are you posting on social media at all.”
“Just on Facebook.”
“Stop immediately.”
“Everett?” Noah sounded scared now.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Larkin concluded. He ended the call with a terse goodbye before swearing under his breath. Larkin pocketed the phone, rubbed his tired eyes, then headed for the elevators.
Doyle’s office was on the fifth floor, on the most western end of the building, and to get there, Larkin had to proceed through an obstacle course of sensory overload: a breakroom that smelled like half a dozen different lunches all recently reheated in the microwave—the clear winner was someone’s leftover salmon and broccoli—two maintenance men, one on an open ladder and the other holding the side rail for safety, who were replacing an overhead tube light that flickered like an impromptu rave, and then a dozen private offices, some doors closed, conversations muffled, others wide open, offering a peek into the lives of the elite squads that called 1PP home.
Larkin came to a stop outside the partially closed door with the nameplate: Ira Doyle, Forensic Artists Unit.
He patted his suit coat, reached inside, and retrieved the travel-sized tube of Tylenol that had recently become a permanent fixture in his life—his very own Clancy’s Candy Counter lemon drops.
Larkin popped two pills, hoping to dissuade his headache from becoming a full-blown stress migraine, then pushed open the office door.
Doyle had this kind of touch, a presence, a magic when it came to making a space feel lived-in, Larkin decided.
He couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly, because the room was a standard office with its drafting desk to the left, flanked by shelves cluttered with tools and supplies, the bulletin board with its drawings from child victims, and the large worktable to the right, but every time Larkin stepped in here, he could feel the tension ease in his neck, his shoulders.
It felt… safe.
Doyle’s back was to the door as he stood at the worktable, snapping on a pair of latex gloves while staring at the contents of the evidence package open before him.
Larkin strode across the room, the tap , tap , tap of his derbies causing Doyle to turn.
But before Doyle could speak, could ask how the call went, Larkin grabbed his tie, gave it a yank, and Doyle willingly moved forward with the action.
With the distance closed, Larkin wrapped his arms around Doyle’s neck, hugging him hard.
Doyle returned the embrace tenfold.
“I love you,” Larkin murmured, pulling back after a moment. “I didn’t tell you that today.”
Almost immediately, Doyle looked like he was about to cry.