CHAPTER SEVEN #2
It’d been like this since June 12. Nearly every time, because growing up, Doyle had been so fucking starved for affection that his emotional response to receiving unconditional love in adulthood was all off.
He literally couldn’t maintain an appropriate intensity—the scale tipping past joy, past wonder, somewhere beyond ecstasy—and that overwhelm usually resulted in tears.
Larkin stepped back and gave Doyle a minute.
Doyle hastily wiped his face in the crook of his arm. He cleared his throat and said, “I love you too.”
Larkin’s mouth twitched, but he said grimly, “I think we have a problem. Noah’s not wrong about the Honda Civic.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw it too.”
Doyle’s brows drew together.
“Last night,” Larkin clarified. “It was double-parked outside the precinct. Honestly, I only gave it a second thought because it looked like your car, and we’d just been speaking. But when I started walking toward it, the driver sped away.”
“Someone followed you from Pier 34?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“But who’d have known you were even there?”
“Unfortunately, a good number of people. O’Halloran said Port Authority called it in, and because of the message on the fridge, were already inquiring if someone by my name worked for the department. The press was also there, although I didn’t note from which outlets.”
“How does that align with… with what Noah told you?”
“He said he’s seen this particular vehicle several times, the most recent being around one o’clock this morning.”
Doyle was already shaking his head, saying insistently, “I locked the door like you asked and got back in bed. I didn’t—”
“Ira, you don’t have to convince me. Noah’s going to call back with the times and locations he remembers seeing the car. Perhaps it’ll be enough to piece together a timeline that’ll allow for identification. You haven’t noticed any similar activity lately, have you.”
“No.”
Larkin frowned but said, “I’d like to keep it that way. I can’t afford whatever this distraction is—not right now.”
Doyle reluctantly returned his attention to the evidence.
He fiddled with the packaging for a long minute before retrieving the brooch from inside.
He held it in his gloved hand and then went to the drafting desk, took a seat in the tall chair, turned on the magnifying lamp, and swung its head down.
“Black enamel on a gold backing,” he called.
“Looks like there’s been some oxidation. ”
“Is that relevant,” Larkin asked, following and standing in front of the desk, looking at the brooch upside down.
“Only from a historical standpoint. There was this law in England that introduced fifteen, thirteen, and nine karats—the 1854 Hallmarking Act—which made gold more accessible to the emerging middle class.”
“But alloy additives cause gold to tarnish,” Larkin concluded.
“Tells you a little about who once owned this, don’t you think?”
“Very interesting. So this wasn’t American-made.”
“It’s got the trappings of English design, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been sold to an American client.
Looks like there’re a few seed pearls missing…
. Those prongs can loosen over time, especially if they’ve passed their centennial celebration.
” Doyle turned the brooch around. Without taking his eyes off the magnified backside, he flipped open the sketch pad on the desk, grabbed a pencil, then began writing what he could decipher of the inscription.
Larkin slowly moved around the desk to stand behind the chair. He watched over Doyle’s shoulder, entranced by the juxtaposition of such masculine hands producing delicate penmanship.
“It’s not an exact match,” Doyle began. “But this script is pretty similar to English round hand. Spencerian was the dominant style in America during the latter half of the nineteenth century.” He motioned to the spaces between letters on the paper—an incomplete name.
Cha ot aur Fu
“It’s ironic…,” Doyle said thoughtfully. “This person was loved so much that their name’s been lost because of grief.”
“The middle name is Laura.”
Doyle turned in his seat, one eyebrow cocked.
Larkin said, “A-U-R is a very specific combination of letters in a name. And since this brooch is mid-nineteenth century in origin—” He paused for clarification.
“Based not only on the oxidation, but that mourning jewelry really took off after the Civil War, yeah.”
“Laura was one of the top fifty most common female names throughout the latter decades of the nineteenth century,” Larkin explained.
“In comparison, the name Maura never even hit the top two hundred since the Social Security Administration began logging names in 1879. And since the A is lowercase, we can presume it’s not Aurora—which is one, too many letters for the space available, but two, has only in the last decade seen a considerable uptick in popularity. ”
“This is what I love about you.”
“My willingness to trawl the archives of government websites?” Larkin asked with a noted inflection.
Doyle smiled to himself while he filled in the missing letters. “Your dedication.”
“Don’t be mistaken. It’s thinly veiled, unmitigated obsession.
” Larkin went back to the worktable where Doyle had deposited his suit coat on one of the stools.
Over his shoulder, he said, “I can’t outright claim there’s a pattern when we’ve not yet had three examples in which to build upon, but given our established history with Adam Worth cases, I’m reluctantly willing to admit the brooch and earring are from the same set.
” Larkin retrieved the plastic evidence bag from the pocket of Doyle’s suit.
He returned to the drafting desk with the earring.
“The rest of the inscription is a death date,” Doyle stated, tapping his pencil against the pad.
B Se 2 880 AE 13
Larkin stared at the jumble of letters and numbers Doyle had copied from the brooch. He said, “Even taking into account that portions of this inscription are missing, I don’t see a date with the available information.”
“Death dates on jewelry were written in a form of shorthand,” Doyle replied. “There’d have been an O here—OB. That’s short for obit, which is derived from the Latin obitus, or death. ‘S e’ was likely ‘Sepr,’ which was how they abbreviated September.”
“Date of death, September 2, 1880,” Larkin suggested.
“That’d be my guess,” Doyle answered. “As for AE—”
“Aetat,” Larkin interrupted. “Or aetatis, at age of. Yes, the shorthand makes perfect sense now, thank you.”
“Next, recite all of the declensions of ‘man.’”
“You just want me to say homo .”
Doyle grinned.
“You’re thirty-nine years old, Ira.”
“It’s still funny.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Doyle accepted the bag, opened it, and held the two pieces side-by-side under the magnifying lens.
He turned them this way and that, studying details that’d have been lost on Larkin.
“Same maker’s mark,” Doyle said suddenly.
“I’m pretty confident these pieces belonged to the mother of this thirteen-year-old girl.
But I guess this doesn’t really tell us much without restoring her name. ”
Larkin stepped away from the desk again and crossed back and forth in front of it as he began to pace the width of the room. “Of the mementos found so far—death mask, post-mortem photography, mourning veil—one was not like the others.”
Doyle said, “The mask was of Andrew Gorman’s own likeness and the veil had personally belonged to Esther Haycox. But the photograph found on Niederman was more like… proof of his crimes.”
“They were trophies. And Worth had plenty in which to blackmail Niederman simply due to their content,” Larkin ruminated.
“Earlier you weren’t so sure this jewelry was a trophy.”
“No.”
“But now you are?”
“The earring in Wagner’s home is proof she had a set of mourning jewelry—C.L.F.
’s, to be specific—in her possession until only a few weeks ago, the same time she tried to make a run for it.
Now, one of these pieces has been presented on her body so blatantly, so boldly, as to be comparable to how the postmortem photograph was found on Niederman.
It’s a clue I can’t ignore, even if it’s not in alignment with her established pattern of taking a cut from the victim’s clothing.
” Larkin stopped, looked at Doyle, and concluded, “It pains me to admit, but I am wrong on occasion.”
“A wise man once told me that some serial killers experiment with their signature and ritual as they gain experience.”
“I told you that.”
Doyle leaned back in his chair with a teasing smile on his face.
He threaded his fingers together to rest on the back of his head and absently swiveled left and right.
“No matter how much planning goes into it—murder is messy. Even the most methodical killers sometimes have to adapt under pressure.”
“I know.”
“So maybe this mourning set was a trophy to Wagner. Maybe she took it as a one-off to see how she felt about it.”
“She had just set you up to be murdered after offing her own husband, but spent precious seconds collecting the mourning jewelry from its hiding place before going on the lam. It meant too much to her to have been a mere experiment.”
“She might’ve started with jewelry as her trophy-of-choice,” Doyle suggested. “It could have held sentimental meaning.”
Larkin considered this. “But not all women wear jewelry, so it wouldn’t have been a dependable choice in the long term.”
“Certainly not with sex workers,” Doyle agreed. “Back then, the smart ones avoided wearing anything that could be torn out or used to choke them.”
“One of Wagner’s very early kills,” Larkin concluded. “I suspect she murdered at least three patients at the New York Infirmary—when she was still learning how to kill with digoxin.”
“Find the right victim and we’ll find the owner of this jewelry, which’ll potentially lead us to the cold case connection.” Doyle puffed his cheeks as he let out a loud breath. “Piece of cake.”