CHAPTER TEN #2
“How’s that for intellectual stimulation,” Larkin said dryly. “Joe admitted to having been at Pier 34 last night. He admitted interacting, to some degree, with Noah.”
“But the shooter was in a Honda Civic.”
Larkin nodded stiffly. He’d been so happy, so relieved ….
Doyle looked toward the street where the Honda’s occupant had killed a man in cold blood, and wondered aloud, “Why would Adam Worth have a journalist from a gay entertainment press murdered?”
…since one intrusive little journalist wasn’t a threat—he was just an unrelated annoyance.
Doyle set his hands on his hips. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Larkin prided himself on being attracted to, and involved with, smart men, but he’d have given his left nut for Doyle to have been dead wrong about this.
Because Larkin had no idea where to go from here.
Doyle made a sound of being intrigued under his breath. He said, “I’ll be right back,” then headed toward Millett and the medicolegal, still hovering over the body.
Larkin pulled out his phone. He dialed a number, put it to his ear, and said when his call was answered, “Have you spoken to an individual by the name of Joe Sinclair.”
“Who?” Noah asked.
“He wrote for Out in NYC .”
“Is he the guy with the beard and biceps?”
“What did you say to him.”
“Nothing.”
“ Noah .”
“Basically nothing,” Noah course-corrected. “He called me, out of the blue, a few weeks ago. He introduced himself, said he was a reporter writing a piece on some cases you’d worked, and….”
“And what.”
Defensively, Noah said, “No one’s ever wanted to know about me. Four years we were married, and all I ever got asked were questions about you. From your coworkers, from my coworkers, our friends, family, even your psychiatrist.”
“And you let a reporter butter you up.”
“They weren’t serious questions,” Noah argued. “He asked where I grew up, what I did for a living, if I enjoyed it—and when’s the last time someone gave a shit about a public school teacher? He asked if we were married and I said yes.”
“Despite the contrary.”
“We are still married, Everett.”
“Goddamn it, this is not the time,” Larkin said sternly. “What else did you tell him.”
“That’s all, I swear. After that, he started getting more interested in you, and I told him I wasn’t going to answer on behalf of a cop.”
“But you know what he looks like.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be too difficult for a reporter with basic research skills and an internet connection to have found our address, right? He came around and tried again, but I told him he needed to back off. That was the last time I heard from him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me.”
“Because I handled it.”
Larkin took in the active crime scene surrounding him—the investigators, the dead man, the bloody sheet. So much for handling it, he thought. “Did you see the Honda Civic before or after Joe Sinclair came to the apartment.”
Noah’s quiet had a thinking quality to it, and he said, “After. Maybe, like, only a day or two later.” He hastened to ask, “What’s going on?”
“It’s an ongoing case,” Larkin said by way of explanation.
“Thank you, Noah.” He ended the call as Doyle returned, now wearing a pair of latex gloves and studying the screen of Joe’s camera.
It seemed to be working, despite visible nicks and scratches on its body.
Larkin said, “Joe tapped Noah for information. First on the phone, then again in person.”
Doyle briefly looked up, and while Larkin hadn’t ever met Doyle’s grandmother, hadn’t even seen a photograph of her, in fact, he could so easily imagine that same expression of skepticism time and again on the matriarch’s face during Doyle’s tumultuous boyhood years.
Evenly, Doyle asked, “What’d Noah tell him? ”
“He claims to have said nothing about me.”
Doyle looked back down at the camera menu.
“He said the Honda showed up between twenty-four and forty-eight hours after Joe dropped by the apartment.”
Still tapping buttons, Doyle murmured, “Given that it sounds a bit like the driver followed Joe , my first step would have been to ask Joe of any Honda Civic owners he might know.”
Larkin grunted. “And if my job were so simple I’d have put in for early retirement already.” He raised his phone a second time, pulling up Lieutenant Connor from his list of contacts.
“Look at this.”
Larkin paused, thumb hovering over the Call button.
He sidestepped closer and took a look at the digital screen as Doyle began to swipe through previously taken photographs, a timeline of their day, only played out in reverse: pictures of Phyllis Clark’s bedroom, living room, like the photographer didn’t know what the subject matter was.
The next was of Larkin and Doyle standing at the end of the driveway before they’d approached the front door, taken from behind and farther down the street.
Another of Larkin entering Precinct 19 the night before, and at least a dozen more—these taken with a zoom lens—of him standing in a cone of orange light on the pier.
“How could I have not noticed.”
Doyle lowered the camera but didn’t say anything.
“ Fuck .” Larkin aggressively tapped Connor’s number and put the phone to his ear.
His lieutenant had already been made aware of the immediate situation in Brooklyn, but after a succinct recap of Noah’s claims involving the blue Honda, how it was noticed shortly after Joe attempted to obtain personal information on Larkin, and how both car and journalist had played a role in Larkin’s life over the last twenty hours, Connor was well and truly pissed.
“What was I saying to you this morning about hack journalists?”
“I don’t— we don’t believe Joe’s presence is unrelated,” Larkin interjected.
“There is a very real connection between his attempt to write some kind of tell-all and the fact that he was just silenced, execution-style, right in front of me. I don’t know how he plays into our case, into a relationship with the sender, but he does . ”
Doyle was coming back from returning the camera to Millett so that it could be logged as evidence. He stopped beside Larkin and waited.
“Sounds a little conspiratorial to me,” Connor was saying.
“If it wasn’t all connected, I’d have an evidence marker next to my head too,” Larkin countered, internally wincing when he caught the flash of distress roll across Doyle’s face like a lightning strike.
Hastily, Larkin continued, “But the sender doesn’t want me dead.
He wants a battle of intellect, and he doesn’t want anyone in the way of his game. Right now, sir, he’s winning.”
Connor grunted. “Did you at least see the shooter?”
“He had to roll the window down,” Larkin confirmed. “I saw his face in a three-quarter profile.”
Doyle suddenly cut in with, “You did?”
Larkin looked at Doyle, nodded, but said to Connor, “I can look through some mugshots when I get back to the precinct. But first, I need to return to 239 Carroll Street. There’s a DB in the basement who’s not the owner, and the refrigerator Wagner’s body was found in originated from this home.”
“All right. I’ll work on damage control from here. Grim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re okay… right ?” And the emphasis suggested Connor meant far more than being physically sound.
“I’m okay,” Larkin confirmed. He ended the call and tucked the phone in his back pocket.
Doyle prompted, “You saw the shooter?”
“I saw his weapon first,” Larkin answered as he started across the street in the direction of Phyllis’s home. “An old-school revolver. But then I saw his face, yes.”
Doyle caught up to Larkin with a few long-legged strides. “Would you remember his features?”
Larkin gave him a touch of exasperated side-eye.
“What I mean is, I think you should sit for a composite sketch.”
—the antiseptic perfume of a hospital, languishing in bed, police asking, “What did he look like? What did he sound like?” but Larkin couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak, could do nothing but sob, and hope had died on the endnotes of a bad dream —
They had just walked past the wrought-iron fence of the funeral home when Larkin answered uncompromisingly, “I’m not a victim.”