CHAPTER ELEVEN #4
“Often, the object of desire is someone of higher social status, someone who would have no idea who the individual even is, but that ‘status’ can also mean different things to different people. Sometimes there’s no communication between the two parties.”
“And other times?” Doyle warily asked.
“Other times it has led to the individual who is suffering from the delusion to break the law in order to establish contact with their object of desire.”
“Like stalking?”
“Yes,” Larkin said on the release of a breath. “Like stalking.”
Doyle looked around, seemingly taking in the parked cruisers, the CSU van, the yellow crime scene tape, the comings and goings of uniformed personnel, everything a copy and paste of the corner of Carroll and Clinton.
“Help me understand this. Did Phyllis just wake up one day and decide she was in love with the homeowner? Did she wait until Stephanie left and then break in to play house before going on the lam?”
“Erotomania can have a sudden onset, yes,” Larkin agreed, “but I suspect Ms. Sato was not Phyllis’s first delusion.”
“It started with Esther?”
Larkin nodded. “Erotomania can lead to pathological jealousy, even violence, if the individual feels their advances are being rejected. This is only a working theory, of course, but Phyllis’s behavior during our interview last month was…
off. Her irrational disgust toward sex workers, when she met Esther as a patron of the burlesque scene, can certainly be viewed as jealousy. ”
Doyle said, “Phyllis claimed Esther left Frills because the industry was dying, and while that’s historically true, what if Esther had further incentive to leave?”
“Like an obsessed patron,” Larkin answered.
“That was Phyllis’s own description of herself.
Esther might have snubbed Phyllis’s interests, which could’ve made the delusion worse.
Toward the end of their supposed relationship, Phyllis described Esther as coming home less often, staying with friends, carrying a gym bag to work with multiple changes of clothes… .”
“When you say it like that, it sounds like a woman who was afraid to go home.”
“Like she was being stalked,” Larkin concluded.
“I guess the question is, how does Phyllis fit into all of these different events and timelines,” Doyle said.
“If she does have a history of stalking women, did her behavior escalate into something more dangerous? Was she involved with Wagner’s murder?
Could her presence have been total happenstance? And either way, where is she now?”
“She is most definitely a person of interest,” Larkin said. “And one I’d like to speak with again, at considerable length.” Hands on his hips, he turned to survey the row of multifamily homes.
Doyle was saying, “Three murders, two stalkers, one crime scene—”
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Larkin added sardonically before moving toward the set of cement stairs that led to the second-story neighbor.
A white woman sat on the landing outside her front door. She was middle-aged, dirty-blond hair piled into a bun atop her head, and she wore a pair of pajama shorts and matching tank top in baby blue, fluffy panda slippers, Dolce & Gabbana rose-tinted sunglasses, and was talking on her cell phone.
“Ma’am,” Larkin started as he removed his badge and flashed the identification. “I’m Detective Everett Larkin—”
“Steph, hang on, some cop’s finally decided to grace me with his presence.” She lowered the phone and said, “It’s about fuckin’ time. I was told to wait here at least an hour ago. My shoulders are sunburned and I’d like to go inside and start dinner for my kid.”
Larkin frowned. He wasn’t about to waste what was left of his stamina being the unstoppable force to this woman’s immovable object. He looked toward Doyle coming up the steps beside him.
Doyle was, as always, quick on the uptake. He said sympathetically, “We’re very sorry to have kept you this long, ma’am.”
“Becca. Friedman,” she corrected.
“Ms. Friedman—”
“Look, I don’t know anything. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. Steph hasn’t even been home and—”
“Are you speaking with the homeowner now,” Larkin interrupted, pointing at the phone.
Becca looked at her cell too. “Yeah.”
“Stephanie Sato,” he reiterated.
“ Yes ,” she said, irritated.
“May I speak with her.”
Becca returned the phone to her ear. “Steph? I’m gonna give the phone to this cop, he wants to talk to you. I’ve no idea. Okay, hang on.” She held it out.
Larkin accepted the phone, tapped Speaker so that Doyle could hear the conversation, and said, “This is Detective Everett Larkin with the NYPD. Am I speaking with the owner of 239 Carroll Street.”
“I’m Stephanie Sato, yes. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m investigating a homicide, Ms. Sato.”
“At my house?”
“Yes.”
“But who—” Stephanie sucked in a harsh breath. “Did something happen to Kathy? Where’s my cat?”
That kneejerk reaction to ask after the well-being of her cat sitter , not her supposed wife, was all the clarification Larkin needed to confirm his updated hypothesis was correct.
Larkin asked, “Who’s Kathy.”
“Kathleen Gardner, my cat sitter.”
“I’m sorry to inform you that Ms. Gardner was found deceased in your basement this afternoon.” Larkin thought to add, “We’re unsure of where your cat is at the moment.”
Stephanie gasped.
Becca choked.
“ Oh my God !”
Between Stephanie’s distorted speakerphone hyperventilating and Becca coughing up a lung, Larkin was barely able to get an additional word in edgewise. He raised his voice over the commotion. “Where are you, Ms. Sato.”
“I-I’m upstate—at an artist-in-residence. I’ve been here almost four weeks. I’m not supposed to be home for another two.”
“And the name of this location.”
“The Adele Claremont Art Residency. It’s outside Saratoga Springs.”
“I’d like to speak with you in person,” Larkin said. “When are you able to return to the city.”
“She can’t just leave ,” Becca protested.
“I can’t just leave ,” Stephanie echoed at the same time. Her breathing steadied almost at once, and she said, “Do you know how coveted these positions are? If I leave, I forfeit my studio space.”
“A dead woman was discovered in your home, Ms. Sato,” Larkin reiterated.
Stephanie clapped back aggressively. “This is such typical chauvinistic male behavior. There’s nothing a man hates more than a woman succeeding. My womanhood frightens you, doesn’t it, Mr. Larkin?”
“I fail to understand what your gender has to do with my wanting to interview you.”
“What my gender has to do with a murder , you mean? Over ten thousand women in this country are murdered every year, and you have the audacity —”
“That statistic is grossly incorrect,” Larkin said over her.
“A 2017 study put together by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that of the approximately 400,000 homicides committed globally, eighty percent of those victims were male. However, the 87,000 murdered women bore the greatest burden of intimate partner- or family-related homicide—fifty-eight percent of all deaths—leading to the continued and accurate usage of the term femicide. But the United States only saw roughly 3,600 of those 87,000 murders, not ten thousand. And it’s Detective Larkin, ma’am. ”
Becca started coughing again.
Doyle gently pried the phone from Larkin’s hand and said, “Ms. Sato? My name is Ira Doyle. I’m a detective with the NYPD’s Forensic Artists Unit.
I understand the prestige that comes with a residency at Adele Claremont, as well as your hesitancy to abandon such an opportunity sooner than anticipated. ”
Silence crackled loudly over the speakerphone before Stephanie asked woodenly, “You understand, huh? So have you resided at Claremont, Mr. Doyle?”
“Uh, no. They declined my portfolio.”
“I guess we can’t all be the three percent.”
The problem with loving Ira Doyle, Larkin thought, was the unfettered access he had to his heart.
It was in realizing how desperate, even as a grown man, Doyle was to be loved, to be accepted, to be validated.
It was the gut punch in knowing Doyle’s decades-old wounds had never scabbed over with cynicism, that his need for happiness kept those scrapes and cuts freshly bleeding, that he poured so much empathy into a career that treated him like the butt of a joke— he draws pictures .
And in a world of performative cruelty, kindness stood little chance.
Yet, Doyle was so determined to never make another person suffer like he had—still did—that he would only ever swallow his anger and be gentle.
So gentle that then the world simply took advantage of him.
As expected, Doyle said, “Ms. Sato, if you can answer a few questions over the phone, my partner and I will be happy to wait until your residency concludes for an in-person conversation.”
Larkin began to protest, but Doyle held a hand up.
“What’re your questions?”
“When did you leave the city?”
“June 9—no, 10.”
“Wednesday,” Larkin murmured.
Doyle nodded in acknowledgment and asked next, “Was Kathy scheduled to visit the home every day?”
“Every morning starting the next day.”
“And you weren’t concerned when she didn’t check in?”
“I don’t have cell service,” Stephanie explained. “We have a landline in the main cabin for emergencies—that’s where I am now. Kathy knew to call that number if she needed to get in touch and someone would fetch me.”
“No news is good news?”
“Exactly.”
Doyle said next, “I’d like to give you a few names. Will you tell me if you recognize any of them?”
“Okay.”
“Matilde Wagner.”
“Hmm… no, I don’t think so.”
“Esther Haycox?”
“No.”
“How about Barbara Fuller?”
“Nope.”
“Phyllis Clark?”
“Sorry,” Stephanie answered. “I’ve no idea who any of those women are.”