CHAPTER FOURTEEN #4
Larkin came to a stop outside of a closed door at the end of the hall.
“Based on what Joe said yesterday, that all of the media outlets want to interview me—which is correct—but only he could tell my story without pandering—which I found extremely doubtful—I would have believed his fixation was on me. But this only proves my original read of Joe was correct: So long as the subject of his narrative fucks other men, the individual themself is interchangeable, which, to be quite frank, I find more than a little offensive, considering the call is coming from inside the room.”
Doyle winced and said, “If it was only about landing an interview with a gay cop, you’d be the last one I’d harass a second time.”
Larkin raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Respectfully.”
Larkin retrieved the keys from his pocket. “So it is about me.”
“I think, whatever Joe was actually trying to accomplish, it did become about you, yeah. It was about more than an interview. He wouldn’t have been shot, otherwise.”
—dead eyes reflecting back his final living seconds like a still image caught on film, that of a man with a puckered scar—
Larkin shuddered. He quickly unlocked the door before them, pushed it open, and took Doyle’s hand, leading him inside.
He flipped a switch on the wall, and an overhead light flickered once, twice, and with an audible hum, illuminated a windowless space roughly the size of the breakroom.
Cream-colored metal filing cabinets from the ’90s lined the wall directly ahead and to the right.
A worktable with a faux-wood laminate top was pushed to the left, and beside it was metal shelving that reached to the ceiling.
It’d been packed tighter than tinned sardines with bankers boxes.
Plastic totes were stacked two and three high along the floor and shoved as far out of the way as possible, suggesting no one had anticipated humanity being such a disappointment that detectives would run out of space in which to shelve unsolved murders.
The room had a musty, old paper smell, and Doyle promptly sneezed.
“Welcome to the Morgue,” Larkin replied. He turned to face Doyle. “These are our unassigned cold cases.”
“There’re hundreds.”
“Thousands,” Larkin corrected. “9,024 is our current total of unsolved cases. If we estimate each detective has about two dozen assigned and open investigations, there are nearly 8,800 cases left in this room. Of course, these numbers don’t take into account any cold cases Homicide detectives might still be sitting on. ”
Doyle swore quietly.
“You can ignore the filing cabinets,” Larkin explained.
“That’s everything from the turn of the century to the 1960s.
Ignore the tubs as well. Those are all from the ’90s and later.
” Larkin put a hand on one of the boxes shoved onto the metal shelving.
“These are the ’70s and ’80s. John and Jane Does will be marked with a red tag. ”
“I’m having Property Clerk flashbacks.”
“I assure you, there will be no maggots in these boxes.”
Doyle smiled at that, but as he walked over to the shelving, he said, “I have to ask… because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Did you ever doubt me?”
“What are you talking about.”
Doyle stared at the faded case numbers on the side of the nearest eye-level box.
“The stalker-turned-shooter,” he clarified.
“Driving the same make, model, color even, as my car? It’s Worth trying to get in your head again, I know it.
” Doyle tapped the box absently before sparing Larkin a sideways glance.
“You made a really stupid decision last month that almost cost you your life. He knows he can’t brute-force us apart, so if he doesn’t want me helping you, wants to keep the game between the two of you, best to lean back into the emotional manipulation tactics.
And if you thought, for even a moment, that there was a chance I could’ve been harassing Noah—”
“Ira,” Larkin interrupted, and his voice sounded harsh, even to his own ears. “I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks. It’s not because of the Prozac. It’s because I’m waiting for that sonofabitch to walk through our front door so I can put a bullet in his brain. I would kill for you.”
Doyle didn’t move, like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Adam Worth will never make me doubt the love of my life.”
It was seven very, very long seconds before Doyle finally exhaled, and the tension in his posture, the stiffness in his shoulders, the flexed muscles in his forearms—they all relaxed like a noose around his neck had been loosened. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Larkin shook his head in a manner that seemed to say, You didn’t , and joined Doyle at the wall of boxes.
“We’re gonna talk about the no-sleeping thing. You know that, right?”
“One crisis at a time.”
The smart move would have been for the Cold Case Squad to store boxes, and the files therein, chronologically from the get-go.
They hadn’t been, of course.
Larkin and Doyle split the search—Larkin crouched to pull red-tagged cases on the bottom shelves, while Doyle stood and reached the ones from overhead.
Despite the work hardly being more than a monotonous chore, Larkin had to exert considerable effort in maintaining both mental and emotional distance from the reality of the task at hand.
Each file was someone born, someone named, someone who had dreamed and hoped and loved, and despite his recent revelation about the spectrum of existence, these were still people who had been robbed of having a good death, and the injustice of it could and would send Larkin into a spiral if he let it.
Porter appeared in the threshold of the Morgue at 12:07 p.m., nursing a fresh cup of coffee and holding the final bite of a chocolate-frosted donut. “Whaddya fishin’ for?”
Larkin reached and set another red-tagged folder on the table before pivoting on one foot to address Porter in his crouch. “A Jane Doe from 1982.”
“Good luck.”
“Did you not want the cake batter donut,” Larkin asked, furrowing his brow a little.
Porter looked at the frosting melting between his thumb and index finger before shrugging. “Moto got it for you.”
Larkin opened his mouth to say… well, he didn’t quite know, but a phone call cut short his consideration. He looked over his shoulder as Doyle retrieved the cell from his pocket and answered, “Hey, Craig.”
“Who’s Craig?” Porter asked before eating the last piece of donut.
“Doyle’s supervisor,” Larkin answered distractedly.
“Right now?” Doyle asked into the phone.
Larkin frowned. “Bailey already approved my request for your assistance on this case. Is he negating—”
Doyle held a hand up to stop Larkin’s protestations.
“Uh-oh,” Porter said. “Trouble in paradise.”
“Thank you, Porter,” Larkin said, clipped.
“Maybe you and Craig should arm wrestle over Doyle,” Porter suggested amusedly.
Larkin pivoted on his heel a second time. “I’m deceptively strong.”
“Uh-huh.”
Larkin arched a brow at the tone of disbelief. “But that is irrelevant, as the man has about as much muscle mass as a ham sandwich.”
Porter tried to suppress a sudden laugh, but the snort jostled his coffee cup and he spilled the contents. “ Shit ….” He quickly switched the mug to his other hand, shaking the wet one while leaving the doorway of the Morgue and calling, “I got coffee on my damn shoes, Grim!”
A smile tugged the corner of Larkin’s mouth as he got to his feet.
“All right,” Doyle concluded. “I’ll be there shortly.”
Larkin said, as Doyle lowered the phone, “This is not what was promised to me.”
“I know. But it sounds like SVU’s just tapped Forensic Artists for a minor emergency—”
“And both Loving and Bailey are either unavailable or underqualified for the particulars of said emergency,” Larkin concluded.
He rested his hands on his hips before adding, “I can’t even be irritated without sounding like a jerk, because survivors always come before cold cases, and SVU has requested the most competent artist for the job. ”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Not without empirical evidence.”
Doyle’s gaze flicked over Larkin’s shoulder toward the open door before he offered a placating smile. “Hopefully it won’t take too much time.”
“It’ll take as long as it takes,” Larkin corrected. “Don’t rush good work for my sake.”
“I’ll call you.”
Larkin nodded. He pulled Doyle down by his tie and kissed his mouth. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Larkin watched Doyle disappear around the corner.
His smoky voice bid farewell to the few other detectives working that Saturday, and then he was gone.
Alone, Larkin blew out a breath, looked around, then dragged a molded plastic chair out from under a stack of boxes.
He pushed it up against the metal shelving, stood on the seat, and resumed searching where Doyle had left off.
Some of the boxes were easy examinations, holding no more than two or three bulging folders several inches thick, while others were packed tight with dozens of files containing nothing more than the bare bones of an investigation that’d gone nowhere.
Larkin made sure to go through the latter with particular care, as he was all but certain the original Jane Doe homicide would hardly contain enough to fill a greeting card, otherwise Barbara would have, at the very least, been linked to the missing person report filed under Esther’s name only a few days later in October of 1982.
It was a dusty and monotonous process, and the quiet was interrupted by the beep , beep , beep of the copier across the hall as someone struggled in vain to make a two-sided copy, desk phones in the bullpen ringing until voicemail picked up, and eventually, Ulmer’s snide “You ready to include me on this case for real, or what?”
Hand poised to pluck a red-tagged folder, Larkin turned to see Ulmer leaning in the open doorway. Mildly, he said, “Hello, Ulmer. No, I’m not.”
“I don’t get you.”
“That’s fine.”
“Three times you’ve asked me to dig up missing persons reports, and three times I’ve delivered. You don’t have to like me—I can’t fucking stand you—but it’s time to put me on this case in an official capacity.”
Larkin ignored the demand. He removed the file in question before fitting the lid on the box and shoving it back against the wall.
“I wrote that complaint, you know,” Ulmer continued. “I guess it’s up to you whether I file it or not.”
Larkin tapped his fingers against the box—one, two, three times—before he got off the chair. He moved toward the doorway, taking a stand before Ulmer. “Do you know the term, ressentiment.”
Ulmer’s brows narrowed. He didn’t answer either way, and instead crossed his arms defensively.
“Ressentiment, as Nietzsche used it, is a philosophical concept in which one assigns their own inferiority, their own grudge, their own hostility, onto an external scapegoat. The ego seeks to create an enemy—a cause that can be blamed—for one’s station as a plebian.
Slave morality is reactive of the master morality.
It’s an inversion of values—bad is now good, good is now evil.
“We all have slave morality within us. Nietzsche’s exploration of the genealogy of morals within Western society demonstrates this.
But our labor of today should not be in returning to the high-minded aristocratic morality of the past, but in reaching beyond the binary, beyond good and evil, to transcend into tomorrow.
My achievements, for the sake of this argument, may be viewed as values of strength—a value which is arguably good .
But because you are unwilling to seek self-actualization, to accept reality as it actually exists, you twist my strength into something prideful, sinful, evil .
“And you, Ulmer, with that cunning projection of false humility, are utilizing your resentment by filing a complaint and claiming I keep you from elevating your station when this can be easily accomplished by putting in the necessary time and work. You poison us all with base and slavish thinking. You can’t stand me because I represent everything you want but cannot have—not because I’m holding you back, but because it’s more comfortable to be perceived as a victim. ”
Ulmer’s complexion darkened. His nostrils flared like a bull seeing red.
Larkin waited, but when Ulmer continued to say nothing, he concluded, “You go ahead and file that report.”
“You’re an arrogant, conceited, entitled, pompous little prick—”
“Man despairs for reason, Ulmer. And whether you will against the most central conditions of life, or choose to instead embrace that which makes us most human—pain and happiness and beauty and death—that is entirely up to you. But before the slave morality’s life-denying rationale slides you further down that dangerous ascetic precipice, of which only nihilism awaits, I suggest visiting the breakroom. There’re donuts.”
Through gritted teeth, Ulmer said, “You’re too fucking much.”
Larkin closed the distance between them. “Then go find less.”
Ulmer smacked the folder in Larkin’s hand, causing the contents to spill across the floor. “Clean up your shit.” He turned and stormed down the hall.
“Asshole,” Larkin muttered with a small shake of his head. He crouched, collected the documents with their faded and cracked typeset, and brought them to the worktable. He’d only reordered a few pages before his eyes caught: October 2, 1982 .
Larkin looked at the stack of folders he and Doyle had pulled, had intended to spend the better part of the day reading through, then reactively turned toward the vacant doorway.
His heart fluttered uncomfortably, like it’d missed a beat, and his fingertips tingled as his body reacted to the oncoming spike of adrenaline.
Larkin was not a religious man.
He wasn’t even particularly spiritual.
But he did believe the dead were never truly gone.
He believed that what lay beyond the veil was not the business of the living to understand—it was merely the next step in the spectrum of existence for those whose physical bodies had returned to stardust—and he believed that until then, his purpose was to live .
To love and love again.
But still, Larkin could envision her standing there, with that shag-cut brown hair, the prominent nose, those big doe eyes. She wasn’t looking for retribution or justice. Such concerns mattered to the living. She was only looking to free herself of the guilt and anger that accompanied a bad death.
She was looking to be remembered.
To be shown the way.
Larkin’s throat was tight as he said to the empty room, “Don’t worry, Barbara. I’ve found you.”