“You mean, manipulative.”
“Just stroke an ego for thirty seconds.”
“There is no reason to provide an ego stroke if I’m making a request that falls within the confines of their job description.”
Doyle slung the portfolio bag over one shoulder and said, “Larkin—may I call you Larkin?”
“That’s my name.”
“You’re looking exceptionally fine.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t often see men wearing pocket squares these days.”
Larkin narrowed his eyes and glanced down at his breast pocket.
“Even fewer who know how to match them.”
“It’s not difficult.”
Doyle took a few steps until he was standing before Larkin. Then he said, in that smoky purr of a voice that was admittedly attractive, and perhaps, Larkin thought, it was so because that was Doyle’s real voice and not an act, “It brings out the gray in your eyes. Like the moon.”
Larkin stared at Doyle.
“There, an ego stroke. And compliment for good measure. How do you feel?”
“Uncomfortable.”
“If you want to ID your John-in-the-box, I need a cast,” Doyle concluded. “I can do a facial reconstruction, and then you’ve got a leg-up on NamUs.”
“But—”
“Unless you wanted the OCME to pull DNA and,fingers crossed, maybe get a hit from the database in four months?”
“No,” Larkin drew out. “It’s only… time simply runs at a difference pace in this squad.”
Doyle exhaled, adjusted the strap on his shoulder. “A memento mori is also a keepsake of those lost. I can give John Doe back his identity so someone can remember him.”
I’ll remember him, Larkin thought automatically. Because when every day he felt as if he were a man in a strange land, unable to stop speaking of, unable to stop thinking of the dead and otherwise forgotten, because he couldn’t—just couldn’t—turn it off, and no one around him sympathized with that, understood that—as if Larkin spoke in tongues… Doyle had unknowingly touched on his love language.
Remembrance.
And that mattered.
For however brief a study this was between them, it mattered.
So Larkin nodded curtly and said, “All right.”
CHAPTER THREE
“It’s not an unreasonable request,” Larkin said. He stood at his desk, phone to his ear, while a woman at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, with a voice like a steam whistle, provided him with a dissertation on why it wasabsolutelyunreasonable to be asking for a skull casting of his John Doe. “I can see your only intention is to roadblock me in this matter. Who’s the ME—Dr. Baxter. I’d like to speak to Dr. Baxter, then.”
“You’re doing great,” Doyle stage-whispered, watching Larkin from where he stood in front of the desk.
Larkin shot Doyle a look as he said into the receiver, “Ma’am, perhaps you don’t fully understand the process of facial reconstruction, which is fine, but if that is the case, I need to speak to someone with a higher pay grade than yourself.”
Doyle gave a thumbs-up. “Excellent first try.”
