“That crabapple was planted April 2, 1998,” Mable said in her gravelly voice. “Looks like it was part of the massive renovation to save the park.”
Doyle dug his notepad out and scribbled the date down.
“It was a goddamn mess back then,” Mable continued, “but you’re probably too young—”
“I remember Madison in the late ’80s,” Doyle broke in before Larkin had had a chance to open his mouth and say anything to the contrary. “Had a crackhead chase me with a knife.”
Larkin turned and looked up at Doyle with a raised eyebrow.
Mable snorted, coughed, and said, “I knew grown-ass men who wouldn’t walk through that park.”
Doyle flashed that lazy smile. “Stupid, unsupervised kids think they’re invincible.”
Larkin turned to Mable once again. “Would there be any reason to dig the hole in advance.”
She made a face. “It was before my time, but no, I can’t imagine they’d do that without risking a safety hazard. That being said, millions were being pumped into the park. There was a lot going on.”
Madison Square Park had once been the apple of Midtown’s eye. Built before the Civil War (Larkin would have to look up the exact date), it’d fallen into a state of extreme neglect and disrepair, like so much had when New York teetered on the edge of financial collapse in the 1970s. The six blocks had become an epicenter of drug dealing, of prostitution, of murder—all the elements that made up what the NYPD had called the city once upon a time: Fear City. So it was possible, probable even, that John Doe was an unfortunate casualty of the violence during that decade. After all, homicides had skyrocketed by 1970—1,117—and kept rising for twenty years. When the crabapple had gone into the ground, homicides were at their lowest since 1965, with only 633 murders, due to the much-needed and aggressive crackdown on crime throughout the ’90s.
But even with the reality of these statistics, the likelihood John Doe had been killed over a rock or fifty cents or just for the sadistic pleasure of hurting another human being—it didn’t sit right in Larkin’s gut.
Because of the death mask.
How exactly that piece of evidence fit into the puzzle, Larkin couldn’t be certain yet. But the murder of John Doe had been methodically planned and orchestrated. Whoever had taken the man’s life, stuffed his body into a crate, and seen him buried nearly four feet in the ground in the middle of the biggest and busiest city in the country, Larkin was certain they never intended for John Doe to be found.
So what did that say about the perpetrator?
Larkin had laid to rest plenty of cases that involved premeditated murder. The victim had been chosen because they were weak, they were blonde, they were wearing a baseball cap—whatever had scratched the itch of the killer. But what was the same in all those instances was that their relationship had been that ofstrangers. And while a certain attempt had been made by the perpetrator to cover their tracks by disposing of the victim in locations unrelated to the scene of the crime—in a dumpster behind a Midtown Whole Foods, left in the overgrown vegetation overlooking the Rockaways out in Queens, floating in the waters along the East River Greenway—the victim was still found and the breadcrumb trail of clues led all the way to an eventual arrest.
John Doe was different.
There was no indication he had ever died until today. Whoever knew him, remembered him, missed him—what had they been thinking for, at minimum, the last twenty-two years? That John had run away? Had been kidnapped? Taken a walk for a pack of smokes? If not for the morning’s disastrous storm, how many more years would those who John had left behind keep wondering where he was, what he was doing, what sky he woke to every morning?
John Doe was never meant to be found.
And it wasn’t the forensic evidence the murderer couldn’t chance leading back to them, but Johnhimself.
They hadn’t been strangers.
“I need employment records,” Larkin said. “The renovation crew working at Madison Square Park during the ’90s.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“But you’re notdressedlike cops,” the petite blonde whined.
Larkin’s request for employment records had seemingly broken the fragile spell of patience he’d cast on Mable via their personal connection at the start of the interview. Her desk phone rang a second time, and she claimed he had exactly the information requested, she needed to get back to putting out fires, and anyway, did she goddamn look like HR? So Larkin and Doyle were directed to an office on the second floor, where they now stood in front of the desk of a young woman who undoubtably got carded every time she ordered a nine-dollar glass of wine at a restaurant.
A nameplate suggested the blonde’s name was Kelly. Kelly wore her hair in a messy bun piled atop her head like an afterthought. She had big brown eyes, a button nose, wore a frumpy striped sweater that Larkin was about seventy percent certain was supposed to be frumpy in acoolway, along with a pair of mom jeans, which hadn’t been cool when he was a child andstillweren’t cool, despite fashion’s attempt to bring them back.
Before Larkin could reply to Kelly’s absurd comment, Doyle took the lead with the ease of a man who was paid to shoot the shit for a living. “We’re detectives, ma’am.”
“So no uniforms?”
“Ties and slacks, I’m afraid.”
Kelly brightened, waved her hands, then said, “Oh! Like Detectives Stabler and Benson!”
Larkin narrowed his eyes. “Law & Orderis a fictional—”
