“Forensic Artists Unit.”
“Fifth floor.”
“It should be on the directory.”
“Yeah, well, there’s only three of them.”
“So.”
The officer furrowed his bushy brows. “So there probably wasn’t enough vowels to list a three-man unit, buddy.”
“Those letters are packaged with three or four times the number of vowels to consonants, so it is extremely unlikely they ran out of ‘i’s. I’d like to leave feedback about the directory. Do you have comment cards.”
“Are you serious?”
“If 1PP did, in fact, run short of plastic letters, a replacement package would cost twenty dollars. The NYPD has an annual budget of five billion,” Larkin explained. “This way, myself and others won’t need to interact with you again for simple directions.”
“Hey—”
And in what was most definitely a power move akin to whipping out his dick and measuring it, Larkin said, “In the future, please refrain from calling me or any other plainclothes officerbuddy. I’m a first-grade detective.” He returned to the elevator banks as one of the car doors opened, slipped inside, and pressed the fifth floor.
Upstairs, Larkin followed winding halls lit with the same fluorescent overheads as his own precinct. The punch-out-style windows appeared to be relegated to inner offices for the most part. The air smelled like toner, like carpet cleaner, like the ever-present hours-old coffee that was the base note of most colognes and perfumes for police officers. A closed door on the west end of the floor had the nameplate Ira Doyle, Forensic Artists Unit, and Larkin stopped outside it. He could hear murmured voices inside, but wasn’t able to decipher individual words. Then he picked up the hesitant laugh of a child, Doyle’s patent smoky response, and the laughter grew more confident—if only briefly—reminiscent of the innocence lost.
He was still with the child victims. Had been all afternoon, in fact.
Larkin turned, backtracked to another office, and knocked on the partially open door. He poked his head in as a middle-aged man glanced up from a computer screen. He was skinny—not Larkin-skinny, who was toned because every effort was made to hit the gym several times a week, if for nothing else but the peace and quiet that accompanied cardio workouts—but skinny in the sense that this man hadn’t much cared for his physique beyond being able to pass departmental endurance requirements. He had a Tom Selleck Chevron mustache, which, when paired with a tie covered in colorful macarons, gave him nerdy homeroom teacher vibes and not that of a forensic artist.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a deep, pleasant voice that absolutely did not fit the aesthetic of someone who would write you up for being late to class.
Larkin pushed the door open the rest of the way. “My apologies for the intrusion. My name’s Everett Larkin, Cold Case Squad.”
A knowing smile broke out across the artist’s face. “You must be lead detective on that case Doyle was called to this morning.”
“That’s correct.”
“Craig Bailey,” he said, standing and leaning over his desk to offer a hand. “Senior Artist.”
Larkin stepped forward, shook, then raised his box in both hands. “I was dropping off a skull cast for Doyle. He was going to be assisting with a facial reconstruction of my John Doe.”
“Yeah, I heard all about that. I got the rundown on his new assignment from our lieutenant this afternoon,” Bailey answered as he took a seat again. “Starts tomorrow, though. He’s doing composite sketches with SVU right now, and I’m not going to interrupt—”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Bailey pursed his lips a bit, and his bushy mustache moved like a caterpillar. “I’ll see he gets the package, then.”
Larkin moved deeper into the office and handed over the box. “Thank you.”
“Sure thing.” Bailey drummed his fingertips against the lid.
Larkin stepped out of the office. The day had been hell. But underneath the addictive calm of pharmaceuticals, he rewound and replayed Doyle’s passing comment about the day and the night—the light and the dark. He replayed Doyle’s reassuring laugh. Its easiness and authentic notes. Its pleasure.Jubilate up to the heavens. Nietzsche—aphorism number twelve—the concept that pleasure and displeasure were so entwined that to have the extreme of one meant the same amount of the other. But if Doyle were the jubilance, did that make Larkin thedepression unto deathin this partnership they were about to embark upon?
Had Doyle read Nietzsche and simply dumbed down the profoundness of that philosophical concept in order to reinforce the lackadaisical front he projected?
Larkin wondered: was Doyle’s laugh due to nothing more than the theory of relief? That it was merely a physiological mechanism in which to handle anger or pain or sadness or to cope with the existential crisis that is human mortality? Or did Doyle laugh because he wastrulyhappy? Because if he chose to accept as much displeasure as possible, then by default he had already paid the price for which to experience boundless joy.
Larkin turned and asked Bailey, “Why was Doyle assigned his current session.”
Bailey glanced up and said, as if Larkin should have known this all along, “He always takes the cases involving children. Those are the worst ones, you know? But he always takes them.”
