“Visit the crime scene, dump site, or last known location of the victim.”
“Despite twenty years having passed?”
“Twenty-two. Yes.” Larkin looked up and added a bit more gently, “I understand it seems a waste of time, but seeing a location, or as much of a location that still exists, bridges the gap between the past and present. It’s humbling, in a sense, to be reminded of people who lived and died before us.”
Doyle didn’t argue. “The apartment he and the roommate shared, then?”
Larkin took another bite of his sandwich, nodded, and said after swallowing, “Edith Stanislaus was raped and strangled in the bedroom she and her younger sister rented on Twenty-Third Street. This was 1945. Police took plenty of evidence from the home—the most important being her stockings, which were used to choke her. They had interviewed four men they considered persons of interest. Despite this, they couldn’t poke a big enough hole in any of the men’s alibis, and of course, there was no DNA testing to be done at the time. The case went cold. I took it over when I was transferred into the squad. Of the three boxes of hard evidence stored with the Property Clerk, I was only able to recover one—not the stockings, but the bedsheet was second-best. Of course, I still had no one to test it against and no one was still alive from then except Edith’s sister, Leona, who was nearly ninety.
“So I returned to the scene, as Leona still lived there—seventy years later and she still lived in that little studio. There had been a few cosmetic updates, but for the most part, it was a tomb to her sister. The same bed frame, Edith’s suitcase and a few hat boxes were stored underneath, her moth-eaten clothes still hung in the closet. Leona had bought a couch. She slept on that. Didn’t want to disturb what was once Edith’s. I was standing inside a time capsule. So I did a search. I didn’t know what for, but maybe—maybe—the detectives before me, now dead and gone, missed something.”
Doyle’s crow’s feet were back as he cast a thoughtful expression. “Something was under the bed.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You said her suitcase and boxes were still there. Makes me think no one had any reason to look. Orclean.”
“I found a gold tooth among a dust bunny the size of a dog. Leona cried. Their stepbrother, Matthew, had a gold tooth he’d lost the same time Edith was killed. He’d told Leona he’d gotten into a fistfight at a bar. She never had reason to doubt his story. I won’t bore you with the details, but Matthew was already dead, so I had him exhumed. A forensic odontologist confirmed it was his lateral incisor. The samples from the bedsheets were enough, barely, due to degradation, to run a test. Matthew had raped and murdered his stepsister and hadn’t been a person of interest because the police never even considered a family member could have been responsible for brutalizing her in that manner.”
“Leona had closure?”
“Yes. She passed one week after Matthew had been charged, posthumously. The point of this story,” Larkin said in conclusion, “is that sometimes I get very lucky. Not usually. But sometimes there’s a memento mori beyond a case number, and I’m not the only one mourning.”
Andrew Gorman had shared an apartment with Jessica Lopez in Alphabet City—East Sixth, between Avenues C and D. It was a neighborhood that’d lived through a lot of drugs, a lot of murder, a lot of crime. The façades of walk-ups lining either side of East Sixth looked tired in a way that only brick and mortar could: awnings of ground-floor businesses were discolored from the sun; exterior stonework around apartment windows dirty from maybe mold, maybe soot, or maybe just a long and hard life; oxidized fire escapes; and one front door had recently been tagged with the declaration thatJohn smokes cock.
Despite the wear and tear of the past, Alphabet City was alive and thriving. An elementary school on the block was clean and bright, the trees old but greenery well underway with the return of spring. A young couple was unloading a moving van double-parked with its hazards on, and folks of all ages walked up and down the sidewalks, going about their Tuesday morning.
Larkin parked in front of a church, denomination unknown, and turned off the engine. He watched a six-story walk-up on the north side of the street, and when a man in jeans and a sweatshirt stepped out of the front entrance, Larkin opened the driver side door and climbed out. He heard Doyle follow, and by the time Larkin had reached the other side of the street, Doyle was at his side, the strap of his black portfolio bag slung across his chest.
“Excuse me,” Larkin called to the man, now busily tugging full trash bags from the building’s bins and knotting them closed. Larkin removed his badge and flashed it. “My name is Everett Larkin, and I’m a detective with the Cold Case Squad. Do you have a moment to speak.”
The man had a face and hands that’d been weathered and worked hard. He was big, but not gym big or overweight big—there was just a lot of him. He moved like he was middle-aged, despite looking older, and smelled like sweat and pot. The man glanced up from the trash and flashed a pair of dark, dead eyes. “Yeah?” He drew the word out oddly before offering a crooked smile.
“Do you live here.” Larkin jutted a thumb at the door.
“I’m the super,” he said by way of an answer.
“For how long.”
Super hummed, staring straight at Larkin. He hadn’t blinked. “A long time,” he finally said.
Larkin tucked his badge away. “How well do you know your tenants.”
Super finally, methodically, lowered his gaze to the bag before him. He finished knotting it, dragged it to the curb, then returned, saying, “I fix all sorts of things for them.”
Doyle asked, “Have any of the tenants lived here since the mid-1990s?”
“Ms. Lopez.”
“Is that Jessica Lopez,” Larkin asked, for clarification.
“That’s right,” Super drew out again in that strange, almost singsong sort of speech.
“Which apartment is she.”
Super directed his dead stare back at Larkin. “It’s about the body in the park?”
“Why would you ask that,” Larkin asked.
