“Mine too,” Doyle said.
She perked up a little and looked at him a second time. “Yeah? I always thought most grandmas share certain traits. Did she always have that one framed picture of Jesus?”
“As any good Irish Catholic granny would.”
Jessica tittered. “A bowl of hard candies?”
Doyle glanced at Larkin before he smiled. “Always.”
Jessica’s stiff posture relaxed. Just like that. It hadn’t been the sip of alcohol, although Doyle’s voice could have made anyone feel a little punch-drunk. “Andy was a sweet guy. My best friend. We met third year of college. Andy was… erm… you know.”
“Andrew was gay,” Larkin clarified.
Jessica dropped her gaze a bit and nodded. “So when he asked if I wanted to be his roommate, I said sure. I felt safe around Andy. God, I know, that sounds so terrible to suggest—that women can’t trust men unless they’re friends with Dorothy—but I think myabuelainstilled a lot of her own fears in me.”
“Certainly not unfounded fears during the ’80s and ’90s,” Larkin said. “Reports of sexual assaults against women were four times higher than they are currently.”
Jessica shuddered a little. When she looked at Larkin again, her brown eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I’m very sorry,” Larkin answered, his modulated tone shiftinga littleto something warmer, gentler. “Andrew’s remains were found yesterday.”
She took a soggy breath and wiped her nose on the flannel shirt sleeve. “He’s been dead the whole time, hasn’t he? I mean, since I filed that stupid missing person report.”
“We believe so.”
“He was murdered?”
Larkin settled back in the seat. He left his hands flat on the tabletop. “Yes.”
Jessica wiped her face again.
Doyle tore a sheet from a paper towel roll on the messy counter, then took a step forward and handed it to her.
“I knew it,” she said, scrubbing her cheeks with the rough towel. “Deep down, I mean. Because your best friend wouldn’t up and leave. Not without a note, a phone call, hell, even some cash for next month’s rent, because believe you me, I was scrambling without him here.” Jessica took another, longer, sip of whiskey. “I guess it hurts less to ignore what you know is the truth.”
Larkin’s palms were sweaty against the worn wood. He resisted curling his fingers into fists. “That is true,” he agreed.
But Jessica didn’t appear to have heard him, because she asked with a spike of frustration, “What was I supposed to do? That cop, the one who took my report, he didn’t care. Kept saying Andy was a grown man capable of making his own decisions and he didn’t have to get his beard’s approval to do nothing. He said that. Called me Andy’s beard. What an asshole.” Jessica tore the paper towel into several smaller pieces. “Andy was proud of who he was. I worried, of course. Even twenty years ago, it was dangerous for him, but we weren’t like that. That cop was homophobic. I called for months, asking for updates. Nothing. Then I started calling yearly.” Her anger subsided, her voice hitched, and those big fat tears started rolling down her face. “Just so the cops knew I hadn’t forgotten Andy. Everyone else did, but not me.Not me.”
These were the worst cold cases.
Andrew Gorman had been gone twenty-two years, and Jessica Lopez had been living with a hole in her heart the entire time. And even now, she wouldn’t be any better off. The best she could hope for was that the truth could be used like gauze, to pack the wound, so she’d stop bleeding out.
Offering a personal connection was time and again Larkin’s least favorite tool in the detective arsenal, because he felt so raw, so vulnerable afterward, but sometimes he didn’t have a choice. Not in moments like this—when someone like Jessica, the closest he’d ever get to Andrew himself, deserved to know her pain was being acknowledged. He peeled one hand from the tabletop, rubbed it against his pant leg, then reached across the table to take Jessica’s. She gripped his tight, her knuckles blanching.
“I won’t forget Andrew,” he said simply.
PomPom’s whine broke the quiet. He scurried into Jessica’s bedroom and returned with a squeaky ball, which he dropped at her feet. He left to fetch another toy, this time a stuffed bunny.
She cried for a bit longer. Doyle fetched her another paper towel. When she’d… not calmed so much as ran out of stamina, she asked, “What do you need from me?”
Larkin gently pried his hand free. “How long were you roommates.”
Doyle removed his notepad from his suit coat pocket and uncapped Larkin’s pen.
“I think a year? No, it’d been just over a year. I remember, because we signed the lease before spring semester of senior year, and had already renewed it before—what happened.”
“In your initial report, you said you had cause for concern when Andrew failed to show for a movie.”
