“No,” Larkin murmured. He turned the mask over again and studied the negative space where it could perhaps be worn, should the unique dimensions match the wearer.
“Forensic artist. Down at 1PP.”
Larkin glanced at Millett and raised one eyebrow.
“You might want to give him a call.”
“Why.” Larkin’s questions were rarely, if ever, delivered with the necessary inflection found in English. He knew it bothered people—bothered Noah—but to control it required a more conscious effort at slowing the perpetual spinning of his Rolodex brain. It required him to be wholly present to current conversations and events, and that came with a host of problems Larkin worked to actively avoid. So the end result was a deadened and uninterested tone taken with most people, even if Larkin didn’t mean to come across as such.
“Because art is his forte,” Millett was saying, pointing at the bag, “and, I wish this wasn’t something I knew, butthatis a death mask.”
CHAPTER TWO
Larkin sat in his sedan on the corner of Twenty-Third and Madison, his left foot still wet, windshield wipers set to high, and an outgoing call ringing in his ear. Thunder crashed overhead, and Larkin squeezed his eyes shut. A shudder coursed through his body and he gripped the steering wheel with one hand, so tight that the material audibly protested. As the thunder’s rumble dragged on like some ancient God had awoken from slumber and was now starving for sacrifices, Larkin focused his hearing on the wipers, breathing on their beats.
Gerr-zzk,gerr-zzk,gerr-zzk.
“This is Mable. Hello?Hello?”
Larkin jerked to attention and said into his cell, “Ms. McClennan, my name is Everett Larkin. I’m a detective with the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad.”
“I’m about to run into a meeting.”
“I’m calling specifically—”
“Shit. About the body in the box over at Madison?”
“That’s correct. I’d like to schedule a time to meet with you.”
“Detective, my inbox is blowing up, my phone won’t stop ringing. I don’t know how the body ended up buried in the park, and frankly, it’s not my job to figure it out—it’s yours,” Mable explained in a gravelly, smoker’s voice. “That’s why you folks get the big bucks from the city, anyway. I’m in full damage control right now, and I don’t have time to say ‘I don’t know’ six ways to Sunday.”
Larkin said coolly, as if he’d not been snapped at by an administrator clearly jonesing for a nicotine break, “I have a few questions about the crabapple tree that was uprooted.”
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “Fine. Eleven.”
Larkin picked up her business card from the cup holder he’d set it in and recited the address, which Mable confirmed before hanging up. He immediately added the appointment to his phone’s calendar, set a reminder, then glanced at the evidence bag on the passenger seat—the bronze of the mask dull and unremarkable in the gray morning light. Larkin wanted to know whether the artwork intentionally lacked any dazzle, in the way that counterfeiters would dye paper with black tea to look weathered and aged, or if it really was old. And how old was old, exactly? Millett hadn’t known anything beyond his claim that it was a death mask—a tradition that had found a resurgence during the Victorian era, apparently. But that in no way meant it was actually from a previous century. If it were, did it match the cranial features of John Doe, or was it an item simply buried with him? Had it been tradition to leave the mask with the deceased? Were they always made of bronze? If it were a replica—that is, modern—for God’s sake,whywas it there at all?
Larkin specialized in death and worked in the medium of murder, but this? This was a ritual of death that was unknown to him, and if he wantedsomethinghe could chase while waiting on the ME to provide him tangible evidence, Larkin needed an artist to answer his questions. He made a call to One Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD and colloquially known as 1PP, and requested Detective Doyle, per Millett’s suggestion. More often than not, Larkin worked alone. His squad consisted of only ten detectives, and they had to spread as much of the 9,022 cases between them as humanly possible. Nonetheless, he was accustomed to requesting aid when necessary, and accepting it in whichever form it came: confidential informants, local authorities when cases required he travel out-of-state—Larkin even had a few connections at the FBI, despite the animosity between the feds and the city. So Larkin figured working with a fellow detective, and one thankfully unassociated with the brutes in Homicide, would be a relatively painless experience.
After several rings, voicemail picked up. A deep, smoky, and unhurried voice said, “Detective Ira Doyle, Forensic Artists. Please leave a message.”
Beep.
Larkin checked his watch. “This is Detective Everett Larkin, Cold Case Squad. The time is 9:07. I’ve taken on a case where I find myself in need of an expert on the subject of bronze face masks—what might possibly be a death mask, although this is speculation—and your name was suggested to me.” The sky flashed a brilliant white before thunder cracked so loud, it was as if the Earth were splitting in two. Larkin jumped, swallowed a lump that might have been his heart in his throat, and hastily added, “I can be reached at this cell number, or my desk at Precinct 19.”
Larkin disconnected, tucked the phone into his pocket, covered his face with one hand, and began to cry. A few wet sobs, a few strangled gasps, and then he cleared his throat and raised his head. He twisted the rearview mirror and checked his appearance: ash-blond hair parted on the side, clean-shaven, splotches of red in his otherwise pale complexion, and light, light gray eyes. A face poetic in its tragedy, a contemporary psychopomp regulated to a scale of monochrome.
—a crown of dandelions, the crackle of open flames, that first kiss, both of them shaking and tasting like sugar and alcohol and the sepulcher of innocence—
Memories bled like watercolors left in rain. A gradient of daffodil—no,gold—to slate, mud,death.
Larkin dried his cheeks and tugged the silver band off his finger. He slipped it in his trouser pocket, put the sedan into Drive, and pulled into uptown traffic.
Larkin had made the decision to return home and pick up dry shoes before returning to the precinct, which then turned into an entire wardrobe alteration, because red derbies couldn’t replace green oxfords without taking into consideration all other facets of his apparel. Larkin hiked the steps of Precinct 19 on Sixty-Seventh, between Third and Lexington, wearing a dark charcoal suit, black tie, gold and gray and black checkered pocket square, and the aforementioned derbies. It was still raining, but the worst of the storm—thunder and lightning—seemed to be on its way to Jersey.
“Spooky Larkin!”
Larkin stopped and looked to his right at the rolling doors of FDNY’s Ladder 16. The police and fire departments of New York had held grudges toward one another since… probably their founding in the 1800s, and although Larkin had never been a military man, he suspected the rivalry was something akin to Army versus Navy. Whether by design or mistake, their two houses had ended up next door on the Upper East Side, and in the five years he’d been a detective at this precinct, it’d proven to be an…interestingexperience.
