“Hang on,” Bosman said. “What for? Ricky confessed, didn’t he? About your cold case?”
“Yes, but he’s lying.”
“He… is?”
Larkin sat again. He placed the Polaroid victims to the far left, the mask to the right, then evenly spaced Jessica’s mementos in the middle. “Killers like this, they go through a phase of trial and error, figuring out what they like, what works, etcetera. I’m particularly curious if Polaroids continued to be taken, or if that step was phased out in favor of just the death mask construction as they became more nuanced.”
“Suppose CSU doesn’t find any,” Bosman answered. “Doesn’t mean, what were you saying earlier, they were gifts to Ricky? Doesn’t mean anything. Maybe LISK—”
“It’s not LISK.”
“I’m joking.”
“A misspoken joke leads to rumors.”
“Christ.”
“But yes, you are correct,” Larkin continued. “Perhaps the perpetrator kept the rest of the photographs to himself. Or he stopped taking a secondary trophy once he grew more confident in his artistic skills. I can’t say yet—there’s not enough information. But I need confirmation as to whether or not Ricky has more Polaroids.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll follow up. And the masks?”
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain he has none.”
“That one percent?”
“I try not to be overly confident.”
Bosman was laughing again.
“Those masks are important. Under no circumstance would the killer part with them. By proving they’re not in Ricky’s possession, we’re heading in the right direction of discrediting his claim.”
“This is some serial killer bullshit,” Bosman said, but quiet, like he didn’t want his voice to carry.
“Yes.”
Bosman swore.
“Keep that between us.” Larkin provided Bosman with his cell number, asked again to be brought up to date as soon as possible, and hung up.
He stared at the evidence timeline in front of him. Despite not being able to see the faces of the female victims from the early ’90s, Larkin could deduce a few physical traits they had in common: petite, small-chested, long hair. He tapped his fingertip across the desk until he reached the photograph of Jessica and Andrew outside their walk-up. Jessica was also quite small in build, and even when she was in college, she wore her long hair atop her head in a messy bun. A possible type, then. The perpetrator wasn’t limited to a race or age so much as stature and aesthetic. And stature could have been also due, in part, to practicality. A hundred-and-twenty-pound woman was easier to take down and dispose of than, say, a hundred-and-sixty. And Ricky had said Jessica was like the others. He would know this based on the Polaroids of earlier murders.
Larkin slid his finger back to the empty space between the evidence bag and the drug-store-developed photos. Were there other murders between 1992 and Andrew’s in 1998? Larkin’s gut said yes. The perpetrator was just finding his groove. He’d have only stopped if he were caught, which wasn’t possible, because Larkin and most other cops would at least be familiar with the story. The only other reason for a period of silence would be if law enforcement had gotten too close. That was also doubtful. It’d be an established open case. Larkin could think of nothing that even closely resembled this situation.
He directed his gaze back to the photograph of Andrew standing outside the theater. A perpetrator with a penchant for small women—possibly focusing his efforts on sex workers simply due to the transient life—suddenly changes course and goes for a college-educated man with a stable lifestyle. And while Andrew wasn’t big—he would have stood as tall as Larkin and possibly had the same slender build—he’d still be a more formidable opponent than the three women, if Larkin could judge by the images alone. And it wasn’t like Andrew was… beautiful, for lack of better description. He wore his hair short and had very overt masculine features. Ricky had called Andrew pretty—had called Larkin pretty, for that matter. The adjective never suited Larkin, he felt. He’d been called classically handsome, which he felt was code for “you don’t look like others,” but not pretty, not unless it was meant as an insult. Although Doyle had said so, and while he’d been joking, it’d still felt… sincere.
Anyway. Pretty did not suit Andrew. So it wasn’t a matter of the perpetrator transitioning in his taste. Andrew’s death was necessary to hide the killer’s secret.
Larkin adjusted Jessica’s photos. Nathan’s hot dog stand was summer. Outside the theater, Andrew had been wearing a coat. Then the apartment perhaps a month or two later. Andrew’s nose wasn’t broken yet in any of them. Jessica had said that happened after they became roommates. Before graduating college, to be precise. Before meeting the jewelry designer who was, in theory, Andrew’s last romantic interest and by default a person of interest.
Larkin looked at Doyle again. Still sketching away.
He still couldn’t make complete sense of the nonfatal attacks. The ME suggested domestic assault. Doyle had too. And in the beginning, it had made sense: abuse that’d gone too far and then having to hide the body. But now? With the addition of the three victims earlier in the decade, also left in parks, also with death masks of a sort? It wasn’t simple IPV anymore. That wasn’t to say Andrew couldn’t have been an abuse victim too….
Perhaps the abuser and the killer were two different people and Andrew had been a very, very unlucky young man. Although, Jessica had insisted that Andrew’s nose was broken before meeting the jewelry designer, which would suggest he hadn’t been behind the assaults. She could have been wrong, though. It was twenty-two years ago, and she couldn’t remember the pseudoboyfriend’s name, so perhaps her memory of the timeline was off too. After all, only one person on this case had a nearly infallible memory, and it hadn’t been Jessica Lopez.
His cell buzzed with an incoming call at 8:32 at night. Larkin picked it up.
Noah Rider.
