“It’d be helpful,” Larkin continued to O’Halloran. “Since I’m busy cleaning up this mess.”
“Fuck you.” But after a second, O’Halloran added, “I’ll see what I can turn up.”
“Thank you.”
O’Halloran grinned, said, “Get bent,” then walked away from the fountain without another word.
Larkin leaned over the railing, holding his umbrella out so it covered both his and Doyle’s heads. “What.”
Doyle raised two fingers to show a watery white residue on the blue latex gloves. “The way she fell, her arm partially covered the hairline. My guess? Plaster of Paris, for making the negative used for casting the mask into another material. There’s a bit of something around her right eye too. Of course we need a test to be definitive, but if it were oil—”
“Put on the face to prevent the plaster removing eyebrows or eyelashes,” Larkin said, thinking back to the library book’s long-winded details on construction methods seen throughout the Victorian era.
“You got it.” Doyle lowered his hand. “CSU it taking samples.”
“I could kiss you.”
“If it turns out I’m right, you’re welcome to do more than that.” Doyle tugged the gloves off and pointed to the body. “Extensive bruising around her neck.”
Larkin’s gaze cut to Danielle Moreno. “Like the others.”
Doyle hummed agreement under his breath, grabbed the fence, and hoisted himself up and out of the fountain. He took his umbrella back from Larkin.
“Hey!” Millett shouted. “Is evidence going to O’Halloran or you?”
“Me,” Larkin called.
Millett gave a wave that conveyed both understanding and dismissal. He returned to snapping photographs and tagging plastic bags.
“We need to send CSU back to Ricky’s,” Larkin said.
“For what?”
“Based on the current decomposition of Danielle’s body, she’s been dead between three and… maybe six days, maximum.”
“Sometime between last Friday and Sunday.”
“Right. And like the other victims, she has very long hair. Women’s hair has a way of defying drains.”
“So there might be evidence she was in Ricky’s tub,” Doyle concluded.
Larkin nodded.
Doyle fetched his wallet and removed a business card. “I’ll give Bosman a call.” He copied the cell number and put his phone to his ear. “We need to ask ourselves: were all the bodies kept for several days, or is this new? And if it’s new, where’s she been in the interim?”
Larkin had just pulled into traffic when his phone rang. “Who is it,” he asked.
Doyle took the cell from the cupholder. “No ID. Local number.”
“Put it on speaker.”
Doyle did and held the phone up.
“Detective Larkin,” Larkin answered as he deftly avoided a taxi who prematurely slammed on their breaks.
“Detective, this is Camila Garcia.”
The panic and embarrassment at having forgotten to make a notation in his calendar for his appointment with Camila was immediate and overwhelming. He gripped the steering wheel tight in both hands, swallowed a string of colorful curses, and managed, “Mrs. Garcia, I’m so sorry.”
