“Homicide didn’t want to be saddled with a loser.” Larkin leaned forward and tilted his head in order to study Doyle’s expression. Doyle appeared intrigued by the presented mystery, but was cool, even casual about it. Interested in the way that people were interested in Buzzfeed’s Top Twenty Hot Summer Beach Reads. Something that was fun but ultimately forgotten.
Except, no… that wasn’t quite right. Because Doyle’s eyes were bright and laser-focused, like he was doing a sudoku puzzle and was the sort of man who committed to completing the entire 9x9 square, come hell or high water.
“Sudoku,” Larkin stated.
“Karaoke.” Doyle looked sideways. “Sorry, I thought we were calling out random Japanese loan words.” He smiled with his entire face again. “You want to roll your eyes so bad.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You keep looking at the ceiling.”
“There’s a water mark. It might be from the storm.”
Doyle snorted. He put the borrowed pen between his teeth and turned the mask over to study the negative space.
“That’s my pen.”
Doyle held it out.
This time, Larkin did roll his eyes. “Keep it.”
“What about sudoku?” Doyle asked before putting the pen in his mouth again.
“Nothing.” Larkin’s phone dinged from his pocket—an appointment reminder. “Tell me about this mask. I need to leave for a meeting soon.”
“Where to?” Doyle asked around the pen.
Larkin had removed his phone to check the notice. “Parks and Recreation.”
Doyle glanced at Larkin for a second time. He removed the pen and asked, “You suspect the employee who called it in?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not,” Doyle echoed.
“When a hole is dug in a city park, it’s expressly for the purpose of removing a tree or planting a tree. I want to know when the crabapple was planted.”
“Huh. That’s smart,” Doyle said.
“It’s common sense.”
Doyle hissed and dramatically clutched his chest. “Ouch.”
Larkin ignored the playful jab and added, “Test results from the crate—hardwood, softwood, lacquered, pressure-treated, etcetera—as well as your professional ruling on that mask will narrow my scope of focus a great deal.”
“A murder from the 1980s is approached differently than if it were the 1880s,” Doyle concluded.
“Your example is problematic, but yes.” Then Larkin shifted in the chair, wheels skating across the uneven floor. “Is that mask from the 1880s?” He heard the lilt in his voice tip upward, just a little, in admitted curiosity as to what Doyle saw that he did not.
“Do you have a magnet?”
“Pardon.”
“A magnet,” Doyle repeated.
Larkin glanced at his desk: computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, pen cup, sans the one that’d been in Doyle’s mouth, and a high stack of brown accordion files in varying degrees of thickness and wear—his active cold cases. Each file was a Lost Boy, unclaimed by their nannies and forgotten by their families, brought to Neverland so Peter Pan wouldn’t be alone.
If only it were so romantic.
