Doyle’s face softened. He met Larkin’s gaze.
“I like when you call me that—Evie.”
“Oh?”
Larkin nodded. He removed latex gloves from his coat and offered Doyle a pair. “Beginning or end.” He indicated the entrance and then the dead-end of the aisle with his free hand.
Doyle took off his suit coat before accepting the gloves. “Here. I’ll start at the beginning. You really know how to show a guy a good time.”
“I’ll owe you and your big, capable hands. Of course, I’ll probably have to restrain you. You’re very touchy, and in theory, we’d be resting your hands after all this work.” Larkin finished with perfect sincerity, “Good thing I have handcuffs.” He turned on his heel and started for the end of the aisle, daring a glance over his shoulder at the half-mark to see Doyle was doubled over, hands on his knees.
After that, the search was slow, methodical, and tedious. Larkin spent a while digging through the gated section on his end but was able to confirm the evidence all belonged to one large, and recent, investigation. Boxes and barrels were clean, crisp, their labels still bright. Not what he wanted. He wanted the evidence that looked like it’d been punted around the city like a football for a few decades. Larkin turned his attention to the towering shelves instead, and had spent nearly an hour systematically moving back and forth between the ground level and pulling along a ladder to reach the overhead barrels, when Doyle’s voice echoed from the other end of the aisle.
“Larkin, I think I found it.”
Larkin climbed down from the ladder, watching as Doyle dragged a barrel from one of the gated units, studied the spray-painted information, then worked the top off. He immediately made a gagging sound, dropped the lid, and stumbled away. “Doyle?” Larkin jogged toward him. “What’s wrong?”
Doyle held the back of his gloved hand against his mouth and pointed with the other. “Maggots.”
Larkin slowed to a walk. “You were pulling plaster of Paris out of the hair of a decomposing body this morning.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a certain detachment to that.”
“It’s just some larvae.”
Doyle lowered his hand. “No. That’s not justsome. That evidence is infested.”
Larkin raised an eyebrow. His partner looked a little green. “You don’t like bugs.”
“Nothing that wiggles, squirms, or has an unnecessary number of legs.”
“Maggots won’t hurt you.”
Doyle put his hand to his mouth again and honestly looked about ready to vomit.
“Okay, okay,” Larkin said quickly. “I’ll look through it.” He approached the barrel and noted the back side appeared to have water damage that’d caused a tear in the heavy-duty cardboard. A trail of wriggling maggots led the way back to the unit, like breadcrumbs. Larkin peered inside and, yeah, it was infested. Whoever had collected hard evidence from Natasha’s murder scene twenty-eight years ago hadn’t properly bagged the items, andsomethingin there, something likely with blood evidence, had attracted a fly. Larkin hastily removed his cuff links, pocketed them, and rolled his sleeves back before reaching into the barrel.
“Don’t touch—oh my God.” Doyle took a few steps back as Larkin removed what looked to be a skimpier, sexier version of a cocktail dress. Maggots fell from the folds of material and he made another sound close to blowing chunks.
Larkin set the dress on the floor and reached inside again. “Take my phone,” he instructed, removing a stiletto with a broken heel next.
“What?”
Larkin angled himself and said, “Left pocket.”
Doyle took a few hesitant steps, got just close enough to tug the cell from Larkin’s trouser pocket, then quickly backed away.
“Call O’Halloran.”
“Why?”
Larkin raised a gloved hand covered in squirming maggots and shook them back into the barrel. He reached inside again, saying, “He doesn’t have control over Natasha’s case file—otherwise this would be easy. Ask him to get a look at the autopsy report. I don’t care what he has to do to accomplish that. Find out if the ME had any specific notes about the weapon used to kill her.” Larkin found the other shoe. “His contact information is my most recent text.”
Doyle swiped on the screen, tapped, and put the cell to his ear. He met Larkin’s look and said, “Thanks.”
Larkin shrugged. He created a pile on the floor of Natasha’s belongings that the perpetrator seemed to have no interest in keeping for himself and tossed with the body when he was done using her face as his mask model. Dress, shoes, purse—everything was covered in maggots. It was difficult to tell without a black light on the dress, but he was pretty sure the crusted surface was old, old blood, and the poor storage, damp floor, and water damage had attracted insects. Larkin didn’t have the heart to tell Doyle this wasn’t the first barrel of old evidence he’d gone through that had… creepy-crawly friends inside. He half listened to Doyle work his interpersonal magic on O’Halloran while he paced a safe distance away, but otherwise, didn’t stop digging through the barrel until he’d found a plastic evidence bag with what appeared to be blood-stained blue and orange threads wrapped around a broken fingernail.
“Appreciate it,” Doyle was saying to O’Halloran. “What’s that? Oh… I’ll tell him.” Doyle hung up.
