“What’d he say.”
“He told me to tell you, fuck you.”
“And what about the autopsy report.”
Doyle warily returned to Larkin and the barrel. “I can’t tell if you’re unaware of people’s general dislike, or if you truly don’t care.”
“I don’t care.” Larkin lowered the evidence bag and stared expectantly.
“Blunt-force trauma,” Doyle recited. “Broke her neck. The ME back in ’92 had specified the weapon had a curved surface.”
“Curved,” Larkin repeated. “A bar, a pipe—”
“A hammer?” Doyle suggested. “You use those in working with metal. Rounding hammers, as the name suggests, has a rounded head.” He glanced down as Larkin’s phone buzzed. “Your—ah, Noah is calling.”
“Hang up.”
“Larkin.”
“Hang up. I’m working.”
Doyle obediently tapped the screen.
“Rounding hammers are the same length as a typical hammer.”
“Are you asking?”
“Yes.”
“I think they come in varying handle lengths and pounds, but to a layman, it’s a hammer,” Doyle answered.
“Concealable, then.”
Doyle nodded.
Larkin frowned, studied the evidence in his hand, then walked a few feet away before returning. “Something isn’t adding up.”
“I’d say a lot of things aren’t adding up,” Doyle commented wryly. “Do you know that the build methods of death masks is a relatively undiscussed subject in art history? Besides the book you borrowed from the library, the only other author I know of who wrote extensively on the matter was Laurence Hutton. He began preserving death masks when a small collection was found in the 1860s in a trash bin in—and we’re coming full circle here—the neighborhood of Tompkins Square.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. He spent the rest of his life hunting down masks in curiosity shops, plaster shops, and studios across America and Europe. He wrotethe bookon death masks because no one else had and it irritated him.”
Larkin considered this, then asked, “Could that be used against the perpetrator.”
“How do you mean?”
“Mr. Hutton’s book—could it be checked out from a library.”
Doyle frowned a little and said, “I suppose it could be, butPortraits in Plasteris from 1890-something. As far as I know, it’s public domain now. It wouldn’t be research easily traced back to any one person.”
“But you’ve read it,” Larkin clarified.
“I went to art school.”
“So did Roger Hunt—designing, literally forging, jewelry. He’d have learned how to use a rounding hammer…. But Natasha was murdered in ’92. Roger, according to Jessica, would have graduated in ’97 with her and Andrew. He would have been a teenager when the killings began, and while that’s certainly not unheard of, most serial killers don’t become active until their twenties. And if I’m correct that Ricky was an accomplice—not the killer—and supplied a safe house of sorts, how did they know each other.”
“Roger might be a native,” Doyle supplied. “Grew up in the city versus moving here for college.”
