“Uh-huh. And there’s a lot of crossover?”
Larkin looked up at the same moment Doyle looked down. Larkin said to Widalski, “More than you’d expect.”
That seemed good enough for Widalski, and she continued walking until about the halfway mark, where she stopped outside a door that looked like every other door and peered through the glass window. Her mouth tugged into a subtle frown before she opened it and stepped into the classroom. The commotion of a dozen different conversations, teenagers laughing, the legs of a chair slamming down on the floor after leaning too far back, all filled the quiet hallway.
Larkin moved into the doorway and studied the room. He’d been inside public schools plenty since his marriage, but was accustomed to the bright colors and homey elements that Noah incorporated into his class layout. In contrast, Mr. Reynold’s room was about as friendly as a prison cell: off-white walls, more of the same fluorescent overheads, two large windows with the typical security grating, and a few laminated posters with generic tips and tricks of the English language, as well as one featuring phrases used today that were popularized by Shakespeare, which actually appeared to have been a student project that’d simply outlasted its classmates’ longevity on the wall. The whiteboard was a mess of half-erased talking points on two or three different subjects—previous classes, Larkin concluded—and the clunky steel desk on the opposite end of the room, with the filing cabinet to its back, would belong to Mr. Reynold.
“Yo, who’s that?” a boy asked.
Larkin glanced at the rows of desks—the sort with the blue seat, metal basket underneath that no one used, and attached arm and desktop—and the thirty-two students inhabiting them. Teenagers sat sideways in order to talk with a friend across the aisle, one sat on the desktop itself, three more heads were down and taking the opportunity to nap.
“He’s a cop,” another kid answered. “I can tell he’s packin’.”
“Everyone settle down,” Widalski said. “Tyrone, off the desk—this is a classroom, not a jungle gym.”
Larkin turned his head enough so he could speak to Doyle standing behind him, but didn’t take his eyes off the class. “There are far too many students in here.”
“Welcome to an underfunded public school,” Doyle murmured.
Widalski waited until the teenagers had settled down before asking, “Where’s Mr. Reynold?”
“He weren’t here when the bell rang,” a girl in the second row said as she ran fingers through the hair pulled over one shoulder.
“Wasn’t here,” Widalski corrected. “This is AP English, Leslie.”
Larkin took a step into the room and asked Widalski, “When did the period begin.”
She checked her watch and said, “About ten minutes ago.”
Larkin considered the answer, moved around Widalski, and approached Reynold’s desk. He scanned the content littering its surface: computer monitor; keyboard; mouse; desk phone; empty water bottle missing the cap; coffee cup repurposed to hold pens, pencils, and a variety of markers; a clipboard with nothing clipped to it; stacks of colored folders stuffed with turned-in homework; a teaching-themed page-a-day calendar that hadn’t been torn away since Friday, April 24.
—living room dark but for the fairy lights and harsh flicker of the television, Larkin stretched out on the couch, and Doyle’s longer body curled up against him, one leg hanging precariously over the side, the other tangled with Larkin’s—his once-partner fast asleep after an exhausting week—
Larkin turned away from the calendar, checked beside the desk, and pulled out the sagging computer chair before determining the teacher’s personal effects—bag, phone, keys, anything of that nature—were absent. Larkin focused on a spot near the right edge of the desk that was devoid of the clutter that took up the rest of Reynold’s workspace. He pointed to it, looked at the teenagers who were studying him with a combination of curiosity and boredom, and asked, “What usually sits here.”
No one replied.
“Something is missing from this desk,” Larkin said to the sea of faces. “Pencil sharpener, calculator, Post-its, glasses case—”
“Mr. Reynold doesn’t wear glasses,” a Latino boy in the front row answered. He had his chin propped up and looked only half-awake.
“What is missing,” Larkin repeated, addressing him specifically.
The boy answered on a sigh, “A picture frame.”
“Detective?” Widalski asked.
But Larkin ignored her inquiry as he bent at the waist to collect the trash bin pushed into the kneehole of the desk. He reached inside, but the contents only consisted of an empty cup from Dunkin’ Donuts and a test page noting a printer was out of cyan ink. Larkin put it back, checked the middle drawer—years of hoarding office supplies, by the looks of it—then opened the three along the lefthand side. The top was a continuation of Reynold’s collection of junk: half a dozen power cords, four bags of gummy candy that drugstores kept stocked at the counter for impulse shoppers, scissors, Scotch tape dispenser, a torn mousepad, and a small, half-empty bottle of Tabasco sauce. Larkin shoved it closed and grabbed the middle drawer.
It was locked.
Larkin frowned, checked the bottom drawer, and found it full of hanging folders, binders of what were probably the same lesson plans Reynold had used for the last decade, if not more, and those blue test booklets students wrote their finals in. He shut it and checked for a set of keys in the other drawers, but there wasn’t one.
Doyle had joined him by then, whispering, “What are you doing?”
Larkin turned his back to the class and Doyle mimicked the action. He said quietly, “A picture frame is missing, this drawer is locked, the keys are gone, and Gary Reynold isn’t on the premises after being informed we were coming to ask questions about Marco.”
Doyle rubbed the stubble on his face before nodding. “Okay. Fair. But you can’t just break into his desk.”
