“No. I don’t know how. Do you.”
“Larkin—”
Larkin turned toward Widalski, still standing at the front of the class. “Do we have permission to open this locked drawer.” He tugged on the handle for emphasis.
“Good God,” Doyle muttered, his back still turned.
Widalski considered Larkin’s question, hyperaware of the audience before them.
“Twenty-three years, Principal Widalski,” Larkin reminded. “He was only eighteen. A student of PS 51.”
At that, she pulled her shoulders back, straightened her posture, and said resolutely, “The desk is school property. You have the school’s permission.”
Doyle pivoted on his heel, ushered Larkin aside with a brush of his hand, and collected a stray paperclip along with the pair of scissors. He squatted, stuck the bottom blade into the lock, wedged the bent tip of the paperclip in, dug at the tumblers for exactly two seconds, and then the drawer popped open.
Larkin met Doyle’s expression as he rose to his feet. “Thank you.”
“Always happy to be of service.”
Larkin plucked a tissue from the box shoved underneath the computer monitor, then carefully pulled the drawer open the rest of the way. If not for the comfort of the Xanax, Larkin would have likely hit stimulation overload already, as this drawer was just as full as the others: fast-food ketchup packets, a dented ping-pong ball, book of stamps, files of loose paperwork, bent, torn, and yellowed around their edges. Larkin removed a flip phone and set it on the desktop.
“That’s definitely not a student’s confiscated phone,” Doyle said, his whiskey voice low, almost intimate. He reached for his own tissue and carefully opened the phone as Larkin kept digging. “Looks like a burner. There’s a few texts… all to the same number.”
Larkin found the missing frame at the bottom, under the stack of files. It was a tacky thing of faux gold, containing a photo of a man, probably in his fifties, although it was difficult to tell, as he was wearing a ballcap, sunglasses, and waders, proudly displaying a fish for the camera. The location in the backdrop could have been anywhere in upstate New York. “Is this Gary Reynold,” Larkin asked, turning the photograph toward Widalski.
She nodded. “Yes, it is. Detective, I really must ask what—”
Doyle interrupted her as he held the burner out for Larkin, still carefully cradled in the tissue. “Look at this.”
“F RED HAIR 14”
“got 10”
“2 YOUNG”
“will get back 2 u”
“HELLO?”
“ITS BEEN 2 WKS”
“NVM ILL DO IT MYSELF”
“Detective,” Widalski tried again, her tone less understanding, more impatient.
Larkin replied, “Principal Widalski, I need to ask that these students leave the classroom.”
The teenagers immediately erupted into a chorus, conversations competing to be heard, pitches rising, questions ringing out among laughter, complaints, thirty-two voices pounding away at the fortification the Xanax was busily erecting and drilling into Larkin’s long-term memory.
“Mrs. Widalski, where are we supposed to go?”
“Maddie just sent me a pic of her tit from the girl’s locker room.”
“I gotta take a leak.”
“Fuckin’ hate this class anyway.”
“Mrs. Widalski, I don’t think this is legal!”
