“Home,” Larkin answered. “He took his keys. He went home.” He started for the classroom door just as Widalski reappeared.
“I’m sorry about that,” she began.
“Call the office,” Larkin interrupted. “Tell them I need Gary Reynold’s home address right now.”
And then he ran into the hall.
Larkin could hear Doyle’s brief instructions to not touch anything and to please wait for responding officers who would be processing the room, and then his partner’s steps were pounding the tiles, the soles of their shoes beating in sync as they made for the stairwell. Even with the late start, Doyle had longer legs, and he reached the stairs before Larkin. He put even more distance between them by sliding down the banister, the slap of his oxfords on the floor bouncing off the bare walls and high ceiling. Doyle turned as Larkin jumped the final two steps, caught his hand, and pushed Larkin to take the lead.
Larkin burst through the doorway of the ground floor, dodged a lone janitor in gray coveralls pushing a mop and bucket out of a storage room, and skidded to a stop outside the glass door of the main office located just before the security desk. He threw it open, raised his badge, and said to the receptionist, “Gary Reynold’s home address.”
She was hardly more than twenty years old and dressed like a fifties housewife in a pastel blue dress, a white sweater that was more for aesthetics than practicality, honest-to-God pearls with matching earrings, and with blond hair done up in what probably took an hour’s time and a full can of hairspray each morning. She squeaked as she put the phone receiver down and began clicking feverishly on her computer. “Principal Widalski asked me to print—”
“Just tell it to me,” Larkin snapped.
She squeaked again, sounding very much like a dog’s chew toy, before turning to the monitor and reading off a full address—state and zip code included.
“Is there an apartment number.”
“Um… garden.”
“What does Reynold drive.”
“I—I—”
A second woman, older, with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, came into view from around the corner. She held a stack of printouts in both hands. “What’s the question?”
“He w-wants to know what Gary d-drives,” the receptionist stuttered, her voice almost a squeal now.
“He doesn’t drive,” the second woman said to Larkin. “Gary takes the train.”
Larkin let the door slam shut behind him, and he and Doyle left the school. They ran across the street, got into the Audi, and Larkin peeled onto Broadway as Doyle put in a call requesting uniformed officers at Gary Reynold’s home address that he repeated into the phone as Larkin said it aloud for him. When Doyle had hung up, Larkin asked, “Closest subway stop.”
“Ah—West 181st Street… let’s see. Reynold could take the A or 1. Either one is only two stops from the high school,” Doyle answered quickly. “But—God, let me think—his address is on Bennett Avenue. So he’d take the A.”
“He’d save at least ten minutes taking the A.”
“Yeah. So he’s got about a forty-five-minute head start to toss whatever’s spooked him.”
Larkin floored the gas, laid on the horn, cut around a USPS mail truck, sped through an intersection as the yellow light turned red, and swerved around a guy with a hand truck stacked with bottles of liquor as he crossed the street from his double-parked delivery truck with its hazards on.
“I’d like to get there alive, Larkin,” Doyle objected, grabbing theoh-shithandle beside his head.
“Reynold’s text message.”
“What?”
Larkin said, with frightening composure for a man doing fifty in a twenty-five zone, “Reynold’s text specified that he was looking for a redheaded girl, age fourteen.”
“I do recall that.”
“He sent that message Tuesday, April 28. He inquired, after two weeks had passed, for an update on Tuesday, May 12, at 4:47 p.m. A second text was date-stamped 6:10 p.m. The last message was delivered Wednesday, May 13, at 7:12 a.m., when Reynold implied he’d find what he was looking for himself.” Larkin made a hard right on West 184th Street.
“You think he has a kid at his apartment?” Doyle protested, his voice rising suddenly, uncharacteristically, in volume.
“I think it’s been a long time since I’ve been surprised by the depths human depravity is capable of reaching, and if there’s even a remote possibility that it involves a child, I’m willing to break a few rules of the road in order to prevent a tragedy.”
The sudden whir of sirens sounded, and red and blue lights spun in Larkin’s rearview mirror. He ignored the cruiser attracted by an expensive car they could ticket the hell out of, and turned down the one-way, tree-lined Bennett Avenue. Larkin hit the brakes as they neared West 181st Street, parked in the middle of the road, and climbed out from behind the wheel. He slammed the car door and held his badge in his free hand to the cruiser pulling up hard behind him.
