“Detective Everett Larkin, Cold Case Squad,” he called as both uniformed officers got out, hands going to their service weapons. He glanced over the roof of the Audi to see Doyle displaying his own identification, and then he approached the officers. “My partner and I are about to enter building 52. We believe there’s a person of interest in the garden apartment who is currently destroying evidence in an ongoing murder investigation. There is the possibility of a female minor being held captive on the premises.” Larkin tucked his badge away and pointed to the six-story apartment building on his right. “Backup has already been requested, but seeing as you two are especially gung-ho, please take point on the garden’s back door.”
The female officer who’d been driving, her eyes now as big as saucers, gave Larkin a curt nod and spirited “Yes, sir,” before directing her partner to follow.
Larkin and Doyle raced to the front door of the complex, and Larkin began tapping apartment buzzers, waiting for someone who might have been home in the middle of the day to answer. “December 24, 2010, I was responding to a domestic, but the woman had barricaded herself in the bathroom and couldn’t buzz me in.” Larkin pressed more button combinations after no initial response. “The only tenant to answer told me to ‘fuck off, you shit-for-brains, it’s Christmas Eve and my fuckin’ kid thinks you’re fuckin’ Santa and won’t go back to bed,’ so I found the fire escape, hoisted myself up, climbed to the third floor, and got inside through an unlatched living room window just as the boyfriend broke down the bathroom door and took a kitchen knife to the vic.”
“’Ello?” answered the staticky voice of a dude-bro who sounded higher than a kite.
“NYPD, buzz us inside, sir,” Larkin demanded.
The lock unhitched.
“I discharged my weapon for the first time that night,” Larkin told Doyle as he grabbed the handle and flung the door open. “Put a bullet in the sonofabitch’s kneecap.”
They both drew their pistols as they entered the vestibule and stepped through the second set of doors into a lobby the size of an afterthought, its walls a thick, landlord off-white, the tile floors and staircase banister a not-quite-black. To the right were two first-floor apartments; to the left was a partially shut door, no number indicating it was someone’s home. Larkin carefully stepped toward the left, moving on the balls of his feet to limit the echo his derby heels usually gave off. He took a quick glance through the crack, then cautiously pulled the door open. The bottom hinge groaned, and then there was enough room to slip down a set of stairs that led to the basement. Larkin took the steps slowly and at an angle, keeping his gun at low-ready while watching the door behind the stairs come into view.
House letters were affixed above the peephole:GDN.
Larkin reached the bottom of the stairs and moved against the wall, training his weapon on the front door as Doyle moved past him to a second door at his back. He was only gone a moment before returning to whisper, “Laundry and utility rooms. All clear.”
Larkin nodded, approached the apartment, and banged loudly with the side of his fist. “Gary Reynold, NYPD. I want you to unlock this door, take a step back, and put your hands where I can see them. Do you understand?”
There was a shuffle of movement somewhere inside, a harsh murmur, then a scream that was abruptly cut short.
“Gary!” Larkin shouted as Doyle holstered his weapon and left his side a second time. “I don’t want you doing something you’ll regret. Let the girl unlock the door and join me in the hallway. Then the two of us can talk.”
“Get out of the way.” Doyle had returned from the utility room wielding a sledgehammer heavy with cobwebs. He gripped the handle at the end with one hand, the other behind the head, and slammed it down against the lock plate. There was another scream from inside the apartment. Doyle heaved the sledgehammer again, this time breaking the lock. He dropped the hammer to one side, drew his Glock 17, then threw his shoulder against the door, snapping the chain lock free.
Larkin took lead, SIG raised as he entered the apartment. The tile floor of the expansive living room was dull and in desperate need of waxing, and the furniture sparse, even for a bachelor pad of a middle-aged man: a single recliner in the middle of the room; an entertainment stand against the far left wall housing a relatively small flat-screen television, home printer, and a closed laptop—all the cables were in complete disarray. The home had no bookshelves or even displaced books piled on the floor, despite Reynold’s entire adult life having been committed to the pursuit and study of the English language. A brief glimpse through an open doorway at the far end of the room showed a mattress on the floor, the bed made up of mismatching sheets. But it was the walls of the apartment that, for one critical second, distracted Larkin.
They were covered in cutouts and printouts of teen girl models. Years and years ofBack-to-School Fashion Tips & Tricks,OMG Hair,Are You a Flirt?, andGet Gorgeous Skin, all advertised with fresh faces and pert bodies no older than sixteen, with an apparent emphasis on redheaded girls. Mingled among the clothing and hair photoshoots and advertisements for the hottest eye cream of 2003 were paparazzi-esque photos of celebrity teenage couples. The boy in each relationship had been scribbled out with a black marker.
Larkin shook his head, blinked, saw a negative of a sea of smiling faces in his mind’s eye, then spun on his heel toward a sound directly behind him. Gary Reynold, tall and rail-thin, with black hair, a receding hairline, and a bushy mustache, shuffled sideways out of a kitchen, his forearm wrapped around the neck of a teen girl with poorly dyed red hair, wearing scuffed and beaten-up pink boots, black jeans torn at the knees with ripped mesh tights showing, along with a white long-sleeve shirt, the wrists frayed, and imprinted with a logo, probably for some obscure band, that looked to have been drawn by hand with a black Sharpie. She was crying, and cheap eye makeup was running down her cheeks.
“Gary—” was all Larkin got out before Reynold let out a panicked yelp, pointed the bright yellow taser he’d been holding to the girl’s head, and fired at Larkin.
The darts struck Larkin in the chest and 50,000 volts of electricity immediately locked and paralyzed his muscles. His jaw clenched, he made some kind of pained sound in his throat, and the SIG fell from his hand as he stumbled backward into the wall covered with one man’s sick obsession. Larkin knew, logically, that the current of electricity would only last five seconds, but it’d already felt like it’d been five fucking years, and he couldn’t react, couldn’t move, could only grit his teeth through the hurt.
Doyle was shouting, “Drop the weapon!”
The girl was sobbing louder.
“Drop the goddamn taser!”
Gary warbled something, protested something, screamed something.
Then Larkin was hit with a second round of darts, and he immediately collapsed to the floor.
—a cannonball off the dock, the lake swallowing him whole, the water growing colder, darker, more and more pressure squeezing his ribs, his lungs, sinking down, down, down—
“Move out of the way!”
—Noah standing on the bottom, sand and silt washing through his blond hair, watching with disapproval as Larkin slammed down on the lakebed like a cut anchor, oxygen knocked from his lungs, water filling him, choking him—
A deafening gunshot in close quarters.
—thunder crashing overhead, mud sloppy underfoot, Larkin’s skull fracturing, a crack so loud that he was deafened by it, and Patrick lay with his own head caved in, green eyes watching Larkin as Noah piled sediment atop his body like a gravedigger at work—
“Larkin? Evie?Evie, can you hear me?”
