“Not really,” Larkin echoed.
“I mean, he touched my hair a few times, and it was definitely gross, but he didn’t… you know.”
Larkin asked, “He didn’t pressure you or force you into a sexual activity of any kind.”
“No. I kept telling her that too. I know how to look out for myself. After that… he took the pictures.” She met Larkin’s steady stare and said, “And I don’t fuckin’ care what you think of me doing that. I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
Larkin ignored the attitude. “Can you be more specific. Where in his house did these photos happen. How many did he take. How did he make you pose. Did you see what he did with the camera afterward.”
She countered by holding her arms up and moving them stiffly, saying, “I am a robot.”
“Megan,” Doyle chastised before Larkin could tell the kid it took a lot more than a mediocre attempt at HAL 9000 to hurt his feelings. “Larkin is one of the smartest detectives in this entire city. You want him on your team. You want him as a friend.”
“Why?” she protested. “He’s weird, and he doesn’t understand any of the shit you do. And you arrested the dude anyway, so what’s it matter?”
“It matters,” Larkin interjected, “because the details make all the difference between Gary Reynold getting a minimum of five years for kidnapping in the second degree, or life without parole for the aggravated murder of victims under the age of fourteen—if we can, in fact, connect any of these twenty-plus-year-old murders to Mr. Reynold with your help. If nothing else, your compliance will help us stick him with a minimum of twenty years for attempted murder in the first degree of an on-duty police officer. Now I ask you, Megan, do you want Mr. Reynold on the street again when he’s still physically capable of doing this, or would you rather he die behind bars.”
Megan had sort of shrunken inward as Larkin spoke, her shoulders hunched and chin tucked against her chest. “How many other kids?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Five, that we know of,” Larkin answered. “One was an eighteen-year-old boy named Marco Garcia. The other four, we don’t know their names. One boy and three girls. We estimate they’re all between twelve and fifteen years old.”
“Were they runaways?”
Doyle answered, “Due to some of the evidence that’s arisen, we think there’s a high probability they were at-risk youth.”
Larkin spread the aforementioned photographs out in his mind, organized them chronologically to the best of his ability, beginning with the girl, whose cryptic message to Larkin was scribbled on the back, then the black boy found insideHamlet, and finally the two girls found hidden in Reynold’s picture frame. All of the photos were taken by the same individual, of this both he and Doyle were confident, but the anomaly was the boy.
The girls were all different, sure—the first appeared to be Latina, older than the other two, andthosegirls were both white with red hair—one natural, one from a box. But to avoid being too categorical and developing blinders, the three were teenage girls. End of story.
So why the young boy?
Because he was someone’s type.
Just how Reynold had photographs of dead redheaded girls, had saved clippings of female teen models with red hair, had forced Megan to dye her hair for their “photoshoot.”
A quality, a characteristic, a feature—there was something about the male victim that someone had desired, craved,sought.
Sought like through a text message.
I’m looking for a boy or girl of a certain age.
And the individual on the other end checks their available wares….
Except, for men like Reynold, it wasn’t about deviant sexual fantasies that needed to be translated into the real world to satisfy the lust, the hunger. He wasn’t looking for a living, breathing child to manipulate and destroy. He was looking to live his fantasies through already-committed acts. Reynold was a collector of content, a closeted pedophile who didn’t do the abusing himself, but benefited off the actions perpetrated by another.
Actions taken to the point of murder.
Then staging the body in a provocative pose.
Snapping photos.
And…selling them?
With the exception of Marco’s death, Larkin had no bodies. He had no witnesses, no stories, not even their names. All he had were photographs. Death portraits of sad children, desperate children, all barely getting by in a rough-and-tumble world and killed so that some sick fuck could rub one off to their likeness night after night.
Those forgotten children had been a commodity, and Gary Reynold had been a repeat customer.
So the new question was, who was the one profiting?
