“Reynold didn’t kill those kids,” Larkin stated.
Doyle’s brows knitted together as he shot Larkin a look. “What?”
Larkin stood and walked to the door. “Come with me.” He heard Doyle tell Megan he’d be back in a moment, that’d he’d be right outside the door, and then the two detectives stood in the hall, empty but for the uniformed officer and the occasional nurse in scrubs rushing by.
“What’s going on?” Doyle asked.
“Gary Reynold’s psychology isn’t that of a killer.”
Doyle settled his hands on his hips. “I want to disagree, but I’ll hear you out first.”
“Appreciated, thank you. Molesters can be broken into two major categories: situational or preferential. Reynold has made it clear that he has a type and it’s consistent, so he can be considered preferential. Megan didn’t attend PS 51, and I’d wager none of the other victims did either, ergo he prefers strangers. Reynold kept a collection, and while violent by the very nature of its content—the sitters were all dead—it’s fantasy fodder. He prefers not to inflict pain. These are all indicators of an introverted molester personality.”
“Larkin,” Doyle said with a heavy breath. “How can you claim he’s averse to violence? He kidnapped Megan. He tased you.”
“He tased me because he was cornered and panicking. The tase, while it most certainly pissed me off, wasn’t lethal. Even more to the point, Reynold had forty-five minutes, if not an hour, head start on us, but he didn’t kill Megan, didn’t dispose of her as evidence. He couldn’t do it because neither homicide, nor sexual homicide, is within his makeup.”
“Hang on.Sexualhomicide? Do you mean—”
“I believe that Gary Reynold is a closet collector—someone who doesn’t engage physically with their victims. They use photos or videos to fantasize and that satisfies their urges. But considering the subject matter of his collection, I believe Reynold might also straddle a very rare subcategory of sexual dysfunction, in that he has necrophilic fantasies. This is similar to the closet collector, in that they fantasize without engaging, and in this instance that would be in either necrophilic homicide—murder in which to obtain a corpse—or regular necrophilia—the use of the already dead. He puts in a request,an order, and then he’s delivered a photograph that aligns with his deviant fantasies.”
Doyle had reached up as Larkin spoke, dug his fingers into his thick brown hair, and left them there. “This is sick.”
“Yes.”
“But then how do you explain Megan? How do you explain his deviation from an established norm?”
“Desperation. An urge that was carefully controlled until it reached its peak, and when this unknown individual he was texting failed to follow up, Reynold tried to quench the thirst himself. But because he’s not inherently a murderer—please don’t misunderstand me here, Gary Reynold is a disgusting fuck who belongs behind bars for the rest of his life—he tried to replicate his photo collection with a living girl. Mark my words, when we find the photos he took of Megan, they will be posed in such a way as tosuggestshe’s dead.”
“But if he didn’t sexually assault her, why keep her afterward?”
“What else was he to do,” Larkin asked. “While we can believe, based on the photos discovered hidden in the frame, that Reynold has been making these purchases for decades, he’s never donethisbefore. Rookie mistakes from the very beginning. He didn’t know what else to do.”
Doyle tugged his fingers free from his hair, leaving it in more of a disarray than usual. He watched a nurse scuttle past, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor. Doyle looked back at Larkin. “Since sometime around 1985, someone has been killing at-risk youth and selling death portraits to paying customers. That’s what you’re suggesting?”
Larkin nodded solemnly.
“This still doesn’t explain how Marco fits into the storyline.”
“No. Not yet.” Larkin reached out and quickly patted down some of Doyle’s errant hairs.
“How did you figure this out?”
Larkin’s mouth quirked, and while the flat effect of his voice was still present, he quietly sang, “One of these things is not like the others.”
“Did you just quoteSesame Street?”
“I watched my fair share of children’s programming while married to an elementary teacher.” And although Larkin was still legally married to said man, he felt it was a technicality not worth bringing into the conversation. “The photograph of the boy that I found in Marco’s custody was obviously different from the other victims, but seeing as how the details of the picture itself aligned with the others, I concluded that, much like how Reynold has a penchant for redheaded girls, someone… preferred him.”
“I got it.”
“I feel the pertinent details to glean from Megan are, one, where did she meet Reynold, two, has she seen any other strange individuals in that area before, and three, everything that Reynold said or did prior to our arrival.”
Doyle nodded, scrubbed his face with both hands, and said as he reached for the doorknob, “Let me lead.”
“Did you ever watchThe Max Headroom Show.”
“She’s a teenager, Evie. Teenagers say stupid, sometimes mean, things.” Doyle entered the room, took a seat on the corner of the bed again, and with pen to paper, asked, “Megan, can you tell us everything that happened once Reynold came home? Up ’til when we entered the apartment?”
