“Your commitment to justice has been noted.”
“Hey. Didyoustudy physics and biochemistry and then take an unpaid internship position with the state police up in goddamnAlbanyjust to get hands-on lab experience so you could spend your best years climbing into a manhole, waist-deep with rainwater runoff, motor oil, piss, used condoms, and more than one rat carcass?”
“No,” Larkin said simply.
“Then shut up,” Millett concluded.
“Thank you for your… informative call, Detective,” Larkin said after a beat. He began to pull the phone away from his ear, then stopped. “Millett.”
“Yeah?”
“On Monday, March 30, you asked if I was acquainted with Detective Doyle and suggested I speak with him regarding the death mask found in Madison Square Park.”
“Uh, sure, that sounds right.”
“Why.”
“Why…?”
“Why did you immediately suggest Doyle.”
“Because he’s a forensic artist.”
“Yes, he is. But how did you know Doyle would have such particular insight and knowledge into an obscure art form and no-longer-practiced mourning ritual.”
“I’ve technically met him once before, prior to him joining the force. An ex of mine—let’s just say they’re into some of the more eclectic moments in history—runs an antique store, and one of my first times visiting the shop, Doyle was there. I don’t think he remembers me from back then. It was nearly… seven years ago?”
“I don’t see the correlation.”
“Doyle was a museum curator. My ex was looking for direction regarding… what the hell was it… jet buttons or brooches or something equally not-interesting. Anyway. Doyle’s quiet but he’s hard to forget. A few years later, I was down at 1PP, for a meeting, I think, and I bumped into him. He’d just gotten promoted to detective and placed in the Forensic Artists Unit.”
Hesitantly, because Larkin had the distinct and wholly accurate account of Doyle saying he’d once had lofty aspirations of a museum job, not that he did, in fact, have a museum job on his resumé, he asked, “Which museum?”
Millett hummed under his breath for a moment. “New York’s Gilded Age Home of Art and Antiquities.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ira Doyle hadbeen a mystery all this time.
That’s what Larkin thought as he stared at the museum’s business page on Google. New York’s Gilded Age Home of Art and Antiquities, the preserved nineteenth-century home of a well-to-do family, now open for educational tours, had a museum next door that specialized in local history, with a particular emphasis on the Gilded Age. Located on East Fourth, between Lafayette Street and Broadway, the museum was open Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tickets could be purchased for the home, museum, or both—at a discount.
Doyle hadn’t ever mentioned how many years he’d been a police officer, but then again, Larkin had never asked. He had assumed it was a career path Doyle chose relatively soon after grad school, when taking his choice of words into consideration.
Had Larkin been wrong?
Again?
It appeared so.
Larkin picked up the phone, dialed the museum’s number, and listened to it ring three times before a snooty-sounding older man answered. On impulse, Larkin lied. “My name is Everett Larkin. I’m a detective with the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad. I’m doing some research in relation to a case and was told I might be able to speak with someone knowledgeable on postmortem photography.”
The man said, “I do believe this is a first for us, here at the Gilded Age Home. We receive inquiries from all over the country about this and that, but in all my years as museum director, I can’t ever remember thepolicemaking inquiries about our exhibits.”
“Yes. Well. And your name is.”
“Marcus Webster, sir.”
“Mr. Webster, is there someone I can speak with.”
