“Evie?”
“I have to tell you something, but you’re going to get angry with me and I don’t want to carry that memory around.”
“I’m not going to get angry,” Doyle replied, his voice that ever-smooth and smoky heat.
“Yes, you will.”
Doyle leaned forward, closing whatever distance between them that the table had provided. “Is it important that I know?”
Larkin nodded.
“Then if it’s important, I can’t be angry.”
That made a certain amount of sense, and Doyle was, if anything, polar opposite of Noah when it came to action and reaction. But Larkin had been bruised and battered enough times, could dredge up any number of incidents where telling Noah something he had felt was important to their relationship ended up becoming an unforgettable association of humiliation or frustration, and Larkin was so afraid he was the common factor and that this—with Doyle—would turn out no different.
Doyle touched Larkin’s wrist, gave the hair tie a few tugs.
“On April 1, while I was waiting to go into surgery, a letter was dropped off at the hospital.”
“What kind of letter?”
Larkin retrieved his phone, opened his email, and spent a moment scrolling before he located the correspondence from the Bronx detectives who’d been assigned the case. They had provided a photo of the cut-and-pasted letters for Larkin’s own record, as well as an update, which basically said they had jack shit to go on and to simply stay safe and vigilant. He offered Doyle the phone.
Doyle accepted, studied the body of the email, the attached photo, his thick brows drawing together. He’d finished after a full minute—he must have, since the email was brief and Doyle was a relatively fast reader—but he hadn’t looked up from the screen.
Larkin tilted his head, caught the absent flicker of Doyle’s eyes roaming the screen, staring right through it, as he must have been considering what to say. Larkin felt like he was going to be sick. He stood up.
Without looking, Doyle reached a hand out, not touching Larkin’s arm, but hovering very close to it. “Please sit.”
Larkin slowly sank back into the chair. He rubbed his sweaty palms against his trouser legs. “Don’t yell.”
At that, Doyle looked up. “I will never raise my voice to you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Doyle pushed the phone across the tabletop. It bumped Larkin’s latte and coffee sloshed over the rim. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? Why didn’t you tell me yesterday, when Iaskedif there was something more going on?”
Larkin turned off the screen before pocketing the cell. He absently drew his index finger back and forth through the spilled coffee. “I didn’t know how. At first I—I didn’t have the spoons to even think about it. Then the boys in the Bronx had no leads. And seeing as I was unable to make sense of its meaning, I suppose I didn’t want to… worry you unduly.”
Doyle sighed. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and stretched his long legs out to the side of Larkin’s seat. “But you know it’s related to these cases we’re working now. I mean—right? That subway token?”
Larkin nodded. He tugged a napkin free from the dispenser and sopped up the sticky mess. “In the beginning, I believed it to be a direct message from Marco’s killer.”
“Maybe from Archie?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re considering that pig responsible for everything?”
“It makes the most sense. I believe that on the night of May 19, 1997, Marco saw something, and he was murdered to keep it secret. I believe what he saw involved Archie and these children.” Larkin finally looked up. Doyle didn’t seem… angry, per se, but he was definitely tense, despite the boneless way he had of sitting. “I’m now uncertain that the April Fools’ letter is actually from our perpetrator.”
“Why?” Doyle asked warily.
So Larkin told him.
Amid the somber and raw genius of Bessie Smith on the overhead speakers, the steam and frothing milk at the cappuccino machine behind the counter, and the quietclick,click,clickof the single other patron typing on their laptop, Larkin told Doyle about the fax. He told Doyle about its anonymity, its veiled threat against their careers, the usage of police department lingo, and how, short of a professional handwriting analyst to confirm his claim, Larkin believed the sender to be the same individual who’d scribbled on the back of the first postmortem photograph.
Doyle was leaning forward again, elbow on the tabletop, hand rubbing his ever-present stubble. He asked, when Larkin had finished, “What did your lieutenant say?”
