“Goddammit,” Larkin swore, moving forward with the intent of rewinding the tape for a second look at the scene of the dead body.
Doyle reached the unit first, putting a hand over the buttons of the VCR. “Hang on.”
Larkin looked at the screen as the tracking cleared and the scene was now of a woman on stage. She tugged a black, semitransparent veil from her face in a manner meant to be coy, provocative, and in doing so, exposed dark curls and the pronounced nose that marked her as the same individual in all three scenes. She wore a risqué, probably black costume of what appeared to be sequins, beads, and feathers. The recorded music she was dancing to hadn’t been picked up decently enough by the camcorder for Larkin to hazard a guess in a game of Name That Tune, but it was clear she had a practiced routine, hitting certain beats with the removal of a stocking here and unbuttoning of the corset-like top there, all in a very tongue-and-cheek manner.
Larkin narrowed his eyes as he studied the blurry picture and said, “I admit, I’m now a touch out of my element.”
“It’s burlesque,” both Doyle and Connor said at the same time.
Larkin turned his attention on the two, who were also giving each other curious glances. “I see,” he stated. “And the correlation between live sex and burlesque would be… what.”
Doyle answered, “Burlesque was around a hundred years before Times Square started to….”
“De-evolve,” Larkin suggested.
Doyle shrugged one shoulder. “By the ’70s, audiences didn’t want glitz and glam and teasing anymore. They wanted skin and raunch—the nastier the better. The scene was overtaken by porn stars in the ’80s who stripped for extra cash, and real burlesque dancers had to adapt or die.”
The video abruptly cut and the screen went black.
Connor said gruffly, “Looks like that’s all she wrote.”
Larkin rewound the tape, pausing on the moment the veil-like material had been lifted from the face of the dead woman in bed. He gave his mental Rolodex a hard spin, studying the faces of every cold case victim as they flashed through his memory, one after another, after another, after another….
“I don’t know her,” he concluded. “This sender is seemingly providing a starting point in solving one murder by giving meanotherunsolved case destined to overlap. A bit like how Marco Garcia’s case overlapped with the six murdered runaways. It’s up to me—” Larkin stopped and corrected himself with a look toward Doyle, “Up tousto glean enough clues from the photograph or video, to begin the investigation. So what do we know: The sequences are out of order, historically. This victim was likely a burlesque dancer first, a… uh… love-team participant second, according to Doyle’s comment of adapt or die, and then she ends up dead in a hotel in the Times Square area during the early ’80s, based on the style of the push-button phone, the color of the bedding, and the suggestion behind her profession. It’s now a reasonable assumption that this woman’s death will relate to yesterday’s mummy-in-the-wall.”
“Shit,” Connor said with a humorless laugh. “There were so many fleabag joints around there that’ve since been razed. And who’s to say she didn’t die of an OD? So many of those girls worked the sex industry just to afford their habits.”
“I doubt the sender is providing cases of coke overdoses to investigate. She was murdered.” Larkin asked Doyle, “Did you note anything related to mourning customs.”
Doyle gave a hesitant shake of his head. “Not really.”
“I don’t know how the fuck you’d see anything,” Connor interjected. “This video’s potato-quality. Can we send it in to be enhanced?”
“A decent editor could clean it up,” Doyle answered. “Sharpen the picture, balance the color, lighten some of the scenes, but beyond that, you can’t enhance information that isn’t there.”
Connor rubbed his chin as he stared thoughtfully at the paused image of the unidentified woman. “I’d love to get a clearer picture of her so you boys could get her face out to the public.”
“We can always make an inquiry with Quantico,” Doyle suggested. “I just got back from a forensic artists’ symposium last night. The FBI had a few guest speakers who work in forensic image analysis. I have their business cards.”
Larkin had been under Connor’s supervision for exactly four years and ten months, to the day, and he understood his lieutenant well enough by then to know that the last thing Connor would willingly do was invite the FBI into his backyard, in literally any capacity, without having first exhausted every tool at the NYPD’s disposal. It was an ego thing. Big-city cops were sensitive to being seen as less than capable. Every detective Larkin knew, himself included, prided themselves on being able to close the same sort of cases the FBI did, and without having the big gold letters to hide behind.
So Larkin suggested, “What about a composite sketch.”
Connor perked up and looked at Doyle.
Doyle’s thick brows rose, and he slowly pointed at the screen. “You want me to draw her?”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Connor asked.
“A photograph is always going to yield better results than an artist’s rendition,” Doyle began.
“We’ll do both,” Connor insisted, his tone dismissing Doyle’s doubts. “If you want to be included in this shitshow, Rembrandt, you gotta work for it.”
“Yes, sir,” Doyle replied.
Connor added, moving toward the door and opening it, “Send a screenshot of the vic along with your composite to public relations and have them get it on the Local4Locals app.”
“Yes, sir,” Larkin echoed.
