Larkin rose to his feet. “I don’t need to.” Point-blank, he said, “I don’t trust you to watch my back, Ulmer. I suggest you cut your losses and worry about your own caseload.”
“You think I don’t know how to file a complaint?”
“Connor will defer to me,” Larkin said assuredly.
Ulmer smiled at that. “I won’t be going to Connor.” He tapped the printouts again, more gently this time, and walked away.
Doyle was entering the bullpen from the Fuck It, studying his open sketch pad when Ulmer not so subtly shoved his shoulder in passing. Doyle turned, watched the other detective return to his seat, then moved to stand in front of Larkin’s desk. “That guy has his testosterone cranked to twelve at all times.”
Larkin was still watching Ulmer from across the room.
“Larkin?”
“Hmm?”
Doyle raised his brows. “Everything okay?”
“It’s fine.” He picked up an accordion file from the far end of the desktop, removed a copy of Janie Doe’s postmortem photo from within, then laid it and the three missing persons reports across his keyboard. “In your opinion, do any of these young girls look like our Janie.”
Doyle lowered his sketch pad and studied the pixelated photos. “If I’m to be Bertillon about it….” He tapped the middle one. “Her. She has the same thick, square earlobes.”
Larkin picked up the document Doyle indicated, then raised his head and asked with a curious inflection, “Bertillon?”
“Alphonse Bertillon,” Doyle answered. His face practically lit up as he asked, “Do you not know who he is?”
Larkin hesitantly shook his head.
“Oh my God. Okay. Parisian police officer who developed a criminal identification system in the late nineteenth century that was adopted by a number of major US cities, including New York. The system was eventually replaced by routine mugshots and fingerprinting, but at the time, the concept was to be able to identify a repeat criminal by a number of standardized measurements, like the length of the head, middle finger, and left foot—”
“That sounds incredibly flawed,” Larkin cut in.
“Yeah, it was,” Doyle agreed, still brimming with the same eagerness seen in a child on Christmas morning. “But my point is, Bertillon was also big on ears. The catalogue card included a space for measurements of the right ear. It was sort of like the original fingerprint—very unique to the individual.”
“You’re quite excited about this.”
“I don’t often know something so… niche that you don’t already know.”
“That’s simply not true.” Larkin studied the missing persons report. “You know an awful lot about the Mets.”
“The Mets aren’t niche,” Doyle pointed out.
“They are to me.” He glanced up once more, catching Doyle’s smile—warm and a little indulgent. Larkin read from the printout, “Mia Ramos. DOB: March 3, 1972. At the time of her disappearance, she was twelve years old, four foot nine inches, ninety-five pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, Latina. She was reported missing on Sunday, October 14, 1984, by her aunt after she hadn’t heard from Mia in two weeks.”
Doyle sighed and ran one hand through his hair a few times. “No one noticed a twelve-year-old girl missing fortwo weeks?”
Larkin remained carefully neutral to the note of dismay he picked up in Doyle’s words. “The responding detective in ’84 noted that Mia was rebellious, had a tumultuous relationship with her mother and stepfather, and had run away three times within the last two years. The mother claimed her daughter had taken off again and always resurfaced when she ran out of cash, which was typically lifted from her mother or aunt’s purse.”
“Except she never came home,” Doyle concluded.
Larkin picked up the photo of Janie Doe and studied the two side by side. “If there’s a chance of Janie Doe being Mia Ramos, she was alive a few years before running afoul of Niederman.” He turned the pictures around to show Doyle. “She’s perhaps fifteen or sixteen in this death portrait.”
“Janie was definitely going through puberty,” Doyle said with a nod of agreeance. “Chest and hips are developed… she’s not four nine or ninety-five pounds either.” He took the memento mori and held it close. “Her and Mia have the same heart-shaped face, same curly hair….”
“And the same ears,” Larkin added gently.
Doyle handed the photo back. “So she might be Mia Ramos.”
“It’ll require an interview with the mother and aunt,” Larkin answered. He pulled his phone from his pocket and added the family’s contact information listed on the report. “Any sort of confirmation without the known whereabouts of her body will continue to prove problematic, but at least we have a starting point now.” Larkin finished typing and looked up. “Is the composite sketch done.”
