Larkin hadn’t experienced a religious upbringing, and he’d never found appeal in organized belief as a grown man, so he was willing to admit to a certain level of ignorance when it came to practicing faith, but Matilde Wagner’s devotion to dogma bordered on almost… pathetic to him. Earl had a record as long as Larkin’s arm, including multiple arrests for solicitation during the time of his employment at one of the most notorious peep shows to ever do business in the city. Matilde might have been one of those, ‘grass is always greener’ sorts, but she didn’tactuallybelieve Earl was reading passages from the bible to strippers and sex workers on his lunch breaks, did she?
“Where is Earl employed currently?” Doyle asked.
“He’s unemployed.”
Doyle made a note and asked after Matilde’s own career—still nursing but now part-time—her home address, and contact information. “I know this has been trying for you, Tilly.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I only have a few more questions. Can you tell me what time Earl woke up today?”
Matilde tilted her head side-to-side in thoughtfulness. “Eight o’clock.”
“You’re sure?”
“Every morning I get up at seven, shower, dress, make breakfast, and Earl sits down at the table just as the coffee maker beeps.”
Feigned thoughtfulness, Larkin self-corrected.
“How was he acting?” Doyle asked next, clearly trying to get at the meat and potatoes of their interview, but having to carefully toe the line so as not to lead Matilde in his questioning.
“He seemed his pleasant self.”
“Did he talk about any plans he had for the day? Errands? Chores? Meeting up with friends—anything like that?”
Matilde offered a little smile and said simply, “He didn’t mention his intention to shoot up a precinct, Detective Doyle. But the Devil prowls like a roaring lion, and even His most faithful children must keep sober minds. Like I said, Earl has been struggling these last few months… I fear the Devil got his claws into my dear husband.”
A brisk knock at the door interrupted them, and an older male surgeon in scrubs and a skullcap entered the room. He looked from Larkin to Doyle to Matilde, then said, “Mrs. Wagner?”
She set her bible aside and got to her feet.
Larkin reached down, nabbed the used tissue, and pocketed it as he stood as well. He pulled out his cell—“The surgery was a success.”—thumbed through the phone calls he’d missed that afternoon—“…move him to the ICU soon.”—and pulled up a photograph. Larkin said, “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Wagner.” He held his free hand out.
Matilde stared at Larkin for a long, withering moment, but then offered a flaccid handshake.
“Do you know this woman,” Larkin asked, raising his phone to display the composite sketch of the Joan Jett look-alike while still holding Matilde’s hand in his.
Matilde shrugged one shoulder. “No, sorry.”
“Did Earl.”
“I wouldn’t know, Detective,” Matilde said, her tone notably irritable when compared to how she spoke to Doyle. She tugged her hand free.
Larkin frowned a little.
Doyle tucked his notepad into his suit coat before offering Matilde his card, saying, “Please don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, or if you perhaps remember any more details about Earl’s recent behavior.” He led the way around her and the surgeon, held the door for Larkin, and followed him into the hall.
They walked toward the elevator banks, and Larkin said, only once the waiting room was out of sight, “If I may be the pot calling the kettle black… she was weird.”
“A little,” Doyle agreed. He stopped and looked down at Larkin.
The sounds of a busy urban hospital settled around them: the dings of elevators from the bank around the corner, sneakers squeaking on linoleum, one messed-up wheel on a cart, causing it to rattle obnoxiously as it was pushed down an adjoining hall, and all the various beeps and tones of machines echoing from open patient room doorways.
Larkin reached into the inner pocket of his suit coat he’d been carrying draped over one arm, retrieved the travel-sized bottle of Tylenol that Doyle had picked up for him before they’d even left the precinct that morning, and dry-swallowed two pills.
“Why did you abscond with a used tissue?” Doyle asked.
Larkin put the Tylenol bottle away before retrieving the tissue in question. He shook it out before turning it this way and that for Doyle to see. “She wiped her eyes.”
