Tick,tick,tick.
And while Larkin understood that the sensation of it growing louder and louder in the dark was entirely psychological, he nonetheless feared the fucking thing was going to wake Doyle, the rest of the fourth floor, and maybe the entire building at this rate.
Tick,tick,tick.
It was the kind of restless night that made Larkin long for the comfort of ZzzQuil—knocking back the artificial cherry antihistamines, the chemical aftertaste coating the back of his throat, forcing his exhausted brain to go into lockdown for a few hours so he could be a semifunctional human being the following day….
Larkin turned onto his side with a weary sigh. He stared at Doyle’s outline in the near-dark of the bedroom. Doyle always turned in the same way—draped across Larkin’s chest like a big housecat with boundary issues—and at some point in the night, he’d toss and turn into a new, convoluted position, as if his restless energy and tendency to fidget couldn’t even escape the siren’s song of deep sleep. Doyle was on his stomach, his arms wrapped around his pillow, face three-fourths buried into the down and cotton, which seemed uncomfortable to Larkin, but Doyle’s back rose and fell in steady, consistent breaths.
Since ditching the ZzzQuil, reducing his Xanax dosage, and becoming thoroughly attuned to what life was like for insomniacs everywhere, Larkin had taken to two midnight hobbies: watching Doyle sleep, which he admitted was a little strange but oddly, profoundly comforting, and pacing the living room, which he typically took to after Doyle inevitably buried his face into the pillow or comforter and staring at his bicep—while quite nice—was usually less interesting.
Tick,tick,tick.
Larkin hadn’t mentioned to Doyle the few extra pills he’d popped prior to his conversation with Charlie Stolle. It’d been stupid and reckless. He’d known that almost immediately, even if he hadn’t cared in the moment. And after the long and bloody day they’d had—made all the more tedious by Larkin’s fluctuating irritability and Doyle’s lack of sleep after dropping everything to fly home on the red-eye the night before—Larkin had felt it’d have been cruel to further burden Doyle with more of his shit. So instead they’d ordered Japanese for dinner, watched half of a Mets game, and gone to bed.
That was, after Doyle had spoken with Phyllis Clark, the woman who’d called the NYPD tip line, claiming their composite sketch was her long-lost girlfriend.
Tick,tick,tick.
Larkin climbed out of bed. He moved around the foot, grabbed his watch off the nightstand, and slipped out of the bedroom. He shut the french doors and began his pacing, knowing even in the dark which floorboards to avoid so the creak and groan of the last century didn’t wake Doyle.
The sender might have been acquainted with Alfred Niederman, the only criminal he’d likely met face-to-face, but it was rapidly becoming clear that the mystery itself—ormysteries, Larkin considered—didn’t quitebeginwith Niederman. It was as if Niederman fired the starting pistol at a marathon race, but as Larkin ran, he kept coming upon forks in the road with no signs, no directions, no indication of what path should be followed to reach the finish line. And no matter how far he seemed to have gotten, Larkin could still hear the whisper of Niederman’s laugh, reverberating between buildings, sinking into the dips between hills, haunting his cases and making a mockery of his deductive skills.
Niederman had murdered Mia Ramos in the mid-’80s, and the sender had put emphasis on the fact that Larkin had missed the importance of—
Larkin stopped dead in front of the window that overlooked West Thirteenth.
Deliver me to Detective Larkin!
On Friday, May 22, Noah had come over, bringing with him a letter that’d been left in the mailbox of the apartment they’d previously shared. And in that letter had been the phrase:Shame on you, Larkin, to ignore my memento. Larkin had, very briefly, wondered what specifically it’d been about the memento—Mia’s identity or the message written on the back—that he’d disregarded, but had come to the conclusion rather quickly that it must have been in regard towhoMia was andwhereshe would have crossed paths with a man like Niederman that’d ultimately give away the sender’s identity.
It’d been the obvious choice at the time.
But what if it wasn’t a matter of either-or?
What if it was both?
Because that message hadn’t been written by the sender.
It’d been written by Charlie Stolle, the former Vice cop who’d taken bribes to look the other way when Harry Regmore started murdering dancers in the early ’90s. Women like Natasha “Nadia” Smirnova, who’d worked the mean streets of Times Square the same time Stolle had in the mid-’80s. A woman who’d perhaps also been employed at the Dollhouse, prior to its 1989 closure. A woman who might have known resident Spunk Cleaner, Earl Wagner, who, according to his cult-like personality of a wife, had been employed at the peep show on and off since 1981. And if Stolle arrested Natasha on “numerous occasions,” he might very well have crossed paths with, even known, Earl Wagner beyond rounding him up during a prostitution raid.
And that would turn out to be thesameEarl Wagner who’d murdered Charlie Stolle in cold blood as he was admitting to Larkin that he was being blackmailed, being forced to write cryptic messages that left Larkin restless and pacing in the early morning hours.
“Evie?”
Larkin turned with a start.
Doyle stood in the partially open doorway, silhouetted by the meager streetlight that managed to leak into the apartment from between the window blinds. He had one hand braced on the still-closed french door and was rubbing his eyes with the other. Doyle’s voice was rough with sleep as he asked, “What’re you doing?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Because of Xanax or because of the case?” Doyle continued, a surprisingly pertinent question coming from a man who looked to be about only half-awake.
“Both,” Larkin answered.
Doyle scrubbed his face. “Want some warm milk?”
“Sorry.”
