“If not as an employee, she was at least on the premises,” Larkin corrected, watching Doyle as he rolled small chunks of clay and pressed them into the skull’s nasal cavity. He was constructing the bridge, nostrils, and philtrum of Jane Doe, according to tissue depth markers and previously established measurements. Larkin continued, “Wagner’s first arrest is confirmed to have been in 1981 after the New York Infirmary noted missing digoxin from a delivery of medication and later found it stuffed down Wagner’s pants.”
“Isn’t that a heart medication?” Doyle asked.
“Hmm. It was commonly used in treatment of arrhythmia or heart failure. It’s still on the market, but there’s safer alternatives. Wagner was subsequently fired and served only six months in jail. He was hired by the Dollhouse upon release later that same year and held the esteemed position of jizz mopper, which is exactly what it sounds like.”
Doyle said, “Digoxin wouldn’t sell on the street nearly as well as other substances he could have pinched. What was he thinking?”
“Perhaps he wasn’t,” Larkin answered. He returned his attention to the laptop still in front of him, maneuvering the touchpad with his right hand while continuing to write arrest dates throughout the timeline with his left.
“I forget sometimes you’re ambidextrous.”
“Only because my mother felt it was unbecoming to have a lefthanded child.”
“The horror,” Doyle said dryly.
Larkin’s mouth tugged in a half smile, but he didn’t look up from the screen. “That was the only theft on Wagner’s record. The rest is, as O’Halloran so crudely put it, ‘bottom-feeder shit.’”
“So he’s got a lot of stupid choices sandwiched between outliers—one theft and one murder,” Doyle concluded.
“It would appear as much.”
“What about Esther Haycox?” Doyle asked next.
“No records with the NYPD.” Larkin clicked and opened a minimized web browser. He asked, “How old would you estimate the woman in the video to be.”
Doyle shrugged one shoulder as he worked. “I don’t know. Early thirties, maybe?”
“And based on a number of visual indicators, those video clips likely originate from the early 1980s.”
“I think so.”
“Then it’s not unreasonable to presume our potential Esther Haycox was born in the late 1940s.”
Doyle glanced at Larkin while he smoothed and shaped the chin and lips. “Where’s this going?”
“The name Esther was at its most popular from the Gilded Age to around the end of World War One. It’s been on a downward trajectory ever since. The baby boom in America saw between three and four million births a year, but on average, only fifteen hundred babies each year were named Esther.”
“Please don’t ask me to find percentages….”
“What if Esther Haycox isn’t her real name.”
Doyle looked up again. “You think that because she doesn’t have a record?”
Larkin said solemnly, “A series of studies on the psychology of secret-keeping suggests that up to ninety-seven percent of adults in the United States maintainat leastone secret. Would you care to guess the most common theme.”
“Something sex-related,” Doyle offered.
Larkin nodded. “Of the three categories that scientists have lumped secrets into—immorality, connectedness, insight—connectedness rates the highest, with secrets most often pertaining to romantic or sexual desires, infidelity, or yearned-for behaviors. But sexual secrets aren’t just men being unwilling to tell their partner they want to explore rope play, or that they’ve been seeing someone else when their partner wished to maintain an exclusive relationship. Some secrets are obvious, overt—due to danger, societal backlash, or potential for blackmail inherent in the secret’s sexual nature. By this I mean the use of stage names by strippers and dancers.
“From the onset, dual lives has been a reoccurring concept in these cases.” Larkin stood from the stool. “Look at the handful of women who were victims of Regmore—Natasha Smirnova worked under the name Nadia. Danielle Moreno used Bettie. Baby and Simone—Catherine Giles and Teagan Brown, respectively. Alfred Niederman went by the screenname Archie Bunker in the old internet forums, and we’ve got a stack of still-unidentified, dead runaways who all likely used fake names themselves, if Megan Anne York, aka Megan Flouride, is any indication.”
Doyle tapped one of his tools absently against the tabletop. “I’ll argue that child runaways using false names is a bit more of a nuanced topic.”
“What do you mean.”
Doyle sighed, setting the clay tool aside. He shifted in his seat to face Larkin, his hands folded between his knees. “The first time I left home, I told other runaways my name was Sam. I was eight. Obviously, I wasn’t trying to ply my trade as a sex worker.”
“Of course not,” Larkin said, deliberately softening his tone.
