Larkin looked at the penmanship a second time, then turned to enter the dark apartment.
“Ira’s back tomorrow, isn’t he?”
Larkin glanced at Gabel. “Yes. He gets into LaGuardia at 7:30 p.m.”
“You gonna meet him at the airport?”
Larkin was starting to sweat, and a headache had been working behind his left eye since leaving Dr. Myers’s office. His hand was hot and greasy from the pizza. He wanted to open this package. In the politest monotone he could muster, Larkin answered, “No. He’s catching a cab.”
“Hm-hm. You used to be able to meet people at the gate. That was a long time ago, of course.”
“Yes. Well. Thank you, Mr. Gabel. Good night.” Larkin stepped inside 4A and shut the door.
He flipped the deadbolt, turned the lights on, and promptly hung his keys on the hook beside the door. Larkin walked across the studio and toward the kitchen. The apartment had always lacked the usual stressors that had driven Larkin in the past to, on more than one occasion, grab a trash bag and began shoving inside anything he considered visual white noise. That had been one of Noah’s first experiences with living under the same roof as Everett Larkin—fishing a power strip, collapsible umbrella, three magazines, an iPhone charger, and the television remote from the trash bins outside.
And it wasn’t like Doyle had done anything special on Larkin’s behalf—he hadn’t even known how clutter was a massive trigger. The home—and Larkin’s heart and soul stressed that particular descriptor—had always felt… comfortable. Personal. Humble. With the television against the bare brick wall that’d been playing baseball almost nonstop since the start of the season, the fridge with photographs of Abigail Doyle tacked under magnets, the collection of well-read and worn books that showcased Doyle’s interests and professional skill sets, the rumpled bed that was a little too small for two grown men behind the set of glass french doors, the cityscape paintings that Larkin got lost in, and the fairy lights—their warm glow all-encompassing, a mimic of Doyle’s embrace.
Larkin dropped the pizza and mail on the countertop, carefully set the box on the kitchen table, then went to the bedroom. He returned a few moments later, sans suit coat, with a pair of latex gloves in one hand. Larkin approached the table a second time, leaned over the top to turn on the window unit, then calmly rolled his shirt sleeves to his forearms and donned the gloves as cold air began chugging into the room.
Fetching a pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer, Larkin carefully sliced the packing tape along the top of the box. He folded the flaps back, reached inside, and removed a VHS still in its cardboard sleeve. RCA, the kind of consumer brand blank tape that used to be sold when Larkin was a kid. There was a label on the outside of the tape with the same blocky writing spelling out:
Watch me, Detective Larkin!
Larkin calmly set the tape back in the box. He tapped the tabletop with his fingertips a few times, took out his phone, and chose a number from his contacts. “…pick up,” he murmured, listening to the rings.
But voicemail answered, and his deep, smoky, and unhurried message was an echo of the one on his office phone. “Detective Ira Doyle, Forensic Artists Unit. Please leave a message.”
Beep.
“Ira, it’s Everett.” Larkin checked his watch. “It’s 7:32—well, 4:32 for you. There was a package for me when I got home. I believe it’s another memento mori from the same individual who left the postmortem photograph on Niederman’s body. I’m going to call my lieutenant and have it picked up for evidence collection. I just wanted you to know because of rule five. That’s it. I miss you.”
Chapter Three
Lieutenant Connor, an imposing Irishman whose features were tempered only by the smattering of freckles across his face and the backs of his hands, looked horribly out of place among the glittering fairy lights and sudoku puzzles and chewed pens. He seemed tired for a Wednesday, suit wrinkled and expression pinched, but then again, Connor had been supervising the overworked and understaffed Cold Case Squad for the better part of a decade, and Larkin could imagine that acting as the defense between detectives and top brass administrators would exhaust anyone, no matter how proficient they were at the job.
Larkin stood in the kitchen, leaning against a counter, arms crossed. He watched one of the fifty CSU detectives employed with the city snap a few photographs of the cardboard box and VHS tape still on the table, then bag them as evidence. He glanced at Connor, whose interest in the proceedings had waned and who was now discreetly studying the studio. Larkin imagined seeing this apartment for the first time, but with the added assumption that it had been his own, and he knew Connor was struggling to pair the décor with the man he knew as Everett Larkin. But still, Larkin could see the wheels turning, because humans were curious, were voyeuristic, and after the Niederman case, the media certainly hadn’t lessened the city’s interest in the “modern mastermind detective.”
Connor let out a deep breath and turned to Larkin. “I’d say it’s a copycat, but we never shared the detail of the message on the photograph with the press.”
“Deliver me to Detective Larkin.”
Connor grunted in acknowledgment. He ran his meaty fingers through his short, strawberry-blond hair. “Same person, you think?”
“The repetition of a command addressed to me via an inanimate object, not unlike Lewis Carroll’sAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland—‘drink me,’ ‘eat me’—would suggest this package is from the same person responsible for the photograph on Niederman’s person Tuesday, May 19. However, I would like to note that the handwriting isn’t a match.”
“Did you watch the tape?” Connor asked.
“I haven’t owned a VCR since high school.”
Connor glanced over his shoulder, watching the detective fill out a chain of custody form on the bagged evidence. To Larkin, he asked, “Can we get the camera footage for this building?”
“It’s a hundred-year-old walk-up with no live-in super,” Larkin said flatly. “The closest thing to a security system is the elderly man in 5A. His fingerprints will be on the package, as he took it upon himself to drop it off at my door. I’ve already spoken with him—he couldn’t say which, if any, service was responsible for its delivery.”
“No postage,” Connor grumbled, thinking aloud. “It’s the same as the letter your husband got.”
SHAME ON YOU, LARKIN
TO IGNORE MY MEMENTO
