“So the takeaway is, don’t get married,” Millett said, collecting a pair of latex gloves, safety glasses, and N95 mask from his kit.
Baxter countered, “I think the takeaway is actually, don’t be straight.”He was smiling to himself as he watched Millett finish donning his PPE, but as the CSU detective began to snap a series of rapid photographs—collecting visuals of the fridge from various angles and distances, including the aggressively scrawled message addressed to Larkin—Baxter’s smile faded.Rather solemnly, he asked, “This isn’t normal, is it?”
Funny, Larkin thought, how desperate humans were to anthropomorphize something as lawless as the universe, to find order in its chaos, to find sense in its senselessness, to accuse man of deviating from the norm—living—when there was nothing true of human design except for the inevitability ofdeath—butthisshould be viewed as abnormal.Nietzsche’s aphorism 109 warned:Let us be on our guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man!It is altogether unaffected by our aesthetic and moral judgments!
Man would always give birth.
Man would always raise his hand against the weak, the opposite, the other.
Man would always die.
And the world would never stop turning.It wasunaffected.
It was only through man’s ability to theorize, to conceptualize, to empathize that he could assign meaning—morality—to a word such as “normal.”
A cool breeze skimmed uptown along the river’s surface as Larkin said, “‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’Hamlet believed Denmark a prison, and so it was.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern believed it not, and so it wasn’t.”
Baxter raised an eyebrow.
“Humanity despairs forreason, doctor,” Larkin continued.“From belief in the divine to chaos theory to existentialism.No matter how fraught with uncertainty, mankind yearns for purpose.Murder is not normal because you believe it so.”
“You don’t?”
“What I believe won’t change anything.”
“And yet, here you are,” Baxter said, gesturing at the crime scene surrounding them.
“Yearning for purpose,” Larkin concluded.
O’Halloran heaved a sigh strong enough to move mountains.“A regular fucking conversation just isn’t possible when you three idiots are involved….”
Larkin glanced sideways at O’Halloran.“We can discuss the career of Pete Alonso at a later date.”
“Sure,” O’Halloran said with a disbelieving snort.
“I’ve become quite adept at the ins and outs of baseball over the last few months.”
O’Halloran’s expression shifted to that of wary curiosity.“Yeah?”
Larkin turned to watch as Baxter busied himself with his own safety gear.He continued in his usual monotone, “My Mets statistics are more a regurgitation of facts, but I’m certain you can use your limited imagination to pretend you’re discussing the current season with someone who appreciates sabermetrics.”
“Asshole.”
Millett lowered his camera.“Now that we’ve covered the American trifecta of divorce, death, and baseball… can we have Dr.Baxter examine the contents?”
“Please,” Larkin answered.
Millett reached across the fridge, gripped the door handle, and yanked it backward.
A pungent odor immediately wafted out, acrid and overwhelming, like bleach and cat piss and human decomposition had all been mixed together in the same vat and was left to bake in the summer sun.
“Jesus H.Christ and his twelve fucking apostles!”O’Halloran swore.He took a step back and put a hand over his nose and mouth.“I’ve been working Homicide nearly fifteen years and never smelled a body this rancid.”
Millett had immediately gone to his kit and collected additional PPE.He gave the fridge a wide berth and approached O’Halloran and Larkin with the offerings.
O’Halloran held up his other hand in defense and asked Larkin, “Grim, you want the case, right?”
“Of course.”
