Doyle said, “If itisStephanie, how has Phyllis not noticed her own wife is missing?”
“How has she not noticed the smell,” Larkin corrected.He started toward the door when he heard a muffledtap,tap,tap.He stopped, looked up.
“What?”
Tap,tap,tap.
Larkin ducked out of the room and slipped around Doyle.Pistol still in hand and back pressed to the handrail, he slowly started up the stairs.He’d made it about halfway up when someone—a man—crept out of the living room and back into the vestibule.The stranger was dressed in khakis and a baby blue polo shirt, the sleeves bulging around his big biceps.He had an undercut and the kind of beard that belonged on either an Alaskan frontiersman or a barista from Williamsburg.The strap of a leather satchel was taut across his muscular chest, the bag resting on his backside, and he held an expensive-looking digital camera in one hand.
The stranger looked down, clicked a few buttons on the camera, then turned toward the basement steps, almost as if instinct had told him he wasn’t alone.The man’s gaze locked with Larkin’s, and he immediately all but flung himself out the still-open front door.
Larkin charged up the stairs, shouting, “NYPD!”
The intruder was already across the driveway and onto the sidewalk by the time Larkin reached the threshold.Doyle was calling for Larkin, but he didn’t stop.He raced out the door, back into the muggy aftermath of the storm, following the stranger along Carroll and west toward Clinton.Even in a suit and dress shoes, Larkin was fast.Gripping his SIG in his left hand, Larkin pumped his arms, pounded the sidewalk, and closed the distance.
At the corner, the stranger nearly plowed into two men carrying an ornamental sideboard from a funeral home toward a parked moving van, their angry voices filling the air like the drone of wasps.The man stumbled like a newborn foal into the crosswalk while keeping a desperate hold on his camera.A truck coming up Clinton laid on its horn.Larkin flew past the two still-shouting movers, into the road, and slammed into the suspect with all of his forward momentum—the two crashing to the pavement on the opposite side of the street and narrowly missing being flattened by an oversized pickup.The camera skittered and scraped loudly across the sidewalk, just out of reach.
“Get off of me!”the intruder shouted.
Larkin grabbed the man’s right arm and yanked it back and up behind him, causing him to let out a high-pitched yelp.“Which letter in NY-goddamn-PD did you not understand?”
“This is police brutality!”
“The hell it is.Stop moving!”
Larkin’s one-handed grip wasn’t enough to hold the bigger man down, and he was able to yank free and awkwardly roll onto his back.Larkin clamped his thighs tight, straddling the intruder’s hips, and by the way the stranger’s face had taken on a sudden, almost waxy appearance, Larkin’s look of rage was far outweighing any embarrassment regarding their physicality.
“Who are you,” Larkin demanded.
“J-Joe Sinclair.”
Larkin cocked his head as his Rolodex memory automatically spun.He knew this name.He knew this man—the reporter who’d endeavored for an interview during the Death Mask Murders.Unprompted, Larkin said, “Out in NYC.”
Joe’s eyebrows rose.“Y-yeah.Wow, you remember—”
“What were you doing in that home.”
“Following a story.”
“You were following me,” Larkin corrected.
“You’re like no one I’ve ever met before,” Joe said in a rush.
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“I mean it,” he protested.“It—it’s not just that you’re open in a conservative work environment, or that you’re handsome and highly decorated—”
“Get to the fucking point,” Larkin snapped.
“I’ve heard you’re a genius—a literal genius.And that you’re hunting your fourth serial killer in as many months.”
“Were you at Pier 34 last night.”
Joe swallowed and then nodded.
Larkin grabbed a fistful of Joe’s polo and yanked him up.“Have you been following my ex-husband.”
Joe was taken aback as he repeated, “Ex-husband?”
