“He said the Honda showed up between twenty-four and forty-eight hours after Joe dropped by the apartment.”
Still tapping buttons, Doyle murmured, “Given that it sounds a bit like the driver followedJoe, my first step would have been to ask Joe of any Honda Civic owners he might know.”
Larkin grunted.“And if my job were so simple I’d have put in for early retirement already.”He raised his phone a second time, pulling up Lieutenant Connor from his list of contacts.
“Look at this.”
Larkin paused, thumb hovering over the Call button.He sidestepped closer and took a look at the digital screen as Doyle began to swipe through previously taken photographs, a timeline of their day, only played out in reverse: pictures of Phyllis Clark’s bedroom, living room, like the photographer didn’t know what the subject matter was.The next was of Larkin and Doyle standing at the end of the driveway before they’d approached the front door, taken from behind and farther down the street.Another of Larkin entering Precinct 19 the night before, and at least a dozen more—these taken with a zoom lens—of him standing in a cone of orange light on the pier.
“How could I have not noticed.”
Doyle lowered the camera but didn’t say anything.
“Fuck.”Larkin aggressively tapped Connor’s number and put the phone to his ear.
His lieutenant had already been made aware of the immediate situation in Brooklyn, but after a succinct recap of Noah’s claims involving the blue Honda, how it was noticed shortly after Joe attempted to obtain personal information on Larkin, and how both car and journalist had played a role in Larkin’s life over the last twenty hours, Connor was well and truly pissed.
“What was I saying to you this morning about hack journalists?”
“I don’t—wedon’t believe Joe’s presence is unrelated,” Larkin interjected.“There is a very real connection between his attempt to write some kind of tell-all and the fact that he was just silenced, execution-style, right in front of me.I don’t know how he plays into our case, into a relationship with the sender, but hedoes.”
Doyle was coming back from returning the camera to Millett so that it could be logged as evidence.He stopped beside Larkin and waited.
“Sounds a little conspiratorial to me,” Connor was saying.
“If it wasn’t all connected, I’d have an evidence marker next to my head too,” Larkin countered, internally wincing when he caught the flash of distress roll across Doyle’s face like a lightning strike.Hastily, Larkin continued, “But the sender doesn’t want me dead.He wants a battle of intellect, and he doesn’t want anyone in the way of his game.Right now, sir, he’s winning.”
Connor grunted.“Did you at least see the shooter?”
“He had to roll the window down,” Larkin confirmed.“I saw his face in a three-quarter profile.”
Doyle suddenly cut in with, “You did?”
Larkin looked at Doyle, nodded, but said to Connor, “I can look through some mugshots when I get back to the precinct.But first, I need to return to 239 Carroll Street.There’s a DB in the basement who’s not the owner, and the refrigerator Wagner’s body was found in originated from this home.”
“All right.I’ll work on damage control from here.Grim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re okay…right?”And the emphasis suggested Connor meant far more than being physically sound.
“I’m okay,” Larkin confirmed.He ended the call and tucked the phone in his back pocket.
Doyle prompted, “You saw the shooter?”
“I saw his weapon first,” Larkin answered as he started across the street in the direction of Phyllis’s home.“An old-school revolver.But then I saw his face, yes.”
Doyle caught up to Larkin with a few long-legged strides.“Would you remember his features?”
Larkin gave him a touch of exasperated side-eye.
“What I mean is, I think you should sit for a composite sketch.”
—the antiseptic perfume of a hospital, languishing in bed, police asking, “What did he look like?What did he sound like?”but Larkin couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak, could do nothing but sob, and hope had died on the endnotes of a bad dream—
They had just walked past the wrought-iron fence of the funeral home when Larkin answered uncompromisingly, “I’m not a victim.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
