Through gritted teeth, Ulmer said, “You’re too fucking much.”
Larkin closed the distance between them.“Then go find less.”
Ulmer smacked the folder in Larkin’s hand, causing the contents to spill across the floor.“Clean up your shit.”He turned and stormed down the hall.
“Asshole,” Larkin muttered with a small shake of his head.He crouched, collected the documents with their faded and cracked typeset, and brought them to the worktable.He’d only reordered a few pages before his eyes caught:October 2, 1982.
Larkin looked at the stack of folders he and Doyle had pulled, had intended to spend the better part of the day reading through, then reactively turned toward the vacant doorway.His heart fluttered uncomfortably, like it’d missed a beat, and his fingertips tingled as his body reacted to the oncoming spike of adrenaline.
Larkin was not a religious man.
He wasn’t even particularly spiritual.
But he did believe the dead were never truly gone.He believed that what lay beyond the veil was not the business of the living to understand—it was merely the next step in the spectrum of existence for those whose physical bodies had returned to stardust—and he believed that until then, his purpose was tolive.
To love and love again.
But still, Larkin could envision her standing there, with that shag-cut brown hair, the prominent nose, those big doe eyes.She wasn’t looking for retribution or justice.Such concerns mattered to the living.She was only looking to free herself of the guilt and anger that accompanied a bad death.
She was looking to be remembered.
To be shown the way.
Larkin’s throat was tight as he said to the empty room, “Don’t worry, Barbara.I’ve found you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On the fateful night of October 2, 1982, Jane Doe had been seen entering the once grand, then fleabag, now razed Hotel Cavalier on Forty-Third Street between Sixth and Broadway.The man she’d been with had rented a room by the hour under the name of D-Day.(Responding Homicide detective Ralph Noonan had scribbled beside the alias:Animal House.) The front desk clerk of the Cavalier claimed D-Day andawoman (he did not specifically claim her to be the same Jane Doe who’d entered, and Noonan failed to ask for clarification) had returned the key “about an hour later.”
At approximately three o’clock in the morning on October 3, a different “newlywed couple” found Jane Doe dead atop an unmade bed with a harvest gold comforter, arms stretched wide as if she’d been crucified, nude from the waist up.The description was a perfect match to the VHS tape Larkin and Doyle had watched of who they knew at the time to be Esther Haycox—Matilde Wagner’s first mission-oriented kill.
D-Day had been Earl Wagner, her husband.
And the woman who’d returned the room key had actually been Matilde herself, on their way out after the two committed that first murder together.
When it came to the available forensics, police had snapped a dozen grainy photographs and made a notation that they’d taken a gym bag into evidence, which corresponded with Phyllis’s dubious claim that Barbara had been going to her job at the Kitten Klub with a bag of costumes, but there was nothing to indicate CSU had collected fibers, DNA, not even fingerprints.
NHI—no human involved.
“This is Detective Everett Larkin with the—”
“I know who you are, detective,” Roz from the office of the Property Clerk interrupted.Her unperturbed, slow, and gravelly voice was arguably even worse over the phone.“What do you want?”
“To schedule a property pick up,” Larkin answered, barely managing to not tack on an,Obviously.
“What’s the case number?”
Larkin read aloud the string of numbers from the Jane Doe file before Roz put him on hold.With the receiver still pressed to his ear, Larkin leaned back in his desk chair, crossed his legs, and continued reading the homicide report.
If he’d been underwhelmed by the evidence retrieved from the scene, the ME’s report had been enough to bring Larkin’s blood to a boiling point.The medical examiner had noted that Barbara came in with bruising around her neck—enough to suggest a homicide—as well as the needle tracks of a “habitual user.”There’d been no accompanying documentation of an autopsy having been performed, however, despite Barbara’s condition clearly falling within the OCME’s responsibility to investigate deaths of an unusual or suspicious manner.And if that goddamn doctor had done his job in 1982, he’d have realized Barbara wasn’t a user at all, but had instead been administered a lethal dose of digoxin, perhaps while she’d been held down—while Earl was crushing her windpipe.Had such a finding been properly documented, perhaps it’d have provided Detective Noonan with more clues and more administrative support to get further in his investigation than he ever did.
Matilde and Earl Wagner might never have had an opportunity to kill a second time.
Mia Ramos could have grown up.
And Alfred Niederman never would have gotten a taste for dead children.
Could have.
