He stared at the evidence timeline in front of him. Despite not being able to see the faces of the female victims from the early ’90s, Larkin could deduce a few physical traits they had in common: petite, small-chested, long hair. He tapped his fingertip across the desk until he reached the photograph of Jessica and Andrew outside their walk-up. Jessica was also quite small in build, and even when she was in college, she wore her long hair atop her head in a messy bun. A possible type, then. The perpetrator wasn’t limited to a race or age so much as stature and aesthetic. And stature could have been also due, in part, to practicality. A hundred-and-twenty-pound woman was easier to take down and dispose of than, say, a hundred-and-sixty. And Ricky had said Jessica was like the others. He would know this based on the Polaroids of earlier murders.

Larkin slid his finger back to the empty space between the evidence bag and the drug-store-developed photos. Were there other murders between 1992 and Andrew’s in 1998? Larkin’s gut said yes. The perpetrator was just finding his groove. He’d have only stopped if he were caught, which wasn’t possible, because Larkin and most other cops would at least be familiar with the story. The only other reason for a period of silence would be if law enforcement had gotten too close. That was also doubtful. It’d be an established open case. Larkin could think of nothing that even closely resembled this situation.

He directed his gaze back to the photograph of Andrew standing outside the theater. A perpetrator with a penchant for small women—possibly focusing his efforts on sex workers simply due to the transient life—suddenly changes course and goes for a college-educated man with a stable lifestyle. And while Andrew wasn’t big—he would have stood as tall as Larkin and possibly had the same slender build—he’d still be a more formidable opponent than the three women, if Larkin could judge by the images alone. And it wasn’t like Andrew was… beautiful, for lack of better description. He wore his hair short and had very overt masculine features. Ricky had called Andrew pretty—had called Larkin pretty, for that matter. The adjective never suited Larkin, he felt. He’d been called classically handsome, which he felt was code for “you don’t look like others,” but not pretty, not unless it was meant as an insult. Although Doyle had said so, and while he’d been joking, it’d still felt… sincere.

Anyway. Pretty did not suit Andrew. So it wasn’t a matter of the perpetrator transitioning in his taste. Andrew’s death was necessary to hide the killer’s secret.