“No, detective. No.” Camila laughed a little bitterly, brokenly. “When I wake up, I’m already thinking of Marco. I go shopping and see those Debbie cakes he ate as a boy. I walk my neighborhood and can point out where he scraped his knee riding his bike, the rosebush I made him and his prom date pose in front of for pictures, the exact spot he found a kitten in a cardboard box and took it home because his heart was so big. There is nothing to dredge up, you see. Marco is always with me. My heart is always broken.”

Larkin was silent.

Camila sighed, and that single sound conveyed everything. She was certain no one understood this helplessness, this loss, this perpetual unknown, and Larkin had talked a good game, but he was like all the other cops who’d let her down before.

“I know your loss, Mrs. Garcia.”

“Do you?” But it was an absent reply. A question she did not expect an answer to.

“Yes. For eighteen years. It never goes away.”

Camila’s voice hitched.

“I can’t promise you that by closing Marco’s case, you’ll feel any sense of relief. A lot of people don’t. I wouldn’t.”

“Then why bother?”

“Because Marco deserves to be remembered and no one should mourn alone.”

Camila began to cry.

Larkin let her.

Doyle returned from the copy room.

Finally, between sniffles and shaky breathes, Camila asked, “Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Does anyone mourn with you?”

Larkin grew cold, as if all the blood in his body suddenly stopped pumping. His throat tightened, like a physical barrier had been erected to protect him. Stop speaking. He hated this. He hated playing the good cop. No matter how beneficial it could be for a case. “No,” he answered, and Larkin could feel Doyle watching him again.

“What was their name?”

Larkin’s chin quivered. His eyes stung. He said roughly, “Patrick.”

“I’ll say a prayer for Patrick.”

He raised his head up, stared at the acoustic tiles in the ceiling, and said nothing.

After the seconds stretched into a minute, Camila said, more calmly, “I can see you tomorrow. I’m leaving in the afternoon for California. My sister. Chemo. So… in the morning?”

Larkin hastily said, “Yes. Tomorrow morning works. Nine o’clock. Thank you, Mrs. Garcia.” He ended the call, pushed back from the desk, stood, and rolled his shoulders while making a circuit around the bullpen. He needed to move, to shake off the conversation, to tamp down the need to swallow a dozen Xanax and go lie down in the middle of the road.