“Then give me the case number. I need physical evidence to link these murders,” Larkin explained. “I’ve got a man sitting in jail who didn’t do it, but he helped. Problem is, he won’t admit to who was the perpetrator. He wants the credit all to himself. If I can find something in the Property Clerk’s warehouse… anything that proves Ricky Goulding wasn’t acting alone…. Maybe something that was never tested for DNA.”

Releasing a held breath, O’Halloran dug his phone free from his suit coat. “Give me your number.” After he inputted Larkin’s cell into his address book, O’Halloran said, “I’ll text you.”

“When you called in Danielle Moreno, you didn’t happen to inquire after her current place of employment, did you.”

“Why?”

“I need to know if she was working anywhere near Alphabet City.”

“Larkin,” Doyle called from below.

“It’d be helpful,” Larkin continued to O’Halloran. “Since I’m busy cleaning up this mess.”

“Fuck you.” But after a second, O’Halloran added, “I’ll see what I can turn up.”

“Thank you.”

O’Halloran grinned, said, “Get bent,” then walked away from the fountain without another word.

Larkin leaned over the railing, holding his umbrella out so it covered both his and Doyle’s heads. “What.”

Doyle raised two fingers to show a watery white residue on the blue latex gloves. “The way she fell, her arm partially covered the hairline. My guess? Plaster of Paris, for making the negative used for casting the mask into another material. There’s a bit of something around her right eye too. Of course we need a test to be definitive, but if it were oil—”

“Put on the face to prevent the plaster removing eyebrows or eyelashes,” Larkin said, thinking back to the library book’s long-winded details on construction methods seen throughout the Victorian era.

“You got it.” Doyle lowered his hand. “CSU it taking samples.”

“I could kiss you.”

“If it turns out I’m right, you’re welcome to do more than that.” Doyle tugged the gloves off and pointed to the body. “Extensive bruising around her neck.”

Larkin’s gaze cut to Danielle Moreno. “Like the others.”

Doyle hummed agreement under his breath, grabbed the fence, and hoisted himself up and out of the fountain. He took his umbrella back from Larkin.

“Hey!” Millett shouted. “Is evidence going to O’Halloran or you?”

“Me,” Larkin called.

Millett gave a wave that conveyed both understanding and dismissal. He returned to snapping photographs and tagging plastic bags.

“We need to send CSU back to Ricky’s,” Larkin said.

“For what?”

“Based on the current decomposition of Danielle’s body, she’s been dead between three and… maybe six days, maximum.”

“Sometime between last Friday and Sunday.”

“Right. And like the other victims, she has very long hair. Women’s hair has a way of defying drains.”