Doyle’s laugh broke the escalation and gave pause to the grave Larkin was digging. Even muffled through the office door, Doyle had a top-shelf-whiskey sort of voice, with a heat in his words that pooled in Larkin’s belly as if he had actually been drinking. His breathing slowed. He put the phone away. It wasn’t a fix by any stretch of the imagination. More like a poorly patched pothole. One wrong move and he’d still fuck his suspension. But if Larkin were careful—very careful—he could drive this road—March 30—with the pleasantry of Doyle’s voice being a much-needed positive memory.

The door opened again. Larkin straightened and turned.

Doyle was staring at him. “She found the file.”

With the briefest nod of acknowledgment, Larkin slipped past Doyle and returned to the lone chair that, somehow, managed to look as if it were consumed by the landslide of shit even more than it had been—Larkin checked his watch—two minutes ago. He perched on the edge of the seat, laser-focused on Mable, who was turning discolored pages that had absolutely been spit out of a dot matrix printer. It said something as to departmental funding at the time.

“That crabapple was planted April 2, 1998,” Mable said in her gravelly voice. “Looks like it was part of the massive renovation to save the park.”

Doyle dug his notepad out and scribbled the date down.

“It was a goddamn mess back then,” Mable continued, “but you’re probably too young—”

“I remember Madison in the late ’80s,” Doyle broke in before Larkin had had a chance to open his mouth and say anything to the contrary. “Had a crackhead chase me with a knife.”

Larkin turned and looked up at Doyle with a raised eyebrow.

Mable snorted, coughed, and said, “I knew grown-ass men who wouldn’t walk through that park.”

Doyle flashed that lazy smile. “Stupid, unsupervised kids think they’re invincible.”

Larkin turned to Mable once again. “Would there be any reason to dig the hole in advance.”

She made a face. “It was before my time, but no, I can’t imagine they’d do that without risking a safety hazard. That being said, millions were being pumped into the park. There was a lot going on.”