It was a bit like reading Hamlet through Alice’s looking glass.

An upside down and inverted evaluation of the Gravedigger by the Prince of Denmark.

Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

Except Doyle wasn’t digging a grave, was he? He had found Yorick and was bringing him back to life, if only for a moment, so as to kiss those lips a final time.

Larkin swiveled in the chair, putting his back to Doyle so that he might read without interruption. And the report, it turned out, had little to offer that Doyle hadn’t already covered in their discussion. John Doe was in his twenties at the time of death, suffered from multiple instances of violence in his past—the ME noted that while he had no soft tissue damage to go off of, the number of breaks would have been enough for a mindful nurse or physician to suspect something was happening at home—and that John Doe had indeed died by extreme blunt-force trauma to the back of his neck.

Blunt-force trauma.

Larkin frowned as he considered. The weapon could have been anything, really. And while that thought wasn’t even remotely helpful, the fact that it was an up-close-and-personal assault lent credence to his developing theory that John Doe wasn’t a stranger or randomly chosen victim to the killer. It was too personal, especially with the suggestion of domestic abuse on his bones. Of course, the violence inflicted on John Doe could have been accidental—highly unlikely—or by an abuser prior to whomever might have killed John—unlikely but not out of the realm of probabilities. People are creatures of habit. Without building a new pattern of behavior, victims were often sucked into the same cycle of suffering over and over.

Now the question Larkin had to ask, as caffeine worked through his system: was John Doe the only one? In any other situation, Larkin wouldn’t have been scratching at that question as if he were trying to remove adhesive residue from a poorly placed sticker. It was the death mask that turned this on its head. The unnecessary step. The clue that brought this beyond a probable fatal domestic. And if John Doe wasn’t the only one, was he the first or the last? His personal, likely intimate, connection to the killer would have either been what pushed him to kill, or who the perpetrator was building up the courage to kill.

A text notification popped at the top of the screen.

Noah Rider.

Larkin didn’t want to deal with him. Not now. Not this early. Not when he was still seething from the night before—the genuine shock on Noah’s face when he learned Larkin was taking Xanax and he had the audacity to question why. Wasn’t the why obvious?

Because Larkin was a neurotic mess.

Because he cried every time it rained.

Because his life was hell.