—a directional shift of the wind, the heat and the smoke kissing his face, a lingering taste of burned marshmallows and Jameson on his lips, with nobody in the entire world to see them but the banished queen overhead—

It wasn’t an association.

Not exactly. A similarity. A comparison. Something more.

Something better.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Well?”

It’d been the first thing Doyle had said since setting Larkin up at his work laptop and leaving him to go nuts with NamUs.

Doyle had, in the meantime, done a few more touchups on John Doe’s bust—the sort of modifications that a man like Larkin wouldn’t notice, but that clearly dug under the skin of an artist. Then Doyle had snapped several photographs of his work to use in the event they found jack in the missing persons reports and had to submit a new case to the unidentified portion of the NamUs dashboard and hope someone else found them. He had been cleaning his worktable when he finally spoke.

And Larkin couldn’t help but note that the silence until then had had two admirable qualities: it had been natural and welcomed. Doyle didn’t force small talk and didn’t chatter to fill the space the way so many people often did. He hummed sometimes, but Larkin was certain that wasn’t due to nerves, and was nothing but a personal habit. Briefly—very briefly—Larkin wondered if Doyle woke early, woke happy, but valued the quiet that accompanied those moments before the sun rose.

Larkin didn’t look up from the screen. He’d been methodically combing through the listing of missing persons in the state of New York, but beyond that, was hesitant to filter his search based on assumed details. Because he couldn’t be certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that John Doe had disappeared in the mid-1990s, nor could he be certain the young man had resided in one of the five boroughs. He might have been from Ossining, Poughkeepsie—hell, Albany.

Or he might have even been from out of state. Nearly one million daily commuters came into the city from Jersey and Connecticut, and although Larkin felt this probability was far less likely, he couldn’t rule it out. If his search of New York state came up empty-handed, he’d have to get on the phone with NamUs and build a unique profile for John Doe’s search across the entirety of their missing persons before he could safely conclude the young man had never been listed.

Larkin hoped that wasn’t the case.

Not only because it limited his avenue of detecting, but also because it was too heartbreaking to consider.

“There are just over 1,000 open cases in New York,” Larkin said. “Some go back as far as the ’60s.”

Doyle opened the closet door, probably putting away the banker’s box of wigs, then shut it. “That’s terrible.”

Larkin grunted in acknowledgment.