Doyle set his pencil down, raised his arms back as if he were sitting at a pec deck machine, and stretched them backward until something in his shoulder or maybe collarbone audibly popped.

Larkin glanced down.

Doyle said, “A kitchen table isn’t the best place to sit and draw for two hours.” He rubbed his right shoulder while inclining his head at the sketch pad. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a very well-done composite sketch of a man who can’t be identified and will now need to be aged twenty-two years so that I can beg my lieutenant to have it uploaded to Local4Locals, asking that he phone the police to assist in the cold case of a man he knew briefly back in the 1990s.”

“May I watch you beg?”

“No, you may not.”

Doyle chuckled under his breath.

Larkin watched Doyle rub his shoulder a moment longer before saying, “Tilt your head down.”

“What?”

“Chin to chest.”

“Is this one of those trust exercises?” Doyle asked, doing as instructed.

Larkin put his thumb and two fingers on either side of Doyle’s exposed neck and dug into the muscle while dragging in a downward motion. “Your shoulder might hurt, but the tension begins in the neck.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Doyle hissed.

“I assure you, it’s Larkin.”

“I take back that crack I made about your sense of humor.”

Larkin smiled a little. He repeated the motion, saying quietly, so Jessica didn’t overhear, “Something’s off about the violence perpetrated against Andrew.”

“How so?”

“Statistically, victims of domestic assault don’t receive help combating the abuse for up to two years. Jessica said he’d been seeing a few different men. None of that sounds particularly serious or long-term.”

“I think we both assumed this fellow,” Doyle began, pointing at his sketch and then grunting when Larkin seemed to have found the knot causing discomfort, “would have been the one to inflict the mortal blow.”

“Yes.”

“He still could have. Victims also have a tendency of becoming entrapped time and again without proper education on how to protect themselves against predators.”

“This is true.” Larkin dropped his hand and took a step back.

Doyle looked up and said, “Thanks for that.”

Larkin shrugged off the comment. “He studied jewelry design at FIT.”

“Yeah. Why did that stick out to you?”

“He’d have learned metal casting and welding—necessary skills for creating Andrew’s death mask.”

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

It was 1:27 p.m. when Larkin and Doyle exited the walk-up.

Upon seeing the fully rendered sketch, Jessica was surprisingly confident in the entire face, not only the elements she’d selected. She had touched the corners of the pad, like caressing a memory, and said, That’s him.