Larkin pushed through the mingling cops and MTA employees still on the platform, shot up the stairs two at a time, and rushed through the recently renovated entrance, with its tiled floors and mediocre art on the walls, before climbing the next set of stairs to the street. Larkin waited at the curb until there was a break in traffic before crossing Sixth Avenue. His black Audi was parked behind an HVAC repair truck and soccer-mom minivan alongside the bike lane. Circling around the front, Larkin tapped his key fob, opened the driver’s door, and got inside. It was too closed up, but the discomfort barely registered as Larkin tossed the evidence bag onto the passenger seat, yanked open the center console, dug out a small, 2x3 hidden envelope, and shook out two Xanax into the palm of his hand. Larkin dry-swallowed the pills before leaning back in the seat.

He counted to sixty before putting the key in the ignition, turning on the engine, and tapping the AC button. The initial gust of warm air quickly cooled, and the sweat slicking his skin began to dry. Larkin rubbed his palms against his thighs and let out a slow breath as the sick sensation that warned of imminent heaves gradually dissipated.

After another sixty count, Larkin glanced at the sodden photograph in its plastic bag. He shifted, pulled his cell from his pocket, and tapped a name in his contacts. On the third ring, the call picked up, and Larkin said, “Hi. Are you busy.”

CHAPTER TWO

At 6:32 p.m., Larkin was walking down the fifth-floor hallway of One Police Plaza, the hideous turd of Brutalism architecture that was the new headquarters of the NYPD. Nestled among the Civic Center neighborhood, with Chinatown to the north and the Financial District to the south, 1PP (as it was colloquially known) was home to not only the police commissioner, but detectives considered to be the “big guns” on the force: Major Cases and Real Time Crime. Hardly anyone—civilian administrator, beat cop, or detective alike—was aware that the three-man Forensic Artists Unit was also on location.

Larkin came to a stop outside a partially closed office door. He’d been inside before, on March 31, but it felt wrong to assume he could invite himself in after only a single visit forty-nine days ago. So he knocked. It was quiet around him. Not empty; Larkin could hear life from behind other closed doors on either side of the hall—a desk phone that wouldn’t stop ringing, the mechanical whine of a personal printer on its last leg, a muffled, one-sided conversation made up of no less than a dozen incredibly unique variations on fuck. The tired overhead lights that never saw rest had an almost subaudible hum to them in the evening hours, and the AC-cooled air was still circulating the scent of someone’s late lunch—microwaved ramen and boiled eggs, Larkin suspected.