The door opened and Detective Ira Doyle stood in the threshold. He was lean and slender, with a build similar to Larkin’s, if not for the extra half a foot in height. His appearance tended to run the gamut of disheveled, unkempt, and lax, with his five-o’clock shadow at any time of day, the loosened tie, rolled-back sleeves, and more often than not, an absent suit coat. His chocolate-brown hair was constantly a mess, not because it was done on purpose, but because Doyle was a habitual finger-comber.

For all the visual cues that’d led to Doyle’s professionalism being called into question, though, Larkin had been the first to admit how wrong he’d been in his initial assessment. Doyle was a gifted artist and a skilled investigator, with seemingly unlimited patience, and a heart no one was good enough for, Larkin included. But when Doyle smiled with his entire body, when those flecks of pyrite in his brown eyes caught the light just right, when he still smelled of neroli and sandalwood and cardamon after a long day, when he said, “Evie,” in that smoky voice, that was when Larkin began wishing he was something more.

Something better.

Larkin raised the jug of water he held in one hand. “Distilled.”

“Perfect.” Doyle stepped back, holding the door. “Come in.”

Larkin moved into the office. A closed 11x24 sketch pad sat atop the white drafting table on the left side of the room. A steel mesh trash can held several crumpled pages of the thick, high-quality paper and a scattering of candy wrappings—lemon drops. Larkin recognized the Clancy’s Candy Counter brand these days, even from afar. The shelves behind Doyle’s chair were still crowded with a ridiculous amount of art supplies, tools, and binders of six-packs. Opposite was the worktable Doyle had sat at March 31, hunched over the bust of the person who they’d come to know as Andrew Gorman. Today, the table was clear but for two plastic trays that looked like those used for photo development, a roll of paper towels, a few brushes, and a squat bottle of an unknown substance with a dropper applicator.

Doyle had accepted the gallon jug from Larkin and said while closing the door, “Don’t trust the lab to do this?”

“New York has one of the top-performing forensic crime labs in the country,” Larkin answered. “They’d do a perfectly adequate job at collecting any trace evidence. Scientists want facts, after all. But artists want stories.” Larkin watched Doyle set the jug on the table before pulling on an apron in a midnight-blue hue. “When it comes to understanding the human element in a murder, your skill set far outweighs the lab’s.”

Doyle was smiling as he crossed the ties once around his front before tying them at the back. “So I guess the check-up with your orthopedist went well.”