“It makes the most sense. I believe that on the night of May 19, 1997, Marco saw something, and he was murdered to keep it secret. I believe what he saw involved Archie and these children.” Larkin finally looked up. Doyle didn’t seem… angry, per se, but he was definitely tense, despite the boneless way he had of sitting. “I’m now uncertain that the April Fools’ letter is actually from our perpetrator.”

“Why?” Doyle asked warily.

So Larkin told him.

Amid the somber and raw genius of Bessie Smith on the overhead speakers, the steam and frothing milk at the cappuccino machine behind the counter, and the quiet click, click, click of the single other patron typing on their laptop, Larkin told Doyle about the fax. He told Doyle about its anonymity, its veiled threat against their careers, the usage of police department lingo, and how, short of a professional handwriting analyst to confirm his claim, Larkin believed the sender to be the same individual who’d scribbled on the back of the first postmortem photograph.

Doyle was leaning forward again, elbow on the tabletop, hand rubbing his ever-present stubble. He asked, when Larkin had finished, “What did your lieutenant say?”

“A lot of things.”

“About the fax—us.”

Larkin answered, “Lieutenant Connor is a decent man who is also very aware of what a discrimination lawsuit would entail for the department.”

“You’re brutal,” Doyle said with a hint of amusement.

“Thank you.”

Doyle picked up his mug and took a sip of the cooled-down coffee. He licked foam from his lips before saying, “Look, Evie… I’m not happy you hid this.”

“I didn’t hide it.”

“You did. Because you had an opportunity to explain it all yesterday, and you chose not to. That being said, I understand your thought process as to why. I’m still not happy, but I get it. But going forward, can we just… not? We have to be a team from the onset or this won’t work.”

“Out-in-the-field, rule four: Always tell the truth.”

“I think it’s rule five.”

“The driving one doesn’t count.”

Doyle took another sip of the latte. “Have you considered two perps?”

“What.”

Doyle shrugged. “You’re trying to assign these correspondences to Archie, but by your own assessment, they don’t fit into his personality. Connor might see it as escalation, and maybe, if Archie was relatively new at this kill-and-photograph initiative, but he’s not. That first photo you obtained is from the ’80s. He’s been doing this as long as you’ve been alive. It doesn’t make sense, purely from a survival point of view, that he’d suddenly take chances like reaching out to you—by name—three times. One of which was before Regmore’s arrest even hit the evening news. How’d he know who you were?”

“I don’t know.”

“It sounds like two conflicting behaviors.”