Doyle took the bag, studied the scrawled note on the back of the photograph, then murmured, “The NYPD is allowing suspects in a murder investigation to pick and choose their lead detective?”

“I haven’t spoken with Lieutenant Connor and gotten his explanation behind this decision yet,” Larkin answered. “But you make an assumption that this note was left by the individual responsible for the death of John Doe.”

“It’s a pretty sound assumption. What was this photograph sitting in?”

“Decomp.”

“Jesus.” Doyle dropped it on the tabletop. He popped the cap off the jug of distilled water Larkin had picked up on his way downtown, and poured the contents into both pans before reaching for a pair of latex gloves.

On April 1, after the subsequent brawl and arrest of Harry Regmore at his mother’s apartment in the Bronx, Larkin had been whisked to the hospital for surgery to correct a broken arm. It’d been a rather incredible injury in the grand scheme of events. Because Larkin had frozen. He should have died that afternoon. But Doyle had been there, had saved his life. And while Larkin had been alone in the ER, an anonymous letter addressed to him had been delivered to the nurses’ station.

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS’ DAY, LARKIN

DEATH MASKS ARE “HORRIBLE THINGS”

I HAVE A BETTER MEMENTO FOR YOU

COME FIND ME

Hospital surveillance had only been able to supply law enforcement with a grainy image of a nondescript individual in a dark hoodie, baseball cap, and sunglasses. The nurse who’d accepted the envelope couldn’t remember any corroborating details—she’d been nearing the end of a twelve-hour shift, hadn’t had a bathroom break in almost as much time, had half a dozen ER patients bleeding, seizing—no, she didn’t pay any mind to the individual. The contents had been dusted for fingerprints, but all that’d come back were the nurse’s and Larkin’s own. The incident had been concerning, but with the absence of any evidence to pursue, local precinct detectives who’d caught the investigation had considered it DOA.

But not Larkin.

He had gleaned exactly four clues.

First: The usage of the Parks’ Department logo within the cut-and-pasted letters, before Harry’s identity had been shared with the public, before he’d even had his mugshot snapped, implied someone internal. Someone with knowledge of who Harry was, what he’d been doing in those parks since 1991, with the suggestion that they could do it all and more.

Second: The quote about death masks had, in fact, been from the third sentence in the introduction of Laurence Hutton’s Portraits in Plaster, the same book Doyle had mentioned reading while attending art school. The book had been published in 1894 by Harper & Brothers Publishers, now existed within the public domain, and was, as Doyle suggested, not exactly a bestseller. That provided further background into the sort of individual who’d quote such an obscure reference.