“Except it’s been thirteen days,” Larkin said.

Hernandez frowned at him. “I guess it has been. Is he in trouble?”

“We’d like to speak with him,” Doyle answered.

“I can’t help you there. Look, I’m trying to be cooperative. What’s going on? You said you were Cold Cases?”

“That’s correct,” Larkin said. “I’m looking into the unsolved murder of Marco Garcia. He was—”

“Marco?”

Larkin cocked his head at the swift and sudden change in Hernandez’s tone. “That’s correct. He was a part-time mentor at the Youth Empowerment Center.”

Hernandez motioned in a distracted manner toward the south as he said, “The YEC over on Fifty-Fifth. His poor mother. I had no idea it was still unsolved.”

“How was it you came to know Marco?” Doyle asked.

Hernandez quickly wiped his face with the back of his hand. “I was a student at the YEC. From… I can’t remember when I started going, but I didn’t stay long… before junior high, anyway. Me and my best friend, Jay, we started hanging out there after hearing from some kids on the street that it was pretty chill. They served meals, which is what got us there, honestly. Jay and I liked the gym too, but I remember we were still dumb little shits and the high school boys monopolized that room. One day, we said, ‘Fuck, we’re already here, let’s hang out in the art room. We don’t have to do nothing if it’s lame.’ That’s how we met Marco. He was cool, you know? Older than us, but not an ‘adult’ who wouldn’t understand us kids and the kind of shit we dealt with. Real trustworthy.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” Doyle pressed.

Hernandez took a deep breath, then licked his lips. “Someone pushed him in front of a train.”

Larkin watched Hernandez’s face carefully, asking, “Is that before or after you stopped attending the Center.”

“I stopped after that. Wasn’t the same without Marco and Jay.”

Doyle picked up on that before Larkin could open his mouth. “What happened to Jay?”

A stray tear rolled down Hernandez’s cheek and into his beard. “Someone killed him, man. He wasn’t even thirteen. And then when Marco—all I could think was, I’m next. So I left. Never went back to the YEC.”

“What was Jay’s last name,” Larkin asked, watching from the corner of his eye as Doyle retrieved his notepad. “Was his murder solved.”

“Come on. A black boy from the projects? Do you think it was solved?” Hernandez shot back.

“No,” Larkin admitted. “Probably not.”

Hernandez took a big breath, his cheeks puffing as he let the air out. “Last name was Gibson. Joshua Gibson. He always went by Jay. Look, it would have been impossible to solve anyway.”

“Why.”

“There was no body.”