Everett Larkin was the star detective of the Cold Case Squad, but he was an aloof personality. He should have been promoted half a dozen times, but he didn’t seem to grasp the concept of small talk. He could have been the youngest inspector in the department’s history, but he refused to schmooze with his higher-ups. He was distant, calculating, brutal in his honesty and unnerving in his intensity. He spoke strangely. He had compulsive habits. He was queer in a career that used him as a poster child for inclusivity while those same people called him a faggot to his face.

Everett Larkin was odd.

And no one had ever wanted to know why.

Connor accepted the bag and studied the scrawled writing on the back of the photograph. “This is what O’Halloran phoned me bitching about, right?”

“Correct.”

Connor grunted.

“Why did you request control of the case,” Larkin asked next. “According to the ME, the victim has been dead no more than nine days. It hardly falls within our purview.”

“Why do you think?”

“The one viable clue is addressed to me, allegedly by a person of interest in the investigation.”

“And?” Connor pressed.

Once is chance. Twice is coincidence.

“Any correlation with the April Fools’ letter is entirely coincidental at this moment in time,” Larkin answered.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Connor said. “And once you’ve been doing this for as long as me, neither will you.”

“The probability of a coincidence can be calculated by looking at the base rate of two independent events. In this case, that would be the act of myself receiving an invitation to locate an unknown individual, as well as the act of an individual perpetrating a murder within the confines of the subway. The NYPD employs 35,000 uniformed officers, of which I am one, making the probability of me, specifically, garnering this person’s interest 1 in 35,000. In 2019, the Mayor’s Office reported three murders in the subway system, making the second event a 1 in 3. Together, the data would suggest a coincidence of… 0.0006.”

“Seems impossible to me.”

“Improbable, but not impossible.”

Connor wasn’t smiling, but there was a glint in his eyes that suggested amusement. “It hasn’t been the same around here without you.”

“I think it was a premature decision. I have thirty-seven open cases that haven’t seen attention in forty-nine days, and Ray O’Halloran, basic manners aside, is a decent cop.”

Connor waved the evidence bag idly. “The fact that your name is on a piece of evidence doesn’t intrigue you?”

“I didn’t say that. It is curious. But I’m being pragmatic.”