Larkin sat on his knees and studied the 9x11 book, far thinner than the mass market editions more often purchased by public schools. It was the right size to hide, since anything thicker would have caused an obvious lump in the mattress. He noted the library sticker on the spine, checked the pocket glued to the inside front cover, and the due date card still inside, stamped in a cracked black ink: MAY 23 1997. Larkin opened the book and let the pages fall where they wanted. Something slipped from Act II and dropped into his lap. He picked it up, recognized the printed string of gibberish on the backside, and held his breath as he prepared himself for the kind of photograph a teenage boy wanted to hide.

Larkin turned it around. The snapshot was a medium wide angle on a black boy, maybe junior-high age or maybe a late bloomer, slouched to one side on a subway bench, his head lolled back against the tile wall.

The boy was unequivocally dead.

Larkin raised his head and looked around the bedroom—a shrine to an only child who loved his mother, did his schoolwork, and enjoyed mediocre cartoons enough to tape them off television. There were absolutely zero indicators that Marco had sadistic, psychopathic, or God forbid, necrophilic tendencies.

And yet, the photo….

Larkin reached into his suit coat and removed the evidence bag with the first photograph. He’d stopped by his precinct that morning to pick it up with the intention of asking Camila if she recognized the girl, and he held the two side-by-side. The odds of two separate individuals taking photos of dead teenagers in the subway were so astronomically slim that Larkin didn’t even entertain the probability. But it wasn’t a statistical likelihood that brought him to the conclusion that this was the same artist—for lack of better description. It was the—how did Doyle put it?—the geometry of the space. The storytelling of the image.

It was a fingerprint. A signature.

Larkin grabbed his phone from beside him on the floor and chose a name in his contacts.

On the third ring, Doyle picked up and said, “Hey,” in his smoky baritone.

“Hi. Are you busy.”

“Busy is relative. What’s up?”

“How would you feel if I were to speak with Lieutenant Connor and request you be brought onto this case in an official capacity.”

“Which case are you referring to—yesterday’s subway murder or the twenty-year-old subway murder?”

“Twenty-three years,” Larkin corrected. “And both. I now have tangible evidence the two deaths are related, and I believe your unique expertise would be beneficial to my investigation.” In the background of the call, Larkin could hear the legs of a chair scrape the floor, and then pages in a book, binder—no, planner—being turned.

“The way you flirt with me….”

“You’re very funny,” Larkin said.