Doyle chuckled before saying, “I don’t have any composite sketches on the schedule today, so I could be in your neck of the woods… in about an hour?”

“That’s fine. I’m still in Inwood.”

“Ouch. All right. I’ll see you soon, partner.” Doyle hung up.

Larkin lowered the cell from his ear and smiled as the screen went black.

Larkin usually got what he wanted—professionally speaking, that was—and while his request to partner with Doyle a second time had come as a mild surprise to Connor, his lieutenant promised to make it happen. Larkin returned to searching the bedroom after his two calls, but after thirty-seven minutes, he found nothing more problematic than that Marco’s ideal woman seemed to have been an even split between Daria and Kate Moss, and Larkin wasn’t certain which Marco would have had a better chance with. He collected the copy of Hamlet before exiting the room, and after twenty-three years of the photograph being wedged against the spine, it allowed for the pages to fall open to the exact hiding spot again and again. Scene ii—Polonius’s conversation with Hamlet.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

Larkin grunted, snapped the book shut, and walked down the hall. He stopped in the open doorway of the kitchen and said, “Mrs. Garcia, if I may have a moment.”

Camila paused from scrubbing the already-sparkling countertop. She projected an air of casualness, nonchalance, but the lie was in the way her face hardened. “Yes?”

Larkin offered the evidence bag. “Do you recognize this girl. We believe this was taken between 1985 and 1990.”

The creases around Camila’s mouth and forehead smoothed as whatever she’d been braced for gave way to curiosity. She took the photo and studied it for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Did Marco have female friends.”

“A few, when he was younger. You know high school boys… they can get so shy around girls.”

“Did he have a girlfriend.”

“One or two. Nothing serious.” Camila gave the photo a shake before staring at the image a second time. “Not her, though. Marco wouldn’t have even been in junior high yet—way too young for a girlfriend.”

“Infatuation among preteens and teenagers rarely includes logic,” Larkin replied. “The human brain isn’t fully developed until our midtwenties, and with the onset of puberty, rising levels of testosterone and estrogen collide with the concept, or idea, of what love is—it’s been described as a high not unlike what you’d experience with cocaine.