Larkin turned away from the calendar, checked beside the desk, and pulled out the sagging computer chair before determining the teacher’s personal effects—bag, phone, keys, anything of that nature—were absent. Larkin focused on a spot near the right edge of the desk that was devoid of the clutter that took up the rest of Reynold’s workspace. He pointed to it, looked at the teenagers who were studying him with a combination of curiosity and boredom, and asked, “What usually sits here.”

No one replied.

“Something is missing from this desk,” Larkin said to the sea of faces. “Pencil sharpener, calculator, Post-its, glasses case—”

“Mr. Reynold doesn’t wear glasses,” a Latino boy in the front row answered. He had his chin propped up and looked only half-awake.

“What is missing,” Larkin repeated, addressing him specifically.

The boy answered on a sigh, “A picture frame.”

“Detective?” Widalski asked.

But Larkin ignored her inquiry as he bent at the waist to collect the trash bin pushed into the kneehole of the desk. He reached inside, but the contents only consisted of an empty cup from Dunkin’ Donuts and a test page noting a printer was out of cyan ink. Larkin put it back, checked the middle drawer—years of hoarding office supplies, by the looks of it—then opened the three along the lefthand side. The top was a continuation of Reynold’s collection of junk: half a dozen power cords, four bags of gummy candy that drugstores kept stocked at the counter for impulse shoppers, scissors, Scotch tape dispenser, a torn mousepad, and a small, half-empty bottle of Tabasco sauce. Larkin shoved it closed and grabbed the middle drawer.

It was locked.

Larkin frowned, checked the bottom drawer, and found it full of hanging folders, binders of what were probably the same lesson plans Reynold had used for the last decade, if not more, and those blue test booklets students wrote their finals in. He shut it and checked for a set of keys in the other drawers, but there wasn’t one.

Doyle had joined him by then, whispering, “What are you doing?”

Larkin turned his back to the class and Doyle mimicked the action. He said quietly, “A picture frame is missing, this drawer is locked, the keys are gone, and Gary Reynold isn’t on the premises after being informed we were coming to ask questions about Marco.”

Doyle rubbed the stubble on his face before nodding. “Okay. Fair. But you can’t just break into his desk.”

“No. I don’t know how. Do you.”

“Larkin—”

Larkin turned toward Widalski, still standing at the front of the class. “Do we have permission to open this locked drawer.” He tugged on the handle for emphasis.

“Good God,” Doyle muttered, his back still turned.

Widalski considered Larkin’s question, hyperaware of the audience before them.

“Twenty-three years, Principal Widalski,” Larkin reminded. “He was only eighteen. A student of PS 51.”