Larkin burst through the doorway of the ground floor, dodged a lone janitor in gray coveralls pushing a mop and bucket out of a storage room, and skidded to a stop outside the glass door of the main office located just before the security desk. He threw it open, raised his badge, and said to the receptionist, “Gary Reynold’s home address.”

She was hardly more than twenty years old and dressed like a fifties housewife in a pastel blue dress, a white sweater that was more for aesthetics than practicality, honest-to-God pearls with matching earrings, and with blond hair done up in what probably took an hour’s time and a full can of hairspray each morning. She squeaked as she put the phone receiver down and began clicking feverishly on her computer. “Principal Widalski asked me to print—”

“Just tell it to me,” Larkin snapped.

She squeaked again, sounding very much like a dog’s chew toy, before turning to the monitor and reading off a full address—state and zip code included.

“Is there an apartment number.”

“Um… garden.”

“What does Reynold drive.”

“I—I—”

A second woman, older, with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, came into view from around the corner. She held a stack of printouts in both hands. “What’s the question?”

“He w-wants to know what Gary d-drives,” the receptionist stuttered, her voice almost a squeal now.

“He doesn’t drive,” the second woman said to Larkin. “Gary takes the train.”

Larkin let the door slam shut behind him, and he and Doyle left the school. They ran across the street, got into the Audi, and Larkin peeled onto Broadway as Doyle put in a call requesting uniformed officers at Gary Reynold’s home address that he repeated into the phone as Larkin said it aloud for him. When Doyle had hung up, Larkin asked, “Closest subway stop.”

“Ah—West 181st Street… let’s see. Reynold could take the A or 1. Either one is only two stops from the high school,” Doyle answered quickly. “But—God, let me think—his address is on Bennett Avenue. So he’d take the A.”

“He’d save at least ten minutes taking the A.”

“Yeah. So he’s got about a forty-five-minute head start to toss whatever’s spooked him.”

Larkin floored the gas, laid on the horn, cut around a USPS mail truck, sped through an intersection as the yellow light turned red, and swerved around a guy with a hand truck stacked with bottles of liquor as he crossed the street from his double-parked delivery truck with its hazards on.

“I’d like to get there alive, Larkin,” Doyle objected, grabbing the oh-shit handle beside his head.

“Reynold’s text message.”

“What?”

Larkin said, with frightening composure for a man doing fifty in a twenty-five zone, “Reynold’s text specified that he was looking for a redheaded girl, age fourteen.”

“I do recall that.”