“August 11, 2015, my first day working Cold Cases,” Larkin began, “I was given a stack of twenty-two files and told to pick one. I chose Baby Hope. She was a nine-month-old found strangled to death and left in a burlesque theater restroom in Times Square, 1988. No security, no witnesses, no suspects—due to the transient lifestyle of the neighborhood at the time. I even had her exhumed from Potter’s Field to take DNA samples. And on Tuesday, June 6, 2017, the results of that test came back. No matches with NCMEC or NamUs. No one missed her. No one even knew her real name. So I stepped out of the precinct, collected a tire iron from my car, and beat the shit out of a trash can on the street corner.” Larkin looked out the windshield as he concluded, “I still haven’t solved that case.”

“You beat a trash can with a tire iron?”

“We’re deviating from the point of my question.”

Doyle took another calculated breath before shaking his head and saying, “It wasn’t wrong of you, to ask for my help. I can handle this. And I’ve got your back.”

“That I never had doubt of.” Larkin left it at that, because throwing yourself into work was a necessity he knew all too well—manufactured distance from crushing emotions that offered the psyche a moment of respite. He gave Doyle a crooked smile, the expression never seeming to sit right on his face, then opened the driver’s side door and climbed out of the Audi. Larkin buttoned his suit coat, watching over the roof as Doyle mirrored his motions. “Reynold wouldn’t say where he hid the pictures he took of Megan, but if CSU hasn’t found them yet, I’m certain we will.”

“You think those are necessary clues?” Doyle asked, moving between bumpers before quickly crossing the street with Larkin.

“If we want the multitude of charges against Reynold to stick, yes.”

“But specifically regarding both subway murders—you think they’re going to be at all relevant?”

Larkin considered the question. He’d given Doyle a brief, bare-bones account of his interview with Gary Reynold on their drive back to said man’s apartment—from his claims of Marco unknowingly instituting a relationship between Reynold and this mysterious Archie Bunker, their anonymous method of buying and selling abusive material, all the way to Dicky’s connection to St. Jude’s kitchen and the Fifty-Seventh Street station, as well as the probability that they might have uncovered the identity of the man in the IKEA bag as that of Creepy Dicky.