Page 29 of Find Me

Alex had gone from working a commercial fishing boat to a charter. An Alaskan fishing boat doesn’t mean jumping into the water. He never seemed like a strong swimmer to her. Just a few weeks ago, she had yelled at him to come back to the beach when the waves were tossing him around and around like tumbling laundry.

She decided not to tell the detective that she already knew that Alex had drowned. “I keep calling him.” It was a true statement. “Still no return call. And as of last night, his pickup truck still hasn’t moved from the lot. Something’s not right.”

She had looked for Alex at his house first, then checked the docks, then began circling past his usual haunts. She eventually found his truck parked in the public lot off West Lake Drive in Montauk, but no Alex.

In retrospect, she had been too honest with Detective Decker when she initially filed the report. Too defensive. It was her own inner voice, judging her. Maybe if she had lied and said they were engaged, or if she had not mentioned her family’s animosity toward Alex, the cops would have treated it more seriously.

Her family—the Hodges. It wasn’t a name that meant much west of the Shinnecock Canal, but here on the East End, it was backed by a tiny bit of power. Her father was one of five siblings who all had their little piece of the industries that mattered—a land surveyor, a contractor, a pool builder, a realtor (the one sister in the family), and, in her father’s case, a mason. They deserved to be listed in a local dictionary under the wordsynergy—enough long-term roots, contacts with the city folks, and goodwill with everyone else that they carried some weight. And itwas no small secret that her family deeply disapproved of her relationship with Alex.

“Actually, we impounded the truck this morning,” Decker said. “I’m just down the street from your house. Are you home now? Can we talk?”

This is it, she thought. At least he’s finally going to tell me that my boyfriend is dead.

Decker arrived wearing shades on his head, which annoyed her. She opened the door and led him to the kitchen table. She didn’t offer him coffee, even though she already had a mug for herself.

“I have a few follow-up questions,” he said.

Go ahead and tell me,she thought.Pull off the Band-Aid. Maybe I won’t even cry again. I might be all out of tears.

“You mentioned before that you thought something bad may have happened to Alex,” Decker said. “That someone might have had ill will toward him.”

In broad strokes, the East End’s population was largely a blend of three distinctive communities: the city people with second and third homes, the multigenerational old-timers like the Hodges, and the more recent influx of Latino immigrants. None of them could exist without the others, given the realities of the home building, landscaping, agricultural, and service industries that drove the local economy. But the divisions and resentments among the factions always simmered beneath the surface.

Alex was what too many of the people she knew would still casually call “a brown guy,” but he wasn’t a handyman or a landscaper or a day laborer that they could treat as the help. He didn’t even speak Spanish. He simply showed up in Montauk last year as the new owner of Reel Deal Fishing. There must have been ten long-term guides who would have killed to make a deal when Frank announced he was finally retiringto Florida. But Frank had sold the operation to an outsider. A stranger. And a brown one at that.

She explained all of this again to the detective.

“Seems pretty shaky as a motive to harm him,” he said.

“Racism’s not rational.”

“There’s a lot of Latino business owners on the East End. Most of them don’t go missing.”

He isn’t merely missing anymore, is he? Just tell me. He drowned.“Well, only one of them was dating me. Trust me: some people were upset.”

“Our department had received two anonymous tips claiming Alex was involved in the drug trade.”

“That’s bullshit. Alex is the last person who’d get wrapped up in anything illegal.”

“Well, the tips came in, I assure you. Whether they were true or not’s another question. Do you know Ed Young?”

Of course she did. Everyone did. Former chief of East Hampton Police. “Sure.”

“Apparently your father told him a few months ago that he thought Alex Lopez was dealing cocaine and speed to the usual suspects. He said the guide business was just a cover for the drug dealing. Your father was pressing the department to look into it. Is it possible he was behind those anonymous tips?”

Was it? She realized she couldn’t rule it out. “My father wasn’t exactly cheering on my relationship with Alex.”

“Because he was a fishing guide?” Decker asked.

“Please. You know that wouldn’t be the reason.”

“So it was a race thing? Just how angry was he?”

She shook her head. Why was he asking all these questions when Alex had drowned? Hadn’t he drowned? Or was Decker trying to suggest that someone drowned him?

“This is like asking someone ‘When was the last time you beat your wife?’ My dad’s feelings toward Alex were awful. I called him out on it,but he really convinced himself it was because Alex was supposedly a drug dealer. Or appeared out of nowhere buying a business that should be locally owned. Or because he didn’t make an effort to get to know my family. But all of that would have been fine with my father, if Alex hadn’t been Mexican. Or ‘a Mexican,’ as my dad would say. But that doesn’t make my dad a killer.” But was it possible she knew someone else who might be? One of the uncles? She shook the thought from her head. Fact one: Alex couldn’t swim. Fact two: Her family was bigoted. Didn’t mean there was a connection. “My father never really liked anyone I dated. So Alex was batting average, all things considered.”

“Do you know where Alex was from before he moved out here?”

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