Page 34 of Find Me

“So he was only a kid when his blood was found inside Janice Beale’s house,” Hatcher said.

“Thirteen, to be exact. And of course his blood could have been there however long before that.” The implication was clear. Alex Lopez was far too young to have been wrapped up with a serial killer more than two decades earlier. “Anyway, I don’t have a bead on the guy yet. He only moved here in January, and told his girlfriend he grew up in Phoenix before moving to Alaska. But obviously he was in Kansas at some point. Problem is, Lopez is a pretty common name, and little kids don’t exactly have driver’s licenses. Got any local knowledge to impart? If the shoe were on the other foot, I’d send you to the YMCA summer program and two grade-school principals, and you’d probably be able to track down eighty percent of the kids who grew up out here.”

“Wichita may be small, but it’s a lot bigger than East Hampton.”

“Figured it was a shot in the dark.”

“Not that dark, as it turns out. There’s another reason I was calling you. Janice Beale’s house backed up to one of the city parks, with a big family rec center. The police helped run a summer camp program there, and Beale used to come outside to play with the kids, give them lemonade, that kind of thing. After she was killed, the kids made it sound like her house was almost like an extension of the camp.”

Carter gave a quick pump of his free fist.

“I was going to pass that on as a possible explanation for the blood, but now that you’ve got a name and an age—”

“It feels right,” Carter said. “Don’t suppose this camp is the kind of place that keeps records from twenty-three years ago?”

“No clue, but it’s at the Edgemoor Park Rec Center, and at least at that time, it was called the COP Youth Camp.”

“Sounds like a euphemism for a juvenile detention center.”

She chuckled on the other end of the line. “The COP part of the name is an acronym—Community Oriented Police. But, yes, it doesn’t exactly scream carefree summer fun.”

“What about LockeHome? Lopez made a call to their main corporate number a couple of months ago.”

“That could be anything. I assume you’ve heard of the company. It’s huge.”

“But this wasn’t a call to a customer-service eight-hundred number. He used the three-one-six area code, a direct call to the headquarters in Wichita.”

“Unless the switchboard system has a way to track the transfer to a specific extension, it’s going to be a needle in a haystack. Locke is probably one of the top five employers in Wichita—more jobs than the city, state, feds, or university. I probably know at least fifteen people who work there now. Actually, let me give one of them a call and see what I can find for you.”

Carter accepted the offer, remembering when he used to be the kind of cop who would have volunteered to help out if the tables were turned.

22

Tuesday, June 22, 1:19 p.m.

Steve picked up after two rings. “Two calls in two days. Lucky me.”

“Except you might not like the reason I’m calling,” Ellie said.

“Unless something’s wrong with you, Jess, or your mom, whatever reason you have for calling always makes me happy.”

“It’s about that case we talked about.”

“No...really?” he asked, making no attempt to conceal the sarcasm. “I might keel over from shock.”

“I know you told me to leave it alone, but—”

“And I also knew that you wouldn’t. No apologies necessary as long as you’re okay. What’d you find out?”

“Long Island’s got a name to go with the DNA hit. Alex Lopez.” She recited his date of birth, and then explained her idea that he might have been one of the kids from the COP camp who’d hung out at Janice Beale’s house.

“It’s a good theory,” Steve said. “Regardless, given the guy’s age, no way he could have anything to do with Summer.”

Ellie didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. She realized she had gotten her hopes up about finding an alternative explanation for her father’s death.

“Lopez apparently made a call to the main headquarters at LockeHome a couple of months before he died. Do you know if there’s a way to track whether a call was transferred to a direct line from there?”

“I do know, and unfortunately, the answer is no. We just investigated a former employee for stealing intellectual property and selling it to a competitor. He was definitely working with someone who was still inside, but he was calling the main switchboard and transferring the call from there. We’re getting the system modified, but the changeover hasn’t happened yet.”

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