Page 35 of Find Me

“Got it. Any chance Alex Lopez’s name rings a bell from the COP camp?”

“No, but when you get to be my age, you’ve forgotten five times the number of people you currently know. You want me to make a call? See if my name still means a thing there?”

“That would be great.”

“Any other work you want to pawn off on me while we’re at it?”

She snickered. “You’re the best. I owe you beers the next time you visit. Hey, did you know about Melanie’s Senate run before it was announced?”

“You seriously overestimate my importance to the organization.”

“Max was wondering if you’d be going to DC with her.”

“Only if it’s in a casket. You should bring him to Wichita, you know. Your mom would be over the moon. She keeps saying she wants to meet the man you’re living in sin with. Didn’t have the heart to tell her I met him over Christmas.”

“Another reason I owe you.”

When she hung up the phone, Rogan was giving her the side-eye.

“Woman, you told me earlier that you had come to your senses and were staying away from this mess. Your version of staying out of something looks a whole lot like doing some other cop’s job.”

“And this looks a whole lot like my partner getting all up in my business by eavesdropping on my phone calls.” Decker had been awfullyquick to let her work his case, but she got the impression he was in over his head.

Rogan’s face lit up. “All up in your business, huh? You’re all street now?”

“Word.”

He shook his head, not satisfied with her response.

“Fine, I admit it. I’m doing that thing I do where I take on everyone else’s problems.”

He placed an index finger to his nose, and then pointed it at her. “Ding ding. We have a winner.”

“It’s not the worst fault a person could have.”

“This is true, and I have certainly benefited from your dragon-slaying tendencies over the years. But first you were helping the defense lawyer with the missing amnesia friend. And now you’re helping the cop who obviously thinks the missing friend went and killed someone.”

“What can I say? I like being in the middle of a mystery. Probably explains why I have this job.”

“Speaking of your job, you do actually still have one.” He gave a pointed look toward an untouched stack of E-ZPass records on her desk. They belonged to Ralph Bunning, whom they had arrested Sunday night for hiring a convicted ex-con to murder the man who’d been having an affair with Bunning’s wife. Without a confession from either defendant, they were trying to prove their meetings indirectly, aligning their movements with cell-phone pings and bridge-and-tunnel charges.

She was on page three when her cell rang. It was Steve. “Hey there,” she said. “That was quick.”

Rogan scribbled something on a legal pad and pushed it in her direction.I.e., lazy bum on Long Island could’ve done it.

“Only took a phone call,” Steve said. “The community policing unit has a database going back years, I guess. There was an Alex Lopez in the camp for the three summers before Janice Beale was killed.”

There it was: confirmation that the bloodstain found in the house had nothing to do with Beale’s murder and therefore nothing to do with her father. “Do they have contact information for the family, by any chance?”

“Shoot, I didn’t even ask. I’m losing my chops. Want me to call back and see what I can find?”

“Nice of you to offer, but that’s okay. It’s another cop’s case to work.” She smiled knowingly in Rogan’s direction, and he flashed a thumbs-up.

One more phone call to close the loop, and she could forget the names Alex Lopez and Hope Miller forever.

“Decker.”

“Good news and bad.” She began with the fact that LockeHome wouldn’t be able to identify the route Alex Lopez’s phone call had made from the company’s general number, and then moved on to the new information she’d gathered. “Lopez was definitely enrolled in the COP camp for the three years before that blood sample was found. My friend didn’t get any other information, but I assume you can follow up with them. It’s the WPD community policing department that keeps the records.”

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