Page 51 of Find Me

“Maybe not,” she said, heading back toward the car, “but you surely left her alone in a holding room for hours, hoping she’d open the door to you questioning her without a lawyer.” Pushing away images of Hopebeing shuffled toward a jail cell, she signaled to Scott to pop the locks and got into the passenger seat.

“I assure you we followed all the rules, Counselor. I didn’t even owe you this phone call, as you know.”

“Can I get into the cottage now?” She and Scott had already rented a room at Gurney’s for the night, but she wanted to see how intrusive the police search had been.

“Techs were still pulling some latent prints, last I heard.”

“What about tomorrow morning?” She hadn’t packed a suit before coming out from the city, but she thought she could find something appropriate in Hope’s closet.

“You’ll be good to enter by then.”

Scott had started the engine by the time she hung up. “That didn’t sound good.”

“It’s not.” She had missed the chance to end this nightmare tonight. She leaned back against the headrest, a growl of frustration escaping from her throat. “I need to get back to the hotel and prepare for court tomorrow. Maybe I can at least patch together a half-decent bail motion.” She had wanted to prevent charges altogether, but now she was lowering the bar to getting Hope released from custody.

When they reached the hotel, Scott bypassed the parking lot and pulled directly in front of the lobby’s entrance. “You do what you need to do.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll head back to Montauk and keep trying.”

“You’ve already done so much. You must be exhausted.”

“Nah, I’m in full investigator mode now. Besides, you’ll work better if I’m not here.”

Two hours later, she jerked awake at the sudden sensation of motion next to the bed.

“Just me,” Scott whispered.

The hotel room was pitch-black except for the red glow of thenightstand clock. It was nearly one in the morning. “I didn’t even hear the door open. Is everything okay?”

She squinted as he clicked on the bedside lamp.

“Oh, it’s better than okay. Remember that dive bar at the marina? The one that was locked up?”

A simple Closed sign had hung on a heavy black door on a brick building under a red awning. It could have been a hardware store or a tackle shop except for the one other sign to the left of the door: Beer and Booze.

“It was open when I went back. It’s called Pier Bar, by the way, but apparently everyone calls it B&B because of the Beer and Booze sign. Anyway, I showed the bartender the photos, and he immediately asked if I was a cop. Let’s just say he didn’t seem like he was real interested in talking to cops.”

Lindsay sat up in bed and leaned against the padded headboard. The bar he was talking about was directly across from the parking lot where Alex’s pickup truck had been found.

“I could tell he knew something, so I told him I was working for a defense lawyer and threw in two hundred dollars to sweeten the deal. He said he recognized Alex from having been at the bar a few times. Said he was easy, low-key, whatever. But the Saturday night we’re talking about, Alex came in late with this big gash on his temple. The blood was still kind of crusting over. He asked for a Four Roses, downed it, then asked for another one and an ice bag. When Alex was on his third drink, he said he’d lost his cell phone and asked the bartender if he could make a call.”

“Please tell me this bartender has a name?” She realized she had not even given Scott instructions about what information to collect if he did happen upon a helpful witness.

“He does indeed. Kevin Mitchell. Anyway, Kevin figures any guy with a gash in his head at eleven o’clock might just need a break, so he hands over his cell phone, and Lopez steps outside. Twenty-five minuteslater, he’s thinking Lopez dashed on his bill, stealing the phone while he was at it, but then he comes back in and apologizes, saying Kevin might want to recharge because the battery’s low. Then he asks for one more drink and a pen and paper. Kevin finds him a notepad, and Alex starts scribbling away like it’s some kind of contest. When he was done, he asked if the bar kept envelopes and stamps around. Kevin finally told Alex that he wasn’t running an office supply store and handed him his check. He offered to call him a cab, but Alex said he was going to walk home to clear his head.”

“Oh my god. Scott, you did it. We have Alex alive and well on Saturday night—just like Hope said.”

Scott reached into the front pocket of his shirt and pulled out a slip of paper. “From Kevin’s phone. The two calls Lopez made.” The first phone number had a 316 area code and was followed by the number 19 after a dash. The second was an 873 number, followed by dash-3.

Lindsay reached for her own phone on the nightstand to confirm her suspicions. The first call, which lasted nineteen minutes, had been to Emilia Lopez’s work number. Lindsay grabbed her briefcase from the floor beside the bed and found the list of numbers that Hope had jotted down from Lopez’s cell phone. The second call Lopez made from the bar—three minutes long—was a match to the now-disconnected Chicago number that Lopez had contacted three times in the weeks before he died.

“Oh, and one more thing—” Scott handed her his phone as he hit the play button on the screen. Scott’s voice rose above the background din of a noisy bar, followed by a low voice Lindsay didn’t recognize. He had recorded his entire conversation with Kevin the bartender. His face broke out into that perfect Scott smile. “Who do you love?”

“SP! For the win.” She jumped out of bed, threw her arms around his neck, and then held his face in her hands, planting an exaggerated kiss on his lips before AirDropping the voice recording from Scott’s phone to hers.“This is perfect. It’s exactly what we need.”

Scott stood motionless as she took a seat at the desk in the corner of the hotel room and opened her laptop. The celebration was over.

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