Page 65 of Find Me

By comparison, it should have been easy for Lindsay to simply introduce herself, but she was certain that her facial expression would revealher suspicions. “Thank you so much, Detective Thompson,” she said, trying her best to sound dispassionate. “I know it’s unusual for a defense lawyer to try to involve a detective, but I at least had to give my best pitch. I know who killed Richard Mullaney, but I need to trust that the police here won’t try to pull my client into it.”

“Well, first of all, I’m off the job for nearly a decade, so call me Steve. And I hope Ellie didn’t get your hopes up. I’ll hear you out and see what I can do, but I can’t make any promises. To be honest, I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to see my favorite NYPD detective—especially when it’s on some defense lawyer’s dime. No offense.”

“None taken.”

Thompson flagged down a passing waiter and asked him to bring two more of what he was having as he looked to Ellie, who flashed a thumbs-up. “How about for you, Counselor?”

“Just a Diet Coke to start,” Lindsay said. “Flying makes me woozy.”

Lindsay slid into the booth first. She didn’t like the idea of being trapped in place across the table from Thompson, but she knew that Ellie should be the one to jump up if it became necessary. She had brought a gun from New York in her checked luggage. Lindsay placed her purse on a ledge abutting the table, then began by saying that she represented a woman named Hope Miller. Though police had not yet charged Hope, she explained, they clearly suspected her of involvement in the murders of both Alex Lopez and Richard Mullaney. They also claimed to have determined that Tara King was her true name.

Across the table, Thompson was already shaking his head, arms crossed in front of him. She even detected a chuckle. “Ellie told me the amnesia part. That’s one hell of a long con. People actually fell for that?”

He had to have googled her, so he would know that Lindsay was the one who found Hope after the accident—or at least that she was the local police chief’s daughter. The fact that he was pretending to be unaware of that confirmed their suspicions.

She and Ellie had spent the last two days nailing down the evidence, with Carter Decker digging in as well. They both felt more than a littleanxious being here in Wichita without telling Decker what they were up to after all of his cooperation, but they were far outside the lines of a typical criminal case. To Decker, Alex Lopez was just another case, and Steve Thompson was just another suspect. She and Ellie were fighting for the people they loved.

Lindsay forced a polite smile. “Granted, cases of retrograde amnesia spanning that many years are rare. But so too would be the case of someone managing to fake it successfully for that long.”

Thompson held up his hands in mock surrender.

“So does the name Tara King mean anything to you?” Lindsay already knew that Decker had reached out to Thompson after connecting the necklace he found on Alex Lopez’s boat to the shooting of Richard Mullaney.

Thompson shook his head. “Never heard it until I got a call from a Long Island detective on, let’s see, it must have been Tuesday. A guy named Decker? My understanding now is that Tara babysat for the family a few times. They met her through their charitable work.”

“I’m surprised a babysitter wasn’t on your radar,” Lindsay said. “I would have assumed you’d look into every person who might have access to the house.”

“Well, you’d assume right. We got a complete list of the house staff from Mrs. Locke. Also a list of anyone who might possibly have a key. No Tara King.”

“So why wasn’t Tara on the list?” she asked.

He shrugged. “You’d need to ask someone else. I worked with the list I had.”

According to Decker, Melanie had said they never entrusted spare keys to part-time babysitters, but according to Jess, Hope had been able to let herself into the house.

By the time the waiter brought their orders, Lindsay was telling Thompson about the secret Facebook group she had found of women who claimed to have been groomed and sexually assaulted by Richard Mullaney.

“I’ve never heard anything about any kind of group like that,” he said.

The group didn’t actually exist, so his response wasn’t surprising. “But what about the underlying allegations themselves?” she asked. “Nothing like that came up when you were investigating Mullaney’s murder?”

“Not once.” He sounded appropriately shocked.

“But what about since then? It’s been fifteen years. The Me Too movement. Women are coming forward in ways they never have before.”

“Well, if they have with respect to Richard Mullaney, I can’t speak to that.”

He was good. She had to give him that.

Ellie interrupted to provide another nudge. “I have no idea if it was Mullaney or not, but when I was little, a girl was telling everyone after lunch at recess on the first day of school that her older sister got a, quote, ‘pervert’ vibe from a volunteer at the COP camp. I even told Dad about it, but I can’t remember exactly what summer that would have been.”

In fact, Ellie had told Lindsay she was certain she’d spoken to her father only a few weeks before he died. That’s why she was here.

He shook his head. “Sorry, he never mentioned it to me.”

As planned, Ellie was the one to shift the conversation to the phone call Alex Lopez had made to LockeHome in April.

“That Decker fella mentioned that to me, too,” Thompson said. “Unfortunately, we’ve got no way of knowing who in the building he might have been connected to.”

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