Page 67 of Find Me

“You’re too good of a cop for this, Els Bells. It’s a nice theory, but it’s not proof.”

“Well, I’m apparently a better cop than you are,” she replied. “It was a stupid move to plant that necklace on Lopez’s boat. It was the only thing that tied him to Mullaney’s murder, which eventually brought us here—to you.”

The smile shifted again. Amusement. Like he knew more than they did. Lindsay assumed he wanted to say something to make him feel smarter than them but didn’t want to implicate himself. She decided to wipe the smirk from his face with another brick.

“We’ve met with Melanie Locke,” Lindsay said. Melanie had kept her promise to contact her after their initial conversation at Wharton and was also cooperating fully with Carter Decker. “She says she never heard one word about these women being paid off. Whether that’s true or not, you know people will believe her. She’s laying every little bit of this at your feet. She’s the victim here, hoodwinked all these years by her husband’s wingman. Your job is gone.”

“The WPD will go after your pension, too,” Ellie added. “You saw how they fought my family after my father died.”

“Well, unlike my old partner, I’ve saved plenty of money.”

“When I told my father about that girl at school—what she said about her sister and the camp—he said he’d look into it.”

“And I told you he never mentioned it to me,” he said firmly.

“It took me a long time to come to terms with this, but my father was not a good father. He cared more about the job than he cared about us. Shit, he cared aboutyoumore than us. He didn’t even pretend to be the kind of guy who was going to show up to my school concerts or soccer games. But when he told us he would do something for us, he did it. And I remember the look on his face when I went to him about the camp. He was so disturbed. He got angry and told me that something so terrible should not be gossip on a school playground. That it was the worst kind of harm an adult could perpetuate against a child. So I know he looked into it.”

“And I told you that if he did, he never said a word about it to me.”

“You were his best friend on the force. And, unlike him, you were stillhelping out at the camp. He was way too far down the William Summer rabbit hole by then to have time for anything else.”

Thompson jabbed an index finger across the table. “Don’t you dare,” he hissed.

“You killed him to protect Richard Mullaney and seal your place at his side. I already told the department. They’re pulling up everything they can about where you were the night my father supposedly committed suicide. Even if they can’t make it stick, everyone will know. By the time you try to fall asleep tonight, this will be the only thing every single cop you ever knew is talking about. You’re the guy who murdered his partner on the side of a deserted road and then let his family believe he ate his own gun.”

The color drained from Thompson’s face as he blinked in silence. Ellie stared back, emotionless.

“I need a second.”

He rose from the table and, after an initial stumble, moved swiftly toward the restrooms at the opposite corner of the restaurant. They watched as the men’s room door closed behind him. A moment later, a man in a trucker-style cap emerged. He was still wiping his damp palms on the thighs of his jeans when they heard the crack of a gunshot.

A woman screamed as Trucker Cap dove for the floor, crawling beneath the nearest table. A waiter dropped a tray of dinner plates that had been carefully balanced on one shoulder and ran through a back exit door, setting off an emergency alarm. A male voice yelled out, “Active shooter! Run! Everyone, run!”

As customers pushed past one another in search of a safe place to hide from an expected onslaught of bullets, two women remained still, side by side in the back corner booth. They knew there would be no more gunfire.

Ellie downed the rest of her beer but said nothing. Lindsay reached into her purse and tapped the record button on her phone. “You called it,” she said.

Ellie dabbed at her eyes with her dinner napkin before placing it on the table. “It’s done now.”

38

Tuesday, June 29, 11:49 a.m.

According to the Dodge Charger’s dashboard, it was nearly noon, but objective concepts of time had stopped meaning anything to Carter Decker about fourteen hours earlier. He had pulled his first all-nighter in the last four years, and the second longest shift in his entire police career. He was ready to inhale the breakfast burrito he had picked up from Rosie’s and then crawl into bed and pass out.

He had almost forgotten what it was like to do his job the right way, but he was feeling pretty good about sealing up the Alex Lopez case tight, even though the perpetrator had taken his own life. There was no doubt that Steve Thompson was the guy. It had taken Decker days, but he finally found the cabdriver who had picked Thompson up from the Cross Sound ferry and dropped him off near the piers at Montauk. The news had not yet gone public, but Wichita police were probably a day or two away from naming Alex Lopez as the person who had killed Richard Mullaney—and divulging the circumstances surrounding the shooting. If Carter had to guess, the news would encourage other women Mullaney had abused to come forward. This morning, Melanie Locke had announced a “pause” in her Senate campaign events for “personal family reasons,” but he had a feeling she’d find some way to spinto her favor the coming revelations about her deceased husband. He had no idea whether the WPD would be looking at felony murder charges against Tara King, but that wasn’t his call to make.

When he pulled onto his street, Mrs. Stansfield threw him a cheerful wave from her front path. He stopped at the curb and rolled down his window. “You’re back. I was wondering if I was ever going to see you again.” The couple had come home from Hawaii only to leave again for Palm Beach three days later. When Carter saw a Sold banner added to the For Sale sign outside their house, he realized how much he was going to miss his neighbors.

“You’re not quite rid of us yet, but, boy, it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to this house. And to you, young man.” She pulled a stack of mail from her mailbox and began flipping through it. “Junk, junk, catalogue, junk.” She paused on a white letter-sized envelope and then held it up in his direction. It was addressed by hand toHomeowner. “Probably someone trying to buy the house and cut out the realtor. You wouldn’t believe how shady people are out here with the real estate.”

She split the envelope open with her thumb and pulled out another envelope, folded in half and tagged with a Post-it note. “Well, this is weird,” she said.

The Post-it note read, “Please give this to Hope Miller. She works for your realtor and doesn’t have a mailbox.”

39

Tuesday, June 29, 1:10 p.m.

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