Page 18 of Find Me

When she stopped speaking, Lindsay was already prepared for an onslaught of skeptical questions. What if Hope faked the amnesia? Why was she in a stolen car? What if she simply decided to disappear and start all over again? All of the reasons Carter Decker had used to rationalize his indifference. Instead, Ellie asked if Lindsay had spoken to anyone who knew Hope on Long Island. When Lindsay got to the part about Hope sending a text message to Evan from the Stansfield house on Saturday night, a look of surprise crossed Ellie’s face. “This was two Saturdays ago?” she asked. “What time?”

“Ten thirty-three, to be exact.”

The answer seemed to bother the detective, but she said nothing more about it. She did, however, finally speak about the College Hill Strangler case.

“William Summer targeted women who were the sole adult in their household,” she said. “He called the victims his ‘projects.’ He’d spend weeks stalking them before closing in. He’d figure out their schedules,their habits. He’d watch through open windows, planning where he would position them once he was inside. What he would do to them. The kids, too, if that was the case. I’m sorry. That must be upsetting to hear.”

Lindsay did her best to mirror the other woman’s matter-of-fact attitude. “If he did have an accomplice, he’d be pretty old by now. That would be rare, wouldn’t it?”

“There’s a theory that some serial killers just stop—they age out. But there are exceptions. If your theory panned out, my guess is that the accomplice would be a younger person. Almost like an apprentice. Summer could have even groomed a vulnerable child he had access to in some manner. Exposed him to violence early on. Encouraged him to inflict it on others. If the accomplice was in his early twenties during Summer’s killings, or even a teenager, he’d only be in his forties today, max, and could definitely still be active. You said your dad managed to get this information from that detective in East Hampton. Have either of you contacted the WPD?”

“My father did. They wouldn’t give him the time of day. That’s why I called you. From what I can tell, you really poured yourself into the case. I’m very sorry, by the way, about your father. Having a cop as a dad isn’t easy. Luckily, mine never had to deal with anything so gruesome.”

“But he did the job,” Ellie said. “It’s more dangerous for an officer to go out on a domestic call or initiate a traffic stop than to work a homicide investigation. You know what it’s like to see someone you love leave for work and know that it could all go south.”

“Though to be clear,” Lindsay said, “I’ve learned as a defense attorney that a whole lot of Americans whoaren’tcops have to worry that this might be the day it all goes south—for selling loose cigarettes, having a barbecue, or asking some lady to put her dog on a leash while watching the birds at a park. All because someone calls the police on them.” Lindsay immediately wondered if she might have sabotaged any chance she had of forging an alliance.

“You’re not wrong,” Ellie said.

“Hope wasn’t vulnerable to that danger in the usual sense,” Lindsay said, “but I’m still worried about her.” It was why Lindsay had not taken up her father’s suggestion of reporting the Honda Civic stolen.

“You really don’t have any other theories as to what happened to your friend?” Ellie asked.

“I have a million theories, but this is the one I keep coming back to.”

“Humor me with one of the others.”

She knew Scott’s leading theory.She dumped everything from her past, including me.That one she wasn’t willing to share.

“It’s possible that she had been running from trouble before her car accident, and it finally caught up to her.”

When Lindsay finally came up with a potential strategy to get Hope a state ID card, she couldn’t understand why Hope didn’t jump at the chance, even if it was a long shot. Lindsay had kept pushing until Hope finally revealed that she’d always had a gut feeling that she might have been involved in something dangerous before the accident. It explained why she had always seemed distrustful of police—except, eventually, Lindsay’s father. She was driving a stolen car when she was found, after all, with no wallet in her purse and only a Hefty bag filled with clothes in the trunk. For all she knew, she could be wanted—by the police or worse—and she wasn’t willing to risk it.

“You think someone was looking for her all this time?”

“Some people never quit. But even if that’s the case, the blood sample’s still my best lead. It belongs to someone who lived in Wichita, Kansas, at some point twenty-some-odd years ago. I guess this leads me to the reason I called you in the first place: Any chance you know someone down there who can shed some light into whatever they know about that DNA?”

“Let me see what I can do.”

Lindsay had no way to know that for the first time in years, Detective Ellie Hatcher was allowing herself to believe once again that maybe she didn’t know the truth about her father’s death after all.

14

Monday, June 21, 1:18 p.m.

Carter flipped down the sun visor of his department-issued Dodge Charger to cut the glare reflecting off the water as he turned onto Star Island Road. Carter was born and bred on the East End, but he could count on one hand the number of times he’d been to this tiny island in Lake Montauk—once for a bar mitzvah and twice for weddings. The flashing lights of two marked police cars and an ambulance in a parking lot next to the yacht club tennis courts were a stark contrast to the rest of the scenery.

Carter badged the uniformed Suffolk County Police officers who were unspooling a roll of crime scene tape across the entrance to the path to the marina and made his way to the cluster of activity on the nearest boat dock, next to a boat marked “Marine Patrol.” He recognized the officer who hopped effortlessly from the police boat and began to make her way toward him. Her name was Lisa Robbins, and Carter knew for a fact that she liked him, even though she shouldn’t.

“Carter, what are you doing here?” she asked. It sounded flirty, and he noticed her adjusting the navy-blue polo shirt of her uniform.

“You just had to be the smarty pants to call in the guy’s name, didn’tyou, Lisa?” he said, holding his hand above his eyes, wishing like hell he’d grabbed his shades when he got the callout. “Couldn’t just be lazy and phone it in as an unidentified floater?”

A boater preparing to launch had spotted what he feared was a body, washed up between his boat and the neighboring one. The initial dispatch went to paramedics and the Marine Patrol. Without a name, an on-duty detective from the interagency major crimes team would have gotten the callout. But Lisa Robbins had managed to get a name to match the body: Alex Lopez.

“Wait. They told me they were sending out the detective who took a missing person report on this guy a few days ago.”

“Yep. Lucky me.”

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