Page 19 of Find Me

“No, they told me it was Decker. Wow, it dawns on me I don’t even know your first name.”

“Sure you do.”

“Fine, you don’t want to tell me. How bad can it be? My middle name’s Eugenia, not that you asked. My uncle Eugene always gave me extra cash for Christmas to make it up to me.”

Not that you asked.The passive-aggressiveness wasn’t lost on Carter. He and Lisa Eugenia Robbins had gone out on one and a half dates last year. The second dinner was cut short, supposedly by a callout, and then Carter had never made it up to her. “My name’s Carter.”

“Yeah, I get it. You want to be called Carter. No first names allowed, I guess.”

I guess.This was why he’d feigned the appearance of a callout with a glance at his cell phone on that second date. And he was beginning to feel like he was in the middle of a bad version of Who’s on First. “Lisa, you do realize my first name—my actual first name—is Carter, don’t you?”

The expression on her face told him that she did not, in fact, realize that. “So what’s your last name?”

“Decker.”

“No, Decker’s got the hairy neck and always smells like deodorant.”

“Nope. That would be Kinderwood. Anyway, I’m Carter Decker. Nice to meet you. Again. Let me guess: You thought I was the one who pulled that little girl from the path of an oncoming car on Abe’s Path last summer?”

Her blank stare was confirmation.

“That’d be one Sergeant Deborah Carter.” He could see Lisa’s disappointment. “So, what’ve we got here?”

“No visible sign of distress. The ME will have to call it, obviously, but looks like a drowning. He’s in swim trunks and a rash guard, and we had a couple days of twelve-foot swells last week. Those kinds of waves are no joke.”

“Those kinds of waves aren’t on the shores of Lake Montauk, though.”

Lake Montauk wasn’t even an actual lake. It used to be, back when it was called Lake Wyandanch, until a real estate developer blasted a gap on the northern slice of shore to connect the lake to the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. He dreamed of transforming the port of Montauk into the Miami Beach of the North. Instead, as Carter understood it, he went bankrupt in the Great Crash. This was the kind of shit he knew thanks to his old man, who had loved both history and the only home he knew outside of Poland, coming straight to the East End from Ellis Island to work a farm. Filip Dankowski the teenaged farmhand eventually became Philip Decker, the electrician who married a bank teller whose parents had come from Ireland. Carter was named for the man who was in the White House when he was born, not because his parents shared that President’s party or policies but because they loved being citizens of the greatest country in the world.

Lisa Robbins was still talking about the water patterns. “The current could definitely carry him from the ocean to here.”

Carter nodded. “How’d you get an ID so fast? The guy swam with a wallet?”

“The rash guard. The logo’s from Reel Deal Fishing. I pulled it up online, and there’s his picture. Sorry, but what a waste.” She held up her cell phone. He recognized the photograph as the same one Lopez’s girlfriend had provided when he took her missing person report. The “what a waste” comment clearly referred to the fact that Lopez had been an attractive man. Carter was confident enough to recognize objective facts. “Seems like a small operation. Not like Jack’s or Hot Rods or anything, but a legit outfit. I found anEast Hampton Stararticle online announcing Lopez’s purchase of the business from the previous owner. How long’s he been missing?”

“His sort-of girlfriend filed the report Saturday, but she hadn’t talked to him since Thursday. It’s not clear they spoke on the regular, though.”

“Anything of note in your missing person investigation so far?” she asked.

An honest answer would have been “What investigation?” After taking the girlfriend’s report, he had used up some time on the clock to swing by Lopez’s business and house, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He had also run Lopez’s criminal history: a speeding ticket three months earlier for going fifty on Town Lane, which, based on what Carter knew about the officer who issued the ticket, probably had something to do with Lopez’s skin color.

He also found reports of two separate anonymous phone calls to the police department, claiming that Lopez’s fishing guide business was a cover for a drug-dealing operation. The first call had come in four months earlier, not long after Lopez had moved to the area. The tipster claimed that Lopez was a “known” dealer, whose apparent financial resources far exceeded any reasonable income from his one-boat tourism outfit. The information lacked the kind of specifics that police generally look for in deciding whether to pursue an investigation, and no action was taken. More intriguingly, a second anonymous call came in only four days before Lopez’s girlfriend reported him missing. This time, theinformant claimed to be a heroin user who had bought drugs from Lopez multiple times. Believing that Lopez had shorted her in their two most recent transactions, the user decided to “blow the whistle” on Lopez’s illegal side hustle. “He gets his product from a guy he used to fish salmon with up in Alaska.”

Unlike the first tipster, the second caller had provided details about the source of her information, claiming to be a direct participant in drug transactions. Her mention of Lopez’s prior work and its location also suggested inside information. The tip had been passed on to the Suffolk County Police Department’s drug investigation unit but, according to detectives there, not yet assigned for follow-up before Lopez’s disappearance. “If you find him,” the sergeant had said, “let us know, and we’ll check him out.”

All of this was more detail than Lisa Robbins needed. “A few whispers that he might have been involved in the drug trade,” he said, “but nothing concrete.”

“For what it’s worth, someone posted a one-star Yelp review on Sunday, saying he stood them up for a charter reservation that day and wasn’t answering his phone, so he was probably dead or missing by then.”

“Look at you being all sleuthy.”

“You’re the investigator. I just keep the water safe—or try to, at least. This will be our third drowning this summer, and it’s only June.”

Carter said nothing.

“You look dubious. There’s some reason you think it’s not a drowning, isn’t there? Something about it seems... fishy?”

She looked proud of herself, and Carter wondered if he’d made a mistake, cutting short that second date.

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