“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 minutes later, 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.