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.”

“Unless it was you,” Ellie said.

His eyebrows shot up in exaggerated amusement. “Me? Yeah, that’s funny.”

“He called you because Tara King showed up on his fishing boat.” A kid carting a pitcher of ice water approached their table, but scurried away when he read their body language. “He remembered her, but she acted like she’d never seen him before. It spooked him. He started wondering if she had figured out that he was the one who killed Richard Mullaney, so he turned to you for help, just like he did after he shot Mullaney. Just like he did eight years before that, when he found Mullaney climbing on top of his sister.”

“Ellie, I don’t know what this lawyer has convinced you of, but this is crazy. Let’s me and you talk alone, and I’ll answer whatever—”

“He was a rapist, Steve.” Her voice was low but seething. “Emilia Lopez was only fourteen years old, and she trusted you—her whole family trusted you—because you let them think you cared about them.” She slapped the table for emphasis. “What did you do instead? Shake down Mullaney for money?”

Thompson wiped his upper lip with his hand. “Do you know the good that family has done? The Locke Foundation educates girls all over the world who would otherwise be banned from reading. And Wichita wouldn’t be the same without the Locke fortune. This is a completely different place from when you grew up.”

“And that justifies letting him get away with rape? How many other girls did he abuse before he was killed?”

Thompson looked to Lindsay, searching for someone to intervene, but she held his gaze, her jaw set.

“You two are from a different generation,” he said. “Times were different back then.”

Ellie laughed mockingly. “Give me a break, Steve. That’s just disgusting.”

“Things were less black and white than they are now. It was complicated.”