Carter nodded, and Lindsay could tell he gave absolutely zero credence to Robin’s intuitions.

“Her friend just moved here from Hopewell, New Jersey. Oh, listen to that: Hope from Hopewell!” Robin lowered her voice again to a whisper. “She was on the run from an abusive ex.”

“Maybe she decided to go back home?” Carter suggested. “Unfortunately, women in that position often change their minds.”

“No,” Lindsay said. “It’s a small town, and I already checked with people there.” She mentally crossed her fingers that Carter would not make a call to Hopewell to verify the false backstory that Robin had just repeated to him. Would this officer worry if a domestic violence victim hiding from an abusive ex-husband suddenly disappeared? Maybe, maybe not. But he certainly wasn’t going to drop everything on his day off for a woman who had only moved to town a month earlier after living fifteen years under an assumed identity and a claim of amnesia. The part about the cash advance from Evan would be the icing on the cops-won’t-care cake.

“Tell you what. I’ve got a bag of tricks in my truck from an in-service training last week. Let me take a look and make sure we’re not missing something with the naked eye. How about that?”

He was obviously humoring them, but Lindsay would take whatever help she could get at this point. “That would be great.”

“Just give me a few minutes.”

Well more than a few minutes later, the shades in the Stansfield house were all drawn, and Carter was spraying liquid from a pump bottle onto the floor beneath the sliding kitchen door, explaining that it was a highly sensitive compound that would emit light when oxidized.

Lindsay wasn’t a cop, but she was raised by one. She also considered herself a pretty talented cross-examiner when it came to challenging the processing of a crime scene. Carter had skipped every initial step—identifying and securing a perimeter, a thorough visual inspection with photographs and notes, perhaps a secondary sweep enhanced by ultraviolet light. She could have a field day with a single officer, off duty, jumping directly to what she suspected to be luminol. Because the compound had the potential to destroy certain types of evidence at a crime scene, police tended to use it sparingly and only after exploring other options.

But because Carter was humoring them, he probably didn’t care about any of that. And because Lindsay was desperate for help, she said nothing.

“What is that stuff?” Robin asked. “I don’t see it doing anything.”

“It’s luminol,” Carter said. He followed up with an oversimplified explanation of the way that the liquid reacted to iron found in hemoglobin. He avoided the use of the word blood, but the implication was clear. “And it’s not doing anything because there’s nothing here that’s an oxidizing agent. This way, you’ll know for certain.”