“Well, if it was a woman’s blood, but not Hope’s, you’d probably tell me on the assumption that I’d see that as better news than an unidentified man’s blood. So I’m going to assume it was the latter, and yet you’re still convinced it has nothing to do with Hope. If I have to, I’ll get a list from the Stansfields of every single man who’s been in and out of that house myself. I’ll track them down and swab them personally, if that’s what I need to do to make you take this seriously. Until you know for sure there’s an explanation, you can’t just move on.”

“Look. I can’t tell you every link in the chain I followed in my investigation, but I assure you, I’m completely confident that the trace amount of blood that luminesced is unrelated to your friend. I know this is hard to believe, but there’s stray DNA in all kinds of places, and it doesn’t mean anything sinister has happened. You’d never look at a hotel room the same again if you saw it under a black light.”

The woman was shaking her head, as if she knew something he did not. “You called the police in Hopewell, didn’t you?”

Right after you told me that bullshit story, he wanted to say. The sergeant on duty had explained that he was going to be “perfectly frank” in the hope that he could “trust” Carter to be “discreet.” According to him, the shrinks and the social workers all said that the woman’s amnesia was legit, but some of the cops initially wondered if her story didn’t “smell right” once they ran the plate on her overturned car and it came back as stolen from Indianapolis. They thought she might have gotten herself wrapped up in a bad situation with dangerous people and, after crashing her stolen car, concocted a story about amnesia to get a free bed and a fresh start. They were quickly shot down by their chief at the time, whose daughter had been the one to call in the accident. “She sort of made that girl her pet project while she was home from her hoity-toity college. You didn’t hear it from me, but there’s something weird about that friendship. Like maybe they’re a little too close, if you know what I mean.” Carter had asked for the former police chief’s name—Jimmy Kelly. It was all the confirmation he needed.