The call had been to the main number; Carter had no way of knowing where Lopez was transferred from there. But it was one indication that Alex Lopez’s connections to Wichita were not entirely in the past, which meant they might possibly explain his connection to Hope Miller.

Carter thought he was onto something when he pulled up the driving route between Wichita, Kansas, and Long Island and found that it would pass directly through Indianapolis. Hope Miller had been found in a crashed 1999 Toyota 4Runner, stolen from Indianapolis.

But then Carter had entered a new map search, this time for directions from Phoenix to Long Island, and ended up on the same exact route from St. Louis on. So if Hope’s car crash had anything to do with Alex Lopez, the two of them could have met in Kansas, Arizona, or just about anywhere south or west of Indianapolis.

His thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of his phone against the desk. A new text message. Detective Carter. Again with people messing up his name. This is Jocelyn Hodge. He rued the day the department started “encouraging” detectives to give victims their direct cell phone numbers. When do you think I can get that necklace? You can understand why it would mean a great deal to me. Thank you.

The necklace in question was a silver chain with two small hearts dangling from a pendant. The chain itself had even smaller hearts embedded every few inches among the links. Carter had found it wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, tucked inside a tackle box on Lopez’s boat. With the help of the zoom lens on his cell phone, he’d been able to make out the tiny letters on the clasp: Tiffany & Co. Shown a photograph of it, Jocelyn said she had never seen it before. She also immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was meant for her, perhaps for her birthday the next month. He could tell she took comfort in that theory—those two silver hearts dangling side by side—but Carter wasn’t ready to release the jewelry yet. Unable to locate the necklace on the Tiffany website, he had contacted the general manager at the Fifth Avenue store, who offered to research the matter and get back to him. He was also waiting for Lopez’s credit card statements to see if he could locate the purchase details.

I’m sorry, Ms. Hodge. It’s logged in evidence for now. Thx.

He hit the send key and then resumed tapping a pen against his desktop. He knew that Alex Lopez was the source of the blood in the Stansfields’ entryway, where Hope Miller was last seen. He knew that Lopez had been murdered. And he was pretty sure he could prove that Hope Miller had come to East Hampton for the express purpose of finding Alex Lopez. But he still didn’t feel the boom.