“Fine, I admit it. I’m doing that thing I do where I take on everyone else’s problems.”

He placed an index finger to his nose, and then pointed it at her. “Ding ding. We have a winner.”

“It’s not the worst fault a person could have.”

“This is true, and I have certainly benefited from your dragon-slaying tendencies over the years. But first you were helping the defense lawyer with the missing amnesia friend. And now you’re helping the cop who obviously thinks the missing friend went and killed someone.”

“What can I say? I like being in the middle of a mystery. Probably explains why I have this job.”

“Speaking of your job, you do actually still have one.” He gave a pointed look toward an untouched stack of E-ZPass records on her desk. They belonged to Ralph Bunning, whom they had arrested Sunday night for hiring a convicted ex-con to murder the man who’d been having an affair with Bunning’s wife. Without a confession from either defendant, they were trying to prove their meetings indirectly, aligning their movements with cell-phone pings and bridge-and-tunnel charges.

She was on page three when her cell rang. It was Steve. “Hey there,” she said. “That was quick.”

Rogan scribbled something on a legal pad and pushed it in her direction. I.e., lazy bum on Long Island could’ve done it.

“Only took a phone call,” Steve said. “The community policing unit has a database going back years, I guess. There was an Alex Lopez in the camp for the three summers before Janice Beale was killed.”

There it was: confirmation that the bloodstain found in the house had nothing to do with Beale’s murder and therefore nothing to do with her father. “Do they have contact information for the family, by any chance?”

“Shoot, I didn’t even ask. I’m losing my chops. Want me to call back and see what I can find?”

“Nice of you to offer, but that’s okay. It’s another cop’s case to work.” She smiled knowingly in Rogan’s direction, and he flashed a thumbs-up.

One more phone call to close the loop, and she could forget the names Alex Lopez and Hope Miller forever.

“Decker.”

“Good news and bad.” She began with the fact that LockeHome wouldn’t be able to identify the route Alex Lopez’s phone call had made from the company’s general number, and then moved on to the new information she’d gathered. “Lopez was definitely enrolled in the COP camp for the three years before that blood sample was found. My friend didn’t get any other information, but I assume you can follow up with them. It’s the WPD community policing department that keeps the records.”