“I’VE MADE OUT a schedule for Lance Terry so we can check out his alibis.” Decker pushed the list across the desk over to McAdams. “Make a few copies. It shouldn’t take too long to verify everything.”

“Do you want me to check out the alibi first or to talk to the administration when it opens?”

“Maybe, neither. Maybe one of the other guys can do it.”

“Still don’t trust me?”

“I might need you for something else.”

“Like?”

Decker handed him a phone number on a scrap of paper. “This is the only number that I could find for John Jeffrey Latham in the Boston area. Give him a call.”

“Sure.” McAdams did. “Voice mail. Should I leave a message?”

“Give it here.” Decker waited for the beep and then pressed the hash mark to go past the instructions. “This is Peter Decker of Greenbury Police Department. Can you please call me back as soon as possible? It’s important.” He left his cell number, the station number, and then he hung up. “It’s seven in the morning. Where could he be without his cell?”

“Sleeping in bed.”

“You of the information highway generation have your cell phones glued to your hands. The call should have woken him up. Try again in five minutes. Leave your cell number. Then he’ll have two numbers to not call.”

Five minutes later, on the dot, McAdams called and left his own voice mail. Decker was scribbling out his thoughts. “Can I have Angeline’s phone bill from last month?”

“Sure.” McAdams slid it across the desk.

Decker’s eyes scanned the list. He gave it back to McAdams. “Do you see Latham’s number anywhere?”

“Uh . . . no, I do not.”

“Do you see any 617 area code numbers?”

“No, I do not.”

“What are the other Massachusetts area codes?”

“If my memory is still intact, which I can’t promise after being up for almost twenty-four hours, it has 857 and 781 . . . uh, why don’t I just look it up?”

“Before you do, what’s the point I am making?”

“That she made no calls to the Boston area.”

“Which means?”

“Either Latham and Boston are dead ends or she had another cell phone.”

“And why would it make sense for her to have another cell phone?”

“If she was doing something illegal, she wouldn’t want a paper record of it.”

“So what’s our next step?”

“Search her place and see if we can find the other cell phone, which we won’t find. Because if she was doing something illegal, she was using a disposable phone.”

“Which means?”

“We won’t be able to recover either a phone bill or a phone number.”

“So what’s our next step?”

McAdams sat back in his chair. “She had to buy the disposable phones somewhere. We need to hit the local phone stores.”

“Tyler, you are truly worthy of your Harvard B.A.”

“How about my two-hundred-thousand-dollar-plus tuition?”