“Me,” I told her.

She served me the latte. “Who gets the black coffee?”

My father was the only other one at the table. He looked at me and winked. “Right here, please.”

“Six bucks.”

“I pay now?” Dad said.

“Now or later.”

Decker frowned, then took out a ten. “It’s all yours. Just give us some privacy.”

She stared at the bill. “Okay. Are you a cop or something?”

The Loo took out his badge. “Yes.”

“Wow! Neat!”

“Privacy?” Decker repeated.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“That means you leave.”

“Oh. Right.”

Eventually, she left. Dad turned to me. “I’m reluctant to get Koby involved.”

“Why?” I said. “He’ll do it—”

“I know he’ll do it. That’s not the problem. He’s a nurse; that’s the problem. As a health-care professional, once she tells him about any kind of molestation, he’s obligated to report it, just like we would be as cops. The difference is, if he reports it, the case jumps into the system and it’s out of our hands. Yeah, we could get involved, but it would be messy. Someone would probably call in DSS. Then some social worker starts talking to Sarah and before long the whole thing about Sarah abandoning the baby comes up. Didn’t you tell me that Louise went through hurdles to get legal custody of Ella?”

“Yes.”

“Who knows? This might jeopardize the custody decision. Once it’s out, we open a big can of worms, Cindy.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“Furthermore,” Dad continued, “a good lawyer can claim that Koby is biased against Buck or whoever it is, and he’d have a point. It would look like a setup. And in a way it would be a setup because we dragged Koby into it. I’m not saying we won’t use him. But if we do it without considering the consequences, the perp could slip away.”

“But if we don’t jump soon, Daddy, Sarah could change her mind about talking to Koby. Then we’re back to square one. Aren’t you the one who told me to just go for it?”

“Cindy, this isn’t someone who’s pointing a gun at you. This is a crime that happened maybe a year ago—”

“Belinda Syracuse happened only a few months ago.”

“And that’s another thing. Even if Sarah was being molested, you have nothing to tie that to Belinda Syracuse’s hit-and-run.”

“We have DNA on the car. If Buck molested Sarah, we could arrest him and demand a DNA sample.”

“Why would the DA bother with a DNA sample? Sarah’s molestation isn’t a recent rape where there’s evidence. It’s he says, she says. We have to show a link to connect the molester to the hit-and-run, if there even is a molester. The only thing we do know is that if Sarah tells Koby about any kind of impropriety, it’s all over. So we’ve got to map out the contingencies before Sarah makes the confession.”

“But Sarah is the case,” I said.

Decker said, “No, Sarah isn’t the case, Cindy. The DNA from the blood smear on the license plate is the case. Our first priority is to see if we can get a matchup. If we do get a match and if it is Buck, then we have Buck associated with the car. Now that still doesn’t place him at the crime. But it will be enough to get us a search warrant for his house and start a file on him. From there, we can probably get his phone records, go through his papers, start asking around town for witnesses who may have seen Buck and Belinda together the night of the murder. That’s our best bet. And even if people did see them together, Buck can always say that he was just trying to be a nice guy to Belinda, much in the way Koby was just being nice to Sarah.”