If Sutton did go to Zippy Wash, there was no evidence of it. Assuming he did go, he paid with coins and was not spotted by the cashier on duty. While the car had been wiped clean, it was messy, wrappers strewn all over the seats. Sutton had probably never made it to the car wash or he’d never intended to go. The last people who admitted to seeing Sutton were his mother and stepfather. Over the next two days, there had been “sightings” of him—Dulles Airport being the most famous, but it had not been credible. Ben had seen the security tapes himself and the man had not been Todd Sutton.

Next to Todd’s time line was Peter Beaumont’s. Peter Beaumont had practiced with the band the night before, then failed to show up at a concert at the Skyline Nightclub. Jason Barnes noted that they delayed the band’s start for an hour and finally had to go onstage without him. Jason and the bass player had to alternate as lead singer for the night. Unlike Todd Sutton, Peter Beaumont’s whereabouts the day of his disappearance were a mystery. No one admitted to having seen him for twenty-four hours. He lived with his mother, who was on vacation in the Finger Lakes with her boyfriend at the time.

But there was one specific link between the two cases that had been nagging Ben for months now. Jason Barnes had been the bandmate and best friend of one victim and the prospective father-in-law of the other. Physically, Jason Barnes could have committed a crime in either scenario. He was a young man when Peter went missing and older, but still physically able to dispose of a body, at the time of Todd Sutton’s more recent disappearance. Ben hated to think of Lara’s father this way, but it was the only connection he could find between the two men. He sighed. That wasn’t a satisfying theory. Why would Jason Barnes harm the man who was his possible ticket to stardom?

“Oh, Lara.” He sighed and ran his hands over his face, hoping, for her sake, he was wrong.

His phone rang. It was Doyle in the next room. “Kim Landau is hot to find you. She wanted you to call her when the lady from the Post left.”

“Did she say why?”

“Nah, she said to call her.” He paused. “That you’d have the number. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have her number?”

He sighed. “I do.” He was sure that if he could see Doyle’s face, it would have a smirk on it like a sixteen-year-old boy.

He picked up the phone and punched in Kim’s number.

“Doyle said Michelle Hixson was already there.” Kim didn’t even wait for hello.

“She was.”

“A bit tenacious, don’t you think?”

“A bit is being kind.”