Marvin rubbed his beard and thought about it. “I’m trying to think if I ever met him. I don’t recall that I did. None of them stayed out here. There was a city council meeting about some of the vandalism the lawyers were complaining about, but as I recall, the mine sent some young associate. The only time I heard Brink’s name was after he got killed. Wasn’t it his son that did it?”

“We’re not so sure about that anymore,” Darrell replied. “The thing is, we think Brink may have stayed at the resort several years ago.”

“Oh, yeah? I guess it’s possible, but I don’t remember.”

“We’d like to look through your guest records from back then. Specifically from July seven years ago.”

Marvin shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

He retreated into a back room and returned a couple of minutes later with a shoebox in his hand. The box was labeled with a black marker for the months of June and July seven years earlier. Inside, hundreds of white index cards were squeezed together in no particular order that we could see. Each card listed little more than the basic information, including a name, cabin number, check-in date, check-out date, total bill, and method of payment. Back then, most of the guests had paid in cash.

Darrell took half the cards, and I took the other. The slowest part of the process was interpreting the handwriting, but when we were both done, we hadn’t found a card labeled with a name that even resembled Gordon Brink.

“Penny and Sandra weren’t one hundred percent sure it was seven years ago,” I pointed out. “Maybe we’re wrong about the timing.”

“I don’t think we’re wrong.” Darrell glanced at Marvin, who was reading a paperback Louis L’Amour novel. “Marvin? Do you typically ask for ID when people check in?”

The resort owner didn’t look up from the book. “Now I do. Seven years ago? I was pretty loose about things back then. As long as people had cash, I didn’t really care who they were.”

Darrell looked at me. “So Brink could have used a false name.”

“If he did, then we’ll never find him.”

But we went through the index cards again anyway. It took longer this time, hunting for the kind of fake name a Milwaukee corporate lawyer might use. The clue I spotted in the stack of cards turned out not to be a name, but a correction in the check-out date and the total bill. The guest had paid in advance for a two-week stay, but then the date had been crossed out and replaced with a new date that was only five days after arrival.

The name on the card was Jay Smith.

Jay. That felt like more than a coincidence.

I showed the card to Darrell, who spotted the significance of the new check-out date immediately.