Free Dead Connection by Alafair Burke Page B

restraining order. The boy was actually arrested after the incident at the mall, and then — well, let’s just say things got worse from there. Amy blamed herself for years.”
    “Our point,” Evelyn insisted, “is that our daughter would not have agreed to go on dates with strangers.”
    “I’m very sorry,” McIlroy said, “but we’ve confirmed that Amy did sign herself up for an account with this service. In fact, she had a date that very night with a man she’d met online.”
    “Well, then, that’s the man you should be looking at,” Hampton insisted.
    “That was one of the first things we did,” McIlroy said patiently. “We were able to confirm his alibi, but we’re continuing to do everything we can—”
    “No,” Hampton said, slapping the table. “You’ll have to check him out again. I refuse to believe that Amy would agree to meet men this way.”
    Ellie tried to help by explaining how common it was for women Amy’s age to use services like FirstDate, but her efforts only served to upset the couple further.
    Hampton cut off the conversation abruptly. “Unless you require anything else of us, Detectives, we’ll thank you for your time and let you get back to Amy’s case.”
    Ellie and McIlroy walked the Davises out, pausing briefly at the men’s locker room, from which McIlroy retrieved the makeshift carrier he had fashioned for Chowhound. As Ellie watched Hampton take the awkward cardboard box from McIlroy, she couldn’t help but feel that these people were owed something more.
    She heard the words come out of her mouth before she’d decided to speak them. “We’re going to find him.”

    JOHNNY’S BAR ON Greenwich Avenue is roughly the size of a typical suburban closet — the walk-in kind with enough room to accommodate the typical suburban wardrobe. In Greenwich Village, however, people are not typical, and Johnny’s Bar has just the right dimensions for a kick-ass watering hole.
    Ellie wasn’t sure how she even knew the bar’s name. The sign out front read Bar. She arrived forty minutes after the time she told Jess to expect her. By her brother’s standards, that wasn’t the same as being forty minutes late. It meant Ellie would have to sit alone for another fifteen. But she’d learned over the years that she needed to be the one to arrive first. Jess couldn’t be relied upon to wait. Jess could not be relied upon at all.
    The woman behind the bar was called Josie. Josie had long curly black hair, pulled into a giant floppy knot at the top of her head. She wore a black tank top and jeans, accessorized with tattoos and piercings. She managed to look comfortable perched on top of the counter, her feet resting on the bar. She argued with a regular about whether it was finally time for Steinbrenner to go. Johnny’s was the kind of place where people talked baseball even with snow on the ground.
    It was also the kind of place where a bartender like Josie remembered an occasional customer like Ellie — as well as her drink.
    “Johnny Walker, right?”
    “Black. On the rocks.”
    Josie scooted off the counter and reached for a bottle on the top shelf. “We don’t get too many people in here for the good stuff. Hey Frank, Hatcher here is a full-blown detective on the NYPD.”
    “Prettiest cop I ever saw,” Frank grumbled, turning his attention to the television. A football game of some kind was playing.
    “Your brother’s late again?” Josie was pouring.
    “No, I’m early.” Josie turned back to the game, leaving Ellie alone with her thoughts after a long two days.
    Ellie let the whiskey warm her chest and stomach, untangling the knots she’d felt since Evelyn and Hampton Davis arrived at the precinct. They were good people, but, like a lot of parents, they knew nothing about their adult child. They still saw her as a precocious little girl, an ingenue just out of college — not as a woman who was already lying about her age on an Internet dating site. They were naive