Mr. Ballin

Now, so far, Hayward had not found the necklace or, you know, found the pawn shop that maybe Barbara went to, but he was very hopeful, maybe too hopeful in some ways.

Because, you know, aside from this necklace lead, the investigation really was kind of losing steam.

They had searched and fingerprinted Barbara's car, but had not found anything significant.

They'd also gotten the autopsy back, and it was mostly unhelpful.

The medical examiner had actually counted five gunshot wounds, not just three, so more than Hayward had thought, but they couldn't confirm whether or not Barbara was sexually assaulted.

And also the forensics report had come back and they had not been able to collect any fingerprints at the scene.

And so all of this was swirling around in Hayward's head as he stepped into this particular pawn shop and he asked the woman behind the counter if they had recently purchased a turquoise necklace.

And to his shock, the woman said, yes.

And then she gestured towards a glass case behind the counter where Hayward could see a long white necklace lined with turquoise stones on a red felt pad.

About a half an hour later, Hayward was back behind the wheel of his cruiser, and his heart was pounding and his mind was racing so fast he could barely pay attention to the road.

Because Hayward finally had a real trail here.

The shop clerk's description of the person who had sold that turquoise necklace matched Barbara perfectly.

Not only that, the shopkeeper also had a receipt for the sale that showed Barbara was at the store on March 11th at 12.50pm, the same day she went missing.

But the most incredible part of this new lead was that Barbara had apparently told this clerk that she was in a hurry because her boyfriend was circling the block outside.

And this was huge because Hayward and his team had spoken to a lot of people in Barbara's life and no one had mentioned a boyfriend.

Now, unfortunately, the pawn shop worker had not gotten a look at this person, this boyfriend that Barbara was talking about.

So Hayward had just taken the necklace and the receipt for evidence, and now he was rushing back to the precinct to make some calls.

He needed to see if anybody in Barbara's life knew about this boyfriend and maybe had just failed to mention it for some reason.

But as soon as Hayward parked and hurried inside the precinct, he was stopped by a deputy, and this deputy seemed as excited and frazzled as Hayward felt.

The deputy told Hayward that he wasn't going to believe this, but they had been continuing their background interviews, and some of Barbara's friends said that Barbara had mentioned a boyfriend named Richard.