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Chaz says, “Get me a cloth and fill up that bucket.” He points to the bottles of water he bought at the gardening store.
The sheriff starts screaming through the rags jammed in his mouth. He knows. Nobody can sustain waterboarding. Nobody.
And for the next half hour, the sheriff writhes in pain. Chaz had studied the best technique for waterboarding—a forty-second pour, lift the rag from the face, then a twenty-second pour, lift, then a ten-second pour, lift, repeat. But this sheriff somehow holds strong.
When it’s clear further efforts will be futile, O walks up behind the sheriff, takes the ends of the garrote in each hand, then pulls it tight around the sheriff’s neck. Sheriff Walton bucks and kicks, but O’s grip is tight.
Once the man stops moving, Chaz says, “Maybe that was premature. We got nothing.”
O shakes his head, holds up the sheriff’s cell phone. It’s a cheap burner. Beyond his interrogation skills, O is something of a tech whiz. If the sheriff has communicated with the accountant, Michael Harper—whom the citizens of Kansas knew as Michael Lane—O will find him.
Before the cleanup crew arrives, Chaz says, “I wondered if you can do me a favor?”
O is washing his tattooed hands in the bucket, the water a sickly pink. He looks at Chaz, waits. Chaz has never asked him for anything personal, so O seems curious.
“There’s a kid who’s been bullying my grandson…”
52
M11 MOTORWAY, ENGLAND
Ryan is speeding down the M11 to the airport. The motorway has two lanes running north, two running south. Trees and fields run along each side. Ryan’s head is spinning. The man who took Ali—The Monster—was real. And now he’s dead. Gruesomely murdered. He visualizes the man who murdered him, the stranger with the axe. It’s like some B horror movie.
He called his parents and told them not to come to England, that the police let him go. The relief in his mother’s voice almost made him cry. They don’t deserve this. He used to be the pride of his basketball-loving father’s life. His parents went to every game, reveled in Ryan “Dodge” Richardson’s glory. Bragged that their son was headed to Division I. But Ryan’s been nothing but trouble for them since that awful night. His parents had to put a second mortgage on the house to pay for his lawyer. Helped him with expenses when he transferred colleges, application fees to law school. He tried to give them his money from bartending, but his parents refused. Told Ryan to go, have fun, live his life.
Ryan’s phone buzzes. It’s a FaceTime call. An unfamiliar number. But it’s a 913 area code—Kansas—so he decides to answer it.
He swipes the device, which is on a cradle mounted to the rental car’s windshield. He’s met with the face of a pretty woman with freckles.
“Mr. Richardson?”
She’s about Ryan’s age, so the “Mr.” is a bit much. But that’s not what catches his attention: The woman knows his real name.
“Yeah,” he says, darting his eyes from the phone to the road and back.
“My name is Poppy McGee. I’m with the Leavenworth sheriff’s office.”
He waits, contemplates pulling over since his heart is thumping now.
“I understand from the UK police that you’ve had quite a night.”
“You’re not supposed to be talking to me,” Ryan says. “My lawyer told your office years ago that all communications go through him. Anything I say to you would be inadmissible.” First-year law-school nonsense coming in handy: the fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree doctrine.
“Mr. Richardson—Ryan—I don’t care about being able to use anything against you. Are you driving?” She can obviously tell that he is. “Can you pull over?”
Ryan spots an exit, veers off without saying anything.
“I don’t know if you heard about Alison’s car?” Before he answers, she adds, “We found something we hoped you could help us with.”
It’s an effective tactic. Baiting his curiosity.
“Why should I?” he asks, if only to elicit more information.
“Because I don’t believe you killed Alison Lane.”
53
Ryan paces outside the petrol station off the M11. He stretches his legs, which have been cramping from being folded into the Mini Cooper. It’s already late afternoon. It took forever to get processed out of the station house. He’s about twenty miles from Heathrow. This place looks like any rural American freeway exit. There’s a BP station, a Starbucks.