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“Do you know if Alison had a favorite book?” the deputy sheriff asks. She has an unusual name—Poppy McGee, like a character from a children’s story.
“A favorite book?”
“Yeah, like a favorite novel or book?” the cop asks from the cracked screen of his iPhone. McGee is a study in contradictions: She’s unusually young to be a deputy, but she has one of those gaps between her front teeth that somehow make her seem worldly. Yet her accent still screams Kansas.
“Why?” Ryan’s tries to catalogue the books on the shelf in Ali’s room. He knew her favorite of all time was a book her father gave her, The Little Prince. French, of course. She was such a Francophile.
The deputy sheriff hesitates. But he can see the decision to disclose on her face. “We found a note in Alison’s car.”
“A note?”
The cop is looking down, like she’s retrieving something. “Yes.”
“How? I thought the car was in the water for years.”
“We got lucky,” she says without elaboration. “Written on the envelope was: ‘If something happens to me.’”
The words grab Ryan by the shirt collar.
“We think the note was for you.”
“Well, what’s it say?” he asks impatiently. What’s with keeping him in fucking suspense?
“That’s just it. We don’t know what it says. It’s written in code.”
Ryan is confused. But then his mind leaps to the prom. The silly prom proposal. The code Ali used.
His memory is confirmed when the cop says, “It’s called a book cipher. We need to know the book she was using to decode the message. We know she made similar messages using a book called The Little Prince, but that wasn’t the book she used for this note. Can you think of a book she might’ve used?”
Ryan’s pulse is ripping. “It’s not a book you’re after.”
“What do you mean?”
“Send me the note and I’ll tell you everything.”
“I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Send me the note or we’re done talking.”
54
LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS
Poppy shouldn’t tell Ryan Richardson anything about the evidence. He’s long been a suspect. And Poppy’s been on the job for less than a week and the sheriff already admonished her for breaking protocol. But Ryan knows something. Even through the small screen on the iPhone, she can see it on his face. And the UK detective told Poppy that Ryan—who goes by “Ryan Smith” now—had an unbelievable tale. About the man he claimed abducted Alison Lane, complete with missing pinky fingers, tracking him to Italy. About the man then ending up dead at his home in England. But the impossible part: The story is checking out. The man with the missing pinky fingers is a ringer for the man Ryan described to a sketch artist five years ago, complete with the missing fingers. And the detective said it turns out he was an undocumented noncitizen, an American who told locals his name was Peter Jones. They’re sending Poppy his DNA in the hopes that a U.S. database will get a hit.
“You want to know the key to the code, send me the note,” Ryan repeats.
“I’m not authorized to—”
“Come on, Deputy.”
“If I send you the note, how do I know you’ll give me the key?”
“I guess you don’t know that,” Ryan says. “But I promise you, I will.”
Poppy’s eyes don’t leave the screen. Ryan jostles like he’s typing on his phone now. His face comes back into view. He’s outside on a gloomy day. By a gas station, from the looks of it.
“I just pulled it up on my phone. It’s the key. It has to be,” he says.