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“I’m sure it’s gonna work out.”
Twenty minutes later, far from shore, Chaz slows the boat to a stop.
O’Leary looks at Chaz’s silhouette. “Does it get easier? The worrying about the kids?”
Chaz releases a laugh, shrugs. “You’ve met Patrick, what do you think?” Chaz’s son works for O’Leary and is a hothead. He’s filled with more piss and vinegar than even O’Leary was in his twenties.
“What about my old man?” O’Leary asks. “You were his right hand. He ever wring his hands about us kids?”
Chaz hesitates.
“I’m fuckin’ with you,” O’Leary says.
“It was different back then,” Chaz says, defending O’Leary’s brutal father even now.
“Anthony’s different than we were,” O’Leary says. “He’s a gentle boy.”
“I feel the same way about my grandson.”
“We don’t deserve the gift of gentle boys,” O’Leary says. He blows out a breath. “Let’s do this.”
Chaz steps to the center of the boat. Yanks off the blanket covering a large mass stationed in the middle.
Even in the dark, the white of the man’s wide eyes is visible. He starts to grunt under the duct tape covering his mouth. Chaz leans down, tests the chains anchored to heavy cinder blocks.
O’Leary nods.
Chaz says, “Allow some last words?”
O’Leary shakes his head. “You work in my territory without permission, you don’t get any last words. You get what’s coming.”
“His people are gonna hit back at us,” Chaz reminds him.
“And I’ll be waiting.”
With that, Chaz and O’Leary each grab an arm and throw the man overboard.
5
LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS
Poppy arrives home from Day One of her new job around 10:00 p.m. She’s tired, hungry. She spent the last twelve hours at Suncatcher Lake, helping set up tall screens shielding the area from news and iPhone cameras as the submerged car was pulled from the water by a tow truck. Poppy’s feet are wet from slogging around the vehicle, hanging a tarp over it to ensure no one could see what was inside. She didn’t want to look herself but couldn’t miss the grisly tableau: the remains of two people—by their clothes, they appear to both be male—in the front seat. She couldn’t see in the back, but Cold Case Company’s third YouTube video—the company doled them out one by one to build suspense—reported finding a woman’s handbag. But no Alison Lane.
Despite his professed concern for the families, the bearded guy posted the video before anyone could locate Alison’s father. According to the town rumor mill, the father had been devastated by her disappearance and dropped out of public life shortly after she was taken.
Poppy looks in the refrigerator, sighs. She retrieves a meal from the freezer and pulls it from the cardboard sleeve, punctures the plastic with a fork, and tosses it in the microwave.
She hears the television and heads into the living room. Her father has fallen asleep in his frayed lounge chair, fast-food wrappers on the TV tray in front of him. That’s what she gets for asking Dash to handle dinner duty. She clicks off ESPN and helps Dad up. He’s half-asleep as he zombie-walks to his bedroom.
Back in the kitchen, she eats the rubbery fettuccine Alfredo, then heads to her room. It’s been an eventful first day. Better than boring, she supposes. She takes off her uniform. Her socks smell like the lake. She thinks again about the human remains strapped into the front of the BMW.
Who were the two men? One set of bones wore a business suit, the other a leather jacket. Did they abduct Alison? Were they working with the Missouri River Killer? Or did they end up with Alison’s car—and dead in it—for some other reason? And where is Alison?
Alison was in the same class as Dash, two years ahead of Poppy. Leavenworth High cut across all socioeconomic divides. The town, known mostly for its notorious federal prison, definitely has two sides of the tracks. Alison lived on the side with large houses and luxury sedans. Poppy didn’t exactly inhabit the other side, though. Her family straddled the middle. Dad made a solid living as a corrections officer at the penitentiary. Dash and Poppy never wanted for anything. She remembers Alison being one of the popular kids. Pretty and smart and from means. But she wasn’t like the other girls who cultivated fake glamorous lives on social media. She had a down-to-earth quality.
Did Alison know the men in the car? If so, how? Poppy tries to remember Alison’s friends from school. Alison spent most of her time with Ryan Richardson. Whatever happened to that guy? Dash should know, they played on the same team. Both stars: Dash and Dodge. It was only five years ago but feels like longer.
Poppy remembers that shortly before Alison’s abduction, a video of her went viral. Poppy reaches for her laptop on the nightstand. She flips it open and googles Alison’s name. The first ten results all reference the Missouri River Killer: MRK’s Victims—Where Are the Bodies? Was This MRK’s First Victim? All the Missing Girls.