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“Why? Was Michael Lane going to testify against the O’Learys for something?”
Fincher tilts her head side to side, like kinda-sorta. “You ever hear of the ‘coupling theory’?”
Not this shit again. Before Poppy can stop her, the agent continues.
“Coupling’s the idea that behaviors are linked, coupled, with a particular set of circumstances. There’s been research on coupling with regard to suicide.”
Poppy clenches her jaw.
Fincher continues, undeterred: “In the 1960s in England, nearly half of all suicides were by carbon monoxide poisoning: people literally sticking their heads in the oven. But then the country phased out the type of gas that had high levels of carbon monoxide. And guess what?”
“I’m tired of this bull—”
“The suicide rates plummeted. If you stuck your head in the oven you wouldn’t die. But the unusual thing was that it wasn’t only suicides by gas that fell. All suicides dropped.” Fincher raises a finger. “Conclusion? Behaviors are linked to a person’s circumstances.”
“Fuck your weird-ass riddles,” Poppy says.
Now Fincher smiles broadly.
“Talk straight or get the fuck out of my car,” Poppy says.
“For a thirteen-year-old boy named Anthony O’Leary, his circumstances were coupled: relentless bullying by affluent private-school classmates coupled with his gangster father’s culture of violence and keeping firearms in the home.”
“You’re saying the head of the O’Leary organization’s son killed himself?”
She nods.
“And that it has something to do with—” Poppy stops herself, has a revelation. “Was Alison Lane a classmate of O’Leary’s son?”
“Her name was Taylor Harper back then, but yes. Then another coupling event: devastated parents with an endless supply of brutal henchmen set on vengeance.”
“So you’re saying Alison was one of the kids who bullied O’Leary’s kid. And she and her father had to go into hiding because of it? O’Leary’s people wouldn’t possibly go after a schoolkid.”
“You wouldn’t think so, right?” The agent taps on her phone, pulls up a news story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. The story is nine years old, the headline says: Tragic Week at Elite Private School: Headmaster and Three Students Dead in Separate Accidents.
Poppy feels a rush of blood in her brain. She’s getting closer. “But why run? Why not join WITSEC?”
“They tried.”
“What do you mean?”
“I went to Michael Lane—Michael Harper—convinced him to turn on O’Leary. He was O’Leary’s captive accountant. Helped them cook the books. But his downfall was helping O’Leary get his son into that private school with Alison.”
“So why didn’t—”
“Someone at WITSEC—and my office—was dirty. In O’Leary’s pocket.”
Agent Fincher explains that she arranged for Ali and her father to meet with the liaison for WITSEC. Explains how it turned into a setup: When Ali and her father arrived at the meet, O’Leary’s men were there. Ali’s father is a former soldier, he got the better of them.
“And they disappeared to a small town in Kansas,” Poppy says.
“Not before Michael stole millions of O’Leary’s money.”
A double reason to hunt down Alison and her father: the bullying of O’Leary’s son and stealing his money.
“The viral video,” Poppy says, thinking aloud. “Someone from O’Leary’s crew saw it five years ago and came to get them?”
The agent nods. “They sent someone outside the O’Learys to grab her. It would give them some distance if anyone put the pieces together when the Lanes disappeared. A patsy.”