Chapter 10

LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

Back in her office, Poppy throws the FBI agent’s business card on her desk. It was an odd exchange, unsettling. There’s obviously a backstory between the sheriff and Agent Fincher—otherwise Ken wouldn’t have told Poppy to steer clear of the woman. The military trained Poppy to stay out of things that are need-to-know. But she wonders what that’s gotten her. And maybe there’s something she needs to know.

She scans her computer monitor. Her email inbox is full. The website for the sheriff’s office has an email tip line, and they’ve set it up to forward Alison Lane–related tips to Poppy. Already, forty emails have come in.

Time to get to work. Among the first dozen, three mention the JFK assassination, two reference Area 51, a handful bring up the Illuminati. The good news is that the nutty ones are easy to work through. The trickier tips are from people who don’t give away any crazy. She makes a list of two potential leads—a woman whose brother went missing and who worries he’s one of the bodies found in the car, and a fisherman who says he saw a BMW parked at Suncatcher Lake a couple summers ago. Long shots, but worth following up. By the time she’s made the list, more tips have come in. As well as telephone calls.

Shit rolls downhill. The expression, which started in the military, is true.

Anyway, she can’t complain. She’s the newest member of the office. And she’s lucky to have the job. But before delving into more crazy, she decides that she’ll pull the Alison Lane file and get up to speed.

Margaret directs her to a musty storeroom. It’s a small space that has Home Depot metal shelves filled with banker boxes. It’s organized by year, so she walks to the section from five years ago. The shelf is nearly empty. Just two boxes, both with “Lane” written sloppily in Sharpie on the cardboard. On tiptoes, she manages to retrieve the first box, which is light. She puts it on the floor, then jumps up to grab the second box. She places them on top of each other, rams her fingers in the side holes, and balances both boxes, carrying them to her office.

She’s excited. It’s her first big case. Inside the first box is a single binder. Hardly the most investigated case in the world. She flips open the black cover and finds a few interview notes by an officer named Buckman.

There are notes on the initial interviews of Alison’s boyfriend, Ryan Richardson, until he lawyered up. His original story was that they were at Lovers’ Lane, someone opened the car door, hit him on the head, and that’s all he remembered. He came back with his lawyer a month later with a wild story about a nondescript man with missing fingers taking Alison.

The binder has notes from other interviews, including the two bullies from the viral video, but they had solid alibis. Otherwise, the investigation was thin.

The girl disappeared off the face of the earth.

Poppy remembers the gossip mill at school. The suspicions about Ryan Richardson. But as the years went by, the town seemed to forget about Alison Lane. Until a new boogeyman terrorized the area: the Missouri River Killer. The podcasters and amateur sleuths speculated that maybe MRK had taken Ali. And damn it to hell, they were right. When police arrested MRK, a man named Benedict Cromwell, last year at a campsite along the river, they didn’t find Alison Lane. But there was a strand of hair on Cromwell’s sleeping bag. It was a long strand, and the sheriff had the wherewithal to run it against Alison’s DNA. And there was a hit.

Poppy opens the second box.

Her eye catches on a thumb drive. It has “MRK interview” written on a tag attached to it. Poppy was stationed at Fort Carson when they caught Benedict Cromwell, but she followed the story. Dateline and 20/20 did segments on him. He was the stuff of nightmares.

More out of curiosity than investigative necessity, she plugs the thumb drive into her computer. Up pops a video, the camera mounted in the top corner of the room and looking down on two figures.

“Can I get you something?” a heavyset man asks. Deputy Buckman, Poppy presumes.

Benedict Cromwell offers a greasy smile. “Yes, for the starters I’ll have diver scallop crispy sushi, followed by sea bream ceviche, then the venison loin with smoked bacon. And a glass of your finest red.” MRK, despite his rank beard and unkempt appearance, was raised in privilege. It’s how he stayed out of prison for so long. He abused several girls in high school and then college but somehow always got away with it. Expensive lawyers, hush money, NDAs. But even that couldn’t get him out of the DNA evidence found under one of his early victim’s fingernails, and the matching scars on his cheek. His lawyers negotiated so he could turn himself in, a luxury not afforded to the average defendant. Instead, Cromwell went underground. Became an invisible drifter who traveled from town to town along the river, taking young women.

On the screen, Deputy Buckman sighs. “I can get you somethin’ from the vending machine if you want?”

MRK shakes his head. He’s enjoying Buckman’s clumsy effort at building rapport.

“You know why we wanted to speak with you?”

“Do tell.”

Buckman slides something across the table. It’s a photograph. The video isn’t clear, but Poppy thinks it’s the screenshot of Alison Lane from the viral video.

“We ran some tests on your sleeping bag.…” Buckman pauses. “We got a hit on this missing eighteen-year-old, Alison Lane.” Buckman then waits, lets MRK connect the dots.

MRK reaches across the table, his wrist chains clanking. He licks his lips. “Well, isn’t she a tasty young thing.”

“It would mean a lot to her loved ones if you told us what happened.”

MRK smirks, tosses the photo on the table.

“You’ve already confessed to the others,” Buckman says, “so there’s no reason to—”

“She’s not one of mine.”

“Her DNA was found on your sleeping bag.…”

MRK shrugs. “Get me the six courses from Jean-Georges and maybe it’ll refresh my recollection.”

Buckman gets up angrily and leaves the room.

On the video, MRK looks up at the camera, offers another sickly smile, and waves.

Other prisoners killed MRK two days later.

Poppy tries to shake off the image of Benedict Cromwell’s cold, dead eyes. She thumbs through the rest of the paperwork in the second box. It appears they closed the case after MRK’s death. At the time, that might have been a reasonable decision. Cromwell trolled Missouri River towns and Lovers’ Lane wasn’t far from the river. Alison’s DNA was found at his campsite. He probably dumped her in the river, which is why she was never found.

But questions are nagging at her. If it was MRK, who are the men in Alison Lane’s car? Was Cromwell working with them? That doesn’t feel right. It wasn’t his MO with the other women he raped, tortured, and murdered. But bigger, more troubling questions hit her: What if it wasn’t Cromwell who took Lane? And if it wasn’t Cromwell, how did Alison’s DNA get on his sleeping bag? Something’s not right. The puzzle pieces are warped, disfigured.

She shudders again thinking about Cromwell. She would never say it out loud, but he got what he deserved: shanked over and over and over in that dreary prison.