Chapter 12

LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

Poppy is startled by a hard knock on her office’s open door. She examines the young Black woman standing in the entryway. She’s pretty, animated.

“You’re Poppy McGee?”

“Yeah.”

“I could’ve called, but I was here for something else, and wanted to see what a ‘Poppy McGee’ looks like.”

The woman’s quirky, but she’s charming and can get away with it.

“I hope you’re not disappointed,” Poppy says.

The woman’s eyes are alight. “Not at all. I’m Chantelle Luna. I work in the lab at KBI.”

Poppy examines her. She has an infectious smile. A dimple punctuating her cheek. “What can I do for you?”

“Margaret told me you’re our contact for the Alison Lane case.”

Poppy nods. “You’ve identified the guys in the car?”

“Not yet. There’s a DNA test backlog. But we found something we thought you’d want to know about right away.”

Poppy feels a flutter of excitement.

“You know Alison Lane’s handbag was in the car?” Chantelle asks.

Poppy nods. The Cold Case Company reported this in one of the videos.

“So it was waterlogged, as you’d expect. But Alison Lane had a makeup bag and it had a tight seal and kept pretty dry even after all this time.”

“You found something?” Poppy asks, trying to contain the eagerness in her voice.

Chantelle swipes at her phone, then displays a photo. It’s of an envelope. On the outside it says: “If something happens to me.”

A spurt of adrenaline shoots through Poppy. “Alison had this inside her purse?”

Chantelle nods enthusiastically.

“Did you open the envelope?” A dumb question.

“Yes, and that’s the puzzling part. Inside was a note, but it seems to be written in code.” Chantelle pulls up another photo.

“Code?”

“Yeah.” Chantelle hands Poppy her phone. “We think it’s a book cipher.”

Poppy shakes her head, not understanding. The note has no words, just a series of numbers:

11,5,1—4,4,2—6,1,4—3,4,1

7,4,3—10,2,6

9,5,1—4,2,5

5,1,2—2,1,1—10,2,6

8,3,1—3,5,1—6,2,2—7,3,6—5,3,1—13,2,1

“It’s a simple code made by referencing the page, line, and word in a book or some other piece of writing.” Chantelle puts her finger on the first line of numbers. “So, like, eleven, five, one, means go to page eleven, line five, and the first word on that line in whatever book is the key for the code. You piece it all together and it makes a message.”

“Have you cracked the code?”

“Not yet. We can’t without knowing the source material—the book Alison used to make the code. I want to ask her father if she had a favorite book. And to see if I can get a sample of her handwriting to compare with the envelope. But his contact info isn’t in the file. I’ve left a message for the sheriff since apparently he spoke to the father.”

“What if we can’t find the book?”

“We’ve reached out to experts. There are databases with thousands of works of literature. If she used one of those books, we might be able to crack it. Maybe AI will do its thing. But you could save us time if you can ask her friends or old teachers or any other family if she had a favorite book or poem collection or whatever.”

“Can you send me those?” Poppy asks, eyeing the photos on Chantelle’s phone.

Chantelle nods, then hands Poppy her phone, gestures for Poppy to tap in her number.

“Why would she be using a code?” Poppy muses, more thinking aloud than asking a question.

“She must’ve only wanted someone who knew the source material to be able to read the message.”

Poppy examines the photo of the envelope again: “If something happens to me.” What did she fear would happen to her? Who was she afraid of? Her boyfriend, Ryan Richardson? Someone else?

She thanks Chantelle for coming by. “Can you keep me posted if you make any progress on the code?”

Chantelle nods.

“And do you have a sense of when we’ll get the DNA results from the car?”

“No, but I’m begging them to expedite. I’ll let you know the moment we finish and run ’em through CODIS.”

“Was there anything else that might identify them?”

Chantelle shakes her head. “No wallets. Can’t lift prints—there was nothing left of the hands.”

Poppy winces thinking about that. “No other forensics?”

Chantelle shakes her head. “All we know is they were men, probably in their late twenties, early thirties. Each shot in the head before the car went under. That explains why they were still in the front seat. Folks tend to die in the backs of the vehicles if they go in the water alive. Cars go down nose-first, so they swim up to the back to try to escape.”

Poppy releases a breath at the horror of dying that way.

Before Chantelle leaves, she turns in Poppy’s doorway: “Hey, me and some friends are getting drinks after work if you’d like to come.”

Poppy thinks about this. She’d like to. Her few friends from high school have moved away. But she needs to focus on the case. And she’s not sure of the politics of hanging with KBI employees.

“I’d love to. This week is bad, but maybe another time?”

Chantelle smiles at her like she thinks that’s never going to happen. “For sure.”

After she’s gone, Poppy thinks about Alison’s note.

If something happens to me.

What did you think was going to happen to you, Alison Lane?