We rumbled across the Missouri River by way of the upper deck of the Hannibal Bridge.

No laughter now, as he asked, “You gonna help get that little boy back?”

“Do my best.”

“I got a boy that age myself.”

“So do I.”

“I believe somebody took my boy, I kill his ass.”

“So would I.”

He laughed again, but the sound of it was different.

Just under a week ago, a bit before nine A.M., someone rang the bell at an exclusive Catholic elementary school here in Kansas City. A young, inexperienced nun answered and found a plump, pleasant-looking (though agitated) woman on the doorstep; about forty, the caller looked respectable enough in a brown hat, beige blouse and dark gabardine skirt. The woman even wore white gloves.

She presented herself as the sister of Virginia Greenlease, whose six-year-old son Bobby attended the school, and said she’d just rushed her sister, who’d shown signs of a heart attack while they were out shopping, to the hospital. Virginia was asking to see her son. The nun—new at the school, barely speaking English—fetched the child and turned him over to the woman calling herself the boy’s aunt. The boy went along dutifully, hand-in-hand.

Later that morning the mother superior’s second-in-command called the Greenlease home to check on how Mrs. Greenlease was feeling.

Mrs. Greenlease, who answered the phone herself, said, “Why, just fine.”

The first ransom letter came a few hours later, special delivery.

We moved through an industrial area and then an unpretentious mix of commercial and residential, all pretty sleepy on an early Sunday afternoon. In the plush Country Club District, broad, winding boulevards followed the contours of the terrain, interrupted by public areas overseen by sculptures and fountains; a classy retail plaza ran to Spanish-style stucco and cream-color brick. The homes themselves were near mansions—not just “near,” really—with impeccably landscaped, evergreen-garnished yards that in warmer weather were likely trimmed as often as their owners saw their barbers.

“We in Kansas now, Mr. Heller.”

We’d only been traveling fifteen minutes. “Over the state line already?”

“Yessir. This is Mission Hills. Lots of rich folks. You a golfer, sir?”

“I am.” I disliked the sport, but sometimes it was the best way to keep clients happy.

“Well, they’s three golf courses to choose from. They keep ’em open till the first snow.”

Autumn had turned the plentiful trees into a riot of color, orange, yellow, red, green, even purple, that last desperate burst of life before winter delivered death. But the grass was still green, brown barely intruding, with a scattering of those vivid colors making a patchwork quilt of lawns. Fathers were tossing footballs to sons while littler kids leapt into heaping piles of leaves with a fearlessness they’d yet to outgrow, their mothers leaning on rakes and looking on in worried surrender.

The cab was about to turn onto Verona Road from West 63rd when a figure in a fedora and raincoat ambled out from around the corner and planted himself before us with his arms outstretched. The cabbie hadn’t been traveling fast in this residential area, but it was startling enough to make him hit the brakes with a squeal.