“Did you even look?” Ben muttered under his breath and inhaled as he walked around to the Cobra’s trunk to see if there was a manual release button but came up empty.

Ben got in the backseat and was relieved when he didn’t smell anything decaying. He wasn’t in the right state of mind to find a dead body. Pulling on the backseat, he got a good look inside the trunk. Shining his flashlight into the space, he found it empty.

“I already looked in there,” said Doyle. “There’s nothing here, boss.”

“You could have told me that, Doyle.”

“You didn’t ask,” said the man with a shrug.

On the passenger’s side of the front seat, GNR and AC/DC tapes littered the floor, and a Burger King wrapper was wadded on the seat. Ben checked the date on the receipt: October 9, 2004 11:41 A.M. The morning of the wedding.

Ben shut the door and circled the spot, searching for something he was missing about the location. “Why here of all places?”

“This ain’t no simple stretch of road and you know it, boss.”

Doyle was right. The other famous case—Peter Beaumont—was a musician who went missing in 1974. Even if people didn’t recall his name or weren’t alive when it happened, Peter Beaumont had been the genesis of the lore connected to Wickelow Bend. He’d gone missing from this very spot, his Nova found running with a quarter tank of gas, 99.7 K-ROCK blaring on the radio, and the driver’s door open for him.

But there was something even more disconcerting that Doyle didn’t know because it had been left out of the papers. Ben Archer recalled the day Peter’s tan Chevy had appeared here. For the fall, it had been an unusually warm morning. Ben had tagged along with his father, the chief of police, and he could still visualize the car. Todd Sutton’s Cobra II wasn’t just parked in the same general spot, it had been parked at this exact same angle as though it were staged.

Until he got back to the office and pulled Beaumont’s file, Doyle also wouldn’t connect another common detail between the two. The other car—Peter Beaumont’s car—had been found abandoned here on October 10, 1974.

Exactly thirty years ago to the day.

Chapter 4

Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

June 20, 1981

They were peering down at her.

“I think I’ve got grass stains?” The man lifted his knee. “Imagine that?”

“You’ve never had them before?” The woman studied the fabric.

“Where would I have ever gotten grass stains?” The man’s voice was terse, like he was speaking to an idiot.

“Well, how would I know?” The woman held a parasol over her head. Then she crouched down, touching Lara’s face. She could see her own reflection in the woman’s mirrored sunglasses. “Do you think she’s fainted?”