That's Not My Name

by Megan Lally

The strangest urge to defend myself bubbles over me. I respect the hell out of this man. Always have. I don’t want him to look at me the way everyone else does. “I’m trying to find her. Same as you. Mr. Scott, I’ve eaten a million meals at your house. Our families went camping together last summer. You went to every one of my swim meets. You know me. And you know I’d never hurt Lola. Not ever.” His glare sears into me, and I think he might regret not running me over when he had the chance. “The kid I knew would never have left her alone at night. He wouldn’t have waited until the next day to call and see if she got home okay. He wouldn’t stop cooperating with the police. I don’t know you at all.”

There are names, hand scratched into the concrete. Alison Krissy Courtney Arely Bekah Carly Sheena Ashley Each in different handwriting. Some names are darker than others, fading away with time, discolored by the moisture coming through the wall. But some are so fresh they look like they could have been carved today. I look down at the screw. My hand shakes so bad I almost drop it twice before I clench it in my fist. My breath rattles in my lungs. I’m not the first. He’s taken other girls. Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

Everything in me crumbles, like I’ve been holding back an avalanche of emotion, and it’s finally too much to withstand. Grief buries me, and I drop to my knees. “You’re not Lola,” I whisper. The complete stranger before me glances down at the wall. I follow her gaze to a set of names scratched into the concrete. The freshest one feels like a punch to the chest. Lola The girl shakes her head, the fear in her eyes shifting to sadness. “No…I’m not.”

The strange boy starts digging through the boxes on the workbench. I gape at him, trying to catch up. He must have come looking for Lola, but he found me instead. One girl too late.

“Are there any other girls here?” he asks, but the tone of his voice tells me he already knows the answer. “No. It’s only me.” He nods and clamps down again. “Maybe Lola got away,” I offer, trying to give him some shred of hope back. “She could be—” “Does that jacket have ‘L.E.S.’ sewn into the hip tag?” he asks. I grab at the hem and fold it up. A tag pops out. L.E.S. is stitched in rose gold thread. “It’s hers,” he says. “Lola Elizabeth Scott. If she got away, she would have made it home by now, and if she had, I wouldn’t be here. So if she’s not here, and she’s not at home…she never left this place.”

Boone, a “home-taught handy man” from McMinnville was found dead in his Alton, Oregon fishing cabin last fall by police after falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his neck. During the investigation into his death, the remains of an elderly neighbor and nine teenage girls were discovered on and around the property. At first, it seemed Boone had a type, as almost all his victims had short brown hair, green eyes, and freckles, but a closer look into his past revealed a much darker connection. An extensive search of Boone’s McMinnville house led to the discovery of additional remains buried under a concrete slab in the backyard: his daughter, Mary Boone, a teen who had short brown hair, green eyes, and freckles. Those who knew the family painted a picture of a difficult household, with a domineering Wayne Boone at the helm. A friend of the family told investigators that Boone’s wife passed in a car accident when Mary was nine, and after her death, Boone became increasingly protective and controlling of his daughter.

The McMinnville coroner’s office listed Mary Boone’s cause of death as a broken neck. She was fifteen years old. Authorities believe that Wayne Boone killed Mary in a fit of rage after she snuck out to attend a Halloween party—the last time anyone saw her alive. Unable to face what he’d done, Boone set out on a mission to “find” her and bring her home again. The abductions began less than a month after his daughter’s death.