Prologue

When Lissa’s niece, Carla Yellow Bird, went missing in 2016, Lissa threw everything she had into figuring out what happened to her—including talking for hours on the phone with someone she suspected was involved.

The story of a con man, one of the most successful salesmen in a long-running multimillion-dollar telemarketing scam, who finally got caught when he was conned himself.

Reporter Nancy Updike spends two days with Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living, and comes away wanting to open his Los Angeles franchise, despite the gore — or maybe because of it.