The Last Thing She Ever Did

by Gregg Olsen

  The man turned away and went around the driver’s side of the car, opened the door, and got in, flicking away Tony’s concern as if it were nothing.

  “Screw you,” he said through the open window. “Try doing your girlfriend a favor by taking her obnoxious little rug rat out for a little hike. I wouldn’t want to be his dad. My kids would never be so goddamn lazy. I guess this is what you get when you meet someone online.”

  Tony glanced at the boy in the backseat. He was crying and pitching a fit. And while he thought the man with the abusive tongue had a complete lack of understanding of how to parent, he had to admit that the kid was pretty bratty.

  “I want my mom! I want Daddy! I want to go home!”

  It made Tony glad that he hadn’t tried to date after his wife died. Who needed the aggravation? Online dating, even at his age—maybe especially at his age—could only bring on the worst of all relationship possibilities. He didn’t want to be a grandpa to some lazy kid, either.

  The next morning, he couldn’t put the little boy and the man out of his mind. Sure, the man was a complete ass, and it was more than likely that the little boy was a terror, but something nagged at Tony and he couldn’t quite place it. He ran the encounter through his mind as he brushed his teeth. Something had been off. More than just the hateful words that had been hurled at him.

  There had been no car seat for the boy.

  He was shoved into the backseat and left there unsecured, like a loose bowling ball, to flail around at any sudden stop. That in and of itself was against the law. It was more than that. Who takes their girlfriend’s kid out at that time of the morning? And who doesn’t have a car seat for a little one?

  Once he made the connection to the missing boy on TV and what he’d seen at Pilot Butte, it only took a minute to let Jessie out in the backyard, check her water dish, and make the short drive to the Bend Police Department. Tony Lupita didn’t think there was any point in calling 911. He didn’t know much. It was more of a feeling of alarm that had lodged inside him. Yet, while he couldn’t be sure that he had seen anything that could help in the Charlie Franklin case, he knew wrong was wrong.

  “Those poor parents,” he said, sitting across from Esther in her office. “They must be going out of their minds.”

  “It is very, very hard,” she said.

  “I can’t imagine.”

  She listened as he related all that he’d seen the previous morning. Unfortunately, and despite his good intentions, Tony was short on the kind of details that would assist in the investigation.

  “Average height,” he said, when trying to describe the man. “Around forty, maybe? Stocky build, I think. Not sure. He had on one of those down-filled puffy coats. Blue. Yes, blue. Or a bluish green.”

  “Anything about his facial features?”

  “His hat,” he said quickly. “He was wearing a beer baseball cap.”

  It was something but not a direct answer. “His face, Tony. Do you think you could work with a sketch artist?”

  Tony looked down at his lap. “I could try, I guess. I mean, all I remember is that he had really angry eyes. Like he hated the world. Sure didn’t like that kid. Every look he gave the boy was a glare.”

  “All right,” Esther said, moving him along gently. “Could you tell his race? Hair color?”

  “White. Had a tan, though. I couldn’t swear to it, but I’d say his hair was more brown than black.” He stopped for a beat and then looked at her, embarrassed. “God, I’m such an idiot,” he said.

  He wasn’t an idiot. He was like a lot of witnesses. Even those who were very sure of what they’d seen during a stressful moment could be wrong. She’d had a case where a woman had identified an assailant with the complete assurance that she was “one hundred percent” positive he was the perpetrator, only later to break down on the witness stand and concede that she’d never really gotten a good look at the man’s face. “I was too scared to look at him,” she’d finally said.

  It happens.

  “You’re fine,” she said. “Tony, you’re doing fine.”

  Inside, Esther wished he’d been a thousand times more observant. He didn’t even know the model of the car. Thought it was a Chevy but could have been a Ford. His description of the child—apart from being blond, male, and about three or four years old—wasn’t much better.

  “If it was a dog,” he said, “I know I could have done better. I know my dogs.”

  Esther took down his contact information and the meager details of what he’d witnessed and thanked him for being a good citizen. She loved animals too, but right now she had a missing child to find. Every second counted, and by that point the case was edging toward hopeless.

  “It just came to me,” Tony said as he was getting up to leave. His face brightened a little. “The car’s plates were from out of state. The one with the stylized sun. New Mexico. Yeah, the plates on the car were from New Mexico! I’m pretty sure. Well, I’m almost pretty sure.”

  Esther perked up too. That was something. True, there were probably more than half a million vehicles registered in the Land of Enchantment, but they still weren’t all that commonly encountered in Central Oregon.

  She made arrangements to get a local portrait artist who volunteered to do the occasional police sketch in to meet with Tony, though she held no real hopes for the exercise. While well-meaning, the artist was more of a law-enforcement groupie than someone who could actually render a viable sketch based on the details coaxed from someone else’s memory. One time she’d spent most of her time sketching another officer’s likeness and signing it along with her phone number.

  A white Chevy or Ford with New Mexico plates was hardly a defining clue. It was something, however. Something along the lines of something is better than nothing. In Esther’s experience, there wasn’t time for a slow-burn investigation, the kind in which leads come in dribs and drabs. They needed a breakthrough. They needed something definitive—fast. Esther hoped—and she held this hope deep, deep in her marrow—that Charlie was still alive. But experience and common sense told her time was running out. Time did that. It just doesn’t stand still.

  She went to the break room down the hall and filled her I ♡BEND mug with the last bit of coffee from the carafe. Not even a full cup. Whoever had been there before her had neglected to do what the sign said: LAST CUP? MAKE A FRESH POT.

  It dripped like molasses into her mug. Esther knew it was going to be terrible after sitting on the burner for way too long. She started another pot, and as she poured boiling water over the ground beans, she found herself saying a silent prayer.

  Find Charlie. Help us find him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MISSING: ONE DAY

  Carole dragged herself to the door to let Liz inside. Carole’s silver-blond hair was flat. She wore yoga pants and a pullover. She didn’t look at all like Carole Franklin. She was a wounded animal. The younger woman from next door held some take-out containers in her hands. Neither woman said anything at first. Liz awkwardly put her arms around Carole and hugged her.

  “I know it’s early,” Liz said, “but I know you haven’t eaten anything.”

  Carole pulled away. Her blue eyes were puffy and red. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I know,” Liz said. “But you have to eat. I got your favorite.” She opened the box and the smell of pad thai wafted into the air. “Three-star. Shrimp.”

  “Thank you,” Carole said, trying to smile, though she had no intention of eating. Eating would only ensure another trip to the bathroom, where she’d end up bracing herself over the toilet and heaving up anything in her stomach. Or nothing at all, if it was empty. She’d thrown up twice that morning.

  “He’s out there,” she said, tears stinging her eyes once more. “He is.”

  Liz started to cry too. “Oh, Carole, I’m so, so sorry.”

  Carole reached for Liz, holding her close while they sobbed. “They’ll find him, won’t they?” she asked. “He’ll be all right. Remem
ber that girl that went missing for ten years? The one in California? They found her. She’s all right. She survived. She hadn’t been murdered.”

  Liz could hardly speak. “Don’t even think about that. Don’t. Don’t let your mind go to that place.” Tears streamed down her face. She felt sick. Sicker than she ever had in her life. She’d never be well again.

  Her hands trembled when she went into the kitchen to make a plate for Carole. Carole stayed planted on the sofa, cocooned in the afghan.

  “Where’s David?” Liz asked, coming back with the food.

  Carole looked up. “At work.”

  Liz set down the takeout and looked into her friend’s eyes. Carole didn’t blink. She just looked at her, telegraphing a message that indicated disappointment with her husband.

  “He got a call from someone,” she said. “Said he was going to see the detective and then go on to work the dinner service at Sweetwater.”

  Liz sputtered. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How could he do that? He needs to be here with you.”

  Carole picked at the Thai food. “It’s fine,” she said, her words still splintered by the trauma of all that was swelling around her, sucking her into a whirlpool. A tar pit. “Why should this day be any different than all the others? For all I know, he’s off with some girlfriend somewhere, crying on her shoulder, looking for comfort sex. Or just sex, period.”

  Liz’s teary eyes widened. Her friend had never indicated anything like that before. And they were close. Sure, they complained about their husbands, but neither had crossed the line into character assassination. Carole was measured. Thoughtful.

  “You don’t know that, do you?” Liz asked.

  Carole rolled her shoulders. Liz wondered if Carole had finally processed what it was that she’d just said. Her little boy was missing, and she had taken the opportunity to trash her husband.

  “I guess I really don’t know it for a fact,” she said, “but David hasn’t been a good husband or a decent father for a very long time. He’s had affairs in the past. I think he’s having one now.”

  Liz could scarcely believe her ears. “Do you know who it is?”

  Carole put down her chopsticks and set her food on the steel-and-glass coffee table. “I used to think it was Amanda,” she said. “For a long time, I was pretty sure that he was sleeping with her. Not so much now. She was at the restaurant when he was out doing whatever it was he was doing when I needed him.”

  Carole’s words hung in the air. Damp clothes on a laundry line, blowing just enough so that they could snap and be seen.

  Dirty laundry.

  The hours blurred into what would become an endless loop. Losing a child was like no other crime. Police came. People gawked from the street. Reporters showed up. Carole barely registered the attention that swirled around her. Her focus on Charlie coming home alive stayed resolute. She didn’t pay any mind to a Bend Bulletin story that speculated her son had drowned in the river. That couldn’t be true. She felt for sure he was alive. He had to be.

  Only one other line in the article stopped her.

  Bend Police recovered evidence from the home that has been sent to the state crime lab in Springfield for testing.

  She had to read it twice to find the sense in it.

  Her bloodstained blouse.

  This was at once a truth—the blouse had been sent in for testing—and the vilest lie, in what it suggested.

  But that quickly, she brushed even this aside. The heat left her face. Her breathing settled. It was nothing but a distraction. It had nothing to do with finding her little boy.

  Charlie was no longer under the blue. He wasn’t sure where he was. Not at all. In fact, Charlie still didn’t know what was up or down. There was a weightlessness that made him feel buoyant. Happy. Safe. The throbbing pain where his head had been hurt, and that made him cry out and wince with every movement, had abated. Faded away. He felt as though he were floating in warm water. Not on the river. Not a lake. Warm, like the big soaking tub in his mom and dad’s bathroom. It was black all around. He wasn’t scared, though. He wasn’t calling for his mommy anymore. Not his daddy, either. The boy was just floating and waiting. Every once in a while he could see a shooting star, a smear of light, streak across the blackness overhead. There was no sound. He wondered if maybe he was in heaven. If so, where were the angels? He listened to hear them, but there was nothing but silence. A slight hum, maybe? Where were the puffy white clouds that would float him?

  He was only three, but in that moment, floating on that soft, warm water, Charlie somehow had the sense that he’d be all right. That everything would be fine. He believed that whatever had occurred was only a moment in time. It would pass.

  He would be free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MISSING: TWO DAYS

  Detectives continued to canvass the riverfront neighborhood and work the phones to determine if there had been anything in the Franklins’ background that might have made Charlie a target for a child abduction driven by either monetary gain or revenge . . . and not the attention of a child predator.

  As perfect as their home environment appeared, there were indications that the couple’s life before Bend wasn’t nearly as pristine as had been portrayed. A woman who had worked with Carole at Google told Esther that not only was Carole a drinker, she was a hard and selfish boss.

  “I’m totally talking out of school,” Cassie Potts said from her office in San Rafael, “but she was a total bitch to work for. She never advanced any of her team members. At least her female team. If you had a dick you had a better shot at moving up.”

  “So she didn’t get along with some of her staff?” Esther asked.

  “No,” Cassie said. “I mean, I guess people who get that far so fast forget that they were once like the rest of us.”

  “You don’t like her,” Esther said, keeping her sarcasm in check.

  “No. But that’s not why I’m calling. I wanted you to know that she wasn’t all that. She’s still a Google Alert of mine and I saw the story about her son. I’m surprised she has a kid at all.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “She didn’t want to be bothered. She actually fired one of her assistants after she told her that she was having twins. Carole Franklin literally said, ‘You’ll have twice the work with those twins and I’ll get half of what I need out of you.’”

  “That isn’t legal,” Esther said.

  Cassie let out a laugh. “Half the stuff that goes on in the real world isn’t legal. You should know that, Detective Nguyen.”

  “Was there anyone there who might have wanted to harm Carole, hurt her in some way?”

  “A lot of people hated her,” she said. “But taking her kid, that’s just not something I could imagine anyone around here doing.”

  “You must have thought you might know something that could help the case,” Esther said. “You called me.”

  “I just wanted you to know that the woman in the papers crying about her kid isn’t perfect. That’s all. She’d do the same for me.”

  Jake appeared when Esther set down the phone.

  “Got anything?” he asked.

  “No, not really,” she said. “Unless you count a coworker from Carole’s past that uses a missing-child news article to pour more misery on what I assume to be a former business rival.”

  “Aren’t people super?” Jake said.

  “Super isn’t the word I was thinking but, yes, they are.”

  Jake stayed planted in the doorway. “Lab guy called. The blood on the blouse is Mrs. Franklin’s.”

  Esther nodded. “That’s good. I guess. Doesn’t help the case much, but it makes it less likely that the boy’s mother did something violent to him. Woman on the phone said Carole was a drinker back in the day.”

  “Didn’t smell anything on her.”

  “No. I didn’t, either.”

  Jake briefed Esther on his conversation with the insurance adjuster.

  �
�He backs up everything Carole Franklin told us. She was on the phone. Longer than she admitted, but she wasn’t off doing something to her son.”

  “Unless she did it before she talked to the insurance adjuster,” Esther said.

  “Didn’t think about that. Her whole time line might be a lie. She could have done something to Charlie anytime after her husband left the house. Couple of hours there.”

  “Right. But my gut tells me no, she didn’t. I just don’t read that from her.”

  Jake shrugged. “Okay. Fine. So where does this leave us?”

  “Same place,” she said. “We need to find Charlie.”

  Carole was sitting outside on the front steps when Liz arrived home from another aimless run along the river. Liz was running to escape and knew it. It was a sunny and warm day, but Charlie’s mother wore a down vest. Even the puff of the down couldn’t conceal her shivering frame.

  “Oh, Carole,” Liz said, wishing she’d had a heart attack before turning into the driveway. “What are we going to do about you?”

  There was no answer for it. It was the kind of stupid remark that people make when they attempt to fill silence. It was only one notch better than asking how the mother of a missing child was feeling at the moment.

  “If,” Carole said. “You know, if they don’t find Charlie, or if . . .” She stopped.

  Liz sat next to her and put her arms around her. An image of the hunter cuddling Bambi’s mother passed through her mind. “They will find him.”

  “If they don’t,” Carole said, “or if he’s dead, what will happen to me?”

  The question struck Liz as self-absorbed, but who was she to judge?

  “I don’t know, Carole. I suppose you’ll be heartbroken for a long time. Maybe forever. But if it’s true—and it’s a big if—then you will find a way to live with it.”

  “But who will I be? I won’t be Charlie’s mom anymore.”

  “You will always be his mom,” Liz said, fighting her own tears.

  “If you don’t have any children,” Carole said, “you aren’t a mother.”