by Gregg Olsen
“No,” he said, trying not to give in to a display of sudden fury. “Had some things at home I had to do this morning. Buzz me when Damon gets in, all right?”
She promised to do just that.
When Owen got to his office, he texted Damon right away:
WTF? What meeting?
Damon answered a minute later:
No biggie. Asked for reco of a breakfast place. Told them Chow and they asked me to join them. See you in a few. Great guys. You’ll love them.
Owen swiveled in his chair and looked out the window at the street below. Everything he believed about Damon was probably true. His old pal and business partner was a backstabber. Damon was going to make sure that he was first in line to get whatever he could. He was a selfish, egotistical prick.
There was no way that Owen would be cut out of what he knew rightfully belonged to him. He turned on his laptop and checked Damon’s calendar for the morning. His face went red with anger.
7:30‒9:00—Private appointment.
He sat there and seethed.
So this is how it’s going to be. Seriously?
Owen sat there drinking coffee and staring out the window, getting angrier and angrier.
Owen shut his office door and sat down at his desk. He couldn’t get any of what had happened in the garage and in that field off the highway out of his mind.
She had done this. All of it.
He turned over a silver-framed photo of the two of them at Crater Lake. Looking at her made him even angrier.
His anger was like a hand behind him, urging him to take care of business. He’d felt it that morning at home. When he stopped for coffee at the drive-through just before Drake Park. Over and over he was reminded that he alone could fix the mess that was taking him down. Deep. Into quicksand. He was being pushed into doing something that he hadn’t planned on doing. He didn’t like to be pushed. He didn’t care one bit about being spur-of-the-moment, although he had manufactured a persona that thrived on spontaneity. With everything he did, there was a calculated payoff. He pulled a sheet of blue paper from the Prada messenger bag that he’d bought used online.
He would never buy used again.
He thought very carefully about what he was going to write.
What he was going to do.
Each word had to count.
Everything he did from now on would allow for no mistakes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MISSING: FIFTEEN DAYS
Owen had pleaded with her, exhorted her, even threatened her: when the boy’s body was found, she absolutely had to react as though she was as shocked as the rest of the world. After Owen went to work and Carole went back to her megahome to get some more of her things, Liz observed her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“No,” she said, “it can’t be.”
She put her hands to her face. “Dear God, no. What happened? How could this happen?”
He had told her not to say too much, just convey the obvious emotional responses: shock at the discovery, grief on learning that the boy was dead.
“Be yourself, Liz,” he told her. “That’s all you have to do. Don’t add to the drama by saying any more than how devastating all of this is. That’s it. Nothing more.”
Her hands trembled as she faced the mirror. She was devastated. She’d been grieving over what had happened since the second she realized what she’d done. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. When Owen told her to be herself, she didn’t know who that was. Not anymore.
She tried again.
“Carole, David, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
That felt right. She was sorry. She was sorry she had killed Charlie. She didn’t have to say that last part. She could think it.
Yes, that would work.
She could tell them how sorry she was.
Liz found herself increasingly unnerved that Charlie’s body hadn’t been found. He’d been out there in the elements for two weeks. Owen had insisted the night they had left him there that the rancher would find him right away. The next day, even. But he hadn’t. No one had. Surely animals had found the body. Carole and David were never going to get the opportunity for closure that the boy’s burial might bring. The brutal waiting game going on next door had to stop. Carole was convinced that Charlie had been abducted by some child molester or was being held captive by some fiend who was going to trade the boy’s life for money. She clung to that with everything she had. Bend detective Esther Nguyen emphasized several times that abductions like that were exceedingly rare, and in any event, no ransom demand had been received.
“Not yet,” Liz heard Carole tell her. “But it could come.”
“In most cases, ransom demands are made within twelve hours after the abductee was last seen.”
“Then you think he’s dead,” Carole said.
“I’m not saying that,” Esther countered. “I’m saying that you and Mr. Franklin need to be prepared for any possible outcome.”
“What about Jaycee Dugard?” Carole asked. “She was found.”
Jaycee. Elizabeth Smart. The women in Cleveland.
All were mentioned by devastated parents as proof of a miracle.
“Yes, she was. Like I said, the vast majority of cases don’t end that way. We have hope that we’ll find him and that we’ll find him alive. I need you to prepare.”
All of it had to end.
Liz dressed in jeans that were suddenly loose and put on a tank top. Although she hated the drive toward Diamond Lake more than just about anything in the world, she got into the RAV4 for the trip. She was grateful that Carole wasn’t outside when she backed out of the driveway to the street. It seemed every time she saw her closest friend, a lie came out of her mouth. Lies when they weren’t even necessary. It was as if even the simplest, most innocuous truth had to be covered in gratuitous subterfuge.
She scanned the highway shoulder for the cutoff they’d taken the night she and Owen hid Charlie’s body. She remembered the slight rise in the road before a curve. But it was daylight now. The world was a completely different place at night. Then she remembered the most distinguishing elements of the site. The rancher’s fence line had been pristine. Its wires were guitar-string taut. The posts were clean and well maintained, unencumbered by a fringe of native bunchgrass. And the junipers. The evergreen spires lined a section of the field where the cattle gathered for refuge during a storm.
Liz was in a storm of her own making, and she knew it.
And there was the road. She pulled off the highway and followed the paved portion to the section of gravel, slowing down near the stand of junipers. Even though the sun beat down and covered the field with flat, even light, she was absolutely sure that she was in the right place. She parked.
Charlie’s body was a magnet. It was drawing her close. She could almost imagine that he was calling out to her, not in anger, but in the hope that she’d come to him.
That she’d bring him home.
Liz turned off the ignition, swung the car door open, and breathed in the air. It was rugged and scenic, and as far as a final resting place could be imagined, it was beautiful. She looked up and down the road. She was alone. She supported herself on the RAV4’s hood. Owen would kill her if he knew she was there. She started this. She’d set it all in motion. She had to know why the boy’s body had not been found. She couldn’t wait for things to just happen. She couldn’t stand another second of looking into Carole’s hopeful eyes when she knew that Charlie was dead. There was wrong and there was immoral. And beyond that? That’s where Liz had wandered. The path she was on was so dark and twisted she’d never be able to find her way out. A million lies could never cover the blackness of her heart.
She started down the incline toward the junipers.
“Hey, you!” a man’s voice called out.
Liz spun around, the air leaving her lungs in a gasp.
A man on horseback was approaching her. He had bright blue eyes, white hair, and a mustache. If he were hea
vier and had a beard, he’d be a department store Santa. If he were younger, a tobacco-company cowboy.
“What are you doing on my land, lady?” he said.
“Arrowheads, sir.” Her grandfather had taken her and Jimmy out to hunt arrowheads in the high desert one time, and the memory had snapped to the front of her mind. “I thought I’d look around.”
The rancher got off his horse. “Thought you were one of those damn geocachers. They come out here like they own the place. Which they don’t. I do. Land’s been picked over for arrowheads. Doubt you’d find any even if I gave you permission to hunt here. Which I’m not. Seeing how you didn’t ask me anyway.”
If Liz had had an arrowhead, she would have stabbed herself in the heart with it.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was just driving home and, I don’t know, I just thought about it. Something my family did years ago.”
He nodded slightly at that, looked around them, and showed the first hint of a smile. “Mine too.”
Then he drew up and scowled. “Shit,” he said. He was looking over at the grove of junipers. “Looks like someone’s been camping here.”
Liz’s heart hit the parched ground. She’d only wanted to know if animals had scattered Charlie’s remains. Now she was there with a man on a horse, and his curiosity was drawing him to a place he might not have visited for a very long time. Now she was going to have to react. She would need to explain why she was there in the first place. Hunting arrowheads would never work. She knew the victim. He had lived next door. It would take the world’s worst detective about ten seconds to turn a purported coincidence into an accusation.
She stood immobile as the rancher went to where Owen had placed Charlie.
“Damn those kids,” the man said. “Come out here to drink and think nothing of leaving a big mess. Out here because there’s no house for miles and they think no one gives a crap. But I tell you, we folks out here do.”
He bent down and tugged at something.
“Oh, God,” Liz cried out. “What is it? What did you find?”
The man with the white hair and the wizened face glanced over his shoulder. “Simmer down, girl. Just some trash. Empty beer carton.” He looked around and made a funny face. “Strange that there’s no bottles or food wrappers.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Nope,” he said. “Just trash.”
Liz turned away from the man. She felt dizzy. She needed water.
“I’m sorry about looking for arrowheads without asking,” she said, still unable to meet his gaze.
“No problem,” he said.
As Liz got into her car, he called over to her.
“Hey, you can come by and hunt anytime,” he said.
Liz sat in the living room drinking more wine than she should while she waited for Owen to get home. Carole had come and gone throughout the day. Home. To the police station. To check to see if posters were still up.
Liz stared at her phone, waiting without much hope for him to respond to her innocuous text.
Liz: Looking forward to tonight!
She didn’t know what else to say. He’d told her to be careful, and she was doing just that. Yet she’d done exactly what he would have never wanted her to do. She’d returned to the dump site. She thought of Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart” and was certain that she’d fallen victim to her own paranoia. She’d literally returned to the scene of the crime. Even criminals on the most stupid reality shows knew better.
The front door swung open, and Owen, wearing a new suit and tie, came inside. She hadn’t seen him leave in the morning. She didn’t even know he had a new suit or why he’d wear one in the first place.
He caught her look. “Investors came today.”
“You look great,” she said, nudging a glass of wine in his direction.
“You all right?” he asked, appearing to notice the tremor in her hands.
“Yes. No. I’m not sure.”
“Is this multiple choice?”
She looked at her glass. “No. Owen, I did something stupid today, but before I tell you, I want you to know that I’m sorry and it worked out and I’ll never do it again.”
“Liz,” he said calmly, “what did you do?”
“I went to where you—where we—put Charlie.” The correction was necessary. She was responsible for Owen’s involvement in this mess. “I went back there. I had to find out why no one had found him. I couldn’t take it another minute. You don’t know what it’s like over there at Carole and David’s. She’s hanging on by a thread and I don’t think she can take another minute of not knowing what happened to her little boy.”
“You killed him,” he said flatly, “and now you want to be the one to find the body?”
“It was an accident, Owen. Don’t you ever say that I killed him! I didn’t mean to do any of it. You know that. You know it.”
“But it’s true,” he said. “That’s what you did.”
Liz was tired of tears. She was angry with her husband for acting as though he’d been a paragon of virtue in the debacle their life had become. She pushed back at him for the first time.
“Don’t judge me.”
“Don’t be a moron. What if someone saw you?”
“Someone did. In fact, I talked to the rancher.”
“Holy shit,” he said. “You’re off the rails now.”
“Sometimes I don’t know why I married you.”
“I have that same thought,” he said. “Especially since you killed the neighbors’ kid. Great move, going back to the body. Did you act all shocked in front of the rancher? Did you cry when the police came?”
“None of that happened, Owen.”
“Why not?”
“Because the body was gone.”
His eyes locked on hers. “Gone where?”
She held his gaze. “Gone. I don’t know where.”
Owen took a second to think.
“Maybe coyotes or a pack of dogs got the body,” he said finally.
She drained her glass and eyed the now-empty bottle. “That’s disgusting. Don’t even say that. Charlie was our little friend.”
“A little friend that you killed with your car, Liz. Don’t get sanctimonious with me. Was there any blood or bones?”
She set down her empty glass and went to find another bottle in the kitchen. “You think I would have withheld that from you?”
Owen followed her. He had a knack for yelling at her in a whisper, and he did that now.
“Don’t ask me that, Liz. I don’t even know you anymore. I have no clue what you are or who you are. The Liz I knew wouldn’t have done half the things you’ve done since Charlie died.”
CHAPTER FORTY
MISSING: SEVENTEEN DAYS
Esther Nguyen put down her phone. The call from the Oregon State Police was the kind that no one looking for a missing child wants to receive.
“Human remains were found south of town,” the officer had said.
“We have a missing boy,” she’d replied, knowing that just about every jurisdiction had their eyes wide open on the case since it had started nearly three weeks prior.
“Right,” the officer said. “Medical examiner is en route now.”
Esther could feel her adrenaline spike. “Is it our boy?”
The reporting officer said he didn’t know. “Better notify the parents before you get out here,” he said. “News crews will be coming. This’ll be all over the state in the next hour.”
She put down the phone and went for Jake, who was trying his best to figure out the new coffeemaker in the break room.
“We might have found Charlie,” she said.
“That’s great!”
“Not great.”
Jake’s face fell. This was not the ending he sought for his first major case. “Jesus,” he said. “I thought we’d find him.”
Esther had hoped for the same thing. “We need to alert the Franklins,” she said. “This is going to blow up all over th
e news.”
“What are we going to tell them?” he asked as he followed her down the hall.
“Human remains were found off 97 and there’s no way of knowing if they are Charlie’s.”
Jake’s face went white. “Holy shit, body parts? What the hell did the freak who took Charlie do to him?”
“Animal activity, Jake. They think that the body was dumped out there and coyotes got to it.”
Jake got into the passenger seat while Esther turned the ignition.
“I guess that’s better than someone cutting up the kid with a chain saw or a hatchet,” he said.
Esther looked over at Jake, and he flushed a little. She let it go, knowing his graphic description was his cover for being sick to his stomach about what she’d just told him.
“I’ll do the talking when we see the Franklins, all right?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “You can do that.”
“After we let the parents know what’s going on, we’re heading out there to the site. You going to be okay?”
Jake puffed himself up a little. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Thanks for the warning. I need to psych myself up just a little.”
She offered a grim smile and drove on.
David Franklin answered the door. He was dressed for work in a shirt that was so new, Esther could see the telltale folds that indicated it had not been laundered yet. Just out of the package.
“Mr. Franklin,” she said, “we need to talk to you and Mrs. Franklin.”
“This isn’t good, is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “I can see it in your eyes. Especially yours.” He raised his chin, indicating Jake, who hung back behind Esther.
“Is Mrs. Franklin home?”
“No, not exactly. She’s next door. You want me to go get her?”
“That would be a good idea,” Esther said.
While the detectives stood there, David went over to the Jarretts’ place and knocked.
“That was kind of weird,” Jake said.
“What are you thinking?”
“He said not exactly when you asked if she was home. That’s a weird response.”
Esther agreed. “Yeah, it is.”
