The Last Thing She Ever Did

by Gregg Olsen

  Carole stopped talking. She sat there quietly. Nearly frozen.

  “Then why do you think he might have gone in?” Esther asked.

  Carole looked out the window. “I don’t know. He shouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have. But he was out there.” She raised a finger and pointed. “Out by the river. Where else could he have gone?”

  “And that was the last time you saw him, Carole?”

  “Right. I said that already.”

  “But you said he hasn’t gone in the water in the past.”

  Carole nodded. “That’s right. I honestly don’t know if he went in. I don’t think he would. I really don’t. And I told him. I told him to stay away from the water. He knows better. I know that. Charlie’s smart.”

  “Did you see anyone out there?” she asked, indicating the river.

  She nodded. “A guy on an inner tube. Some kids on the bridge. Someone in a canoe. My neighbor across the river was out there for a while.”

  Esther asked for more details, and the mother of the missing boy did her best to fill in the blanks. She could barely get her words out.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’m not like this. I’m not.”

  “This is a lot to take in,” Esther said. “Take a breath.”

  Esther looked out the window. The river was nearly as flat as a pane of glass. The detective was pretty sure that if the boy had fallen from the bank, his mother would have seen an indication of it. The man paddling the canoe would have. Maybe the tuber floating by around that time. Or the elderly neighbor across the water, pushing a mower.

  She turned her attention back to Carole, who by now was very pale, her skin nearly the color of her hair.

  “Carole?”

  The boy’s mother snapped out of her stupor. “I was only away from him for a minute. Really I was.”

  “I know,” Esther said. “I need you to stop saying that, all right? We need to focus on where your boy might have gone, not what mistakes you think you might have made.”

  Carole blinked. “Thank you.”

  “Neighbors? Friends nearby?”

  “Our closest neighbors are the Jarretts, but they left early in the day. Liz is taking an exam for the bar, and Owen is with a tech firm downtown. The couple on the other side of us stays here only a few weekends out of the year. They’re not here now. They rent out the house, but no one’s checked in yet for the weekend that I can tell.”

  “All right,” the detective said. “We’ll look into everything. Has anything troubled you lately?”

  Carole looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, have you or your son received any unwanted attention from anyone? Anything at all?”

  “No. Everyone smiles at him. Charlie’s a friendly little boy. Please find him. I know he’s out there. He’s scared. I can feel it inside.”

  Missing kids came in several flavors, and over the years Esther had worked cases that aligned with each type. The most common were those in which custodial rights played a part. One parent lashing out at the other by taking a child or not returning him or her from a scheduled visit. In most instances, those were easily solved. Charlie’s parents were together, so the detective scratched that kind off the list. A runaway was another possible scenario, but Charlie was too young to fit that profile. Next was what social workers and law enforcement called “thrownaway” cases. Those occurred when parents simply abandoned or kicked the child out of the family home. Again, scratch. Sometimes foul play was involved in that scenario, but not all that frequently. Sometimes children simply wandered away from the sight of their parents and got lost at the store, on a camping trip, or even in their own backyard. And finally, the kind that chills even the most seasoned investigator: the abduction case, in which a stranger had preyed upon the most vulnerable.

  Local law enforcement from around the region was notified first. Arrangements for an Amber Alert were made, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was contacted. Within hours, Charlie’s photograph and description would be everywhere. If the case wasn’t solved in short order—as most are—the little boy would be seen on TV, on shopping mall bulletin boards, and all over social media.

  Help could come from anywhere.

  Across the state.

  Right next door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MISSING: TIME UNKNOWN

  The blond-haired little boy was under the blue water of the ocean. Charlie’s warm breath floated from his lips, a pant too weak to extinguish the tiniest birthday candle. Too faint to stir the wisp of a dandelion-seed head, as he and his mother had done the day before when they walked to the playground with the pirate ship.

  Too faint. Too weak. But alive.

  Charlie tried to twist, but he couldn’t move. He looked upward through narrowed eyes, but in his disoriented state he had no idea which way was up and which was down. His tears instantly dissolved in the seawater and he tried to cry out, but the blue of the ocean kept his words close, compressed to his face. His head hurt. He wanted his mommy right then. More than he’d wanted anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

  More than a puppy.

  More than a chocolate animal cookie.

  Mommy! Come and get me! Mommy! I’m in the water. I can’t breathe! Get me!

  Each word came out in small bubbles beneath the blue.

  Yet no one heard him. No one knew where he was. Charlie didn’t know where he was. He didn’t understand how it was that he’d found himself in the water, under all of that blue.

  He lay there, very still. Thinking his mother would come. He thought of his father and tried that too.

  Daddy! Daddy! Come and help me! Get Mommy!

  Those words no longer came from his vocal cords. Instead, they pulsed their way through his brain, stumbling along the way. He thought about the pinecones he’d gathered along the Deschutes shoreline—how one had pricked his finger, another had released a whirling seedpod that twirled through the air. He recalled his walk up the hill from the shore, balancing that full bucket of pinecones.

  Then everything became fuzzy. His head was wet, but the blue kept him from reaching upward to touch it. No more tears. No more cries for help.

  Charlie didn’t understand how it was that he’d ended up in the water.

  Mommy?

  Daddy?

  Help me.

  The boy closed his eyes to shut out the heavy, heavy blue. His breathing slowed some more. Just a faint, shallow puff. His hope for his mommy or daddy to pull him from the water dissipated as Charlie Franklin, three, found himself fading into the sweet calm of oblivion.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MISSING: FOUR HOURS

  It was nearly 2:00 p.m. when Liz Jarrett pulled her car into a spot by a dumpster in the parking lot behind the Shilo Inn, where the bar exam would commence in ten minutes. She could feel her fingers tremble as she turned off the ignition and removed her car keys. She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. She doubted that she’d ever looked worse a single day in her life. Not even on the longest nights-into-mornings in college, when she drank, smoked, and partied herself into a near stupor. Her eyes looked wild and hollow at the same time. It was like looking at a photograph of someone she didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. Who was that woman?

  Liz flipped the mirror so she couldn’t see herself anymore and scanned her surroundings. A single pedestrian took his time exiting the lot for the street. When he was no longer in view, she reached across the seat and grabbed the small metal bucket that had ridden with her from Bend to Beaverton. A moment later, her heart pounding all the while, she lifted the dumpster’s lid and tossed it inside. It fell to the metal bottom with a horribly loud, hollow bang. She cast a panicked look around her but still saw no one. She peered inside the dumpster. Empty except for the little bucket. She wanted to cover it up, but there was nothing there. She let the lid fall. It thundered on impact.

  Her heart bounced inside her chest.

  Inside t
he Shilo Inn, the cool air from the hotel’s air-conditioning blasted her. Liz imagined running through a car wash just then, the blasts of water and then air taking the sweat from her body. Making her feel as though she were clean, when in reality she’d never felt dirtier in her life.

  She flew to the bathroom and doused her face with water. She didn’t even want to look at her face.

  Pull yourself together. Take the test. Go home. Owen will know what to do.

  The paper towel dispenser next to the sink was empty. Really? Everything about this day was wrong. She pulled a pack of tissues from her purse and patted her skin. The mirror grabbed her image. She looked like shit.

  She was shit.

  Behind a table in the upstairs lobby area, a woman with coral lipstick and eyelashes that scraped her eyeglasses fished for her packet.

  “Skin of your teeth,” she said.

  “Pardon?” Liz answered, somehow holding the tremor in her voice at bay.

  “One more minute, dear, and you’d be locked out. If you pass, remember that judges like punctual lawyers. Come to think of it, test administrators do too.”

  Liz took the packet. It took everything she had not to respond to the woman in kind, telling her that, with a minute to spare, she was on time. The law is about technicalities passed through her mind, and she wanted to say as much.

  But she didn’t. If there was no way out of what she’d done, then a flippant retort would only cement her in the mind of this coral-lipped, spider-lashed woman who lived to wag her finger and would surely delight in facing the cameras.

  “She was disheveled and late,” Liz imagined the woman saying to reporters. “Very strange. I knew something was wrong with her the minute she made a beeline for the bathroom. She didn’t even acknowledge me. Something wasn’t right with that one. I could see it from twenty-five yards.”

  Phones off. Purses and backpacks stowed. The ballroom was a freezer full of people young and old going after a dream. She recognized a couple of people from the last time she’d taken the essay portion of the test. An Asian man from her study group who knew the law inside and out but muffed the essays because of a misunderstanding of the wording of a question. A mother of three was also a repeater. Sally, an Oregon Law classmate of Liz’s. Sally’s dad had been a lawyer of some note, and he’d wanted to pass on his practice to his only daughter. Sally had told Liz one time that she preferred running the office to being in court. “Look, I have three kids. I need to be home in the evenings, not burying my face in a law book or reading depositions. My dad doesn’t get it. All he cares about now is his legacy. When he dies, I’m selling the practice the next day.”

  The page in front of her confronted her with a blank stare.

  Ten minutes into the exam, Liz got up. She kept her head down and went out the door, passed the woman with the tarantula eyelashes, and went for her car. Sweat dripped down her temples. She kept her breathing shallow, because she was sure if she took in any more air, she’d heave. She sat there trying to get a grip on herself. She turned on her phone. Her hands quaked as she sent a text to her husband.

  Liz: I need you.

  Owen: I got your message. In meeting. Have to wait.

  Liz: I screwed up.

  Owen: No shit? Can’t call now. There will be other tests.

  Liz: Not the test. God, Owen. I need to talk to you.

  Owen: See you tonight. Everything will be all right. Promise. Need to focus here. Big things happening here. Later.

  With a jolt, Liz noticed a message had come in from Carole—then saw that it had been sent early that morning. Her heart still hammered as she opened it.

  Just sending you good vibes for the day. Saw your light on. I know you pulled an all-nighter. Don’t worry. You’ve got this. You’re going to do great.

  Carole had completed the text with a smiley face and a heart emoji.

  There was no emoticon for how Liz felt just then.

  Owen Jarrett had dark hair and dark eyes. At thirty-one, he was in perfect shape, though outside of running along the river on Saturdays and the occasional visit to the local gym, he didn’t really work at it. He drank as much beer as he wanted, and there was never a time when he couldn’t double down and finish the last slice of pizza. Thin-crust. Deep-dish. Didn’t matter. Good genes, he’d tell those who marveled at his ability to stay in fighting shape. Guys who had to work at it were jealous. Women found themselves drawn in by his looks but somewhat annoyed by his relentless pursuit of being the best at whatever he did. A bit of a braggart. Definitely a man who was all but certain he deserved his place at the top of the food chain.

  In the offices of Lumatyx, a loft over a downtown Bend art gallery, Owen walked around as if he owned the place. That was fine, as he and his partner, Damon West, actually did own the company. Lumatyx proprietary software assisted employers in determining which potential candidates were best suited for a job, how long they would stay, and at what cost. In essence, Lumatyx software would help companies manage the inevitable employee churn to their advantage. Slash the number of times they got burned by new hires who didn’t stay long enough to recover the costs of getting them up to speed. Fewer signing bonuses for hires who could be had without them. Owen, who had majored in computer science at the University of Washington, had met Damon at Microsoft. They’d missed the cash grab at the mega software company, and so they had plotted a way toward a fortune of their own. The answer was Lumatyx. Damon had the coding skills, but Owen had the heart of a marketer. He could talk a good game. It was up to Damon to deliver. That sometimes created a little tension.

  Lumatyx was a few weeks away from an infusion of cash from a venture capital firm out of Boston, and Owen was on the precipice of a windfall. The Subaru Forester that he’d driven for the last three years was going to be swapped for a Ferrari the day after the trading bell rang. He already knew the color and model. A black convertible with a red leather interior. Flashy, sure. But he’d earned it. The house he and his wife bought from her family’s estate would meet the wrecking ball, and another mammoth dream home would rise up along the river.

  Every single day was a tick of the clock closer to the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Damon stuck his head into Owen’s office. Owen didn’t say so, but he had noticed that over the past few weeks Damon had upped his game in the fashion department. His shirts were no longer Gap but English Laundry. He’d replaced his wireless LensCrafters frames with some thicker, hipper nerd style. He was living off charge cards and the promise of paying them off with a single click on his online banking account. He wasn’t really hitting it, though. In those glasses just now, he looked more like an African American Buddy Holly than a digital-solutions tycoon.

  “Conference call in two minutes,” Damon said.

  Owen looked down at a text from his wife asking him to call her. “Coming,” he said, Liz’s messages vanishing as he powered down his phone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MISSING: FIVE HOURS

  “Holy shit, David, where have you been?”

  David Franklin dropped a pile of lifestyle magazines and some other papers in a heap in front of Amanda Jenkins. He pulled back a little. Amanda and the lunch waiters at Sweetwater crowded him. That didn’t make him the least bit happy. It was the kind of greeting that portended some disaster: an oven that didn’t work, the salamander broiler on the fritz. David was dressed in black jeans and a gray linen shirt open at the collar. His shoes were black Italian loafers, and around his wrist he wore a matching woven leather bracelet. He was strikingly handsome, with a head of coal-black-and-silver hair that he let grow just long enough to allow for the gel and the humidity of the day to make his locks curl.

  Stylish but not fussy.

  That was David’s look, head to toe.

  “What’s going on?” His brown eyes searched the faces of what he called his “superstar” restaurant team.

  Amanda was his number one. Not quite an assistant manager, but as close as in
creasingly strained financials allowed. She was a willowy redhead with green eyes and a band of freckles that crossed the bridge of her nose like a tan mist. She was smart and cautious. She ran the front of the house with precision and didn’t suffer any hiccups in service. The food was David’s domain.

  “Carole’s been trying to get you,” she said. “We all have. You haven’t been picking up.”

  “Phone’s dead,” he said. “What’s going on? Carole all right?”

  “Yes,” Amanda said. “I mean no. She’s not all right. David, Charlie is missing. The police are looking for you.”

  David took a step back, as though doing so would turn back the clock and erase what Amanda had just said.

  “What do you mean, ‘missing’?”

  By now Amanda was losing some of her calculated cool. She could feel her heart race a little. This was bad. “Carole can’t find him anywhere,” she said. “The police are at your house right now. David, where have you been?”

  His face went white. “Running errands. Jesus.” He turned toward the door, and the keys to his Porsche slipped from his fingers. Amanda dropped down to retrieve them. He held his hand out as she passed him the keys. His hand was warm, damp.

  “Can’t find him?” he repeated. “Can’t find Charlie?”

  Amanda’s heart raced more. “That’s what they said. Carole’s frantic. You want me to drive you?”

  David shook his head. “No. No. I can do that. You take care of things here. We have a full house tonight. No mistakes.” He reached for the handle on the back door, a shaft of light beaming into the restaurant as he swung it open.

  “What the fuck kind of response is that?” Mitchell, a sous-chef, asked when the light beam had cut out.

  “He’s in shock,” Amanda said. “He’s out of his mind with worry.”

  Mitchell rolled his eyes. He’d never liked David Franklin. “His kid is missing and he’s worried about tonight’s service?”

  “Stop it,” Amanda said. “Can’t you see he’s in distress?”