by Gregg Olsen
“I have something to tell you,” she finally said.
“You’re fucking crazy,” Owen said. His eyes penetrated her. “You didn’t do that, Liz. You couldn’t have.”
Liz didn’t say anything. When she told him what she’d done, each word had stuck in her throat like a dull steak knife. Saying it a second time would surely make her cough up blood.
Charlie’s blood.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said, her eyes finally flooding. “I panicked.”
Owen started pacing. He slammed his fist onto the top of the morris chair that faced out at the river. He couldn’t look at her just then.
“You don’t run over a kid and then not call an ambulance,” he said.
Liz went to him. She didn’t touch him. She just stood there. “I didn’t run over him. I didn’t. I—I bumped him. It was an accident.”
Owen spun around. “This is more than just an accident, Liz. Get a dose of reality. You messed up in the biggest way anyone ever could. You made bad into worse. There isn’t a word for this disaster.”
Liz reached for him, but he pushed her away. “I’ll fix this,” she said.
Owen took a step back toward the window. “How? How in the hell can you fix this?”
Now Liz started pacing. She went to the kitchen. She hurried back to him. Over to the front door. Then back to her husband.
“I’ll tell Carole and David,” she said. “They know I loved Charlie. They will know it was an accident. Carole knows me.”
Owen tried to hold it together, but his wife’s reasoning was completely ludicrous. “Seriously?” he asked from his place by the window. “And then you’ll tell them the part that you put their kid’s body in the garage so you could go take the bar?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she said. “I was messed up.”
Owen shot her a look. It was cold. It was meant to hurt. Hurting her just then was the only way that he could stun her into stopping her inane excuses for what she’d done.
“Hopped up,” he said. “You were hopped up on those goddamn pills you’ve been taking. It isn’t an accident when a drunk driver kills someone. It’s a crime.”
Liz’s eyes went to the front door. It passed through her mind that she could make a run for it. She could push past Owen, get to her car, and drive far, far away. She could go to some place in Idaho or Nevada. A place where no one would know what she’d done. A place where she could start over. She’d never be a lawyer. She’d lose Owen. She’d live the rest of her life looking over her shoulder while she worked as a grocery checker or motel maid. She’d never be anything in life, and in that moment, she accepted such an inevitable outcome. She deserved it. She could feel the doorknob twist. She could hear Owen yelling at her to stop, but only halfheartedly. He’d want her gone. He’d want to start over with his big money and a wife who wasn’t a murderer.
“I’m sorry,” she said, crying. “What do you think I should do?”
Owen slumped back down into the chair facing the river. “Let me think. The police are crawling around the neighborhood. Let me think of what to do. Goddamn you, Liz. You screwed up big-time. The biggest screwup in the world.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We aren’t going to do anything.” Owen went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He looked in the mirror, not at himself, but in the direction of his wife, whom he could hear rummaging around for a corkscrew.
“Owen, we can’t just leave him there.”
“We won’t,” he said, reemerging from the bathroom. “We aren’t. I’m going to clean up this mess.”
He didn’t say your mess, though Liz knew that was what he meant.
“Owen, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You know that, don’t you?”
He barely looked at her.
“Don’t do anything,” he said, going for the door. “Stay put. I’ll fix this. I’ve worked too hard to lose everything because of something you did.” He turned to her to show that he meant what he was about to say and amended his words. “We’ve both worked so hard.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MISSING: FOURTEEN HOURS
For decades the front porch of the Jarrett place had been the site of countless family celebrations. It ran the length of the Craftsman bungalow, facing the river and the endless parade along it. Birthday parties, the Fourth of July, a nearly annual family reunion had taken place on those wide, old, worn planks.
To Liz, all of that seemed a million years ago.
With her husband gone, she looked in the direction of the water. It was after midnight and she half hoped the next day would never come. Her tears with Carole and David had been genuine. She’d loved Charlie. She knew he’d loved her too. He’d come to show her his pinecones that morning. A few days before, she’d told him that they would make pinecone turkeys for Thanksgiving that year, something she’d done with her mother when she was a girl. Pipe cleaners, gobs of glitter, construction paper, and googly eyes transformed the cones into the kind of treasure that mothers can never discard.
Owen had given her some pills, and now she sat there watching, drinking some wine, and feeling as though a dark lid were sliding over her. She looked down at her hands, limply lying in her lap. What had she done? How could she have carried Charlie into the garage to hide him away? Who was she now?
She saw old Dan Miller ensconced in his swivel chair across the water, the light from his TV set silhouetting his bushy, white cockscomb hair. He was always in that chair, facing one way or another. Sometimes he held binoculars to his eyes to get a better look. Seeing him like that always gave her a hollow feeling, only served to remind her how after Seth had died he’d simply retreated from life. He’d become one of those people on the outside, looking in. Face pressed against the glass. She wondered if Dan had seen something that morning, anything that she would not want him to see.
Even in her drugged and drunken stupor, Liz traced the sight line from Dan’s vantage point to the driveway the Jarretts shared with the Franklins. She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think he could have seen what had transpired when she backed out from the garage. He might have witnessed Charlie wander over with his pinecones, the lurching of her car, her panic as she ran around to find the dead boy behind the car.
Liz looked over at the house next door. Carole and David’s place had knife cuts for windows on the street and the sides facing their neighbors. The narrow windows were afire with light. Every one of them. She wondered if they were looking in every room again, trying to find something that might indicate where Charlie had gone.
Or who had taken him.
She knew they’d never see him again. Carole’s heart would be broken forever. The chain reaction that she’d ignited would reverberate for the rest of their lives. Carole would grieve. David too. They’d do so publicly. Arms would wrap around them. Maybe their marriage would become stronger. Maybe it would disintegrate. Liz had done all of that. She’d lit a fuse, and there was no way of stopping it.
She would live with what she’d done. She’d cry with her friend, but her tears would not come from the same place as Carole’s. Owen would stand by her. Wouldn’t he? In books, secrets are always a dangerous bond. Would they stay together because of what he had on her? And what she would have on him when he’d fixed the problem?
Liz put the wineglass to her lips and poured the rest of it down her constricted throat. She hated pinot gris, but it was what Owen gave her when he told her to pull herself together.
As she waited for Owen, she prayed silently that God would forgive her and would understand that it had indeed been an accident. That God would know that evil didn’t live in her heart. That she’d made a mistake. As the wine and the pills took over, Liz felt her eyelids become heavy and her limbs go numb. The wineglass dropped into her lap. What was happening? She wondered if she was overdosing. She hoped that she was. She didn’t deserve to live. She didn’t want to live. Living would be torture.
Liz
looked down at the river.
It was a black snake with a stain of silver from a fading moon peeking through the breaking clouds. It called over to her. Begged her. Told her that if she would go into the water, everything would be all right.
Charlie Franklin came to her as she drifted off, sitting on the porch in an old Adirondack chair that her grandfather had made out of lumber from a cedar tree that had died not long after he bought the property.
Charlie had his bucket of pinecones and a big grin on his face as he knelt beside her while she rested. He told her that everything would be all right. That when she got to heaven, they’d make those turkeys together, like she had promised. He spoke to her in complete, measured sentences. Not like a three-year-old at all. He told her that he knew that she hadn’t intended any of what happened to him. That she was not the reason he had died. That what had transpired between them on the driveway that morning had been an accident.
“Lizzie,” he said, “it’ll be okay.”
Liz woke up with a start and picked up her empty wineglass, which had somehow managed to hit the floor beside her chair without breaking. She felt woozy and strange. Not herself.
She knew she would never again be whoever she’d been.
She hoisted herself up from the chair and held the handrail to make her way back inside.
“Owen?” she called out, her voice raspy and her feet unsteady.
No answer.
She went into the kitchen, the bedroom, the office, even the bathroom, stumbling as she worked her way through the house. As repulsed as she was at what she’d done, it took everything she had to avoid going into the garage to see what Owen was doing in there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MISSING: FOURTEEN HOURS
Owen knew he had been out in the garage far too long. For all his furious, can-do bluster with Liz about how he’d fix everything, he was stuck, vapor-locked, just inside the door. An acrid scent permeated the air. He couldn’t make himself cross the space to the workbench, and the tarp, and the nightmare beneath it.
Sealed off all day, the garage was stifling, like an oven preheated for a take-and-bake pizza. To let in some air, Owen had twisted the knob on the side door parallel to the river and popped it open. But then he’d had to nod in the direction of a patrol officer who’d parked across the street to keep an eye on things.
He pulled the oven door shut again.
Now all this time had passed, and those eyes were on him. The cop had to be wondering what in hell he was doing. Great. This could not get any worse.
Owen had no idea what he was doing, just the words of his wife pushing him there, telling him what she’d done. It was surreal. It was a bad dream. It was the end of a dream too, he knew. Everything that he’d worked so hard to achieve was going to be undone by her actions.
Liz, what a colossal mess!
With seemingly every muscle in his body pulled taut, his movements were labored. Sweat that had accumulated on his brow was dripping down and forcing the salty liquid into his mouth. He doubted that his heart had ever pounded as hard as it was at that moment. Not even when he ran his only marathon, in Boston, when he was in college.
The garage was old-school. Built in the days when families had only one car and no real need for the stuff that accumulates with time and money. Liz’s car, the newer of the couple’s two vehicles, had been the winner in a coin flip to decide who would dodge the snow and frost in the winter, the weeping sap from the pines in the summer.
Everything would be different if he’d won the toss. None of what had happened would have occurred. He knew that by altering one little detail, the world is changed. Just one little thing. He compiled a list of little things. If Liz had gotten up on time. If he’d parked his car there. If they’d never bought this stupid house or met the Franklins. If. If. If. The contents of the list came at him like an Uzi, striking him in the heart and causing his lungs to gush out all their air. He felt weak. Disoriented. Sick to his stomach.
Liz really, completely, totally fucked up.
How could he fix it? He had to fix it. He had everything riding on the eventual IPO, and the slightest whiff of a scandal would trigger the clause that promised morality and fidelity among all the principals of the firm.
A wife killing a neighbor’s kid—and then hiding the body!—was going to be front-page news. There would be no way to hide it. No way out.
He turned the dead bolt on the door between him and the cop across the street and flipped on the single light that hung over the workbench. On the bench was the tarp. Under the stiff covering was the body of the little boy all of Bend was searching for.
Goddamn it. Fuck! Shit! Liz, you idiot! What were you thinking?
Owen started to pace, first back and forth and then in a small circle. He had to get rid of the body. That much was a given. He couldn’t tell the police that he just stumbled across Charlie in his garage. They’d want to know how he had gotten there. They’d want to examine the car when the injuries that caused the child’s death were identified. They’d know. Everyone would know.
He’d have to ditch the body somewhere.
He’d have to run Liz’s car through the car wash.
He’d have to do all of that fast.
It was an accident. Liz was a gentle soul. She didn’t mean for this to happen. If she told the truth, then her life really would be ruined.
And, even more importantly, he’d lose his job. The boatload of money that he was about to get. He’d lose everything.
Liz’s husband stood there paralyzed—thinking, planning, and arguing with every scenario that came to mind. A drop of sweat fell to the floor. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He started moving again, thinking, processing.
And then he heard it: a soft puff of air causing the tarp to rise and fall just a little. It puzzled him. Maybe the window above the workbench was ajar and air had been forced inside by the gentle breeze.
That was a lie that he told himself when he instantly knew better.
Charlie Franklin wasn’t dead after all.
The little boy from next door was alive.
The impulse to pull the covering off Charlie and save him was a jolt that came and went. Owen stood immobile in that oven of a garage as the smell of the boy’s urine wafted through the air.
Bad had gone to worse. Terrible had become horrendous. An accident had suddenly morphed into an epic disaster.
The sound of a car door slamming startled him.
The cop, finally coming to check on him?
A nosy neighbor from across the street?
A pizza delivery guy.
Any could be his undoing. How in the world could he explain his way out of this mess? Holy shit. Liz had backed into a little boy, covered his body up with a tarp, and left him for dead all day in the hell of an overheated garage.
There was no way out of this, no undoing it.
He finally forced himself to move to the workbench. He stood still in front of it, looking closely at the tarp. It was nearly imperceptible, but what he saw couldn’t be ignored. The tarp rose and then fell. He watched it repeat the same motion. Up and down.
Alive.
Owen Jarrett played out the scenarios one more time. He wasn’t going to lose everything because of one stupid mistake. He stepped closer and put his hands on the tarp. He was going to stop the tarp. Stop the little boy. It was crazy and sick and Owen didn’t care about any of it. He was doing what he had to do.
At first Owen felt nothing but the boy’s still, fine-boned body beneath his hands. He told himself he’d imagined the breathing. But then Charlie made a mewling sound, muffled by the tarp. The noise jolted Owen, and he pushed down on the plastic. The boy stirred—didn’t push back, but remained in barely perceptible, squirming motion. His heart hammering inside his chest, Owen found Charlie’s face through the tarp. He did not want to pull off the loose plastic covering. He didn’t want to see what he was doing, although the act could not have been more deliberate.
He put his hand over Charlie’s face and pressed down. The boy twitched. Twitched again.
Goddamn it, Liz! Look what the fuck you are making me do! You bitch! This is your fault!
Sweat from his forehead met the tears in his eyes. He reached for a shop rag with his free hand and wiped his face.
Charlie had been left for dead, but he wasn’t giving up. His muted squirming and odd, twitching motions lasted for what seemed like a long, long time. Owen would never be sure just how long. There was a flash in which he almost stopped doing what he was doing. But he didn’t. There would be no way of explaining the unthinkable.
The boy stopped moving. Owen stepped away, his heart pounding to near bursting. The plastic covering loosely tenting the body was still.
Owen had to get out of there.
He didn’t want to overthink, but he needed an excuse for having come out to the garage and stayed all this time. He scanned the space and retrieved a small box marked KITCHEN and started for the door.
The patrol officer’s head popped up as he emerged.
“Found it,” Owen called to him. “Holy crap, do I need to clean up this garage!”
“Tell me about it,” the cop said. “Girlfriend’s been after me to do the same for about a year now. Just never get to it.”
“Yeah,” Owen said. “Hard to find the time.”
As he turned the doorknob to go inside, he made a promise to himself. He’d never tell Liz what he’d done. This was her disaster. She was to blame for Charlie’s death. He’d remind her of that whenever he needed to. For the rest of her life.
However long that was.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MISSING: FIFTEEN HOURS
As if sleeping would erase what had happened, Carole lay still on the California king bed that faced the moonlit river. She’d tossed her pillow to the floor. It was after 3:00 a.m., technically the day after her son went missing, but in her heart and in her soul it was merely the continuation of the day when she’d senselessly turned her back on Charlie. She told her husband and the detective that it had been only five minutes that she’d taken her eyes from him. That hadn’t been true.