The Last Thing She Ever Did

by Gregg Olsen

  “Look,” Carole said, “if there is someone, I don’t know who it is. David’s a private man. My family says secretive is a better word for the way he operates. I say private.”

  Esther leaned closer. “But you suspect he’s seen others.”

  “Of course,” she said, again without hesitation and with just a glance at the detective. “He had a fling with a girl before we moved here. It was messy. She turned aggressive about it. I wasn’t about to lose my husband. In part, it’s why we’re here. We had to get away from her.”

  Carole got up, her gait unsteady, and observed the river, the current slowly propelling some paddleboarders toward the old beaver lodge.

  “We should never have moved here,” she said. “It was David’s idea. I shouldn’t have listened to him.” She fell silent, appearing to forget they were there. “God,” she said to the window, “I want Charlie to come home.”

  He ran his fingers over his fashionable stubble and took a deep breath. Owen Jarrett felt his own handsomeness, a chin that was chiseled just so. Another deep breath filled his strong, runner’s lungs. He reached for his new phone and scrolled through the latest messages from Liz. While she was refraining from directly referencing what had triggered her meltdown, her neediness had been accelerated by what she’d done. And by what she’d forced him to do. She was drowning and wanted a lifeline.

  He wanted to throw her an anchor.

  Can you come home? I’m falling apart here.

  He was tempted to write back to her: You’ve ruined my life. I don’t want to come home ever.

  Instead, he shut her down with a terse two-word message.

  Working late.

  He swiped a finger against the glass of his phone and sent out a text to a different contact.

  I’m going through a lot here. Don’t you even care?

  He put his feet up on the desk and waited for an answer.

  None came. He put his palm against his forehead and rubbed at a throbbing pain.

  Answer me!

  He texted again.

  I promise. I’ll be free of her.

  No answer.

  His rage began to fester. He hated being ignored. Everything he’d ever wanted was all out of sequence. It all teetered because of Liz and what she did.

  He told Paula, who was on the phone at the front desk talking to her boyfriend, that he was heading out for a bit. The young woman smiled and waved. With Damon off getting an eyebrow wax or something, Owen felt it was safe to take a minute to think.

  To plan what to do next.

  He drove down Wall Street and around the block to Newport, where he crossed the river. A couple of miles out of town, he pulled over behind a brewery that had somehow managed to fail in a town that’s a magnet for brewmasters—and beer drinkers. It was the only place he knew would be deserted and available for what he knew he had to do.

  He rolled up the windows and faced the mirror.

  “Oh, God, no!”

  The words had stuck in his throat. He took in some air and tried it once more.

  “Oh, God! My wife! You need to come quickly. I think she’s dead. She’s dead. She’s really dead! Hurry!”

  That was too definitive. And why would he say “Hurry!” if he’d thought she was dead? Do-over.

  “I think something’s the matter with her. I just got home. She’s unresponsive. She’s been depressed lately. Really depressed. I never thought this could happen. Please hurry. She’s all I have.”

  Owen looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He’d have to do better. He’d have to find a way to ramp up the anguish and release some actual tears if he were going to be believable.

  Liz was never going to make it through the investigation into the disappearance of the neighbors’ boy. It had been obvious nearly from the first day. In fact, when he thought about it, his wife had been fragile before the incident. Unsure. A second-guesser at everything. He wondered what he’d seen in her in the first place. She’d idolized him. That was true. She’d been an available sounding board when he talked about his grand plans, a ready lover when he wanted sex. She was beautiful. And she was smart. But all of the things that he had found appealing were now coming under more scrutiny. His. Others’. She’d failed the bar twice. She talked about how humiliating that had been. She’d never once acknowledged the shame he felt. All of the people in his circle at the office and in the industry were unquestionably A-listers. She could have been one too. She looked it. In the way that a jeweler can tilt a diamond to conceal the flaw, the experience with Charlie had revealed something so deep and so wrong that there was no fixing it.

  She’d crack and fall to pieces, and while Owen knew that she loved him, she could be only a liability to him now. She’d blundered into quicksand and, in her blind panic, would think nothing of pulling him in with her.

  Owen looked in the mirror again. He had always liked what he saw. Right now, however, he knew his world was about to change. He was on the verge of a dream come true. And while he knew there had been a time when he truly loved Liz, that had been eclipsed by the mistake she had made. He furrowed his brow and tightened his lips. He put his hand on the wheel and let out a scream that came from deep inside. It was the kind of scream that could send a flock of geese flapping into the sky, that would make the bravest dog run and hide under the bed. His eyes popped a little.

  Still, no tears. Not a single drop. It was much harder to do than he thought.

  “Help me,” he said in a raspy whisper. “I just got home. My wife . . . she’s not breathing. Oh, God, please hurry. I think she overdosed on pills. Hurry.”

  Better, Owen thought, but he’d still need to find a way to turn on the waterworks. Or at least give the appearance that he had cried just before the paramedics arrived.

  Onions occurred to him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  MISSING: ONE WEEK

  Matt Henry waited in the lobby to see the detective handling the case of the missing little boy. The young man with shoulder-length brown hair and morning stubble wore a red fleece, khaki shorts, and Birkenstocks.

  When Esther emerged, he introduced himself as the “canoe guy” the news said was being sought in conjunction with the missing little boy, Charlie Franklin. She led him to an interview room where the air-conditioning was working too hard. The room was an icebox.

  “Sorry for the chill,” she said. “Maintenance is on the way.”

  Matt said he was fine. “Had a good workout,” he said. “Took a run along the river this morning. That’s when I heard on my Oregon NPR podcast you were looking for me. I’m totally behind in my podcasts. Anyway, that’s when I figured I might have something that could help. I think I might be the paddler in the red canoe you’re looking for.”

  “Tell me about that morning,” she said.

  “Right. Okay. Me and Chelsea were playing around that morning. Chelsea’s my dog. We were paddling in Mirror Pond and, I don’t know, I just got a wild hair and decided to head up the river. Just testing my new toy.”

  “‘New toy’?”

  “My GoPro. Got it for my birthday.”

  She nodded, familiar with the make of camera. “What time was that, if you remember?”

  Matt thought for a beat. He liked to be precise. He worked for a local engineering firm.

  “We got a late start,” he said. “Chelsea chased a rabbit in the park and, well, we didn’t get into the water until after nine thirty. Beautiful morning. Lots of commotion around Drake Park, though. You know, with the car show. I’m not much into cars. More of a cycling kind of guy.”

  “So you decided to head up the river.” Esther wondered if he paddled in a straight line or a leisurely, circuitous route. He sure talked in circles.

  “Right,” he said. “We started up the river. I listened to some tunes and set up my equipment.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  “The GoPro. I told you. I figured it would be cool if I shot some footage from Chelsea’s point of vi
ew as I paddled. It’s a lot harder to paddle upstream than I thought. I don’t think I’ll ever try that—”

  “You have video?” Esther asked. Adrenaline charged through her nervous system.

  Matt gave a quick nod. “Yeah. I remember the woman calling over to me. That’s on the vid. She was pretty upset. I didn’t see anything. I thought she was drunk or something. Seems like that’s all people do around here: drink. Not good for you.”

  “Where is the camera?”

  Matt retrieved the camera from the pocket of his fleece and the two of them huddled awkwardly over the device to watch the playback on its minuscule screen. The first images were of the morning’s jog up Pilot Butte with flashes of the dog’s hindquarters featured prominently.

  “Let me speed past all that,” Matt said. “You been up there? Awesome view. Well worth the effort. Sunrise is the best time to go. I’ve been up there two hundred and six times. More than that, actually. That’s when I started keeping track. Had to start somewhere.”

  “We all do,” Esther said. “And, yes, I’ve been up there.” She was tempted to give some kind of bogus number, just because Matt Henry’s OCD seemed to beg for it, but she didn’t.

  “All right,” he said. “Here. It starts right here.” He tapped his finger against the screen as though the detective needed prompting to get her complete attention.

  Esther bent closer. It was agonizingly slow going, and the dog had the attention span of a mosquito. She could hear the sound of the water and see the tip of the canoe as it moved upriver. A mallard landed, and the camera went nuts while the dog barked.

  “Whoa, Chelsea!” Matt could be heard exclaiming. “Do not go in the drink with that camera on your head!”

  The dog settled down and the paddling continued. Just past the beaver lodge, the camera picked up a glimpse of the shoreline. While it didn’t show the Franklins’ house, it was unmistakably their property. The lower third of the river-rock fire pit flashed by.

  “See that?” he said. “I think that’s the kid.”

  Esther didn’t say anything. She could see Charlie’s sneakers walking away from the shoreline.

  The camera spun around, and the canoe went back to the beaver lodge. In doing so, it picked up the image of a man with binoculars looking across the river. Matt talked incessantly to his dog the whole time, telling her what a good baby she was and how he didn’t want her to go after the beavers.

  “If we get lucky enough to film them, we can put it on YouTube,” he said.

  After ten minutes he started upriver again.

  Carole’s voice could be heard now, calling out, “Have you seen my little boy?”

  Matt didn’t reply right away. “Say that again?”

  “Here,” Matt told Esther, pointing at the video. “I pulled out my earbuds right there. I didn’t answer the lady right away because I didn’t know what she was talking about. She seemed a little out of line. You know, yelling like that.”

  “I’m going to need to keep this camera,” Esther said.

  “I’ll get it back, right? You won’t keep it forever, will you?” He looked skeptical.

  “Yes, you’ll get it back. We’ll copy the video. All right?”

  “Was there anything on there that was helpful with the case of the missing boy? I know that some people think he might have gone in the river, but I think if he did, Chelsea would have barked at him. She’s a barker. She barks at a leaf when it blows across the road.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  Esther didn’t say so, but one thing struck her as particularly odd. The old man with the binoculars was Dan Miller.

  What was he looking at? And why hadn’t he said anything to her about that when they talked?

  Esther ran into Jake outside of the records section. Jake smiled at her, but she didn’t return the gesture. Smiling was almost never her first reaction to seeing someone.

  “Canoe guy came in,” she said, handing over the GoPro. “Took some video.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “Charlie.”

  “No shit?”

  “He’s walking away from the water. He doesn’t go in—at least, not at the moment he was being filmed. He’s carrying a bucket. Can’t make out much more than that. And Dan Miller. He’s on the tape too. You need to download it so we can see it on a larger screen.”

  “On it.”

  “Good.”

  With that, Esther returned to her office to drink more coffee and scroll through messages. Media calls, mostly.

  Charlie almost certainly had not fallen into the water. The canoe guy and Brad Collins would surely have noticed that. That was good. That meant the child hadn’t drowned. On the other hand, that meant that it was more likely than ever that he’d gone somewhere under his own power—or with someone else.

  Someone, she thought, that the boy almost certainly knew.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  MISSING: ONE WEEK

  Dan Miller opened the front door wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops. The retired doctor’s white hair apparently hadn’t yet decided on a direction to lie in that day: it was all over the place. In one hand he held the remote control to his television set. While Dan had talked to other officers, he’d never responded to her request to get in touch when she’d talked to the neighbor and left her business card.

  Esther was circling back. The GoPro video was a good reason to make another run at the old man.

  “Golf is on,” he said, opening the door wide and revealing an interior that looked every bit the authentic Old Bend the house portended from the street. It wasn’t a faux cabin with fake moose-antler chandeliers and bear silhouettes stenciled on parchment-colored lampshades. It was real. Heavy beams supported the soaring ceiling. Dark oak flooring, scarred from years of people coming and going, led to a stone fireplace whose firebox, circled by a heavy shadow of black soot like a teen girl’s heavy-handed mascara, indicated decades of memories.

  “I’m here about the Franklin boy, Dr. Miller,” she said.

  Dan motioned her inside and shut the door. “Been sitting in my chair, watching the river and the goings-on over there,” he said, indicating a leather chair that swiveled from the picture window to face the TV. He had a front-row seat to all the action, on both the Deschutes in front of the house and the links on the large flat-screen, his only apparent nod to modern technology. He muted the TV, although it didn’t matter much. Golf is the quietest of any broadcast sport, with whispering announcers barely registering above a suppressed cough.

  Dan offered Esther something to drink, but she declined. It wasn’t a social visit. Esther didn’t do those anyway.

  “Mrs. Franklin says you were out doing yardwork when her little boy disappeared,” she said.

  The old man fiddled with the remote for a second. The joints of his fingers showed signs of arthritis. Twigs with tiny burls. He set down the remote.

  “I was cutting the grass, yes,” he said, “but I don’t know a damn thing about the kid disappearing. I was busy. I was ‘in the zone,’ as the kids say. It takes focus to do things the right way. Even mowing the lawn needs to be done right.” He paused before adding, “I try not to look over in that direction much anyhow.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Dan gave his head a little shake and then stepped to the window and pointed. “Seriously?” He turned to meet Esther’s gaze straight on. “It’s like I told the other young officer.” He pointed toward the window. “Look at that monstrosity, sticking up like a middle finger between the homes that have been there for forty or fifty years. Excuse my French, Detective, but I look at that house and the people who live there as a big middle finger to the rest of us. Or at least what’s left of us. New people with their glitzy homes and European cars are ruining this town. It’s just a matter of time, and this place will be a city without children, populated by people who look at the Internet all day long and have nothing of interest to say to anyone
.”

  Dan was on a roll, and as much as Esther enjoyed his rant—and could see the truth in what he was saying—she needed to guide him back to the subject at hand. “So you saw nothing,” she said. “You were right outside. You waved to Mrs. Franklin before she went inside.”

  “I don’t recall waving to anyone,” he said. “And if I did, it was only because I’m polite to a fault. Mom raised me that way. Truth is, I can’t stand those people over there. Not even Carole. I mean, from what I’ve seen and when I’ve run into her and her husband in town.”

  “You’re not sugarcoating a little for me?” Esther asked with a friendly smile, to soften her sarcasm. Or at least try to.

  Dan caught it and smiled back. “The little boy’s all right,” he said. “The parents? Jesus, that David is a piece of work, and Carole’s useless. They fight all the time. It’s like living across from some kind of movie-of-the-week trash that’s always on and with no way to change the channel.”

  “How so?”

  Dan didn’t say anything. He sat down heavily, mute.

  “How so?” she repeated.

  “You don’t want to know,” he finally said.

  “But I do,” Esther said. “I actually need to know.”

  Dan looked away, back out the window to the river. “Well, then I don’t want to say. I’m over seventy, but I won’t use the old-guy’s trick of really speaking my mind and then pretending I’m too senile to know I did it.” He pointed across the river. “You can see a lot from here.”

  The detective and the old man watched as, as if on cue, the couple with the missing boy faced off in the kitchen. David was saying something in what seemed to be a spirited fashion, but it was hard to see if he was angry or upset. Esther noticed a pair of binoculars on a table next to the swivel chair but didn’t think she should pick them up to get a better view.

  “You saw something,” she said.

  “Not anything important. Nothing that has to do with anything that really matters here, Detective. I’ve seen things, but nothing that would help you.”