by Gregg Olsen
“A little boy is missing, Dr. Miller. I need to know what you know. I understand you don’t like the parents much, but beyond the big house I can’t see why you’d despise them so much. Seem like a nice couple.”
Dan leaned into his leather chair and swiveled it in the direction of the detective. “Like I said, he’s a jerk and she’s a moron. Do I need to spell it out?”
“I think you do,” she said. “Yes.”
The elderly man wasn’t a shrinking violet by any means, but he shifted uncomfortably before speaking. “He’s a player. I think that’s the word you use today.”
Esther pushed a little. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen him over there with a woman. Not his wife.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said. “My eyesight isn’t as bad as you might think, and though it’s been a while, and most all of it is from memory, I know it when someone is having sex.”
“When did you see that?” Esther asked.
“Honestly, I couldn’t count the times. Maybe ten.”
“Recently?” Esther asked.
He shrugged. “No. Not really. It stopped a few months back. The two of them got into a knock-down, drag-out fight. I almost called the police—I guess that would be you—but I didn’t. I was hoping that they’d get divorced and move away. Still be stuck with that piece-of-shit house, though. Excuse my French again.”
“Do you know who the woman is?” Esther asked.
He said he didn’t. “I’m not even sure if it was the same one. Girls these days change their hair and dress different. My wife had the same hairdo from high school to the day she died. Wore a skirt too. Never pants. My Miranda was a genuine classic.”
He fiddled absentmindedly with the remote.
“You must miss her a lot,” Esther said.
“That’s an understatement,” he said. “Every second of the day. What can you do? She wouldn’t want me to lie down and die. Life goes on. Those two across the river don’t know what Miranda and I always knew.”
“And that was?”
Dr. Miller took a deep breath. “That a marriage is between two people. Bring a third into the mix and you’re bound for trouble.”
“You don’t mean Charlie, I presume,” she said. “You mean another woman or another man.”
“Of course that’s what I mean. I had a family. It was everything to me. Kids are the greatest things in the world, though these days nobody seems to give a rat’s ass about them.”
Esther smiled to herself. Apparently ass wasn’t French.
“I hope they find that little boy,” he said as he got up to lead her to the door. “Still wish they’d move, though.”
“About the day Charlie went missing. You told the officer you were home, but you didn’t see anything.”
“That’s right. I didn’t.”
“I don’t know if that’s entirely true, Dr. Miller.”
“What do you mean?”
It was time to mention the GoPro.
“We have video. It shows you watching from the window.” She indicated the pair of binoculars. “You were using those.”
“I don’t know if I was or wasn’t, but I sure didn’t see anything. If I did I’d have called the police. Calling the police or an ambulance is the decent thing to do.”
Across the river, Liz called the humane society to let them know that she couldn’t come in to volunteer that afternoon. It was the first time she’d ever missed a day.
Animals had always been her great love. Throughout her childhood she’d raised just about every kind of creature available at a pet shop. She was not a cat person or a dog person. She was an animal person. One time she’d found an injured otter, and she nursed it back to health. For years after his release, she was sure that every otter she saw was Ollie.
She held her cat, Bertie, on her lap when she left a voice message for the volunteer coordinator. The cat’s outboard motor purr ordinarily calmed Liz when she was feeling stressed.
But no longer. Nothing could calm her.
“We’ve had a tragedy in our neighborhood,” she said, picking her words carefully as she thought of Owen’s advice. When you talk to anyone, never give details. Details will trap us. “Our next-door neighbor’s son is missing. I think I’m going to stay home and see if there’s anything that I can do to help out.”
Liz hung up and went over to the window that faced the Franklins’. That enormous house punched at the sky. It looked dark and foreboding, even more so than ever. She remembered the day the framers came and how, board by board, the structure shut out some of the light that had poured over the river and spilled onto the Jarretts’ shoreline. She’d gotten used to the change over time, mostly because Carole, David, and Charlie brought some joy and their own kind of light to the neighborhood. She tried to erase from her mind what she’d done. She wanted to tell herself that it had been a nightmare or even a stray recollection from a movie she’d seen.
Liz watched from the window while police came and went. Owen insisted that everything would be okay.
For Carole and David, she knew it never would be.
PART TWO
SORRY
Blame me. Fine. That’s how weak you are.
—Owen Jarrett
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MISSING: EIGHT DAYS
A little over a week since Charlie vanished, and they had nothing. Just Matt Henry’s GoPro videotape strongly suggesting that Charlie Franklin had not gone in the river. And that was shot from his dog’s point of view. No one had seen anything. Not a single verifiable sighting. The man from Pilot Knob with the New Mexico plates and the screaming little boy was a Match date disaster. Local police had questioned him. Nothing. Nothing at all. Esther and Jake decided to return to where it had all started.
“Let’s revisit the Jarretts. Liz is Carole’s closet friend, at least here, locally.”
“She wasn’t home when it happened,” Jake said, looking at his notepad. “She’d left around nine thirty to take the test.”
“The bar exam she didn’t stick around for,” Esther said.
“What more do you think she could tell us, then, if she wasn’t home?”
Esther wasn’t sure. “Let’s pay her another visit and find out.”
They drove across town and parked in the driveway, looking down the stretch of gravel that led to the Franklin place.
“Man, that house is huge,” Jake said.
“It sure is. Pretty soon little places like this one will be a thing of the past,” she said, indicating the Jarretts’ house.
She knocked on the door. Liz answered. She was still in her bathrobe and her hair hadn’t been washed.
“Sorry,” she said, realizing she looked like a wreck. She ran her hands over her hair, trying to flatten it out, but it was no use. It was a twirl of snarls. “I haven’t been myself since this all started.”
“Can we come in?” Esther asked.
Liz kept the door stationary. “The house is a mess. Just like me. Probably not the best time.”
“We don’t mind, Mrs. Jarrett,” Esther pressed, taking a step closer to the door. “We won’t be long. We’re just revisiting some things, trying to find out anything that we can. A little boy’s life is at stake here. Can we come in?”
Liz couldn’t refuse. Rebuffing an interview would make her look indifferent. The fact was she was shattered inside. She could feel her heart rate escalate and her face grow warmer.
“All right,” she said, “but you’ll have to excuse the place.”
She led them to the living room. She could barely look at her visitors.
“You mind if I put on some clothes?” she said. “Lost track of the day.”
“That’s fine,” Esther said.
The detectives surveyed the room while Liz disappeared into the bedroom. The living room was fairly neat. Esther couldn’t see any reason why Liz would have felt it was in disarray. Esther was only an indifferent housekeeper and
would have considered the Jarrett home perfectly fine for receiving company. A denim-blue camelback sofa faced the river, its back against the river-rock fireplace, which, judging from the black soot on the lintel, got plenty of use in winter. Over the mantelpiece was a painting of a group of skiers. Family photos adorned the shelf. Off to the side, near the dining room, was a set of free weights—thirty pounds each.
When Liz returned, her hair was in a loose ponytail and she’d put on a pair of jeans and a dark blue V-neck T-shirt. She caught Esther’s gaze as it lingered on the weights. “My husband does curls while he watches TV.”
Liz reached for the coffeepot and offered the detectives a cup, but both declined.
“I don’t know how I can help you,” Liz said, filling her mug and looking straight ahead at the wall of cupboards. “Like I told you, I wasn’t home when it happened. Drove up to Beaverton early that morning. Didn’t get home until late.”
“Yes, that right,” Esther said. “Let’s focus on what you might have seen in the days leading up to Charlie’s disappearance.”
Liz sat, set down her cup, and folded her arms. “You think he was kidnapped? That’s what I think too. I think someone came and snatched him right out from under Carole.”
“We really don’t know what happened,” Esther said.
“Has there been a ransom demand?”
“No,” the detective said. “Let’s focus on what you can tell us.”
Liz leaned forward, steadying herself with a hand placed squarely on the armrest of the old morris chair. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Maybe a car out of place?”
“There are always cars out of place around here. We’re overrun by tourists this time of year.”
“What about Charlie? Did you see him with anyone in the days before he went missing? Maybe talking to a stranger?”
“Oh, no,” Liz said. “Not at all. He was a very well-behaved little boy.”
Esther glanced over at Jake. She wondered if he had noticed the same thing she had.
“I know you are good friends with the Franklins,” Esther said. “You and your husband both. Right? You are close.”
“We are,” Liz said. “Nearly from the time when they first moved here.”
“Right. I know this might be hard to do, but we need to know if there’s been any trouble between the Franklins. As far as you know.”
Liz shifted in the chair. “I don’t want to gossip about people I care about.”
“Of course not,” Esther agreed. “I get a sense that you and Carole are especially close.”
“David’s pretty busy with the restaurant. Carole and I have had a lot more time together. She’s helped me prep for the bar. I’ve helped her get her studio in order.”
“Good friends.”
“Very.”
“Sometimes good friends confide things to each other. Has Carole ever confided anything to you about her marriage?”
“Like what?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Liz. About her marriage to David.”
“None of this has anything to do with their marriage,” Liz said. “Some freak came and took their kid. That’s what happened.”
“Probably. But we need to know if that freak, as you say, might have been someone that knew them. Maybe someone from David’s restaurant. Or someone from Carole’s past.”
“Carole doesn’t have a past. She worked her ass off at Google and married David.”
“What about David?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at. Really, I don’t.”
“Has David been faithful, as far as you know?”
Liz bristled a little. “Look, there was a time when he wasn’t,” she said. “I think. It was before they moved here. Carole told me about something, but I really didn’t pay it any attention. She complained about her husband the same way I complain about mine. He’s too busy. Too distracted at times. I wouldn’t know if he’s played around behind her back here or not. She never said so.”
Esther looked over at Jake again, giving him the signal to ask a few questions of his own.
“You live next door,” he said. “You must have seen something.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I told you I wasn’t home.”
“Not that. I mean before.”
“Oh,” Liz said. “I still don’t know what you mean.”
Jake clarified. “A stranger. Something or someone that just seemed out of the norm. Something that maybe you look back on now and can’t quite make sense of.”
“I wish I did,” she said. “I wish you could bring him home right this very minute. I just can’t help you. I hate to chase you out of here, but I have an appointment that I need to get to. I’m already late for it now.”
“All right,” Esther said, handing Liz her card. “Please call me if anything comes to mind.”
Liz said she would.
“Did you notice that she talked about Charlie in the past tense?” Jake said as they returned to the car.
Indeed Esther had. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, other than the fact that she thinks the boy is gone for good.”
They’d reached the car. Jake looked back at the house. “Why would she think that?”
“Because most kids who’ve been missing this long are dead. Some are never found. Dead nevertheless.” She got in behind the wheel.
“You think Charlie Franklin is dead?” Jake asked when he’d joined her inside.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But yes, probably. He probably is. I hate saying it, Jake, but this is the world we’re living in now. Not very many miracles these days.”
“That’s pretty jaded, isn’t it?”
His remark made her wince a little. He was right. “Sorry,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that we won’t fight like hell to try to find him and bring him home. God willing, he will be alive. I want to be hopeful. Wishing for something doesn’t make it so.”
Esther put the car in gear, and they drove downtown to a coffee shop. Her pessimism about Charlie’s fate bothered her. She wondered if thinking that the case might be hopeless would affect how she handled it. No, she decided. The Franklins needed their son back, but they didn’t need false hope that all would be all right. It was her place to toe the line and always tell family members that she and the other members of law enforcement had locked arms and were working every single second on solving the case. There were lots of cases, though. And sometimes cases cooled.
“Did you notice something odd about the way she spoke about Charlie?” she asked while they waited for their order.
“You mean apart from that it was in the past tense?”
“She never said his name. Not once. A little odd, I think.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing, really,” she said. “Just a little strange.”
He poured three servings of cream in his coffee, turning it from dark brown to a light beige. He added sugar too.
“I noticed something else,” Jake said.
Esther took a drink of her coffee. “What was that?”
“She couldn’t wait to get rid of us, just like last time,” he said, stirring the pale mixture. “She said she had an appointment to go to, but I really don’t think so. She wouldn’t have gotten dressed if we hadn’t shown up. I bet she didn’t have anywhere to go.”
“Maybe she ran out of wine,” Esther said.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I smelled that too.”
The detectives left, and Liz stood immobile by the front door. She kept her eye on the peephole until Esther and Jake disappeared. She listened for their car to start and waited for the sound of the tires moving the loose gravel over the surface of the blacktop. Their appearance hadn’t been unexpected. She knew there would be a time when the police would circle back. She thought she’d be prepared for it, but it had been hard sitting there, telling them lie after lie. Her hands were shaking, and she held them together while she went back to the kitc
hen to get a drink. She needed to steady her nerves. She was in serious trouble. Just one glass of wine, and she prayed that God would help her figure out what to do. She was so sorry for everything she’d done. She knew it was impossible to undo any of it. It was beyond grotesque.
One glass turned into two. She paced around the house, glancing at the river every now and then, squinting her tired eyes as the sparkles of light bounced through the old glass of the original window. The laughter of some kids floating on the water turned her stomach. Maybe it was the wine? No, she knew, it was the fact that she’d killed a little boy. She imagined for the thousandth time telling Carole what she’d done, but there was no scenario in which she could imagine forgiveness. Not even a little.
I need to do something.
Owen needs to do something.
She put down her wineglass and retrieved her purse from the bedroom. A painting her mother did of her brother and Seth mocked her. Bonnie Camden insisted it was her best work. It showed the boys sitting in a red canoe on Mirror Pond.
It was an accident.
People say that, and those involved cling to it. A tragedy’s main players have no control over how other people might choose to perceive an error in judgment. The parents who leave their child in a hot car “only for a minute,” the teens who double-dare a buddy to jump from a cliff “because if you don’t, you’re a wuss”—no one means to do harm, but those outside of the scenario are always quick to assign blame.
Her parents had done that to Dr. Miller.
Others would do that to her. The difference was, while what happened to Charlie was absolutely an accident, what she did afterward ensured that she’d never escape blame.
She got into her RAV4 and started for Lumatyx. Outside, the world was bright, sunny. The radio played an upbeat pop song. Everything was at odds with how she felt.
When she got inside Owen’s building, the receptionist said her husband was at an off-site meeting.
“What off-site meeting?” Owen hadn’t mentioned anything. But then, he hadn’t told her much about what was going on at work. She could feel him pushing her to the sidelines. “Where?”