by Gregg Olsen
“If this goes to trial—and we think it won’t get that far—then David Franklin will be a very sympathetic defendant,” said Stephen Richter, Franklin’s attorney. “No one knows what happened to his son, and no one knows the kind of grief and distress that kind of uncertainty causes. I’d probably do whatever it took to get answers, too.”
Franklin was released last night.
“He didn’t, Carole? He didn’t do this, did he?”
Carole nodded. “He did. He texted me.”
“My God,” Liz said. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. He’s done now. When Charlie comes home, David will never be alone with him again. I knew he was self-absorbed. Selfish. A jerk. But I never thought he had that kind of hate or violence in him.”
Liz set all of this in motion, and she knew it. She wondered if there would be any way out of what she’d done now.
“He was trying to find out what happened to Charlie,” she said to fill the air.
Carole put Bertie down. “Doesn’t matter. He almost killed someone. I can’t see any circumstances where I could forgive that.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
MISSING: TWENTY-TWO DAYS
From his DoubleTree hotel room, David could see the medical center. The sight of the sprawling building with the illuminated white cross made him ill. He’d been booked and released on bail that tapped the last bit of his cash reserves. Such as they were. All without a word from Carole.
She’d ignored his calls and texts.
He caught the sight of his bruised knuckles as he pulled the heavy curtain and took a tiny bottle of scotch from the minibar. He’d beaten a man nearly to death. For his son? For himself? To prove he was the equal of his wife, a former Google executive? He stared at the bottle, trying to decide if he should twist the little red wax cap and sink down even lower. He’d heard that Brad Collins would likely recover. If he did, it was a kind of gift that David didn’t deserve. And though he didn’t live and die on the patronage of local diners to keep the restaurant afloat, he knew that word would get around and people with a justified sense of righteousness would abandon Sweetwater. Whatever had been so important was ebbing away. His lawyer said the prosecutors would probably give him probation for a guilty plea.
“A jury will hate what you did, but they can be made to see that your anguish over losing your son was a mitigating factor,” the lawyer said. “At least I think so.”
He dialed Carole’s number again, but she didn’t answer.
I can’t explain why I did what I did, he texted. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.
A moment later, a text came back.
Sorry isn’t enough. Bye, David.
Carole had been ignoring the calls from Washington Federal. They had been persistent and completely annoying. Whoever had been trying to reach her obviously didn’t know that there were more pressing matters than whatever it was the bank was trying to tell her.
Finally, she could take it no more.
“Look,” she said, before letting the caller say a word, “I don’t mean to be rude, but now is not a good time. Please stop calling.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Franklin,” a young man said. “I’ve been trying to reach your husband.”
She wondered if the caller had seen the news. Her husband was unreachable because he’d been arrested for aggravated assault.
“He’s indisposed,” she said. It was the only polite way of putting his unavailability to a stranger, especially someone who didn’t have a clue about what had been going on.
“Oh,” he said. “But I have good news. I need to let him know that we’ve approved the loan we met about.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh. The line of credit for Sweetwater.”
“What line of credit?”
“Mrs. Franklin,” he said, “you’re on the paperwork. I see your signature right here.”
“You do?”
“Right,” he said. “The line of credit should keep the restaurant going until Mr. Franklin’s TV appearance kicks off his platform. Exciting times.”
All of this was news, of course. She knew cash was tight at Sweetwater, but David had insisted she didn’t need to pull out any more funds to keep it afloat.
“I can do this on my own,” he told her.
“It’s our money,” she’d responded.
“Not really, Carole. It’s yours. And that’s okay. I need to make a go of it on my own.”
“Mrs. Franklin?” the loan officer asked.
Carole snapped back into the moment. “Yes. Sorry.”
“Good. I thought something might have happened to you. The phone felt like it had gone dead.”
Carole slumped into a chair. “No, I’m here,” she said. “When did my husband meet with you?”
“Let’s see. This has been ongoing. We’ve had several meetings. This is tricky stuff. No one wants to bankroll a restaurant. Not even in a cool place like Bend.”
“Right,” she said. “When was the last meeting?”
When he told her, the blood drained from Carole’s face. It had been the morning of Charlie’s disappearance.
David hadn’t been out screwing another barmaid.
He’d been out fighting for his dream.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
MISSING: TWENTY-TWO DAYS
Carole and Liz faced the Deschutes. It was dusk. They’d already emptied a couple of bottles of wine and a bag of tortilla chips. No salsa. Just dry chips from Safeway. The air had cooled. Liz got up and retrieved a couple of old coverlets that her grandmother had made during her knitting phase.
“Fall is just around the corner,” she said.
“My favorite time of year, Liz.”
“Me too.”
“Charlie’s going to be a pirate for Halloween,” Carole said.
Liz took a breath. “Right. That will be great.”
Carole sipped her wine. She didn’t have to pretend not to drink to support her husband any longer. “I know,” she said. “I think I’ll make his costume. Last year was store-bought.”
“That will be great, Carole.”
A pair of mallards landed in the river, and the two women watched the ducks in the dim light.
“What’s Owen up to tonight?” Carole asked, filling her glass. “Another meeting?”
“Yes,” Liz said. “In a way I’m glad.”
“I noticed things are tense between you two.”
“I guess. Sometimes you need a break from your husband.” Liz looked over at her friend. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s fine. I know what you mean.”
“Did you talk to David today?” Liz asked.
“No, not really. He texted. I don’t know what to think of him. I don’t know, no matter the reason, if I can be with anyone capable of so much violence. After he beat up Mr. Collins, I’ve wondered if he’d done something with Charlie. A fit of rage. An accident. But he couldn’t have. He wasn’t home. Charlie’s gone because of me. David’s in trouble because of himself.”
Liz kept her eyes fixed on the water, which was turning gold and black. The picture in front of her was the same one that had been imprinted in her mind when she was a girl. The Deschutes was a gold-and-black snake flowing past the house, down to the bridge, then into Mirror Pond.
It looked the same. But it didn’t feel the same.
She lifted her eyes from the water. “Dr. Miller must be sick or something.”
“Oh? I hadn’t heard.” Carole looked across at the Miller place. “Maybe he moved without saying something.”
“Maybe. But his car was there. No, he’d never leave that house. He was going to die there before selling it.” She shook her head. “He’s never out anymore. His yard is a mess.”
“That’s all he cared about,” Carole said. “I wish he would move away.”
Carole had become increasingly bitter as the investigation stalled. Liz tried to bolster her spirits, but everything she s
aid hid the underlying truth of what she’d done. She was a fraud sitting there patting Carole’s hand and telling her she’d be all right. For her part, Carole couldn’t see anything good in anyone. Everything was negative. No one could blame her.
She’d lost something precious that could never be replaced.
Liz thought of reminding Carole that Dan Miller had lost a son too, but she knew it would come off as a tit for tat.
Carole only wanted Charlie home.
And that, Liz knew, would never happen.
“Never cared much for the man,” Carole said. “All he ever did was complain about how big our house is. Funny, now I kind of understand, after staying here with you and Owen. A smaller place does feel more like home.”
“Your house is fine,” Liz said. “It’s all Owen talked about after you guys showed up here with your architectural plans. He wouldn’t shut up about it. Wanted to tear this place down that very night. Thankfully we didn’t have the money.”
Carole smiled a little. “God, you must have hated us, coming in and changing the way things are. You never think about the impact on others when you do something big like that. You just come in and do what you want to do.”
Liz poured some more wine for herself. “It’s fine. Really. I’m over it.”
Carole stayed quiet for a long time. Another pair of mallards careened downward and planted themselves on the shimmering water as though replacing the first pair. The women watched in silence while the birds floated down with the river’s current.
Carole got up and leaned against the porch rail overlooking the water.
“Wish we never came here,” she finally said. “It was a mistake. We should have stayed in California. David wore me down. Told me it would be better to raise a family in a place like Bend. You know, a place where everyone knows everyone.”
Liz joined Carole. “Bend isn’t like that anymore. Maybe no place is.” She put her arm around her friend. It was another of the rare times that they’d started a conversation that didn’t begin with Charlie’s name. In essence, he was in every word that Carole said. Although not by name.
“You think it will rain?” Carole said.
“Looks like it.” Liz craned her neck so she could see the driveway. “I hear Owen’s car. Let’s go inside. It’s getting chilly.”
“You go in,” she said. “I’ll be a minute.”
It was after 9:00 p.m. Owen set his keys on the table by the front door and watched his wife as she came through the old French doors that led to the river side of the house. By then Carole had gone to bed. She’d been going earlier and earlier. She told Liz that she thought that sleep was a better escape than wine.
“I talked to David today,” he said, keeping his voice down. “He really wants to talk to Carole.”
“You mean he wants to make sure he’s got her money for his defense,” she said, also in a whisper. Owen gave her a look that was meant to put her in her place, but she wasn’t going to let him do that. “Don’t give me that,” she said. “It isn’t the same thing.”
“You could be where he is,” he said. “With what you’ve done.”
She wanted to throttle him right then and here. She wondered if that was how David had felt when he confronted Brad Collins. A warning. A twinge of fear. The kind of emotion that pushes you to a place you ordinarily would not go.
“You’re agitated,” he said. “We can’t have that, Liz.”
Just then Carole emerged from her bedroom. She made her way to the kitchen to get some water for the sleeping pills she’d come to rely on.
“Hey, Carole. Talked to your husband this afternoon,” Owen said. “He’s a wreck. Restaurant’s empty. Looks bad. Says you won’t call him back.”
“Let it go, Owen,” she said. “I want to keep my focus on what matters to me. Charlie. Not David.” She turned to face them from the doorway to the guest room. “I don’t give a flying fuck about David. I know what he’s about. I always have. That’s my sin in all of this: not choosing a better man when it came time to finally get married and start a family.”
“He loves you, Carole,” Liz said, though deep down she’d doubted it.
Carole looked at the Jarretts. They were a young and beautiful couple. While they had problems, they weren’t insurmountable. They weren’t encumbered by the fight to have everything all at once. The way her husband had been.
The way, she realized, she had been too.
“David loves David,” she said, her voice flat and husky from the wine. “He’s never wanted anything that didn’t move him forward in his dream. A little boy with a mind of his own never fit into his scheme of things. Sometimes I wonder if he was half-glad when Charlie was taken. It sure freed him from a lot of the annoyances that got in his way.”
Carole returned to her room and shut her door.
Liz turned her attention to her husband, still standing where he’d deposited his car keys.
“We are destroying them,” she said.
“Don’t go there,” he said quietly. He raised his hand and motioned for her to stay calm.
Owen always wanted her to be quiet.
“I promise,” he said, moving away from her and to the kitchen. “It will be over soon. Anything to eat around here? You can’t believe the lousy day I had.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
MISSING: TWENTY-FIVE DAYS
Liz could no longer tell if there was something different about Owen or if it was merely the way she’d been processing everything since the accident. He’d told her repeatedly that she was being paranoid and that there was nothing to be done but wait out the police investigation. At night, when she would lie next to him, feeling the slight heaving of the mattress as he breathed in and out, she wondered how he was able to sleep. She couldn’t. At least not at night. In the dark, she’d taken to moving from the bed to the sofa, then back to the bed, then back to the sofa again. Her movements were the manifestations of her guilt. She knew that. She was a nomad in her own home. An unworthy interloper. Each day she hoped for the resolution that her husband had promised.
His words played on an endless loop.
They’ll find him. It will be bone-crushingly sad when they do. But it will be over. And it’ll never lead to us. Not ever.
Liz had agreed to all of it. She knew she couldn’t blame Owen for what she had done. She had been the guilty party. He was only trying to help her.
And still it wasn’t right. In her heart she knew what they had done was every kind of wrong.
“We need to talk,” Liz said one morning while Owen dressed for work.
“Can’t it wait?” he asked, making a face as he noticed a small blemish on his chin. “I need to get to the office.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Liz said. “And, no, I don’t think it can wait. It’s about Charlie.”
Owen drew closer. His face was hard, his lips tight. Although the bedroom door was closed, he looked around to ensure that what he was about to say was heard only by her. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders, a move that was meant to focus attention on his words.
Instead, it hurt.
“Leave it alone,” he said. “Now is not the time.”
“You’re hurting me,” she said, trying to pull away.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.” He relaxed his hands and let go.
He was lying. Liz knew it. Owen’s grip on her shoulder was a reminder that she’d turned over all of the power she’d held in the situation. She’d given in. She’d acquiesced to his plan.
“I think I should tell the police what I did, Owen. I can’t live like this.”
His eyes drilled into hers. “That would be the biggest mistake of your life. Worse than what you did on the day of your bar exam.” He didn’t even want to say the words, didn’t want to name the things they’d done.
“I’ll say that I hid him,” she said. “I’ll leave you out.”
Owen let her words hang in the air. He let out a sigh and then, a little mo
re gently this time, led her to the edge of the bed.
“Sit,” he told her, and that’s just what she did. “We did what we thought was best. I did what I thought was best for you and our future.”
“I know,” she conceded, wanting to believe him. “But you don’t know what it’s like. The only thing that’s keeping Carole alive is the hope that Charlie will be found alive. I can’t keep lying to her. I can’t keep pretending that hope is even possible . . . not when I know it isn’t.”
Owen softened a little. “Look,” he finally said, “I get it. I understand. I hate it too. It’s what we agreed to do. You can’t go changing your mind, Liz. You have to be stronger than that. I need you to stay focused.”
“If I told the police everything, except the part where you helped me—”
“They will put you in prison,” he said. “They’ll put both of us in prison.”
“But I won’t tell about you,” Liz said. Her eyes welled up with tears, but none fell. “Not a word. I’ll say it was all me, because it is all me, Owen.”
“They will find out, Liz.”
She buried herself in his chest.
“No,” she said. “Not if I don’t tell.”
Owen could feel the tension in his wife’s body, the wetness of her eyes staining his English Laundry cotton dress shirt. He gently pushed her away and looked into her eyes.
“If you tell the police—tell anyone—so help me, Liz, it will be the last thing you ever do.”
The words hung in the still air. Liz wasn’t sure if it was a prediction or a threat. Something in her husband’s tone confused her. It was so matter-of-fact. So cold. She didn’t exactly know how to respond.
Owen could see Liz struggling to process his remark. He’d gone too far, threatening her so overtly—though God knew, he wasn’t bluffing. He could so happily strangle her right now. He’d walk it back a little, though. Set them on another track. “There’s too much at stake here.”
Still Liz was unsure.
“But it’s the right thing to do,” she finally said.
Owen put his hands back on Liz and held her.