The Last Thing She Ever Did

by Gregg Olsen

  “Is he going to be all right?” Esther asked after peering in the open doorway.

  “Outside of a head injury, he’s fine,” Dr. Cortez said. “Well nourished. Clean. Obviously not victimized, at least in any physical way.”

  “No signs of abuse?” Esther asked.

  “None.”

  “So why did that freak take him?” Jake said.

  The doctor looked at Jake. “That’ll be your job to figure out.”

  “The MRI,” Esther said. “What does it tell us?”

  The doctor picked at the film. “He was hit. It’s been a while, but there’s definitely the shadow of some bruising on the front and back of his brain. All of our brains float. Kids, even more so. It’s a coup-countercoup injury.”

  “What did he say?” Esther asked. “How’s his memory of what happened to him?”

  “Gone for the time being,” the doctor said. “Maybe forever. It’s missing from the time he was hit and abducted to the time he came to, and about the same amount of time prior to his injury. Retrograde amnesia is hard to understand. We just don’t know enough about it.”

  “You mean he won’t be able to tell us what happened to him?” Jake asked.

  Dr. Cortez shook her head. “Not impossible, but I doubt it. I’ve seen cases like this before. Car accidents, a few serious assault cases. People forget everything in a window that’s defined by the length of time they were unconscious and backward for the same amount of time prior to the incident.”

  “So he won’t be able to tell us anything,” Esther reiterated.

  “My guess—and, again, it’s only a guess—is no. While healed for the most part, his concussion was a severe one. Closed-head injuries like his are hard to understand because you just can’t see how bad they are. A lot goes on hidden in the skull.”

  Esther looked at the scan, her eyes traveling over the areas of gray and black, stopping where the doctor indicated trauma had been picked up on the film.

  “Not knowing what happened can be a great gift for some people,” Dr. Cortez said. “That way they don’t have to relive it over and over. Charlie is going to be fine. His family’s a shambles, but that’s another story. The boy will survive this. Kids are resilient. Adults can be another matter.”

  Esther thought of Dan Miller. He hadn’t suffered a brain injury at Diamond Lake. Yet from what Liz Jarrett had reported to the officers who arrived first on the scene after finding Charlie, he’d never been able to get over what happened the day he left Bend with his son and a couple of neighbor kids for a day on his boat. It had been an enduring hurt festering below the surface.

  “He told me that the biggest mistake he ever made was saving me instead of Seth,” Liz had said. “By taking Charlie, maybe he thought he had the chance to finally undo what happened.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  MISSING: NO MORE

  Liz sat on the edge of the bed. Her shoulder injury from the battle with Dr. Miller had required just five stitches. The scar would be a lifelong reminder of what had happened. As if she’d ever need one. Owen had picked her up at the hospital and brought her home to change. She’d said almost nothing on the way there.

  He sat beside her. “You’re in shock,” he said, patting her knee. “We both are.”

  She didn’t respond. She just sat there, replaying everything in her mind and still unable to make sense of any of it.

  “Dr. Miller saw us,” she said at last. “He saw what we did, Owen.”

  Owen slid next to Liz and put his arm around her. She could feel the weight and warmth of his body, but it transmitted nothing to her. No comfort, no assurance. Nothing at all.

  “And he’s dead, Liz.”

  “Charlie’s alive.”

  Owen persisted. “And he’s a very little boy. What does he know? Really, what could he know? He was out cold when we put him in the field.”

  Alive, she thought. He was alive.

  “He doesn’t remember anything,” he said.

  Liz studied her husband’s eyes. Who is this man? “That’s now,” she finally said. “He might remember later.”

  “He’s only three.” He was in salesman mode. “He won’t be able to make sense of any of it. He’s been traumatized. He’s too little to put it together . . . and even if he could, no one could make sense of it. We’re free.”

  Liz lowered her eyes and gazed at her lap. She pressed her hand against her stomach. She felt sick inside.

  “Dr. Miller is dead,” she said.

  Owen relaxed his arm. “And thank God he is,” he said. “He was a whacked-out weirdo. He was the only one who could put the pieces together. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

  Her feeling of nausea passed. “He thought he was doing right, Owen. He thought that he could somehow fix the past by taking care of Charlie.”

  “You can’t fix the past. You can only go forward. We’re going to do that.”

  “David is going to prison. That’s on us.”

  “No. No, it isn’t. It was a choice he made.”

  Liz turned to face him. “Because you told him about Brad Collins. Don’t lie to me. I know you were doing what you do best, Owen. A button pusher. That’s you.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly,” he said.

  There was truth to that. Her mind had been firing nonstop since the fight in the basement. She knew it was all real, but she didn’t feel like herself at all.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I know for certain that what I did ruined David and Carole’s lives. It was me, Owen. I was the one who started all of this.”

  “Right. I’ll give you that. You also ended it.”

  Salesman again.

  “Did I?” she asked. “Because it doesn’t feel like I ended anything. Not for anyone. I can still see Charlie wrapped in that tarp. How could we have done that when he was alive? How could we have done that at all?”

  “You need to stop thinking about this,” he said. “It’s over.”

  Liz knew better. She knew that it would never really be over. It would be like Diamond Lake, haunting her for the rest of her life. The lie would grow into a disease. Cancer, probably. It would come for her when she least expected it.

  Although she would always know it was on its way.

  Owen undressed for the shower. “We’ll need to go back to the hospital,” he said. “Carole will expect us to be there. They are keeping Charlie overnight.”

  “I can’t face her again,” Liz said.

  “You have to,” he said. “You are the hero. The press will be there. So will the detectives. You’ll have to pull yourself together, Liz. This is done. You’ve been handed a gift. We both have. This is a happy ending.”

  Owen stepped out of sight into the bathroom and turned on the water. The old pipes creaked, and he stepped inside the shower.

  It didn’t feel happy. Not at all.

  Liz picked up Owen’s expensive jeans, which he had left in a heap on the floor. They were his favorite, dark dyed and not too skinny. She removed the leather belt and coiled it to place it in the top drawer. She’d grown to hate him since the accident. Shifting the contents of the drawer, she noticed some paperwork underneath his growing collection of cashmere and cotton socks. Her husband was becoming a clotheshorse. He dressed better than she did. He told her that he had to look the part.

  “Dress for what you want to be,” he’d said.

  She’d wanted to be a lawyer. She would never be that.

  A quarter-folded sheet of light blue paper caught her eye. She recognized it immediately as the stationery that Owen had bought for her birthday the year before. “Almost a dollar a sheet,” he had said, in that grandiose way he had about certain things. It was teasing but true at the same time. “Don’t waste it on shopping lists.”

  What was it doing there?

  She looked over her shoulder at the bathroom door as the water in the shower poured over her husband.

  It was a typewritten note.

  I’m sorry for all the
pain that I’ve caused. I am a failure as a wife and friend. I no longer want to be a burden to anyone.

  Her signature concluded the short missive.

  Liz heard Owen pull the curtain back and step out onto the mat. She could feel her heart race.

  Although she had imagined killing herself and even planned to do so, she’d never actually written a suicide note. She’d never taken that concrete step toward truly attempting what she thought was her only way out.

  To save Owen.

  To ease Carole and David’s enduring heartbreak.

  To fade away.

  She sat there until Owen emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist. She turned and faced him, the slip of paper now unfolded in her hand.

  “What is this, Owen?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, running his fingers through his damp hair.

  “Don’t lie to me, Owen. You wrote a suicide note. For me. Why would you do that? What were you going to do to me?”

  “Liz,” he said, “calm down. I wasn’t going to do anything. I thought you were going to kill yourself. You talked about it. I was thinking that if you did, then you should say something. You know, I thought you would want it that way. And you know they always blame the husband. I had to protect myself in case you didn’t leave a note.”

  There he was again, doing what he did best. Lying. Looking for a solution that would sound good to others and absolve Owen of any blame. Liz was sure everyone at Lumatyx hated him.

  “You wanted me to die,” she said. “You were probably hoping the whole time that I would end it all so you could play the victim card and move on with your life. All that money. A dead wife. That’s what you wanted, Owen.”

  “I didn’t want a dead wife. I didn’t want to lose everything. You did all of this to us and—yes, all right, I really did think that if you killed yourself . . . well, that it would be all right.”

  “How would it be all right?”

  “I thought you killed Charlie. I thought we’d never, ever be able to undo that. If you killed yourself, out of guilt for what you’d done, I’d be able to move past all of this. Don’t blame me. None of this is my fault. All of this is on you.”

  Liz could feel the blood drain from her face. “Owen, why did I even fall in love with you? I don’t know who you are. You can’t have changed so much from that man I married.”

  “Honey,” he said, reaching for her. “I am the man you married. I didn’t know what to do. I was just trying to survive. Is that so wrong?”

  “You wanted me dead, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I can’t lie. You know me.”

  “Lying is all that you do, Owen. You must have been very disappointed that I’m still alive.”

  “No,” he said, trying to hold her. She stepped back and held her hand out to stop him. “This is our chance to start over.”

  “We had our chance,” she said. “We’re done. You’re going to leave soon. Not right away. I don’t want anyone to make a thing about our breakup.”

  “What breakup?” he asked. “I don’t get you at all. We’re home free.”

  She sucked in some oxygen. It was like she could breathe for the first time.

  “I want to be free of you,” she said. “I know that you wanted me dead. I know that this whole thing was about your job at Lumatyx. The money. Well, it’s not going to happen.”

  “You’re insane,” he said. “You’ve gone off the rails. I’m not going to be pushed around by the likes of you.”

  Liz didn’t say anything for a long time. She just looked at the man who had played upon her weaknesses for his own personal gain. They had no marriage. He had a career path. The path to the big house on the river. He wanted to be like the Franklins.

  “You don’t even like me, Owen,” she said.

  “That’s not true,” he said. “I love you.”

  “You love yourself. There isn’t room for you and me in this marriage.”

  “Fine,” he said, his anger controlled but rising a little. “You stupid bitch. The only thing going for you was your looks, and we know those are fading fast. Pill popper. Boozer. It shows on your face every time you look at me.”

  “I took those pills because you gave them to me.”

  “Blame me. Fine. That’s how weak you are.”

  “I was weak. I’m not now. I’m drawing a line, and I’m not going to budge past it. You are going to leave Bend for good.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said. “My job’s here.”

  “You’ll quit your job.”

  “No, I won’t. Not going to happen. I’m about to get a shitload of stock, and I’m not going to leave that on the table.”

  “You will leave it,” she said. “Or you will go to prison.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “That night when we left Charlie out in the middle of nowhere, my phone accidentally took a picture of you, Owen. Remember that flash? It shows you carrying Charlie, his arm dangling out of the tarp.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “There is no photo. We got rid of those phones.”

  “And you’re the high-tech expert. The cloud, Owen. The photo was stored on the cloud. I sent it to my law professor. He’s agreed to represent me if I need help in the future.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  “I would and I have done it.”

  “You’re bluffing!” he said.

  “Want to bet?” she asked, finding some long-missing strength in herself. “Want to bet your life? You’re going to resign from Lumatyx and you’re going to leave town, or you’ll go to prison for kidnapping and attempted murder.”

  Owen tightened his jaw. “No one will ever believe that I had a thing to do with what happened to Charlie. Besides, you were the one who killed him.”

  “He isn’t dead, remember?”

  Owen started pacing. Liz could see that his mind was working on what to say. What to do.

  Looking for something to hit me with? A belt to strangle me with? A razor to slit my throat with? All of those things would require him getting his hands dirty. Owen doesn’t like to do that.

  “I could kill you right now, Liz,” he said. “You’ve failed at everything you’ve tried to do. No one would give a shit if I did.”

  His true colors were ugly, but he had a point. Owen was always expert at pointing out her faults, be it with her relationship with her brother—tenuous at best—or the fact that she’d failed the bar.

  Technically, twice.

  “Least of all me, Owen,” she finally said. “The truth is I’m not sure I’ll be able to live with everything I’ve done. None of it will ever leave me. I expect it will catch up with me. You, you’re different. It didn’t take but a single criminology class for me to understand you, though it’s taken me a long time to face it. Who wants to admit they married a sociopath? But that’s just what I did. Everything that comes from your lips is a lie. You’ll start over. You’ll do fine. You’ll get that money. But you’re not going to get it here.”

  “I’ll drag you down with me if you mess with me,” he said.

  Liz wanted to laugh, but she didn’t. Nothing about what happened to Charlie, the Franklins, Dr. Miller, and Brad Collins had been funny. “Owen, you’ll quit Lumatyx and you’ll leave Bend. If you don’t, you’ll go to prison and, as pretty as you are, I’m sure you’ll make plenty of new friends there.”

  Owen stormed out, slamming the door so hard that Liz’s grandmother’s china hutch shuddered and a Blue Willow teacup fell to the floor.

  She went over to pick up the shattered pieces. One piece at a time. Her own guilt and fear had made her a prisoner. Had made her weak. But in that moment of confrontation, Liz Jarrett had used one of her husband’s most cunning methods of control.

  She’d lied.

  She’d never contacted any professor. There was no photo on the cloud.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

/>   MISSING: NO MORE

  Within a few hours of Charlie’s discovery in a neighbor’s basement, the story of “Bend’s Miracle Boy” was all over the Internet. News media trucks from Portland and Seattle had already staked out prime real estate at the hospital and along the street in front of the Franklin house. To all of the reporters’ disappointment, there wasn’t anyone central to the case available for a live shot. David was back in the kitchen at Sweetwater. Liz and Carole were at the hospital with Charlie. The police weren’t talking. Not even the hospital spokesperson would comment.

  The only one available was Owen, who’d left work because Damon had said the media was a distraction.

  “And, really, shouldn’t you be with Liz?” he asked.

  Damon was marginalizing him again.

  “But we have a conference call.”

  “You’re optional. Now, do the right thing. Go home. I have it covered here.”

  Damon is a prick.

  Despite the elated mood among the reporters and the people on the street, Owen’s countenance was grim. Sweat collected at his temples. He’d rather be anywhere but there. He’d especially rather be on the conference call to make sure Damon West didn’t throw him under the bus.

  He was speaking to the press only to get everyone to go home.

  “The family is grateful for the return of their son,” Owen said, gazing over the reporters and onlookers to avoid really looking into anyone’s eyes. “My wife is not a hero but a messenger of hope that good has triumphed over evil and a little boy has been returned to his parents. Please leave and respect the privacy of all involved.”

  That last part was really his true message. To Owen’s way of thinking, everything had become far more complicated since Charlie’s miracle return. Directing the narrative was a feeble attempt to right a sinking ship. Everything would have been better if Charlie had died.

  The kid has more lives than a cat, he thought.

  Carole’s phone pinged with a text from David.

  Please let me come.