The Last Thing She Ever Did(16)

“Has he been known to go into the river? You know, when you are not around to supervise?”

“No,” Carole said. “Never. Absolutely not. Look, we live on the river. Our son knows better. I tell him every day. I told him this morning. Don’t even think about getting your feet wet.”

Carole stopped talking. She sat there quietly. Nearly frozen.

“Then why do you think he might have gone in?” Esther asked.

Carole looked out the window. “I don’t know. He shouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have. But he was out there.” She raised a finger and pointed. “Out by the river. Where else could he have gone?”

“And that was the last time you saw him, Carole?”

“Right. I said that already.”

“But you said he hasn’t gone in the water in the past.”

Carole nodded. “That’s right. I honestly don’t know if he went in. I don’t think he would. I really don’t. And I told him. I told him to stay away from the water. He knows better. I know that. Charlie’s smart.”

“Did you see anyone out there?” she asked, indicating the river.

She nodded. “A guy on an inner tube. Some kids on the bridge. Someone in a canoe. My neighbor across the river was out there for a while.”

Esther asked for more details, and the mother of the missing boy did her best to fill in the blanks. She could barely get her words out.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’m not like this. I’m not.”

“This is a lot to take in,” Esther said. “Take a breath.”

Esther looked out the window. The river was nearly as flat as a pane of glass. The detective was pretty sure that if the boy had fallen from the bank, his mother would have seen an indication of it. The man paddling the canoe would have. Maybe the tuber floating by around that time. Or the elderly neighbor across the water, pushing a mower.

She turned her attention back to Carole, who by now was very pale, her skin nearly the color of her hair.

“Carole?”

The boy’s mother snapped out of her stupor. “I was only away from him for a minute. Really I was.”

“I know,” Esther said. “I need you to stop saying that, all right? We need to focus on where your boy might have gone, not what mistakes you think you might have made.”

Carole blinked. “Thank you.”

“Neighbors? Friends nearby?”

“Our closest neighbors are the Jarretts, but they left early in the day. Liz is taking an exam for the bar, and Owen is with a tech firm downtown. The couple on the other side of us stays here only a few weekends out of the year. They’re not here now. They rent out the house, but no one’s checked in yet for the weekend that I can tell.”

“All right,” the detective said. “We’ll look into everything. Has anything troubled you lately?”

Carole looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, have you or your son received any unwanted attention from anyone? Anything at all?”

“No. Everyone smiles at him. Charlie’s a friendly little boy. Please find him. I know he’s out there. He’s scared. I can feel it inside.”



Missing kids came in several flavors, and over the years Esther had worked cases that aligned with each type. The most common were those in which custodial rights played a part. One parent lashing out at the other by taking a child or not returning him or her from a scheduled visit. In most instances, those were easily solved. Charlie’s parents were together, so the detective scratched that kind off the list. A runaway was another possible scenario, but Charlie was too young to fit that profile. Next was what social workers and law enforcement called “thrownaway” cases. Those occurred when parents simply abandoned or kicked the child out of the family home. Again, scratch. Sometimes foul play was involved in that scenario, but not all that frequently. Sometimes children simply wandered away from the sight of their parents and got lost at the store, on a camping trip, or even in their own backyard. And finally, the kind that chills even the most seasoned investigator: the abduction case, in which a stranger had preyed upon the most vulnerable.

Local law enforcement from around the region was notified first. Arrangements for an Amber Alert were made, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was contacted. Within hours, Charlie’s photograph and description would be everywhere. If the case wasn’t solved in short order—as most are—the little boy would be seen on TV, on shopping mall bulletin boards, and all over social media.

Help could come from anywhere.

Across the state.

Right next door.





CHAPTER SIX

MISSING: TIME UNKNOWN

The blond-haired little boy was under the blue water of the ocean. Charlie’s warm breath floated from his lips, a pant too weak to extinguish the tiniest birthday candle. Too faint to stir the wisp of a dandelion-seed head, as he and his mother had done the day before when they walked to the playground with the pirate ship.

Too faint. Too weak. But alive.

Charlie tried to twist, but he couldn’t move. He looked upward through narrowed eyes, but in his disoriented state he had no idea which way was up and which was down. His tears instantly dissolved in the seawater and he tried to cry out, but the blue of the ocean kept his words close, compressed to his face. His head hurt. He wanted his mommy right then. More than he’d wanted anything he’d ever wanted in his life.