The Last Thing She Ever Did(71)
Carole sat there at the kitchen table, her brain running over all the same scenarios again and again. How she should have kept her eyes on Charlie the entire time she was on the phone with the adjuster. How turning away, even for just one minute, had set off the series of terrible events. Her lapse had given some creep the way in that he needed to take her son. It allowed evil to walk right in and take control. And now, although she steeled herself with the tiniest shred of hope, she knew her mistake had led to whatever hell her son had suffered after he was taken from her.
“Who does this to a child?” she asked Liz.
“Don’t think the worst, Carole,” Liz said. “You don’t know what happened.”
Carole’s eyes stayed riveted on her friend’s. “You know it,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“I don’t,” Liz said, turning away for a moment. “I don’t. Really. I have faith.”
It stunned her to lie like that. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the magnitude of what she’d done was growing larger and larger. Her words were an ice ball rolling down a mountainside, building into an avalanche, hurtling toward innocent people.
All completely unaware of what was heading their way.
“I saw the look in your eyes when the detective said they’d found something off the highway,” Carole said. “I saw the hope—the faith, as you say—leak out of you. If you can’t believe he’ll be found, what can I do? I’m alone in this, Liz.”
“You’re not, Carole. Owen and I are here. David’s being a prick, but you know that he loves Charlie. You have to hold on to all of that right now.”
The ball of ice was becoming larger. It was unstoppable.
“Hold on to what?” Carole asked, setting down the steaming graniteware mug. The smell of chamomile filled the air. It was a grandmotherly kind of smell. Sweet and soothing. Liz hoped that Carole would sip the hot drink, calm herself just a little. Maybe lie down and try to get some rest.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“I know, Liz. I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t get through this without you. You are the only one who seems to understand how I feel. You’ll make a very good mother to a little boy or girl someday.”
Liz didn’t know how to respond to that without crying. They sat there in silence for a long time, drinking tea until their cups were empty.
Finally Liz picked up Carole’s empty cup and turned to the cupboard. She took her time preparing another cup of tea, then set it down in front of her grieving friend.
“Is it wrong of me to hope that they found someone else’s boy?” Carole asked. “What would God think about that? Wishing that some other family will get the worst news of their lives.”
Liz didn’t know what to say.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Carole went on, filling the void in their conversation. “I know that you think I’m a terrible person. I can’t help it. It’s not logical. It’s not moral. And yet there’s a part of me that hopes that if another child dies, then maybe Charlie will live. Like out of all of the kids who are stolen, you know, one or two make it home.”
“I’m not thinking that,” Liz said, getting up. “I’m thinking that there aren’t enough prayers and hopes in the world for everyone to have everything turn out all right.”
Carole drank more tea.
“I need to lie down, Liz,” she said. “Wake me up if the police come back.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
MISSING: SEVENTEEN DAYS
A caravan of emergency and police vehicles from an array of jurisdictions, along with the Oregon state medical examiner’s familiar white van and a couple of news crews from Portland and Bend, lined the highway. At the head of the procession was a large Ryder truck. Cars slowed and necks craned as passersby tried to see the reason for all the commotion. Before the body was found earlier that day, the place was completely unremarkable. No one would have stopped to look. Rabbitbrush and sagebrush competed for water. A hubcap that rolled off someone’s vintage VW had settled there. Litter clung to a fence like ratty laundry on a line some twenty yards off the highway.
A silvery white tarp over a broad aluminum frame covered the spot where the trucker had pulled over to take a leak. His dog, Jo-Jo, had found an arm.
“Yeah,” the driver said to a reporter as Esther and Jake passed by, “it made me sick seeing that. Something really wrong about people these days. Tossing someone into a ditch like they was nothing but trash.”
The sun was high in the sky, illuminating the tent like a big white beach umbrella. The side panel facing the highway had been dropped to obscure the view, although it wasn’t likely that anyone could see a thing from the roadway. Whoever had been left there was in pieces. Small yellow numbered evidence markers dotted the vicinity of the tent.
“Evidence, Jake,” Esther said as they approached the tent. “Whatever we see here, think of it as pieces of evidence. Don’t let it play with your head. If the pieces belong to our missing boy, then that’s all they are: pieces. Not him.”
Jake made a sound of agreement behind her.
She saw the medical examiner’s assistant, Mirabella Condit, working the scene. They’d met at a conference a few years prior. Mirabella was a striking woman who always dressed as if she were going out to dinner no matter where she went. “Look,” she once told Esther as they took lunch together on a conference break, “I’m in the lab all day long doing this and that to dead people. It’s grim. No doubt about it. My pushback is that I dress up. People say it’s about respecting the victims, but it’s really because it makes me feel good about myself. Reminds me I’m still a person too.”