The Last Thing She Ever Did by Gregg Olsen

Author:Gregg Olsen [Olsen, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781542046428
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2018-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

MISSING: SIX DAYS

Esther and Jake dodged the media—Bend’s mostly—that had remained parked across the street from the Franklin house for nearly a week. Esther recognized one reporter as a stringer for the Oregonian. A missing little boy doesn’t generally catch the interest of news editors unless he’s white and comes from a wealthy family. Charlie Franklin was tailor-made for the media. When Esther worked the missing-boy case in Corvallis, the boy was half Native American, and she practically had to beg the local TV affiliate to do a story. It was an ugly truth that all police officers knew.

Carole met them at the door with anxious, haunted eyes. “Did you find him?” she asked. She looked tired, wan. She wore the same pink sweater that she’d changed into when she gave up the top she’d been wearing when she tore her earlobe. Esther thought that she smelled of alcohol, but it might have been an alcohol-based mouthwash.

“Is Mr. Franklin here?” she asked.

Carole stepped back a little, letting them in. “He had a meeting,” she said. “Do we need him here now? I can try him.” She reached for her phone.

“No,” the detective said. “We want to talk to you. Just you.” Her tone was formal, she knew. She wished that she had a way of communicating with a softer touch, but that morning she just didn’t have it in her. The pressure she was feeling was like a stack of stones planted on her chest. One more, and her rib cage would splinter.

“You don’t have any news about Charlie, do you? What about that pedophile from out of state?”

“No. We’re pretty sure it wasn’t him. We’re all but certain that Charlie wandered off with someone he knew.”

“Who? Who do you think?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Esther said. “We want to find out more about what’s going on with you and your husband.”

Carole wrapped her arms around her thin frame and looked nervously away. “I don’t understand. What are you getting at?”

“Carole, we need some honesty here,” Esther said. “What is going on in your marriage?”

Carole stiffened. “Our marriage is solid.”

“We’ve heard otherwise,” she said, trying to push gently. “We need to get at the truth.”

“What you need to do is find our son. That’s all you need to do. The state of my marriage to David is irrelevant and has nothing to do with what happened to Charlie.”

“You don’t know that, Carole. Look, we don’t like to pry into private matters. We don’t. But in this case there are a few things going on that we need to discuss. We need to better understand the dynamics here.”

“We’re not having this conversation.”

“We need to,” Esther said.

Jake, inexperienced and impatient, spoke up. “Is your husband having an affair?”

Esther gave him a sharp look but noted that Carole hadn’t flinched at the question. Not in the slightest.

“What does that have to do with any of this?”

“Maybe nothing. We need to investigate all possibilities. If there is another party involved, we need to talk to her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.