Liz looked down at the river.
It was a black snake with a stain of silver from a fading moon peeking through the breaking clouds. It called over to her. Begged her. Told her that if she would go into the water, everything would be all right.
Charlie Franklin came to her as she drifted off, sitting on the porch in an old Adirondack chair that her grandfather had made out of lumber from a cedar tree that had died not long after he bought the property.
Charlie had his bucket of pinecones and a big grin on his face as he knelt beside her while she rested. He told her that everything would be all right. That when she got to heaven, they’d make those turkeys together, like she had promised. He spoke to her in complete, measured sentences. Not like a three-year-old at all. He told her that he knew that she hadn’t intended any of what happened to him. That she was not the reason he had died. That what had transpired between them on the driveway that morning had been an accident.
“Lizzie,” he said, “it’ll be okay.”
Liz woke up with a start and picked up her empty wineglass, which had somehow managed to hit the floor beside her chair without breaking. She felt woozy and strange. Not herself.
She knew she would never again be whoever she’d been.
She hoisted herself up from the chair and held the handrail to make her way back inside.
“Owen?” she called out, her voice raspy and her feet unsteady.
No answer.
She went into the kitchen, the bedroom, the office, even the bathroom, stumbling as she worked her way through the house. As repulsed as she was at what she’d done, it took everything she had to avoid going into the garage to see what Owen was doing in there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MISSING: FOURTEEN HOURS
Owen knew he had been out in the garage far too long. For all his furious, can-do bluster with Liz about how he’d fix everything, he was stuck, vapor-locked, just inside the door. An acrid scent permeated the air. He couldn’t make himself cross the space to the workbench, and the tarp, and the nightmare beneath it.
Sealed off all day, the garage was stifling, like an oven preheated for a take-and-bake pizza. To let in some air, Owen had twisted the knob on the side door parallel to the river and popped it open. But then he’d had to nod in the direction of a patrol officer who’d parked across the street to keep an eye on things.
He pulled the oven door shut again.
Now all this time had passed, and those eyes were on him. The cop had to be wondering what in hell he was doing. Great. This could not get any worse.
Owen had no idea what he was doing, just the words of his wife pushing him there, telling him what she’d done. It was surreal. It was a bad dream. It was the end of a dream too, he knew. Everything that he’d worked so hard to achieve was going to be undone by her actions.
Liz, what a colossal mess!
With seemingly every muscle in his body pulled taut, his movements were labored. Sweat that had accumulated on his brow was dripping down and forcing the salty liquid into his mouth. He doubted that his heart had ever pounded as hard as it was at that moment. Not even when he ran his only marathon, in Boston, when he was in college.
The garage was old-school. Built in the days when families had only one car and no real need for the stuff that accumulates with time and money. Liz’s car, the newer of the couple’s two vehicles, had been the winner in a coin flip to decide who would dodge the snow and frost in the winter, the weeping sap from the pines in the summer.
Everything would be different if he’d won the toss. None of what had happened would have occurred. He knew that by altering one little detail, the world is changed. Just one little thing. He compiled a list of little things. If Liz had gotten up on time. If he’d parked his car there. If they’d never bought this stupid house or met the Franklins. If. If. If. The contents of the list came at him like an Uzi, striking him in the heart and causing his lungs to gush out all their air. He felt weak. Disoriented. Sick to his stomach.
Liz really, completely, totally fucked up.
How could he fix it? He had to fix it. He had everything riding on the eventual IPO, and the slightest whiff of a scandal would trigger the clause that promised morality and fidelity among all the principals of the firm.
A wife killing a neighbor’s kid—and then hiding the body!—was going to be front-page news. There would be no way to hide it. No way out.
He turned the dead bolt on the door between him and the cop across the street and flipped on the single light that hung over the workbench. On the bench was the tarp. Under the stiff covering was the body of the little boy all of Bend was searching for.
Goddamn it. Fuck! Shit! Liz, you idiot! What were you thinking?
Owen started to pace, first back and forth and then in a small circle. He had to get rid of the body. That much was a given. He couldn’t tell the police that he just stumbled across Charlie in his garage. They’d want to know how he had gotten there. They’d want to examine the car when the injuries that caused the child’s death were identified. They’d know. Everyone would know.
He’d have to ditch the body somewhere.
He’d have to run Liz’s car through the car wash.
He’d have to do all of that fast.
It was an accident. Liz was a gentle soul. She didn’t mean for this to happen. If she told the truth, then her life really would be ruined.
And, even more importantly, he’d lose his job. The boatload of money that he was about to get. He’d lose everything.
Liz’s husband stood there paralyzed—thinking, planning, and arguing with every scenario that came to mind. A drop of sweat fell to the floor. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He started moving again, thinking, processing.
And then he heard it: a soft puff of air causing the tarp to rise and fall just a little. It puzzled him. Maybe the window above the workbench was ajar and air had been forced inside by the gentle breeze.
That was a lie that he told himself when he instantly knew better.
Charlie Franklin wasn’t dead after all.
The little boy from next door was alive.
The impulse to pull the covering off Charlie and save him was a jolt that came and went. Owen stood immobile in that oven of a garage as the smell of the boy’s urine wafted through the air.
Bad had gone to worse. Terrible had become horrendous. An accident had suddenly morphed into an epic disaster.
The sound of a car door slamming startled him.
The cop, finally coming to check on him?
A nosy neighbor from across the street?
A pizza delivery guy.
Any could be his undoing. How in the world could he explain his way out of this mess? Holy shit. Liz had backed into a little boy, covered his body up with a tarp, and left him for dead all day in the hell of an overheated garage.