As she lay there, her fingers found the gold sea star pendant, and she reviewed the time line in her head. Phone records confirmed that Mrs. Franklin was on the phone for twelve minutes. It was within that period that Charlie vanished. If he’d gone off with someone, then it had likely been without a struggle. No one heard anything. No one saw anything. If Charlie Franklin walked away, it was with someone he knew.
Who was it? And why did they take the three-year-old?
Across town, the front page of the Bend Bulletin was rolling off the presses. The local TV stations had already aired the story of the missing little boy the night before as an add-on to coverage about the classic car show in Drake Park. By the time the papers hit newsstands and doorsteps that morning, everyone in Bend would know that Charlie Franklin had disappeared. Among the readership or the viewers who caught the update on the morning news would be the person who knew exactly what had happened.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MISSING: ONE DAY
The retriever was more bronze than golden, but she was almost twelve, and the change in her glorious coat came with the territory. Tony Lupita, Jessie’s owner, lamented that she no longer darted out at every squirrel or cozied up to the younger dogs when they were out walking to the top of Pilot Butte, an extinct cinder cone that rose almost five hundred feet above its stunning surroundings.
It was before daybreak, the best time to be there—especially after the scorcher of the previous day. It was just fifty-five degrees.
Tony looked at his watch. The sun would pour light like golden maple syrup over the sleeping city of Bend in about six minutes.
A warm glow.
Just like Jessie.
He loved that dog the way that he loved people. In fact, to his way of thinking, she was a person.
A couple of tourists in navy-blue running gear came toward the dog walker and the dog, racing to the bottom of the butte. They wore earbuds and the look of self-satisfaction. Tony, a widower in his late sixties, gave them a quick wave. It seemed odd that they’d be coming down the butte before the light show, but tourists were a very weird breed.
The morning air carried a chill. Tony wore old Nikes, faded 501s, and a windbreaker that he would almost certainly peel off once he made it to the top and felt the heat of his own body rev up from the walk. He’d been coming there with Jessie since she was a puppy. The top of the butte had restrooms and a few benches for soaking in the view, twinkly lights eclipsed by the sunrise. Mount Bachelor, the Three Sisters, and Mount Hood cut through the high-desert floor. Before pulling out his water bottle and taking a seat, Tony tossed a stick out for Jessie and she did just as she always did: took a circuitous route to go after it, nose to the ground, before bringing it back.
Tony took out his phone and snapped a couple of pictures, drank some water, then began following the coiling track back down to the parking lot. By then they encountered at least twenty or more who had started up the 1.8-mile hike to the top.
As Tony and Jessie made their way to the car, he noticed a man and a little boy. The boy was crying and the man was telling him to shut up.
“You aren’t my dad,” the boy said.
He was blond, about four. Maybe a little younger. It had been a while since Tony had been around children, and ages were tough for him to determine. At any age, however, no kid should be treated like that little boy was being treated.
“Shut up,” the man said. Tony couldn’t make out his face, which was obscured by the bill of his Pabst Blue Ribbon baseball cap.
“Is everything okay here?” Tony said, leading Jessie over to the man and the little boy. Jessie, who loved kids, started to growl at the man. It was out of character for the dog.
“Get that beast away from me,” the man said. “There’s a leash law.”
“She’s on a leash,” Tony said, taking a step closer. “There’s also a law against child abuse.”
“Mind your own business,” the man said, tugging at the now-crying boy and shoving him into the backseat of the vehicle.
Tony hated confrontation, but the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. “The boy says you’re not his dad,” he said. His heart was pounding, and he knew it had nothing to do with the climb up and down the Pilot Butte.
The man turned away and went around the driver’s side of the car, opened the door, and got in, flicking away Tony’s concern as if it were nothing.
“Screw you,” he said through the open window. “Try doing your girlfriend a favor by taking her obnoxious little rug rat out for a little hike. I wouldn’t want to be his dad. My kids would never be so goddamn lazy. I guess this is what you get when you meet someone online.”
Tony glanced at the boy in the backseat. He was crying and pitching a fit. And while he thought the man with the abusive tongue had a complete lack of understanding of how to parent, he had to admit that the kid was pretty bratty.
“I want my mom! I want Daddy! I want to go home!”
It made Tony glad that he hadn’t tried to date after his wife died. Who needed the aggravation? Online dating, even at his age—maybe especially at his age—could only bring on the worst of all relationship possibilities. He didn’t want to be a grandpa to some lazy kid, either.
The next morning, he couldn’t put the little boy and the man out of his mind. Sure, the man was a complete ass, and it was more than likely that the little boy was a terror, but something nagged at Tony and he couldn’t quite place it. He ran the encounter through his mind as he brushed his teeth. Something had been off. More than just the hateful words that had been hurled at him.
There had been no car seat for the boy.
He was shoved into the backseat and left there unsecured, like a loose bowling ball, to flail around at any sudden stop. That in and of itself was against the law. It was more than that. Who takes their girlfriend’s kid out at that time of the morning? And who doesn’t have a car seat for a little one?
Once he made the connection to the missing boy on TV and what he’d seen at Pilot Butte, it only took a minute to let Jessie out in the backyard, check her water dish, and make the short drive to the Bend Police Department. Tony Lupita didn’t think there was any point in calling 911. He didn’t know much. It was more of a feeling of alarm that had lodged inside him. Yet, while he couldn’t be sure that he had seen anything that could help in the Charlie Franklin case, he knew wrong was wrong.
“Those poor parents,” he said, sitting across from Esther in her office. “They must be going out of their minds.”
“It is very, very hard,” she said.
“I can’t imagine.”
She listened as he related all that he’d seen the previous morning. Unfortunately, and despite his good intentions, Tony was short on the kind of details that would assist in the investigation.
“Average height,” he said, when trying to describe the man. “Around forty, maybe? Stocky build, I think. Not sure. He had on one of those down-filled puffy coats. Blue. Yes, blue. Or a bluish green.”
“Anything about his facial features?”
“His hat,” he said quickly. “He was wearing a beer baseball cap.”