He had told her not to say too much, just convey the obvious emotional responses: shock at the discovery, grief on learning that the boy was dead.
“Be yourself, Liz,” he told her. “That’s all you have to do. Don’t add to the drama by saying any more than how devastating all of this is. That’s it. Nothing more.”
Her hands trembled as she faced the mirror. She was devastated. She’d been grieving over what had happened since the second she realized what she’d done. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. When Owen told her to be herself, she didn’t know who that was. Not anymore.
She tried again.
“Carole, David, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
That felt right. She was sorry. She was sorry she had killed Charlie. She didn’t have to say that last part. She could think it.
Yes, that would work.
She could tell them how sorry she was.
Liz found herself increasingly unnerved that Charlie’s body hadn’t been found. He’d been out there in the elements for two weeks. Owen had insisted the night they had left him there that the rancher would find him right away. The next day, even. But he hadn’t. No one had. Surely animals had found the body. Carole and David were never going to get the opportunity for closure that the boy’s burial might bring. The brutal waiting game going on next door had to stop. Carole was convinced that Charlie had been abducted by some child molester or was being held captive by some fiend who was going to trade the boy’s life for money. She clung to that with everything she had. Bend detective Esther Nguyen emphasized several times that abductions like that were exceedingly rare, and in any event, no ransom demand had been received.
“Not yet,” Liz heard Carole tell her. “But it could come.”
“In most cases, ransom demands are made within twelve hours after the abductee was last seen.”
“Then you think he’s dead,” Carole said.
“I’m not saying that,” Esther countered. “I’m saying that you and Mr. Franklin need to be prepared for any possible outcome.”
“What about Jaycee Dugard?” Carole asked. “She was found.”
Jaycee. Elizabeth Smart. The women in Cleveland.
All were mentioned by devastated parents as proof of a miracle.
“Yes, she was. Like I said, the vast majority of cases don’t end that way. We have hope that we’ll find him and that we’ll find him alive. I need you to prepare.”
All of it had to end.
Liz dressed in jeans that were suddenly loose and put on a tank top. Although she hated the drive toward Diamond Lake more than just about anything in the world, she got into the RAV4 for the trip. She was grateful that Carole wasn’t outside when she backed out of the driveway to the street. It seemed every time she saw her closest friend, a lie came out of her mouth. Lies when they weren’t even necessary. It was as if even the simplest, most innocuous truth had to be covered in gratuitous subterfuge.
She scanned the highway shoulder for the cutoff they’d taken the night she and Owen hid Charlie’s body. She remembered the slight rise in the road before a curve. But it was daylight now. The world was a completely different place at night. Then she remembered the most distinguishing elements of the site. The rancher’s fence line had been pristine. Its wires were guitar-string taut. The posts were clean and well maintained, unencumbered by a fringe of native bunchgrass. And the junipers. The evergreen spires lined a section of the field where the cattle gathered for refuge during a storm.
Liz was in a storm of her own making, and she knew it.
And there was the road. She pulled off the highway and followed the paved portion to the section of gravel, slowing down near the stand of junipers. Even though the sun beat down and covered the field with flat, even light, she was absolutely sure that she was in the right place. She parked.
Charlie’s body was a magnet. It was drawing her close. She could almost imagine that he was calling out to her, not in anger, but in the hope that she’d come to him.
That she’d bring him home.
Liz turned off the ignition, swung the car door open, and breathed in the air. It was rugged and scenic, and as far as a final resting place could be imagined, it was beautiful. She looked up and down the road. She was alone. She supported herself on the RAV4’s hood. Owen would kill her if he knew she was there. She started this. She’d set it all in motion. She had to know why the boy’s body had not been found. She couldn’t wait for things to just happen. She couldn’t stand another second of looking into Carole’s hopeful eyes when she knew that Charlie was dead. There was wrong and there was immoral. And beyond that? That’s where Liz had wandered. The path she was on was so dark and twisted she’d never be able to find her way out. A million lies could never cover the blackness of her heart.
She started down the incline toward the junipers.
“Hey, you!” a man’s voice called out.
Liz spun around, the air leaving her lungs in a gasp.
A man on horseback was approaching her. He had bright blue eyes, white hair, and a mustache. If he were heavier and had a beard, he’d be a department store Santa. If he were younger, a tobacco-company cowboy.
“What are you doing on my land, lady?” he said.
“Arrowheads, sir.” Her grandfather had taken her and Jimmy out to hunt arrowheads in the high desert one time, and the memory had snapped to the front of her mind. “I thought I’d look around.”
The rancher got off his horse. “Thought you were one of those damn geocachers. They come out here like they own the place. Which they don’t. I do. Land’s been picked over for arrowheads. Doubt you’d find any even if I gave you permission to hunt here. Which I’m not. Seeing how you didn’t ask me anyway.”
If Liz had had an arrowhead, she would have stabbed herself in the heart with it.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was just driving home and, I don’t know, I just thought about it. Something my family did years ago.”
He nodded slightly at that, looked around them, and showed the first hint of a smile. “Mine too.”
Then he drew up and scowled. “Shit,” he said. He was looking over at the grove of junipers. “Looks like someone’s been camping here.”
Liz’s heart hit the parched ground. She’d only wanted to know if animals had scattered Charlie’s remains. Now she was there with a man on a horse, and his curiosity was drawing him to a place he might not have visited for a very long time. Now she was going to have to react. She would need to explain why she was there in the first place. Hunting arrowheads would never work. She knew the victim. He had lived next door. It would take the world’s worst detective about ten seconds to turn a purported coincidence into an accusation.
She stood immobile as the rancher went to where Owen had placed Charlie.
“Damn those kids,” the man said. “Come out here to drink and think nothing of leaving a big mess. Out here because there’s no house for miles and they think no one gives a crap. But I tell you, we folks out here do.”
He bent down and tugged at something.