PART 3: The Phone In The Pocket
“Clothes,” Detective Soto said. “Mostly clothes, and some documents.”
I stared at her. “Clothes?”
“Women’s clothing, Owen’s school things, a laptop, and a stack of file boxes. Nothing that was ever alive.” She let that settle before continuing. “I’m sorry. I know what you were bracing for.”
My knees went weak, and I had to lower myself onto the edge of the hospital chair. For three hours I had been carrying a fear I couldn’t even name, and it drained out of me so quickly that the room tilted.
“Then why would he throw them in the pool?”
“That’s what we’re trying to understand. The laptop and papers are waterlogged, but our forensic team thinks some of it can be recovered. Mr. Dawson, has your son ever mentioned Curtis’s work?”
“Only that he travels a lot. Dana said he handled accounts for a construction company.”
Soto nodded slowly, as if that confirmed something she had already suspected. “We’re still looking for both Dana and Curtis. Her car is gone from the driveway, and his SUV was found two blocks away with the engine still warm. Someone slammed that car door, and then he vanished on foot.”
“He saw the police coming.”
“Possibly. Or he saw you.”
I looked over at Owen, finally asleep in the hospital bed, one hand still wrapped around the edge of my sleeve. Whatever had happened in that house, my son had paid for it, and I wasn’t sure he had finished paying.
The child interviewer was a gentle woman named Ms. Okafor, who spoke to Owen in a small room with soft chairs and a box of crayons on the table. I watched through a window with Soto, and I had to step out into the hallway twice just to breathe.
What Owen told them came out in pieces, the way children tell hard things.
Three weeks earlier, he was supposed to have been asleep. He had crept downstairs for a glass of water and seen Curtis in the study, the door standing open, papers spread across the desk and a duffel bag full of cash beside his foot. Owen had asked what it was, and Curtis had smiled and said it was a surprise for the family.
But Owen had heard the arguments afterward. His mother had started asking questions, quietly at first. Where did the money come from? Why did a company call at night? Why were there accounts in her name that she had never opened?
“Mom found the papers,” Owen told Ms. Okafor. “She said she was going to call someone. Curtis said she was being dramatic.”
On Wednesday night, the arguing turned physical. Owen heard something crash in the kitchen. His mother ran upstairs, pulled him out of bed, and pushed her old phone into his pajama pocket.
“She said, ‘Run to Mrs. Doyle’s. Don’t stop,’” Owen said. “But Curtis caught me at the back door.”
Dana had thrown herself between them. That was the part Owen kept coming back to, his voice wobbling every time. His mother had grabbed Curtis’s arm and screamed at him to let go, and in the struggle Owen had been shoved through the doorway and onto the patio. Curtis had lifted him by the shoulder and carried him to the dog kennel, a heavy metal thing he had bought months earlier and never explained.
“He said it was just for a little while,” Owen whispered. “He said I talked too much and needed to learn to be quiet.”
“And your mom?” Ms. Okafor asked gently.
“I don’t know. I heard the car leave. I think he took her.”
Through the glass, Soto’s jaw tightened.
“Did you see the phone, Owen? The one your mother gave you?”
Owen reached into the pocket of his hospital gown, where a nurse had tucked away his few belongings, and pulled out something small and scuffed. It was a cheap prepaid flip phone with a cracked screen.
“She said if I ever needed help, I should call the number saved first.”
