The Last Time She Saw Him Read Online Free Page B

for. I need to make my annual call before I wake them up.
    Like some sort of dark holiday tradition, I’ve called Detective Michael Leidy every Labor Day for the past thirty years. Leidy was just a few years out of the police academy when he took Ben’s missing persons case, and Leidy has since risen to the ranks of director of the unit’s cold case division.
    I slip into the office, pull down the worn, red album from the bookshelf, and begin to pore through its entirety: a dozen or so yellowed newspaper clippings about Ben’s abduction and my scribbled theories on possible motives and suspects. On the album’s last page is a story I saved from the Detroit Free Press from ten years earlier. It featured the state’s then major unsolved crimes. The lead art is Ben’s third-grade class picture. In the photo, Ben is wearing his favorite red shirt, which offsets his jet-black hair and olive skin, bronzed and lightly freckled from what we thought would be endless childhood summers at the shore. Ben looks especially proud in the picture, despite the fact that we were dirt-poor back then. He is forever captured looking back at the camera with an air of confidence, like a little boy who knew he was going to be something special one day.
    I trace my finger along Ben’s strong jawline in the photo and remember our final day together at Funland. After the carousel ride, Mark Brewster cornered us. He was the middle-school bully who could smell the blood of two vulnerable kids from a mile away.
     
    “Hey, Ben, I thought you were too poor to come here,” Mark said, sauntering over. “Why don’t you leave so your little sister can go and beg all the neighborhood kids for money so your daddy can buy gas for that beat-up car of his?”
    “Leave Julia alone. She didn’t do anything to you.”
    “What did you say to me? I’m going to kill you, you little bastard,” Mark said, puffing out his lardy stomach. “Hey, loser boy, how’s your stringy-haired, alcoholic mother?”
    “Stand back, Julia,” Ben warned and shoved me away from the danger of the pending fight and into the crowd that had gathered in hopes of seeing two kids beat the crap out of each other.
    Right before Mark could throw his first punch, a lanky security guard in a blue polyester uniform made his way toward Ben and Mark. “ What are you kids doing? Break it up, you two!” he yelled.
    Ben grabbed my hand, and we raced down Michigan Avenue as fast as we could, away from Mark Brewster and Funland. When we reached the library, breathless and feeling like we were going to die, we turned around to face our tormentor. But we had left the overgrown, tubby bully in the dust.
    “He’s going to be after us forever now!” I cried. “Mark Brewster’s dad is the most powerful man in town, and he’s going to sue us.”
    “He’s not going to sue us,” Ben answered. “And if he did, what’s he going to take? We don’t have anything. Do me a favor. Don’t ever back down from bullies like Mark Brewster. You’ve got to stand up to them. It doesn’t matter if you’re poor. You have nothing to feel bad about.”
    “I can’t fight someone like Mark Brewster.”
    “Sure you can. Don’t give in to the bad guys. Okay? You’ve got to fight them with all you’ve got.”
     
    I file the red album back on the bookshelf and speed dial the number for the St. Clair Sheriff’s Department. Even though it’s early and a holiday, I know Leidy will answer. But after the fourth ring, I am about to admit I am wrong when Leidy picks up.
    “Detective Leidy here,” he answers in his flat Michigan accent.
    “Detective, it’s Julia Gooden.”
    “I’ve been expecting your call,” Leidy answers without missing a beat.
    I look down at my usual script of questions for our annual go-round.
    “Anything new on Ben’s case?”
    The sound of papers shuffles in the background until Leidy finally resurfaces.
    “Nothing new. We had a little girl go missing this summer down in