And Liam was fantastic at playing the part. When people would ask him how old he was, he would hold up one finger and cry, “One!” He loved to perform. Sometimes I would look down in his crib at night at his sleeping face and wonder how I got so lucky.
It was when he was barely four years old that I first noticed something different about him.
We were at the park. I had Hannah in her carriage and she was sobbing as usual. I was lucky that Liam could be trusted to play independently, because Hannah required all my attention. So I didn’t notice what he was doing until I found him crouched in the corner of the park. I pushed Hannah’s carriage over to see what was going on.
Liam was playing with a large carpenter ant. He had built some sort of enclosure, and he would allow the ant to leave, then trap it again. I watched him do this for aminute, trying to figure out the rules of his game. Finally, I said, “What are you doing, Liam?”
He lifted his big brown eyes and smiled at me—that smile that made all the women fall in love with him. “The ants thinks he’s gonna get away, but he can’t! He doesn’t know I’m gonna smoosh him.”
Those words said in Liam’s four-year-old baby voice made me feel really uneasy. “Liam,” I said in a choked voice. “You’re being mean to the ant.”
He scrunched up his little face. “But it’s just an ant, Mommy. Who cares?”
“It’s a living creature, Liam.”
But he just looked at me blankly until I told him to go play at the monkey bars again. He obligingly went back to the jungle gym, but I couldn’t get the incident out of my head. That night, I told Jason about what he said, but Jason wasn’t at all concerned. “Boys like to play with bugs,” he said.
But he wasn’t playing with the bug. He wastorturingit.
It only got worse after that. More disturbing statements that got harder and harder to shrug off. And then that girl found duct-taped in the closet when he was in kindergarten. He got kicked out of school for that one. I told him he could never do anything like that ever again, and technically, he didn’t. I finally took him to that childpsychologist, Dr. Hebert, but I don’t believe she did anything to help him. He just got smarter about keeping his mouth shut.
And not knowing what he was thinking was the hardest part of all.
After the police take Liam away, Jason immediately calls John Landon. We sit on the sofa and he puts our lawyer on speakerphone, so we can both listen in. We have to order Hannah to go upstairs, because she shouldn’t be listening to this, and also, she’s almost hysterical.
“John,” Jason said. “They just took him. The police. They cuffed him and put him in the car. They’re taking him to jail.”
“Yes.” Landon’s voice jumps out of Jason’s phone. “I had a feeling that was going to happen today.”
“What are they going to do now?” I ask.
“They’re going to bring him to the police station and book him,” Landon says. “They’ll photograph him and fingerprint him, and then put him in one of their holding cells.”
My son behind bars. Tears spring to my eyes. I can’t bear it.
“We’ll get him a bail hearing tomorrow morning,” Landon says. “Hopefully they’ll set bail and he can go home until the arraignment.”
Jasonsucks in a breath. “You think they won’t set bail?”
“It’s possible. They’re charging him with murder.”
“But they don’t even know if Olivia Mercer is dead!” Jason says.
“Right. They have to prove that a crime was even committed, so that’s in his favor.” Landon pauses. “Also, he’s only sixteen. I’ll argue all that at the bail hearing.”
“So there’s a chance they might not even be able to charge him?” I ask hopefully.
Landon is silent for several seconds. “I’m not going to lie to you, Erika. They may not have a body, but they’ve got a strong case against him.”
My stomach drops. “What have they got?”
“Well, for starters, it was known that they were at least dating, if not boyfriend and girlfriend. We have the neighbor who is testifying not only that Olivia and Liam were together that night, but that she got into his car.” He clears his throat. “But it was what they found in your car that was the nail in the coffin. They found traces of blood that matched Olivia’s blood type and three of her hairs. In yourtrunk.”
“In my trunk?” I say numbly.
“Yes,” Landon says. “If they were just in the seat, we could argue she was in the car, but the trunk is a bit more damning.”
“But it’s a hatchback,” Jason points out. “If she was in the backseat, her hair could’ve gotten into the trunk. It’s not like the trunk is an enclosed space.”
