by Gregg Olsen
“What?”
“Got a hit off the sexual offender database. One of the names off the rental waivers. Brad Collins, forty, Dayton, Ohio.”
“Good work,” she said. “Where is Mr. Collins, do you know?”
Jake was excited, nearly out of breath. “Got that too,” he said. “Called his home number on the waiver and—get this—his mom answered. Nice lady. Said that her son is staying at the Pines. Drove out here with a buddy, a kid that she says lived out West and needed a ride home. Said he was even thinking of moving out here. Don’t think she knows a thing about her son’s past. Used to be a teacher. Said he’s always doing nice things for kids.”
“I’ll bet he does,” Esther said. “Good work, Jake.”
“I got more,” he went on. “I called the manager at the Pines. He’s in 22, the cabin on the end, farthest away from the manager’s office. He’s there now.”
Jake was nearly giddy, and Esther couldn’t help but smile.
“Meet me there,” she said. “Don’t drive into the lot. We don’t want to scare off Mr. Collins. He might have Charlie.”
“Right. Right. I’ll be there. Quiet, like.”
Brad Collins sat on his bed in his monthly rental cabin at the Pines. He hadn’t put up a fight or tried to escape out the back way when Esther and Jake showed up at his door. Indeed, from the moment he saw the Bend detectives, he exhibited nothing but weary resignation. He even invited them to look around the cabin before Esther could ask to do so.
“When things like this happen,” Brad said, “I know I’ll see people like you. I came here in part for a fresh start. Some fresh start.”
Esther and Jake studied the scene. Nothing remarkable. An Ohio State T-shirt hung on the back of a chair. Fast-food wrappers. Coffee in a small pot scented the air. No indication of Charlie Franklin. No sign of the friend he said he brought out to Oregon.
“Cam is nineteen and that’s all I need to say about him,” Brad said.
“Where is he?” Esther asked. “We might need to speak with him.”
“I dropped him off in Madras with his family.”
“Do you have an address?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll give that to you. Like I said, I’m used to this. Jesus, you people always come sniffing around whenever a kid’s involved.”
“You might be able to help us, Mr. Collins,” Esther said. “Can you come downtown?”
His face went red. “I’ve been through this before and I’ve played it both ways. I’ve gotten a lawyer and I’ve gone in to be interviewed without, as you say, ‘incident,’ and either way I end up with nothing but humiliation and, in the case of a lawyer, a big fat bill to pay.”
“You can take your own vehicle or ride with us,” Esther said.
The Ohio man picked up his keys from the nightstand. “I’ll drive,” he said.
Brad Collins was overweight, with a receding hairline and hooded eyes that darted around the space with more energy than his girth might have suggested. The Ohio State T-shirt was tugged over the roundness of his stomach, leaving a bare stretch of skin exposed. Esther had watched him pull it down several times on the closed-circuit TV that captured every move he made and everything he said.
Armed with a folder that contained the information posted on a sex offender website, Esther took a seat directly across from Brad. He was being interviewed first as a witness, not yet as a suspect or as that resident of law-enforcement purgatory, a person of interest.
“How did you know about the missing little boy?” she asked.
“I saw it on the news,” Brad said.
“Right,” she said. “The news. Was it on the TV or in the papers?”
“As far as I know it hasn’t been in the papers,” he said. “Pretty much everyone knows. Bend’s a lot smaller town than where I come from in Ohio. Missing kids are a big deal.”
“Yes, they are.” Esther kept her eyes riveted to his. Uncomfortably so. She was looking for a window into his soul, a way to measure whether he was being truthful or evasive. He stared right back. “You were on the river that morning, weren’t you?”
He folded his arms. “You know I was,” he said. “Let’s not play games, Detective. I’m here because of my past and the fact that I went tubing down the same stretch of river where the little boy went missing.”
“All right,” Esther said. “Yes, that’s why you are here. Your tone suggests a kind of hostility, and I don’t know where that’s coming from.”
“Really? No matter how clean I keep my nose, people like you are always harping on me. Beating on me for things I didn’t do.”
“I just want to know what you saw, Mr. Collins. That’s all. I’m not here to beat anyone up. I’m here because there’s a little boy out there somewhere. He’s scared. His parents are scared. That’s why we’re here. No other reason.”
“So you say,” he said, barely looking at the detective.
Esther opened the folder. “It’s the truth. And I can see that you have kept your nose clean. I do see that.”
He looked over at the unblinking red light of the camera mounted on the wall.
“I was a student teacher at the time. Twenty-two. The boy was seventeen. It was wrong, not just because he was underage but because I was in a position of authority. In other states it would have only been a lapse in judgment, though. Not a crime.” He looked again at the camera’s red light. “You have no idea what it feels like to be watched all the time, Detective.”
Esther set down the papers. “I guess I don’t. Let’s get through this so that you can go home, so that we can move this case forward.”
“Fine,” he said. “Yes, I was on the river. Yes, I guess I went past the house where the kid, Charlie Franklin, went missing.”
“Did you see him?”
He stayed quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I did. I saw him. He was playing by the shore. I floated by. That’s really the end of the story.”
“He was playing,” she said. “What was he doing? Was he close to the water’s edge?”
“He’s a kid,” he said. “I barely saw him. I don’t know what he was doing. I paid more attention to that big house than anything. I remember thinking that some millionaire had to be living there and that the kid was some rich person’s child. You know, how lucky that boy was. Where you start in life matters. Big-time.”
She knew what he was saying was true. Her own mother had said so many times.
“I need you to think, Mr. Collins. I need you to think very, very hard.”
“I have,” he said. “I don’t know anything. Really. And if you think for one second that I really had something to do with this, then you better check out the bartender at Anthony’s in the Old Mill District. I got out of the water at Mirror Pond, took the bus back to return my tube, and planted myself in front of the TV in the bar to watch the game. I bet my Visa card was swiped by eleven o’clock, if not a few minutes sooner.”
Esther’s eyes met his. “We’ll check into that. Now, I know you’ve been thinking long and hard about the day on the river. Did you see anything—really, anything at all—that was unusual?”
“I don’t live here,” he said, shifting in his seat. “I don’t know what unusual would be.”
“It was quiet that morning,” Esther said.
Brad looked away. “Yes. Very.”
“Did you hear anything?”
He glanced at her, then away once more. “Some kids were partying up the river, but it was quiet past the little bridge. I thought the kids were obnoxious.”
“Upriver?”
“Yeah. Just past those damn rapids.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. A guy with a dog. In a canoe. Some ducks.”
“Do you remember anything about the boy? Anything?”
“No. I don’t. I really don’t. I was minding my own business. I’m on a damn vacation. At least, I was.”
“How long are you going to stay in Bend?”
&nbs
p; “Up to now I was thinking of moving out here. Rented the cabin for a month’s stay. Now I’m not so sure. Came here to do a good deed and I get blamed for something I didn’t do.”
“No one’s blaming you,” Esther said.
“Maybe not for this, but you blame me. People like you always do. No matter what I do, I’ll always be the first person that gets the knock on the door. And for what? A mistake I made a long time ago.”
The detective handed the Ohio man her card.
“Let me know if you are going to leave,” she said. “I might have a few more questions.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MISSING: FIVE DAYS
Damon West poked his head into Owen’s office at Lumatyx. It was after ten in the morning—early for Damon, who favored a workday that lasted until after midnight. A row of red Japanese toy robots on a stainless steel credenza behind Owen bobbled as the air moved. The toys were an affirmation of the geekdom that surrounded Owen. He’d ordered the lot of them from eBay but pretended they’d been collected one at a time. In his heart, Owen Jarrett was not a techie. He could, however, play the part.
“You look like shit,” Damon said.
Owen knew that his business partner’s assessment was probably on the generous side. He’d had less than three hours of sleep. Before getting dressed, he stood in the shower for a full twenty minutes, letting the hot water cascade over him to peel away the sleep and the stream of consciousness that he had been unable to escape.
Liz. Charlie. Liz. Charlie. Murder. Liz.
“Thanks,” he said. “I feel like shit. Twenty-four-hour bug, I think.”
Damon took a seat in the Herman Miller Eames chair that was Owen’s first splurge in anticipation of the windfall he was about to collect on.
“You’ve been preoccupied,” Damon said, adjusting his new frames.
Owen blinked his bloodshot eyes. “Have I?”
“Everything all right? With you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Liz?” Damon asked.
Owen glanced down at the face of his phone. A stream of texts from his wife filled its cracked surface.
“You’ll find out soon enough. She didn’t finish her bar exam. Got sick.”
“Shit,” Damon said. “She’s been studying her ass off.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. She’s at home now trying to figure out her next move. We both are.”
“I’m really sorry that happened,” Damon said. “It’s just a stumble. We’ve had them, and now look at us.”
“Yeah, the money.”
“Rolling in, baby. We’re set for life.”
“Money’s good,” Owen said.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to buy?” Damon asked. “After the car, of course.”
“I think I’ve spent every penny in my head a thousand times over. No idea what I’ll really do. After the car, that is. You?”
“I’m going to buy my mom a condo in Sunriver,” Damon said with a wry smile. “Close to me, but not too close.”
Sweat dripped from Owen’s armpits and his head throbbed. Even so, he managed a grin. “I figured you’d do something like that, Damon. The only thing we have in common is code.”
Damon laughed as he got up to leave. “Yeah. We’re about to have big, fat bank accounts too.” He looked closer at his business partner and friend. “Drink some water, Owen. You’ll feel better.”
Owen doubted that.
“Right,” he said.
Owen returned his gaze to his phone and started to scroll through Liz’s messages.
She had sent the first one only minutes after he left home for the office.
Liz: What have I done?
The next text came through ten minutes later.
Liz: I don’t know how to face Carole. I don’t know what I’ll say. I’ll tell her. I think I’ll tell her. Owen, I need you. I need your help right now.
Five minutes passed, then another was dispatched.
Liz: We’ve made this worse. We’re really screwed up here. I’ve thought about it. I should tell someone. But I won’t. I promised you.
Owen pressed his hand against his clammy and pounding forehead. His wife was unraveling when she needed to find a way to deal with the situation. Texting unremittingly was not the answer. In fact, it could make things far worse.
Someone could read them.
Liz: I’m going to take a valium and go over there. I’m going to hold it together. I am. Please don’t worry.
Valium was a good idea, but worry was all Owen could do. He picked up the office landline and dialed Liz’s cell. She picked up on the first ring.
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice calm and controlled when inside he wanted to drive home and shake Liz hard and get her to snap out of what she was doing. “You need to get rid of your phone and go to the AT&T store and buy us each new phones. You need to do that before you do anything. Okay?”
Liz stayed quiet. “I don’t understand, Owen.”
Owen kept his cool. He had no choice. His irritation showed on his face but not in his voice. He didn’t need any pushback from Liz.
“Smash your phone with a hammer right after this call,” he told her. “Obliterate it. I’ll get rid of mine too. And, Liz, never text me anything about what happened. Do you understand? I said we couldn’t talk about it. That means texting. Especially texting.”
Silence filled the receiver.
“Did you hear me?” Owen asked.
Finally a response: “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that. I just needed to talk to you and I knew I couldn’t call you.”
“That’s okay,” he said, lying to her. None of what they’d done was okay. “After this call, we can’t talk about anything like this on a phone again. That means texting too.”
“I’m going crazy,” she said.
“No,” he said. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. Really, I am.”
He ignored her. “I told Damon I had a twenty-four-hour bug. I told him that you got sick at the bar exam. Okay? No more stories. Nothing elaborate. Nothing convoluted. Keep things simple. People who’ve done this kind of thing are always tripped up by what they say after they’ve done it.”
“This kind of thing” was murder, he knew. He wouldn’t dwell on that.
He heard Liz swallow. “What about Carole and David?” she asked.
Owen turned his body toward the window. The sidewalks were full of people shopping and finding their way to one of the city’s farm-to-table places that had been featured in the Oregonian. The car show and the Charlie Franklin story had provided a one-two punch to one of the last summer weekends.
“Be yourself,” he said.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“You’re Liz Jarrett. You love Carole. Go help her get through this.”
It was not a suggestion but an order.
Liz was a woman who knew how to stand her ground, but she knew that under her feet the ground was shifting and at any moment she was going to fall. It would be a hard fall, one from which she would never recover. She couldn’t push back at an order. She no longer knew who she was.
“But—” she started to say, before letting her words drop.
There was no arguing with something as horrific as what she’d already done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MISSING: FIVE DAYS
Owen caught a glimpse of himself in his office window. Damon was right. He did look terrible. His eyes were accentuated by dark crescents. Stress mottled a smooth complexion that was usually marked only with three-day stubble. Owen needed to pull himself together. He needed to help Liz get herself together. They needed to take a deep breath. Both of them. They needed a moment to stem the grief and shock that had enveloped them. If they didn’t, they’d surely get caught. Owen put his iPhone in a Starbucks cup that he’d retrieved from the trash. It was good that he’d bought a twenty-four-ounce drink the other morning. His usual twelve-ounce “tall�
�� would never be big enough to contain the phone. He put the paper cup back in the trash and covered it with a bunch of other papers. That night the janitor would take the trash to the dumpster. He’d tell everyone that he’d lost his phone as he went about the business of reassembling contact names and numbers into a new device.
It was smart not to make any adjustments to his routine.
As he sat there facing the empty Eames chair, his necessary betrayal played over in his mind. He’d let Liz believe that Charlie was dead when he went into the garage. He’d let her carry the burden of what she thought she’d done. He rationalized his actions as the only way to save their marriage, their very lives. He’d killed the neighbor kid because he knew that he’d lose everything if his wife were arrested for murder.
He’d worked too hard for the Lumatyx deal and the cash that was going to pour over him like the sweetest nectar known to man.
Charlie would have told on them.
They’d never get that big house on the river.
He told himself, What’s done is done.
Esther felt her phone vibrate as she sifted through reports. She glanced at the image of her mother that appeared on the screen. Lee Nguyen had been calling for days. At all hours. Esther had grown tired of her mother’s need to say she was sorry when she really wasn’t. After her father died, Esther’s mom had sought to strengthen their bond, but each time she’d found a way to remind her of some disappointment—her failed marriage, her dubious career, her casual sense of style.
All of those things seemed so petty, so insignificant. Charlie Franklin was missing. This was no time for her mother to interject herself into her daughter’s life. Not when another mother was desperate to find her own child.
Esther felt the gold sea star pendant around her neck and rejected the call.
The swipe of Brad Collins’s Visa card and a quick telephone conversation with the bartender at Anthony’s confirmed the Ohio man’s story.
“He’s not our guy,” Esther said.
Jake shrugged. “Still a perv, though.”
“I don’t know, Jake,” Esther said.
Jake thought he saw a little sympathy in her eyes. It puzzled him. “You don’t feel sorry for him, do you?”