The Last Thing She Ever Did(47)

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?”

“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.”