The Last Thing She Ever Did(80)

Jake took it all in. “All right,” he said. “I’ll call her.”

“Thanks. Be sure to get the hospital’s main number and give her Dr. Della Cortez’s name.”

“Esther?” he asked before hanging up. “What if this is related to what happened to Charlie Franklin?”

“I’m not following.”

“Like maybe he got caught messing with some other kid. What if someone saw him do something really, really bad and just worked him over in some kind of vigilante move?”

“Anything’s possible, I guess, though again, his record doesn’t suggest he’d do anything of the kind. Even if it did play out like your scenario, would that justify this beating? We still need to work this assault just as hard as any other case, Jake. Even the bottom of the barrel deserves that. Our job, thank God, isn’t to judge. That’s for the courts. We’re in this to round up the people who have no regard for the law, no matter how distasteful we may find their victims.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I knew that. Sorry.”

Esther started to drive toward the Pines.

“Call his mom,” she said. “Meet me at the office later.” She hung up.



Jake looked up the hospital’s phone number so he’d have it ready as Esther had instructed. Then he started to dial. The phone rang about ten times before Mrs. Collins picked up. He’d hardly gotten a word out beyond the fact that Brad was in the hospital when Mrs. Collins let out a wail that he was certain could be heard from Ohio to Oregon. It was so loud that he pulled the phone from his ear until she stopped.

“I’m really sorry to bring you this news,” he said.

She cried a little more.

“Really, I am,” he said. “I have the hospital’s number right here. Let me give it to you so you can call. Okay?”

“Thank you,” the woman said. “I appreciate it. What happened to him? Was he in a car accident? He’s not a very good driver.”

“No, as far as we can tell he was assaulted. We don’t know what happened but we’re going to do our best to find out.”

“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” she asked, spitting out the words one at a time as she caught her breath between her sobs.

“All I know is that it’s very serious, Mrs. Collins,” Jake said, trying to wind down the call. “You’ll need to talk to the doctors at the hospital.”

There was a slight pause on the line, long enough for Jake to wonder if the victim’s mother had dropped the phone.

“Mrs. Collins?” he asked.

When she finally spoke, her words were choked with tears. “Did someone hurt him because of the way he is?” she asked, calming herself with a deep breath. “Is that what happened?”

“We don’t know,” Jake said, wondering if she meant because of her son being gay, or a pedophile. He couldn’t see anything to be gained from asking for clarification.

Another longer pause. Mrs. Collins stopped crying. She said she was a caregiver for an elderly sister with cancer and it would take her a couple of days to arrange things to come to Oregon.

“It’s pretty serious, ma’am,” Jake said. “Doctor says to hurry.”

She reiterated her responsibilities with her sister and said she’d get there as quickly as she could.

“He’s a good boy,” she finally said. “He really is. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business who my son runs around with.”



Liz saw Charlie’s face everywhere. In the swirl of foam in her coffee. In the line of kids waiting for a turn to skateboard at the park. On TV. In Carole’s eyes.

Especially in Carole’s eyes.

Liz went for a run to try to bolster her weakened self back into someone who could—and would—do the right thing. As she ran, she kept coming back to how betraying Owen and her promise to him would only serve to visit more misery on an innocent party. He didn’t deserve to have his world collapse because of what she did.





CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

MISSING: NINETEEN DAYS

Esther didn’t need the help of the Pines office manager to let her inside the cabin where Brad Collins had been staying. The door was ajar, and she eased it gently open, looking around the small space—at the bed, the chair, the nightstand, the tiny kitchenette—to be sure that Brad Collins’s attacker was gone. What she saw momentarily took her breath away. It was as if a bloody cyclone had rearranged the furniture and splattered red on the sheets. There could be no doubt that the man fighting for his life had endured his beating there.

She dialed Jake.

“We’ll need some techs at the Pines to process the scene,” she said. “Big mess here, that’s for sure.”

“Rage beating,” Jake said. “That’s pretty messed up.”

Esther exhaled. Her blood pressure was up. “That idiot Massey should never have told the paper Collins’s name,” she said. “I told him how messed up that was. Might have made Collins a target of some vigilante. Wouldn’t be hard to find him, drive around any motel and look for Ohio plates.”

Her eyes landed on the phone jack that had been pulled out of the wall.

“Check with dispatch to see if any 911 calls were made from here,” Esther said.