Terry lived in Applewood, a neighborhood adjacent to Elliston Park. Nice and handy if he ever wanted to pop over there and play with his boats for a while. Margie and Siever were greeted at the door by Mrs. Hall, a short Filipino woman who smiled and nodded a lot and probably missed half of what they were saying. Margie was sorry they hadn’t known ahead of time that she was Filipino. They could have brought Cruz with them. Or Cruz could have gone in Margie’s place, as the three of them ganging up on the family would probably be too much.

  Instead, they smiled and nodded and tried to speak slowly so that she would be able to understand them.

  Margie wondered how she liked her husband’s boat hobby. Did she think it was silly? A good thing to relax and de-stress? Something that took too much of his time and attention? Margie saw a couple of giggling children run across a hallway behind her. They were perhaps four or five and cute as buttons. A boy and a girl.

  Mrs. Hall had them sit down and bustled into the kitchen to fix a beverage or snack; Margie wasn’t sure which. In a few minutes, Terry Hall joined them in the living room.

  “I hope this doesn’t take too long,” he said. “It’s my daughter’s birthday today, we have a special evening planned.”

  “Oh, is it? Well, happy birthday to her. How old is she?”

  “Four. We’re going to go out for supper, and then go to the park for a while, let them burn off some steam. Have some cake. A few of our friends are going to join us there.”

  Margie had a feeling that “a few of” their friends probably had the same meaning in the Filipino community as it did in Margie’s family. Somewhere under three hundred people. She smiled.

  “How nice. I’m sure she’ll love that. We’ll try to wrap things up here pretty quickly.”

  “I don’t know what happened to Simon. I thought I made that clear. I don’t know anything that happened and I can’t think that anything I could tell you would be helpful.” He shrugged. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “If we could just go over things again. Sometimes being in a quiet setting, where you are not distracted by the boats and everything else that’s going on, makes a difference. I’m sure it won’t take long.”

  Terry shrugged and folded his arms, a closed-off gesture that told her he wasn’t going to be trying too hard to help her out.

  Mrs. Hall returned carrying a tea tray. She said something aside to her husband, then encouraged everyone to take some tea and the other treats that she had prepared for them. Or had pulled out of the freezer so that it would look like she was prepared for company when she was not. She spoke to them mostly in Filipino, pointing to the tea and cookies and asking her husband in English if there was anything else that he wanted her to do.

  “It’s fine, honey,” Terry assured her. “They’re just here to talk to me. Not to have dinner.”

  She nodded a few times and eventually retreated, leaving them alone to discuss the case once more.

  “When was the last time that you saw Simon?” Siever asked.

  “Tuesday before last. I think. The days run together sometimes. It’s hard to remember what happened at one meeting and what happened at another.”

  “No problem.” Margie smiled. “Just do your best to answer the questions, and we’ll try not to take up any more of your time.”

  He nodded.

  “Had you ever gone to the park with Simon? Just with the two of you, I mean?”

  “No. Why would I? The guy bothered me when we were together with a group. I wouldn’t want to spend extra time with him.”

  “What was it that bothered you about him?”

  “Just a personality conflict. He rubbed me the wrong way.” Terry’s face was a mask; expressionless. “That kind of thing happens. Just because we were both interested in RC boats… that doesn’t mean we were best buds.”

  “I heard that there was some kind of problem with the boats. You hit Simon’s boat with yours?”

  “I think they just got too close together and he panicked. I don’t think that they actually collided.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “He didn’t stay to his side of the course. If he had, I wouldn’t have spooked him.”

  “So it was his own fault. And his boat was damaged?”

  “The boats are made of lightweight materials. They don’t fare well when they collide with rocks.”

  “I don’t imagine so,” Siever agreed dryly.

  Terry smiled at the irony in his voice. He appreciated having someone there to share his wry sense of humor.

  “But Simon blamed you for the damage done to his boat?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  “Did you apologize? Agree to help him out with the cost?”

  “No. Like I say, it was his own fault.”

  The two children came thundering down the stairs, then stopped where they were and hid behind the banister post, peering around at the two police detectives.

  “They can still see you over there,” Terry told the children. “You guys need to leave me alone for a few minutes, and then I’ll get ready to go.”

  “Cute kids,” Margie said, smiling at the children. This made them giggle and duck down to hide again.

  Terry gave her a wary look. “Thank you.”

  “Do they like racing boats?”

  “Yeah, what kid wouldn’t? They don’t usually come with me, but sometimes as a treat or to give my wife a break, I bring them along.”

  Margie smiled at the children again. But Terry didn’t invite them to come closer and she didn’t want to disrupt the interview or irritate him, so she turned her attention back to him, resolved to ignore the children’s giggles. They would get bored and go play until Terry was finished and ready to take them out to eat.

  As she turned back to Terry, she noticed his eyes on Siever, watching him with a frown. Siever had been looking at the children but, like Margie, apparently decided that the best course of action was not to engage with them, and his attention turned back to Terry.

  Sometimes it was helpful to admire or talk to the interviewee’s children. With mothers especially. They became more engaged and liked to show off their offspring. But Terry was clearly not one of those people. He had already told the children to go and did not talk to Margie and Siever about them without encouragement. When Siever turned his attention away from the children and back to Terry, Terry’s shoulders dipped down and the tightness in his face softened.

  “How long ago was this accident with Simon’s boat?” Siever asked. “It sounds like it was recent, but I might be making a wrong assumption.”

  “It was a few weeks ago. Not long.”

  “And was Simon still upset about it?”

  “We weren’t speaking to each other. Which was fine with me. I assume that means that he was still upset about it.”

  “How did Simon feel about the children?” Margie asked. “Did he enjoy having them around? Was he irritated or distracted by having them around when they came?”

  Terry’s face immediately contorted into a scowl. It was something that he felt so strongly about that he was not able to control his expression for a second or two. The change in expression was not subtle. Terry ground his teeth and didn’t answer at first.

  “Simon seemed quite comfortable around children,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Margie tried to reconcile the words to Terry’s reaction. Most people would be happy that other people didn’t mind kids around. It would be a problem if the opposite were true and Simon Hustler hadn’t liked having kids there when they were playing with the boats. Margie could understand a bachelor being irritated by kids getting underfoot, asking a lot of questions, and squealing at the boats racing around the lake.

  “Why does that upset you?” she asked finally, unable to find a more tactful way to approach it.

  “I didn’t like him around my kids.”

  “Oh. Why is that? Was he mean toward them? Too loud?”

  Terry shook his head. “No. He was… too close to them.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Margie studied Terry’s expression and then looked at Siever. Too close.

  “Did he behave inappropriately toward them?”

  “Depends what you call inappropriate, I guess. I kept a close eye on him, made sure he couldn’t do something behind my back. But he… he’d get down on their level, close to them, hug them close to show them something. Patting their heads or shoulders. Sometimes he would bring them treats or toys. Something from the hobby craft store.”

  That all sounded pretty innocent to Margie. Things that anyone engaging with a child might do. But what sounded innocent and what looked innocent to Terry could be two totally different things.

  “And that made you uncomfortable.”

  “You know what they say about grooming children. About the molester making friends with the parents and the kids, giving the kids presents, building a special relationship with them. Seeing how close they can get to desensitize the parents.”

  Margie nodded slowly. “Yes… you’re right about that.”

  “That’s what he was like. Showing them more attention than anyone else. Doing things to get them to like him. Touching them too much. Buying them things. I didn’t like it, and I told him to stay away from them.”

  Margie met Siever’s eyes. This was a new direction. One that they hadn’t foreseen.

  “You need to go with your gut,” she acknowledged. “A parent can’t afford to take chances.”

  “Did he listen to you when you warned him off?” Siever asked.

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “The man with the boats?” the little boy piped up, still watching them from behind the banister. “We like the man with the boats like Daddy’s.”

  However much Margie wanted to start asking the boy questions directly, she had to school herself not to. Terry had already demonstrated that he was protective of them and, if she showed them what he thought was too much attention or he thought that she was scaring them or putting words into their mouths, he would not like it. Their interview with him would be over.

  She could already see him shutting down at the little boy’s words. Closing everything off.

  Siever followed Margie’s lead and did not ask the boy anything directly.

  “How did that make you feel?” Margie asked. At Terry’s look, she clarified. “When you told him to stay away from your kids and he didn’t?”

  “How do you think it made me feel? The guy should know better than to mess with someone else’s kids. If I tell someone to stay away from them, I expect them to do it. I could call the police, tell them that he was causing trouble. I could get a restraining order.”

  Margie wasn’t so sure that he could get anything on the basis of not feeling comfortable with Simon being friendly with his kids. There wasn’t much the police would be able to do other than to advise Simon that he needed to listen to the children’s parent and stay away from the kids. And to advise Terry to stop bringing the kids to the park for the meetups.

  Take the kids to the lake on days when the rest of the group wasn’t there.

  Margie made a few notes in her notebook, more to avoid looking at Siever or Terry than because she was afraid she might forget anything. She documented the meeting with Terry and wrote down her thoughts about Simon and the children.

  “Was there anything else?” Margie asked eventually. “Any other disagreements with Simon? Problems with his behavior?”

  Terry shook his head, his mouth an angry straight line.

  “How about the others? Are you aware of any disagreements between any of the others in the group and Simon?”

  “You would have to ask them. I don’t know anything about any of them.”

  “You don’t think that anyone had a grudge against him?”

  It gave Terry the opportunity to point the finger away from himself and focus the police department’s attention on someone other than him. But he didn’t take her up on the opportunity. He just shook his head.

  “Nothing I know about. You would have to ask them.”

  Margie was sure when they got back to the car that she and Siever were both thinking the same thing. She pulled her seatbelt across her body to buckle herself in and looked at him.

  “He thought Hustler was a pedophile,” Siever said.

  “Yeah. That certainly puts Terry at the top of my suspect list. If I thought that a predator was hanging around my daughter…” Margie’s heart started to race and she felt a warm flush over her skin just at the thought of it. “I wouldn’t wait until he hurt her.”

  “He told Hustler to stay away from his kids, and he didn’t. He kept behaving inappropriately…” Siever hesitated. “If what Hustler did was inappropriate…?”

  “Even if he didn’t mean any harm, he should have backed way off when Terry told him that there was a problem.”

  “Yes,” Siever agreed. “Once he knew there was a problem, he should have backed off. Stopped talking with the kids or bringing them presents. Just ignored them when they were at one of the meetups.”

  Margie flipped through her notepad, thinking. “His mother told us about him trying to become a mentor. An uncle or big brother through one of those programs.”

  Siever nodded, remembering. “But they kept switching kids on him. And then they ghosted him.”

  “I think we should find out what they knew.”

  In order to join the mentorship program, Hustler had been required to go through a police check. That police check was clean; he didn’t have any accusations or charges against him. The results had been sent directly to the organization, so they knew which one Hustler had applied to.

  Siever managed to get an appointment with Amanda Sorken, the director of the program, within a few hours.

  Sorken was a tall, dark-haired woman. She offered to shake hands with each of them, and Siever and Margie both shook, though they preferred not to have physical contact with more people than they had to. They were all seated in Sorken’s small office. There were stacks of paper everywhere, on the desk, the shelves, and even a few piles on the floor.

  “We are required to keep things confidential,” Sorken started delicately. “For the sakes of both our children and our mentors. We need to be very careful of anything we say.”

  “Simon Hustler, the man that we are inquiring about, is dead. So you don’t have any requirement to keep anything regarding him confidential. You can keep the names of the children involved confidential for now. I can’t promise that records won’t be subpoenaed later but, for now, we don’t need any names.”

  She didn’t look quite comfortable with this declaration. She sat stiffly, waiting for their questions.

  “From what we understand,” Siever said, “Hustler was assigned several different children to mentor, but each one lasted only a few meetings. They would meet together once or twice, and then he would get changed to another child.”

  Sorken nodded. “Yes, that’s a fair summary.”

  “Were there accusations against him of inappropriate behavior?”

  She shook her head. “There were not.”

  Margie let out a breath. That, at least, was a relief.

  “Were there any red flags in his behavior that led you to believe that he might not be an appropriate person to mentor these children?”

  Sorken had to think about that one. She waffled, shaking her head and making several false starts before she was able to get going. “Not in the way you are thinking, no.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “There wasn’t anything that made me or anyone else think that he might be abusive in any way. But as far as being the appropriate person to be a mentor… that’s a different question. A mentor should be someone that the children look up to. A good example of what they can achieve. Something that they can reach for.”

  Margie nodded. She thought about what she knew about Hustler. A bachelor with a very negative world view and an obsession with RC boats. He had things going for him—he was an accountant, so he had succeeded in his schooling and post-secondary training and was at least competent at what he did. His mother had said that he was very bright, that she had fought to have him moved ahead in school because he was bored. He was diligent, getting to all of the RC boat get-togethers. And he had shown interest both in mentoring children and in the children of his fellow enthusiasts. All positive traits.

  “He just wasn’t a very good fit for this kind of work,” Sorken said. “He had… a certain social awkwardness. Saying the wrong thing or saying it in the wrong way. Blunt. Critical.”

  “The children didn’t like him,” Siever suggested.

  “No. They didn’t. He was ‘creepy.’ He leaned too close. He breathed on them. He ‘told it like it is’ when they needed tact and understanding. We tried to find a child that he could get along with. Someone with similar interests or a compatible personality. But we did not have good success. We were still trying to find someone… told him to wait and we would see what we could find… but eventually, we knew there wasn’t going to be anyone. He just didn’t have a way with children.”

  “Did you give him any advice about it?” Margie asked. “Give him some tips on improving his relationship with the children? How to get along without creeping them out?”

  “We really don’t have time for any kind of intensive training. We expect people to have a basic understanding of how to get along with others.”

  “So you didn’t give him any information at all about what the problem was or how to deal with it?”

  Sorken looked at her for a moment, then shook her head. “No. We did the best we could with what we had, but we were not prepared to train him or impose him on any more children.”

  Siever was making a few notes in his notepad. “Did anyone else ever inquire about him? Make a complaint about him?”

 

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