by Lisa Gardner
She was a precocious child. All energy and high hopes and huge demands. She could throw a forty-five-minute temper tantrum over not having the right shade of pink socks to wear. And she had once spent an entire Saturday morning refusing to come out of her room because she was furious that Sandra had bought new curtains for the kitchen without consulting her first.
Yet, neither Sandra nor Jason would have it any other way.
He looked at her, Sandra looked at her, and they saw the childhood neither one of them had ever had. They saw innocence and faith and trust. They relished their daughter’s easy hugs. They lived for her infectious laugh. And they both, early on, had agreed that Ree would always come first. They would do anything for her.
Anything.
Jason glanced at the unmarked police car sitting outside his house, felt his hand curl into an automatic fist, and checked the reflex.
“She’s pretty.”
“Mr. Smith is a boy,” he said automatically.
“Not Mr. Smith. The police lady. I like her hair.”
Jason turned back toward his daughter. Ree’s face was smudged with peanut butter in one corner, jelly in another. And she was looking at him again with her big brown eyes.
“You know you can tell me anything,” he said softly.
Ree set her sandwich down. “I know, Daddy,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She ate two green grapes half-heartedly, then rearranged the others on her plate, around the white petals of the daisy. “Do you think Mr. Smith is okay?”
“Cats have nine lives.”
“Mommys don’t.”
He didn’t know what to say. He tried to open his mouth, tried to summon some kind of vague reassuring phrase, but nothing would come out. He was mostly aware that his hands were shaking convulsively again, and he had gone cold somewhere deep down inside, where he would probably never be warm again.
“I’m tired, Daddy,” Ree said. “I want to take a nap.”
“Okay,” he said.
They headed upstairs.
Jason watched Ree brush her teeth. He wondered if this is what Sandy had done.
He read Ree two stories, sitting on the edge of Ree’s bed. He wondered if this is what Sandy had done.
He sang one song, tucked the covers around his daughter’s shoulders, and kissed her on the cheek. He wondered if this is what Sandy had done.
He made it all the way to the doorway, then Ree spoke up, forcing him to turn around. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his fingers fisted beneath his elbows, where Ree couldn’t see the tremors in his hands.
“Will you stay, Daddy? Until I fall asleep?”
“Okay.”
“Mommy sang me ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’ I remember her singing ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’ ”
“Okay.”
Ree shifted restlessly beneath the covers. “Do you think she’s found Mr. Smith yet? Do you think she’ll come home?”
“I hope so.”
She finally lay still. “Daddy,” she whispered. “Daddy, I have a secret.”
He took a deep breath, forced his voice to sound light. “Really? Because remember the Daddy Clause.”
“The Daddy Clause?”
“Sure, the Daddy Clause. Whatever the secret, you’re allowed to tell one daddy. Then he’ll help keep the secret, too.”
“You’re my daddy.”
“Yep, and I assure you, I’m really good at keeping secrets.”
She smiled at him. Then, her mother’s daughter, she rolled over and went to sleep without saying another word.
He waited five more minutes, then eased out of the room, and just barely made it down the stairs.
He kept the picture in the kitchen utility drawer, next to the pen flashlight, green screwdriver, leftover birthday candles, and half a dozen wine charms they never used. Sandra used to tease him about the tiny photo in its cheap gilded frame.
“For God’s sake, it’s like hiding away a picture of your old high school sweetheart. Stick the frame on the mantel, Jason. She’s like family to you. I don’t mind.”
But the woman in the photo was not family. She was old—eighty, ninety, he couldn’t remember anymore. She sat in a rocking chair, birdlike frame nearly lost in a pile of voluminous hand-me-down clothes: man’s dark blue flannel shirt, belted around brown corduroy pants, nearly covered by an old Army jacket. The woman was smiling the large, gleeful smile of the elderly, like she had a secret, too, and hers was better than his.
He had loved her smile. He had loved her laugh.
She was not family, but she was the only person who, for a very long time, had made him feel safe.
He clutched her photo now. He held it to his breast like a talisman, and then his legs gave out and he sank to the kitchen floor. He started to shake again. First his hands, then his arms, then his chest, the bone-deep tremors traveling down to his thighs, his knees, his ankles, each tiny little toe.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t make a sound of protest.
But he shook so hard it felt as if his body should break apart, his flesh flying from his bones, his bones splintering into a thousand pieces.
“Goddammit, Sandy,” he said, resting his shaking head upon his shaking knees.
Then he realized, quite belatedly, that he’d better do something about the computer.
The phone rang ten minutes later. Jason didn’t feel like talking to anyone, then thought, a little foolishly, that it might be Sandy, calling from … somewhere … so he picked up.
It wasn’t his wife. It was a male voice, and the man said, “Are you home alone?”
“Who is this?”
“Is your child there?”
Jason hung up.
The phone rang again. Caller ID reported the same number. This time Jason let the machine get it. The same male voice boomed, “I’ll take that as a yes. Back yard, five minutes. You’ll want to talk to me.” Then the man hung up.
“Fuck you,” Jason told the empty kitchen. It was a foolish thing to say, but it made him feel better.
He went upstairs, checked on Ree. She was tucked almost all the way under the covers, sleeping soundly. He looked automatically for the familiar copper pile of Mr. Smith curled up at his daughter’s feet. The spot was empty, and Jason felt the familiar pang again.
“Goddammit, Sandy,” he muttered tiredly, then found his coat and stepped into his back yard.
The caller was younger than he expected. Twenty-two, twenty-three. The thin lanky build of a young man who hadn’t filled out yet and probably wouldn’t until his early thirties. The kid had scaled the wooden fence around Jason’s yard.
Now he leapt down and sprang forward a few steps, moving like a golden retriever puppy with floppy blond hair and long, rangy limbs. The kid stopped the instant he spotted Jason, then wiped his hands on his jeans. It was cold out, and he wore only a white T-shirt with faded black print and no coat. If the March chill bothered him, he didn’t show it.
“Umm, cop out front. Sure you know. Didn’t want to be seen,” the kid said, as if that explained everything. Jason noticed he wore a green elastic band around his left wrist and was snapping it absently, like a nervous habit.
“Who are you?”
“Neighbor,” the kid said. “Live five houses down. Name’s Aidan Brewster. We’ve never met.” Snap, snap, snap.
Jason said nothing.
“I, uh, keep to myself,” the kid offered, again as if that explained everything.
Jason said nothing.
“Your wife has gone missing,” the kid stated. Snap, snap.
“Who told you?”
Kid shrugged. “Didn’t have to be told. Cops are canvassing the neighborhood, looking for a missing female. A detective has set up camp outside your house, so obviously this is ground zero. You’re here. Your kid is here. Ergo, your wife is missing.” The kid started to snap the elastic again, caught himself this time, and both hands fell to his sides.
“What do you want?” Jason asked.
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“Did you kill her?”
Jason looked at the boy. “Why do you think she’s dead?”
Kid shrugged. “That’s the way these things work. Report starts with a missing white female, mother of one, two, three kids. Media kicks in, search teams are organized, neighborhoods are canvassed. And then, approximately one week to three months later, the corpse is recovered from a lake, the woods, the oversized freezer in the garage. Don’t suppose you have any large blue plastic barrels, do you?”
Jason shook his head.
“Chain saws? Barbecue pits?”
“I have a child. Even if I had such items, the presence of a small child would curtail my activities.”
Kid shrugged. “Didn’t seem to stop the others from getting the job done.”
“Get out of my yard.”
“Not yet. I need to know: Did you kill your wife?”
“What makes you think I would tell you?”
Kid shrugged. “Dunno. We’ve never met, but I thought I’d ask. It matters to me.”
Jason stared at the kid for a minute. He found himself saying, “I didn’t kill her.”
“Okay. Neither did I.”
“You know my wife?”
“Blonde hair, big brown eyes, kind of a quirky smile?”
Jason stared at the kid again. “Yes.”
“Nah, I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her out in your yard.” The kid resumed snapping the green elastic band.
“Why are you here?” Jason asked.
“Because I didn’t kill your wife,” the kid repeated. He glanced at his watch. “But in about one to four hours, the police are gonna assume that I did.”
“Why would they assume that?”
“I got a prior.”
“You killed someone before?”
“Nah, but that won’t matter. I have a prior, and like I said, that’s how these things work. A woman has gone missing. The detectives will start with the people close to her, making you the first ‘person of interest.’ Next, however, they’ll check out all the neighbors. That’s when I’ll pop up, the second ‘person of interest.’ Now, am I more interesting than you? I don’t have the answer to that, so I figured I’d better stop by.”
Jason frowned. “You want to know if I harmed my wife, because then you’re off the hook?”
“It’s a logical question to ask,” the kid said neutrally. “Now, you claim you didn’t kill her. And I know I didn’t kill her, which leads us to the next problem.”
“Which is?”
“No one is gonna believe either of us. And the more we claim our innocence, the more they’re gonna come down on us like a ton of bricks. Wasting valuable time and resources trying to get us to admit guilt, versus finding out exactly what did happen to your wife.”
Jason couldn’t argue with that. It’s why he’d kept his mouth shut all morning long. Because he was the husband, and the husband started the process automatically suspect. Meaning every time he spoke, the police would not be listening for proof of his innocence, but rather for any gaffe indicating his guilt. “You seem to know a lot about how the system works,” he told the kid.
“Am I wrong?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay, so going with the old adage that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, the cops are our mutual enemies, and we’re now friends.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“Aidan Brewster. Neighbor, auto mechanic, innocent party. What more do you need to know?”
Jason frowned. He should be quicker than this, seeing the obvious flaw in such a statement. But he could feel the stress and the fatigue catching up with him now. He had not slept in nearly thirty hours, first watching Ree, then going off to work, then returning to the scene at home. His heart had literally stopped beating in the space of time it had taken him to discover the empty master bedroom and walk the twelve feet to Ree’s room, his hand curling around the doorknob, twisting, pushing, so deeply unsure of what he might find inside. Then, when he’d spotted his daughter’s sprawled shape, sound asleep under the covers, he had staggered backward, only to realize in the next instant that Ree’s presence raised more questions than it answered. All of a sudden, after five years of almost leading a normal life, of almost feeling like a real person, it was over, done, finished, in the blink of an eye.
He had returned to the abyss, in a space he knew better than anyone, even better than convicted felon Aidan Brewster.
“So,” the kid was saying now, snapping, “did you ever hit your wife?”
Jason stared at him.
“Might as well answer,” his neighbor said. “If the police didn’t get to drill you this morning, they’ll get to it soon enough.”
“I didn’t hit my wife,” Jason said softly, mostly because he needed to hear himself say the words, to remind himself that that much, at least, was true. Forget February vacation. Forget it ever happened.
“Marital difficulties?”
“We worked alternate schedules. We never saw each other enough to fight.”
“Ah, so extramarital activities, then. You, her, both?”
“Not me,” Jason said.
“But she had a little something, something going on?”
Jason shrugged. “Isn’t the husband always the last to know?”
“Think she ran off with him?”
“She never would have left Ree.”
“So she was having an affair, and she knew you’d never let her take her daughter with her.”
Jason blinked his eyes, feeling his exhaustion again. “Wait a minute …”
“Come on, pull it together, man, or you’ll be rotting in jail by the end of the day,” the kid said impatiently.
“I wouldn’t harm my daughter, and I would’ve granted my wife a divorce.”
“Really? Given up this house, prime real estate in Southie?”
“Money is not an issue for us.”
“You’re loaded, then? Even more moola to have to surrender.”
“Money is not an issue for us.”
“That’s crap. Money is an issue for everyone. Now you do sound guilty.”
“My wife is the mother of my daughter,” Jason found himself saying testily. “If we did separate, I would want her to have the resources necessary to take care of my child.”
“Wife, child, wife, child. You’re depersonalizing them. Claiming to love them so much you’d never harm ’em, but on the other hand, you can’t even bring yourself to call them by name.”
“Stop it. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“Did you kill your wife?”
“Get out. Leave me alone.”
“You’re right. I’m outta here. I’ve only spoken with you eight minutes, and I already think you’re guilty as hell. But hey, that means I got nothing to worry about. So see ya.”
Kid headed for the fence. He already had his hands curled around the wooden slats, preparing to lift himself up and over, when it came to Jason, the piece he’d been missing since the very beginning.
“You asked if my child was home,” he called out across the yard. “You asked about my child.”
The kid was up now, one leg slung over the fence. Jason started to run toward him.
“Son of a bitch! Your prior. Tell me what you did, tell me exactly what you did!”
Kid paused at the top of the fence. He no longer looked like a golden retriever puppy. Something about his eyes had changed, his expression growing secretive, growing hard. “Don’t need to; you already figured it out.”
“Background check, my ass! You’re a convicted sex offender, aren’t you? Your name is in the fucking sex offender database. They’ll be at your door by two.”
“Yep. But they’ll still be arresting you by three. I didn’t kill your wife. She’s too old for my tastes—”
“Fucking prick!”
“And I know something you don’t know. I heard a car last night. Best I can figure, I saw the vehicle that took your wife away.
”
| CHAPTER SIX |
I fell in love the first time when I was eight years old. The man didn’t actually exist, but was a character on TV: Sonny Crockett, the cop played by Don Johnson on Miami Vice. My mama didn’t hold with such nonsense, so I’d simply wait until she’d pass out cold from the afternoon “ice tea,” then pop open a Dr Pepper and watch the reruns to my heart’s content.
Sonny Crockett was strong, world-weary. The kind of tough guy who’d seen it all and still went out of his way to save the girl. I wanted a Sonny Crockett. I wanted somebody to save me.
When I turned thirteen I developed breasts. Suddenly, there were a lot of boys interested in saving me. And for a while, I thought that might work. I dated indiscriminately, with a slight preference for older boys with body art and really bad attitudes. They wanted sex. I wanted somebody to load me up in the front seat of his Mustang and drive a hundred miles an hour in the middle of the night with no headlights. I wanted to scream my name with the wind tattooing my face and whipping my hair. I wanted to feel wild and reckless. I wanted to feel like anyone but me.
I developed a reputation for really great blow jobs and for being even crazier than my mad-as-a-hatter mother. Every small town has a mother like mine, you know. And every small town has a girl like me.
I got pregnant for the first time when I was fourteen. I didn’t tell anyone. I drank a lot of rum and Coke and prayed real hard for God to take the baby away. When that didn’t get it done, I stole money from my father’s wallet and went to a clinic where they do those kinds of things for you.
I didn’t cry. I considered my abortion an act of public service. One less life for my mama to ruin.
I’m telling you, every small town has a girl like me.
Then I turned fifteen and my mother died and my father and I were finally free and I …
I dreamed for so long of somebody to save me. I wanted Sonny Crockett, the world-weary soul who still sees the true heart within the battered exterior. I wanted a man who would hold me close and make me feel safe and never let me go.