by Lisa Gardner
I didn’t know what I was doing. I was not qualified for this.
I remember thinking, struggling my way to the car, that I could smell my mother’s prized roses. I threw up in the grass. Jason patted me on the back, and in his calm, controlled voice, told me I was doing just fine.
He loaded up my hospital bag, then helped me into the passenger’s seat.
“Breathe,” he said over and over again. “Breathe, Sandy. Just breathe.”
At the hospital, my courteous new husband held the bucket while I vomited. He supported my weight as I moaned and panted in the birthing shower. He lent me his arm, which I bloodied with my fingernails as I fought to push the world’s biggest bowling ball out of my uterus.
The nurses watched him with open admiration and I remember thinking vividly that my mama was right—the world was filled with bitches and I would kill them all. If only I could stand up. If only I could get the pain to stop.
And then … success.
My daughter, Clarissa Jane Jones, slid into the world, announcing her arrival with a throaty cry of protest. I remember the hot, sticky feel of her wrinkled little body being plopped down upon my chest. I remember the sensation of her little button mouth, rooting, rooting, rooting, until at last she latched onto my breast. I remember the indescribable feeling of my body feeding hers, while the tears streamed down my face.
I caught Jason watching us. He stood apart, his hands in his pockets, his face as impossible to read as ever. And it hit me then:
I had married my husband to escape from my father. Did that make us family?
My husband had married me because he wanted my child. Did that make us family?
Clarissa became our daughter because she was born into this mess. Did that make us family?
Maybe you simply have to start somewhere.
I held out my hand. Jason crossed to me. And slowly, very slowly, he reached out a finger and brushed Clarissa’s cheek.
“I will keep you safe,” he murmured. “I promise nothing bad will ever happen to you. I promise, I promise, I promise.”
Then he was clutching my hand and I could feel the true force of his emotions, the dark tide of all the things he would never tell me, but that I understood, one survivor to another, lurked beneath the surface.
He kissed me. He kissed me with Clarissa nestled between us, a hard kiss, a powerful kiss.
“I will always keep you safe,” he whispered again, his cheek against my cheek, his tears mingling with my tears. “I promise you, Sandy. I will never hurt you.”
And I believed him.
At 5:59, as Aidan Brewster was checking in for his weekly support group meeting, Jason Jones was putting in a movie for his daughter, and beginning to panic.
He’d called in sick to work. Didn’t know what else to do. Night was falling. Still no word from Sandy. Still no sign of the police. Ree had woken from her nap in the same quiet mood as before. They had played Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders and Go Fish.
Then they had sat at her teeny art table, him with his chin on his knees, and colored oversized pictures of Cinderella from Ree’s favorite coloring book. Mr. Smith did not magically appear on the front stoop and Ree stopped asking about either her cat or her mom. Instead, she regarded Jason with serious brown eyes that were beginning to haunt him.
After dinner—meatballs, angel hair pasta, and sliced cucumbers—he put in a movie. Ree had perked up in anticipation of the rare treat, and was now seated on the green love seat, holding Lil’ Bunny. Jason claimed he needed to do laundry and beat a hasty retreat to the basement.
There, he started pacing, and once he started, he couldn’t stop.
When he had first come home and realized Sandra was not in the house, he had been confused, perhaps even anxious. He’d gone through the normal steps: checked the basement, checked the attic, checked the old shed out back. Then he’d called her cell, only to hear it ring in her purse. That had led him to rifling the contents halfheartedly, looking through her little spiral notebook to see if she’d magically recorded a middle-of-the-night meeting. When at two-thirty A.M. he confirmed his wife hadn’t planned to go missing, he’d walked around the neighborhood, calling her name in a low whisper, much like how one might call a cat.
She wasn’t in her car. She wasn’t in his car. And she still wasn’t at home.
He’d sat down on the love seat to consider the matter.
The house had been locked when he’d come home, including the doorknob and two dead bolts. That had implied Sandy had done her usual bedtime routine. He’d checked the kitchen counter and discovered the graded papers, meaning Sandy had done her usual post-Ree routine.
So where had the evening gone wrong?
His wife was not perfect. Jason knew that as well as anyone. Sandy was young, she’d led a wild and reckless youth. Now, at the relatively tender age of nearly twenty-three, she was trying to raise a toddler while adjusting to a new job and living in an unfamiliar state. She’d been more distant since the school year began, first overly quiet, then since December, almost overly friendly, in a forced sort of way. He’d started thinking about going away for February vacation precisely because her mood had grown so tangled, so … different.
He was sure she got homesick, especially in the winter, though she never said. He was sure there were times she wished she could go out, feel at least a little bit young, though she never said.
He himself had wondered about how long she would remain married to him, though again, she never said.
He missed her now. That thought pained him. He had grown accustomed to coming home and finding her curled up in their bed, her sleeping position an uncanny mimic of their daughter’s. He liked her Southern drawl, and her addiction to Dr Pepper, and the way she smiled with one dimple appearing in her left cheek.
When she was quiet, there was a softness to her that soothed him. When she was giggling with Ree, there was a spark to her that electrified him.
He liked watching her read to their daughter. He liked listening to her hum as she puttered in the kitchen. He liked the way her hair fell around her face in a curly gold curtain, and how when she caught him watching her, it made her blush.
He didn’t know if she loved him. He had never figured that out. But for a while she had needed him, and for him, that had been enough.
She’s left me; that had been his first thought at three in the morning as he sat in the empty shadows of the family room. He had tried to make amends in February, and it had been a disaster. So Sandy had finally left him.
But then, half a beat later, he dismissed that conclusion: While Sandy may have been ambivalent about marriage, she was not ambivalent about Ree. Meaning if Sandy had left the house willingly, she would’ve taken Ree, and at the very least, grabbed her own purse. The absence of such steps led to a different conclusion: Sandy had not left willingly. Something bad had happened, here, inside Jason’s own home, while his daughter had slept upstairs. And he had no idea what.
Jason was a reserved man. He acknowledged that. He preferred logic to emotion, fact to supposition. It was one of the reasons he made a good reporter. He was excellent at sifting through vast pools of data and coming up with the perfect nugget of information that brought everything together. He did not get bogged down with outrage or shock or grief. He did not suffer any preconceived notions about Boston’s citizens or humanity in general.
Jason believed at all times that the worst could happen. That was a fact of life. And so, he armed himself with many other facts, perhaps believing, rather foolishly, that if he knew enough, this time he could be secure. His family would not suffer. His daughter would grow up safe and sound.
Except here he was, confronted by several great big unknowns, and he could feel his control already beginning to unravel.
The police had been gone for nearly six hours now, just the lone officer sitting in the car outside the house, switched out once, around five o’clock. Jason had thought having the police in his home all m
orning had been long and painful. He now realized their absence was far worse. What were the detectives doing? What was Sergeant D. D. Warren thinking? Had she taken the bait regarding his sex offender neighbor, or was he still considered the prize catch?
Did they have a warrant yet for the computer? Could they kick him out of the house, force him down to the station? Exactly what kind of evidence did they need?
Worse yet, if they arrested him, what would happen to Ree?
Jason walked around the coffee table again and again, hard tight circles that made him dizzy and still he couldn’t stop. He didn’t have local family, didn’t have close friends. Would the police contact Sandy’s father, ship Ree to Georgia, or invite Max up here?
And if Max came up here, exactly how much might Max say or do?
Jason needed a strategy, some kind of contingency plan.
Because the longer Sandy remained missing, the worse this was going to get. The police would keep digging, asking harder questions. And inevitably, the word would leak out, the media would descend. Jason’s own peers would turn on him like cannibals, beaming his image all over the free world. Jason Jones, husband of the missing woman and person of interest in an ongoing investigation.
Sooner or later, someone was going to recognize that image. Someone was going to start to connect dots.
Especially if the police got their hands on his computer.
Jason careened around the table too fast, catching his knee on the corner of the washing machine. The pain lanced up his thigh and finally forced him to stop. For an instant, the world spun, so he clung to the top of the washer, breathless with pain.
When he could finally focus again, the first thing he noticed was the spider, the tiny little brown garden spider hanging right in front of him by a thread.
Jason jumped back, clipping the edge of the beat-up table with his shin and nearly yelping from the pain. But that was okay. He could take the pain. He didn’t mind the pain, just so long as he didn’t see that spider again.
And for a moment, it was too much. For a moment, one tiny little cellar spider had him spinning back to a place where it was always dark except for the eyes that glowed from the dozens of terrariums edging the room. A place where screams started in the basement and worked their way up through the walls. A place that smelled routinely of death and decay and no amount of ammonia was ever going to make a difference.
A place little boys and big girls went to die.
Jason placed a fist in his mouth. He bit his own knuckle until he tasted blood and he used that pain to ground himself again.
“I will not lose control,” he murmured. “I will not lose control, I will not lose control, I will not lose control.”
The phone rang upstairs. He gratefully left the basement and went to answer it.
The caller was Phil Stewart, the principal from Sandy’s school, and he sounded uncharacteristically flummoxed.
“Is Sandra there?” Phil started.
“She’s not available,” Jason said automatically. “May I take a message?”
There was a long pause. “Jason?”
“Yes.”
“Is she home? I mean, have the police located her yet?”
So the police had interviewed people where Sandra worked. Of course they had. That was a logical next step. After checking here, they might as well check there. Of course. Jason needed something intelligent to say. A statement of fact, a party line that summed up the current state of affairs without delving into personal territory.
He couldn’t think of a single damn word.
“Jason?”
Jason cleared his throat, glanced at the clock. It was 7:05 P.M., meaning Sandy had now been gone for what, eighteen, twenty hours? Day one nearly done, day two nearly beginning. “Umm … she’s … she’s … she’s not home, Phil.”
“She’s still missing,” the principal stated.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any ideas? Do the police have a lead? What’s going on, Jason?”
“I went to work last night,” Jason said simply. “When I came home, she was gone.”
“Oh my God,” Phil expelled as a long sigh. “Do you have any idea what happened?”
“No.”
“Do you think she’s coming home? I mean, maybe she just needed to take a break or something.” This was delving into personal territory, and Jason could practically hear Phil’s blush over the phone lines.
“Maybe,” Jason said quietly.
“Well.” Phil seemed to pull himself together. “Sounds like I should arrange a sub for tomorrow.”
“I would think so.”
“Will the search begin in the morning? I imagine much of the staff would like to assist. Probably some parents of the students, as well. Of course you’ll need help distributing flyers, canvassing neighborhoods, that sort of thing. Who will be leading the charge?”
Jason faltered again, feeling the edge of panic. He caught it this time, stiffened his backbone, forced himself to sound firm. “I will get that information to you.”
“We’ll need to think of what to tell the children,” Phil stated, “preferably before they catch it on the news. Perhaps a public statement for the parents, as well. Nothing like this has happened around here before. We need to start preparing the kids.”
“I will get that information to you,” Jason repeated.
“How is Clarissa holding up?” Phil asked abruptly.
“About as well as can be expected.”
“If you need any help on that front, just let us know. I’m sure some of the teachers would be happy to assist. These things can all be managed, of course. All it takes is a plan.”
“Absolutely,” Jason assured him. “All it takes is a plan.”
| CHAPTER NINE |
At 5:59 P.M. Sergeant D.D. Warren was a happy camper. She had a warrant to search Jason Jones’s truck. She had an appointment with a registered sex offender’s parole officer. And better yet, it was trash night in the neighborhood.
She drove around South Boston with Detective Miller, getting the lay of the land while they plotted next steps.
“According to Detective Rober,” Miller was reporting, “Jones kept a low profile for the afternoon. No guests, no errands, no activities. He seems to be hanging out at home with his daughter, doing his thing.”
“Has he been out to the truck?” D.D. wanted to know.
“Nope, hasn’t even cracked open the front door.”
“Huh,” D.D. said. “Working on the computer? Your guy should be able to see him sitting there in the kitchen window.”
“I asked that question, and the answer is uncertain. Afternoon sun made the view into the kitchen window unclear. But in the officer’s professional assessment, Jones spent most of the day entertaining his kid.”
“Interesting,” D.D. said, and meant it. What a spouse did after a loved one went missing was always a source of fodder for the inquisitive detective. Did the spouse go about business as usual? Suddenly invite over a new female friend for “comfort”? Or run around purchasing accelerants and/or unusual power tools?
In Jason’s case, his behavior seemed to be mostly defined by what he didn’t do. No relatives or friends coming over to help him cope, maybe assist with childcare. No trips to the local office supply store to blow up photos of his missing wife. No quick visits to his neighbor’s house for standard inquiries: Hey, have you happened to see my wife? Or maybe hear anything unusual last night? Oh, and by the way, catch any sign of an orange cat?
Jason Jones’s wife disappeared and he did nothing at all.
It’s almost as if he didn’t expect her to be found. D.D. found that fascinating.
“Okay,” she said now, “given that Jason is holding tight, I think our first stop should be with Aidan Brewster’s PO. We got Suspicious Husband under our thumb. Now it’s time to learn more about Felonious Neighbor.”
“Works for me,” Detective Miller said. “You know, tomorrow morning happens to be t
rash day for the neighborhood.” He nodded his head toward the collection of trash cans starting to proliferate on the curb. Trash in a house was private property and required a warrant. Trash on the curb, on the other hand … “Say two or three A.M., I have an officer swing by and pick up Jones’s garbage? Give us something to sort through in the morning.”
“Ah, Detective, you read my mind.”
“I try,” he said modestly.
D.D. winked at him, and they swung back into the city.
Colleen Pickler agreed to meet with them in the nondescript space that passed for her office. The floor was light gray linoleum, the walls were covered in battleship gray paint, and her filing cabinets sported a dull gray finish. In contrast, Colleen was a six-foot athletically built Amazon, sporting a head of shocking red hair and wearing a deep red blazer over a kaleidoscope T-shirt of oranges, yellows, and reds. When she first stood up from her desk, it looked like a torch had suddenly been lit in the middle of a fog bank.
She crossed the room in three easy strides, shook their hands vigorously, then gestured them into the two low-slung blue chairs across from the desk.
“Forgive the office,” she announced cheerfully. “I work mostly with sex offenders, and the state seems to feel that any color other than gray might overstimulate them. Clearly,” she gestured to her top, “I disagree.”
“You work mostly with sex offenders?” D.D. asked in surprise.
“Sure. Nicest group of parolees there is. The heroin pushers and petty burglars bolt first time they smell fresh air. Can’t track ’em down, can’t get ’em to complete a single piece of paperwork, can’t get ’em to make a meeting. The average sex offender, on the other hand, is eager to please.”
Miller was staring up at Pickler as if he were having a religious experience. “Really?” he said, stroking his thin brown mustache, checking the motion, then smoothing it again.