The Neighbor

by Gardner, Lisa

  “All right, D.D., obviously you have something on your mind.”

  “When you were a sniper with the state’s STOP team, did you sleep?”

  “You mean more than I do now?”

  “Nah, I mean, when you deployed, did you take a nap?”

  “D.D., what the hell are you talking about?”

  “You been watching the news? Missing woman in Southie?”

  “Slept through the morning press conference, but Annabelle told me you had great hair.”

  D.D. felt mollified by that, which was just plain stupid. “Yeah, well, I’m at the house tonight, seizing the computer, yada, yada, yada, and get this, in the middle of the forensics foreplay, the husband took a nap on the love seat.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Just closed his eyes, put his head back, and went to sleep. You tell me, when was the last time you saw a family member of a missing person take a nap in the middle of the investigation?”

  “I’d consider that odd.”

  “Exactly. So I call him on it, and get this: He gives me some SWAT team song and dance that when you’ve been activated, but not deployed, the sensible thing is to sleep, so you’re ready for action.”

  There was silence. Then, “What’s this guy do for a living again?”

  “He’s a journalist. Works freelance for Boston Daily.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh what? I didn’t call you for grunting, I called you for expertise.”

  She could practically see him rolling his eyes in bed. “Well, here’s the thing: For most tactical unit situations in policing, you are activated and deployed pretty much simultaneously. But I know what he means—couple of guys on my team were former military special forces. Navy SEALs, Marine Force Recon, that kind of thing. And yeah, I’ve watched those guys fall asleep in the middle of cow fields, school gymnasiums, and flatbed trucks. There does seem to be some kind of rule for military types—if you’re not doing, you’d better be sleeping, so you can do later.”

  “Shit,” D.D. said, and chewed her bottom lip.

  “You think he’s former military?”

  “I think he could play poker with the devil himself. Son of a bitch.”

  A yawn now. “Want me to take a run at him?” Bobby offered.

  “Hey, I don’t need no state suit nosing into my investigation,” D.D. bristled.

  “Easy, blondie. You called me.”

  “Here’s the kicker,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “The wife is AWOL, and of course we suspect him, so we seized his trash. We found a pregnancy test. Marked positive.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. So I decide to ambush him with it tonight. See how he responds. Because he’s never mentioned this, and you’d think a husband would tell you if his missing wife was pregnant.”

  “Speaking of which …”

  She paused. Blinked. Felt her stomach drop away. “Holey moley,” she said at last. “I mean, when, how, where?”

  He laughed. “How and where probably aren’t necessary, but Annabelle’s due August first. She’s nervous, but doing well.”

  “Well, crap. I mean, congratulations. To both of you. That’s … awesome.” And it was. And she did mean it. Or would mean it. Goddamn, she needed to get laid.

  “So okay,” she cleared her throat, did her best to sound brisk. This is Sergeant D.D. Warren, all business all the time. “Regarding my person of interest. Tonight, I ambush him with the news—”

  “You told him his wife was pregnant.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But how do you know that the test strip belonged to the wife?”

  “I don’t. But she’s the only adult female in the house, and they don’t entertain, I mean never, so it’s a safe assumption. The lab geeks are gonna run DNA on the test strip to be definitive, but I gotta wait three months for those reports, and let’s be honest, Sandra Jones doesn’t have three months.”

  “Just asking,” Bobby said.

  “So, being strategic, I drop that little bomb into our conversation.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t react. Nothing. Nada. His face was so blank I could’ve told him it was raining outside.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. You gotta figure if he’s surprised, well then, he should choke up, because now both his wife and unborn child might be in danger. He should jump off the couch, start asking more questions, hell, start demanding more answers. Do anything but sit there like we’re talking about the weather.”

  “In other words, he probably did know,” Bobby filled in. “His wife got pregnant by another man, he kills her, now he’s covering his tracks. That’s not rocket science, D.D. Hell, that’s a national trend.”

  “And if we were talking about a normal person, I’d agree with you.”

  “Define ‘normal,’”Bobby said.

  She sighed heavily. This is where things got murky. “Okay, so I’ve been dealing with this guy for two days now. And he’s cool. Arctic cold. Miswired in some deep fundamental way that probably should involve a lifetime of therapy, six kinds of pharmaceuticals, and a total personality transplant. But he is who he is, and I’ve noticed a pattern to his deep freeze.”

  “Which is?” Bobby was starting to sound impatient. Okay, so it was almost midnight.

  “The more personal something is, the more he shuts down. Like this morning. We’re interrogating his four-year-old daughter in front of him. She’s recounting her mother’s last words, which don’t sound promising, let me tell you. And this guy is leaning against the back wall as if a switch has been disconnected. He’s there, but he’s not there. That’s what I thought tonight when I told him his wife was pregnant. He disappeared. Just like that. We were both in the room together, but he’s gone.”

  “Sure I can’t take a crack at him?”

  “Fuck you,” D.D. informed him.

  “Love you, too, babe.” She heard him yawn again, then rub his face on the other end of the phone. “Okay, so you have one really cool customer who seems to have some kind of tactical background and knows how to hold up under extreme duress. You think he’s former special ops?”

  “We ran his prints through the system, but didn’t get any hits. I mean, even if he did top secret, deeply classified James Bond crap, the missions would be off the radar, but military service would put him in the system, right? We’d see that piece of the puzzle.”

  “True. What does he look like?”

  D.D. shrugged. “Kind of like Patrick Dempsey. Thick wavy hair, deep dark eyes—”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake. I’m looking for a suspect, not a blind date.”

  She blushed. Definitely, definitely needed to get laid. “Five foot eleven, hundred and seventy pounds, early thirties, dark hair and eyes, no distinguishing marks or facial hair.”

  “Build?”

  “Fit.”

  “Now, see, that does sound like special ops. Big guys can’t make it through the endurance training, which is why you should always look out for the small guy in the room.” Bobby sounded smug as he said this. A former sniper, he fit the small, dangerous model perfectly.

  “But he’d have a record,” she singsonged.

  “Shit.” Bobby was starting to sound tired. “All right, what kinds of things did light up?”

  “Marriage certificate, driver’s license, Social Security number, and bank accounts. Basic stuff.”

  “Birth certificate?”

  “Still digging.”

  “Speeding tickets, traffic citations?”

  “Nada.”

  “Credit cards?”

  “One.”

  “When was it opened?”

  “Ummm …” D.D. had to think about it, trying to recall what she’d read in the report. “Within the past five years.”

  “Let me guess, around the same time as the bank accounts,” Bobby said.

  “Now that you mention it, most of the financial activity fell around the same time Jason and his wife mov
ed to Boston.”

  “Sure, but where’d the money come from?”

  “Again, we’re still digging.”

  Longer pause now. “In summary,” Bobby said slowly, “you got a name, a driver’s license, and a Social Security number, with no activity before the past five years.”

  D.D. jolted. She hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but now that he mentioned it … “Yeah. Okay. Only activity is from the past five years.”

  “Come on, D.D., you tell me. What’s wrong with that picture?”

  “Crap,” D.D. exclaimed. She whacked her steering wheel. “‘Jones’ is an alias, isn’t it? I knew it. I just knew it. I’ve been saying that all along. More we learn about the family, the more everything feels … just right. Not too busy, not too boring. Not too social, not too anti social. Everything is just right. Goddammit, if they’re with WitSec, I will slit my wrists.”

  “Can’t be,” Bobby assured her.

  “Why not?” She really didn’t want her case to be part of the witness protection program.

  “Because if so, you’d have federal marshals already crawling all over your ass. It’s been forty-eight hours, and the wife’s disappearance is public info. No way they wouldn’t have found you.”

  That made her feel better. Except: “What’s left?”

  “He did it. Or she did it. But one of them has a new identity. Figure out which one.”

  Coming from Bobby, D.D. took news of a probable alias as expert advice. After all, he’d married a woman who’d had at least twelve names, possibly more. Then it hit her. “Mr. Smith. Fuck. Mr. Smith!”

  “Lucky Mr. Smith,” Bobby drawled.

  “He’s a cat. Their cat. I never connected the dots. But think about it. The family is Mr. and Mrs. Jones, with their cat, Mr. Smith. It’s an inside joke, dammit! You’re right, they’re mocking us.”

  “I vote for Mr. Arctic.”

  “Ah shit,” D.D. moaned. “Just my luck. I got a prime suspect who by all appearances is a mild-mannered reporter, with a secret identity. You know who that sounds like, right?”

  “I don’t know. Who?”

  “Fucking Superman.”

  | CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE |

  When Jason was fourteen years old, his family had gone to the zoo. He’d been too old and cynical for these kinds of outings, but his little sister, Janie, had been madly in love with anything furry, so for Janie’s sake, he’d agreed to the zoo.

  He’d do most things for Janie’s sake, a fact his mother exploited zealously.

  They’d made the rounds. Eyed sleeping lions, sleeping polar bears, sleeping elephants. Really, Jason thought, how many sleeping animals did one guy need to see? They bypassed the insect exhibit without a word, but ducked into Reptile World. At ten years of age, Janie didn’t really like snakes, but still liked to squeal while looking at snakes, so it made a crazy kind of sense.

  Unfortunately, the key exhibit item—the albino Burmese python—was covered up, with a sign saying, Out to Lunch. Deepest Apologies, Polly the Python.

  Janie had giggled, thinking that was pretty funny. Jason had shrugged, because it seemed to him that a python would be yet one more sleeping creature, so he fell into step behind his sister as their father led them toward the door. At the last moment, however, Jason had glanced over and realized the cardboard wasn’t fully covering the glass. From this angle, he could peer right in, and Polly wasn’t out to lunch, Polly was eating lunch, a very cute-looking lunch, too, quivering on the floor while the giant snake unhinged her jaws and began the slow, laborious process of drawing the jackrabbit into her massive yellow coils.

  His legs had stopped moving on their own. He’d stood there frozen for a full minute, maybe two, unable to look away, as inch by fluffy brown inch, the freshly asphyxiated body disappeared into the snake’s glistening gullet.

  He thought at that moment, staring at the dead bunny I know exactly how you feel.

  Then his father had touched his arm, and he’d followed his dad out the exit into the white-hot blast of Georgia summer.

  His father had watched him carefully for the rest of the day. Looking for signs of what? Psychosis? Impending nervous breakdown? Violent outbursts?

  It didn’t happen. It never happened. Jason got through each day as he got through the day before, step by painful step, moment by painful moment, a physically scrawny, painfully undersized boy, armed only with his thousand-yard stare.

  Until the day he turned eighteen and came into Rita’s inheritance. Had his parents planned him a party? Had Janie bought him a gift?

  He’d never know. Because on the morning of Jason’s eighteenth birthday, he’d gone straight to the bank, cashed out two-point-three million dollars, and vanished.

  He’d returned from the dead once before. He never planned on hurting his family that badly again.

  Sandy was pregnant.

  He should do something.

  As thoughts went, Sandy’s pregnancy was a curious one. It floated right above him. Something he could state, something he could repeat, and yet the three words refused to sound like English.

  Sandy was pregnant.

  He should do something.

  The police were gone. They had wrapped up their party a little after one A.M. The computer was gone. His iPod, Ree’s Leapster. Some boxes had disappeared from the basement as well, probably cartons of old software. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He’d signed the evidence logs where they had told him to sign, and none of it had made a bit of difference to him.

  He wondered if the baby was his.

  He would take Ree and run, he thought idly. There was a thin metal box up in the attic, tucked behind a thick piece of insulation, which contained two pieces of fake ID and approximately twenty-five thousand dollars in large bills. The pile of cash was surprisingly small, the metal lockbox no bigger than a hardcover novel. He knew the police couldn’t have discovered it during their search, because it was the kind of find that would have immediately engendered conversation.

  He would climb the stairs to the attic, retrieve the box, slip it into his computer case. He would rouse Ree from her bed, shear her long brown curls, and top them with a red baseball cap. Throw on a pair of denim overalls and a blue polo shirt and she would make an excellent Charlie, traveling alone with her freshly shaved father.

  They’d have to sneak out the back to avoid the press. Climb over the fence. He’d find a car a few blocks away and hotwire a ride. The police would expect them to hit South Station, so instead he’d drive them to the Amtrak station on 128. There, he’d park the first stolen car, and help himself to a second. The police would eye all trains going south, because that’s what people did, right? They headed south, maybe into New York, where it was easy for anyone to get lost.

  Ergo, he’d drive the second stolen vehicle due north, all the way to Canada. He’d stick “Charlie” in the trunk and don a sports jacket and thick, black-rimmed glasses. Just another businessman crossing the border for Lasik. The border patrol was used to such things.

  Then, once he and Ree hit Canada, they would disappear. It was a huge country, lots of land and deep green woods. They could find a small town and start over again. Far away from Max. Far away from the suspicions of the Boston police.

  Ree could pick a new name. He’d get a job, maybe at the general store.

  They could make it for years. As long as he never got back on a computer.

  Sandy was pregnant.

  He should do something.

  He didn’t know what.

  Upon further contemplation, he couldn’t run. Not yet. He needed to save Ree. It would always come down to Ree. But he wanted, he needed, to know what had happened to Sandy. And he wanted, he needed, to know about the baby. He felt that in the past forty-eight hours, fate had taken his legs right out from under him. And now, perversely, it was dangling a carrot.

  He might be a father.

  Or Sandy really did hate him after all.

  If he couldn’t run, then he
needed a computer. Actually, he needed his computer and he needed to understand just what Sandy had done. How much had thirteen-year-old Ethan taught her?

  Best he knew, the family computer was still safely stashed at the offices of the Boston Daily. But how to retrieve it? He could drag Ree with him over to the offices. Police would shadow him this time, and probably two or three reporters as well. His mere presence would make them suspicious. What kind of grieving husband woke his kid in the middle of the night to go to work two nights in a row?

  If the police grew suspicious enough, they might check out the computers at the Boston Daily. Particularly if Ethan Hastings kept talking to them. How much had Sandy found? What pieces had she put together without ever confronting him on the subject? She should’ve been angry. Furious. Frightened.

  But she had never said a word.

  Had she taken a lover by then? Is that what this came down to? She’d found a lover, and then, once she’d stumbled upon the computer files, made her decision to leave Jason. Except then she’d discovered she was pregnant. His? The other man’s? Maybe she’d tried to break it off with her lover. Maybe that had made the other man angry, and he’d taken steps.

  Or maybe, on Wednesday night, armed with her newfound training from Ethan Hastings, Sandy had discovered Jason’s computer files. At that moment, she’d realized she was carrying a monster’s child. So she’d … what? Fled into the night without even her wallet or a change of clothes? Decided to save one child by abandoning the other?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  Which brought him back to the only other new man he knew of in Sandy’s life—Ethan Hastings. Perhaps the boy had assumed a more intimate relationship with Sandy. Perhaps she’d tried to tell him he was mistaken. Given all the hours he’d spent with her, trying to help her outwit her own husband, Ethan had taken this personally. So he’d come to the house in the middle of the night and …

  The youngest killer in America had been sentenced for a double homicide at the tender age of twelve, so as far as Jason was concerned, Ethan Hastings met the age requirement for possible homicidal maniac. The logistics of murder, however, seemed complicated. How would a thirteen-year-old boy get to Jason’s house? Ride his bike? Walk? And how would a kid as scrawny as Ethan Hastings dispose of a grown woman’s body? Drag her out by her hair? Fling her over his handlebars?