The Neighbor

by Gardner, Lisa

  We always started out talking about computers. Wayne would ask if I’d copied the hard drive yet I’d report on my various failed attempts. Jason’s schedule was highly unreliable, I’d explain. He would arrive home anytime after eleven P.M., and first I had to put Ree to bed and then grade papers, and by the time that was all done, I was already nervous Jason would return home at any second. I tried, I aborted. I had a hard time concentrating….

  “It’s all very nerve-wracking,” I’d say.

  Wayne would squeeze my hand in support and I’d feel the contact of his fingers as a tingle all the way up my arm.

  We didn’t hold hands. We didn’t find dark corners. We didn’t retreat to the back seat of his car and neck like teenagers. I was too aware that we were still in my place of work, where there were eyes and ears everywhere. And I was even more aware of my young daughter, never far away, who might need me at a moment’s notice.

  So we walked the halls. We talked—innocently really. And the more Wayne didn’t touch me, the more his hands didn’t graze across my breasts and his lips didn’t brush along my collarbone, the more I wanted him. Crazily, insanely, until every time I looked at him I thought my body might spontaneously combust

  He wanted me, too. I could tell by the way his palm lingered on the small of my back as he helped me climb onto the bleachers. Or the way he paused at the end of an empty hallway, never saying a word, but his eyes burning into mine, before finally, reluctantly, we both turned around and headed back to more populated areas.

  “Do you love him?” he asked me one night. No reason to define “him.”

  “He’s my daughter’s father,” I said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I think it does.”

  I didn’t tell him about my sex life, or the lack thereof. That felt too much like a violation of the family code. I could flirt with a stranger. I could tell him I suspected my husband was engaged in unlawful Internet activities. But I could not tell him my husband had never physically touched me. That would cross the line.

  And I didn’t want to hurt Jason. I just … I wanted Wayne. I wanted to feel the way I felt when I was around him. Young. Pretty. Desirable.

  Powerful.

  Wayne wanted me, and yet, he couldn’t have me, and that made him want me more.

  By the end of January, the e-mails were replaced by text messages. Only during school hours; Wayne was not stupid. He would send me a smiley face. Maybe a picture of a flower he’d taken with his cell phone at the grocery store. Then the questions began.

  Maybe I could get a babysitter for Ree, or tell my husband I’d joined a book club. How long were my lunch breaks?

  He never asked to have sex with me. Never commented on my body or made any overly suggestive comments. Instead, he began to actively campaign for a private rendezvous. It went without saying what we would be doing during this time.

  I vetoed lunchtime. Too short, too unpredictable. What if Jason stopped by with Ree, or a student tried to find me? What if Ethan saw us leaving school grounds together? Ethan would definitely ask questions.

  A babysitter was out of the question. All these years later, I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood. Furthermore, Ree was at the age where she would talk, and Jason would want to know immediately what I had to do that was more important than watching our child.

  As for joining a book club … These things were easier said than done. Who would be hosting this book club? What contact information would I give Jason and what if he actually called during the appointed hours? He would do that, at least once, I predicted. He had a tendency to check up on me.

  I could’ve arranged for a “spa” night. But again, I’d never told Wayne of my unusual marital arrangement, nor did I mention it now. Spa nights were for strangers. And this wouldn’t be with a stranger. This would be different.

  So we went round and round. E-mailing and texting, but mostly anticipating our chaste Thursday night walks around the South Boston Middle School, where this one man gazed at me with unrelenting hunger, wanting, needing, demanding …

  And I let him.

  The second week in February, Jason surprised me. School vacation week was coming up and he announced it was time for the family to go on vacation. I was standing at the stove at the time, browning hamburger. I was probably thinking about Wayne, because I had a smile on my face. Jason’s announcement, however, jarred me back to reality.

  “Yippee!” Ree squealed, sitting at the kitchen counter. “Family vacation!”

  I shot Ree a dry look, because we’d never gone on family vacation, so how would she know it was such a good thing?

  Jason wasn’t looking at our daughter, however. He was regarding me, his expression contemplative, waiting. He was up to something.

  “Where would we go?” I asked lightly, returning to the frying pan.

  “Boston.”

  “We live in Boston.”

  “I know. I thought we’d start small. I got us a hotel room downtown. A swimming pool, atrium, all sorts of fun stuff. We can be tourists in our own town for a few days.”

  “You already booked it? Chose a hotel and everything?”

  He nodded, still staring at me. “I thought we could use some time together,” he said, his face inscrutable. “I thought it would be good for us.”

  I poured in the Hamburger Helper seasoning packet. A family vacation. What could I say?

  I gave Wayne the news by e-mail. He didn’t reply for two days. When he did, he wrote one line: Do you think it’s safe?

  That jarred me. Why wouldn’t I be safe with Jason? Then I remembered the photo again, and the research I was supposed to be doing with the family computer, except I’d gotten so caught up in flirting with Ethan’s uncle, I’d forgotten Wayne was supposed to be offering me expertise instead.

  We have a four-year-old chaperone, I wrote back at last. What could go wrong?

  But I could tell Wayne didn’t approve, because the text messages dropped off. He was jealous, I realized, and was naive enough to be flattered.

  Sunday night, I sent him a cell phone photo of Ree, dressed in a hot pink bathing suit with a purple snorkel, blue face mask, and two oversized blue flippers. Chaperone prepares for duty, I wrote, and included a second photo of Ree’s suitcase overflowing with the approximately five hundred things she believed she needed for a four-night hotel stay.

  Wayne didn’t write back. So I cleared the inboxes of my cell phone, purged my AOL account, and prepared for four days of family vacation.

  My husband will never hurt me, I thought I guess right up until that moment, I didn’t realize how much both of us were living a lie.

  | CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO |

  D.D. was on a roll. She could feel it. First the conversation with Wayne Reynolds, then the interview with Maxwell Black. The investigation was coming together, key pieces of the puzzle starting to fall into place.

  The moment they were done talking to Sandy’s father, D.D. had blasted Jason Jones’s photo over to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She was getting a solid profile in place now—known aliases, possible geographic connections, key financial information, and relevant dates. Jason had left a heavy paper trail from the past five years, after he disappeared from the radar screen. Now they were getting the sliver of insights necessary to crack his full identity wide open, including tracing his offshore funds.

  At this point, D.D. was willing to bet that some other law enforcement agency in some other jurisdiction had the exact same file she did, except under a different alias. When she connected with that agency, Jason Jones/Johnson would finally be exposed, and she’d have her arrest. Preferably in time for the eleven o’clock news.

  In the meantime, of course, they continued to work the basics. Currently, D.D. was reviewing several evidence reports, including preliminary findings of a trace amount of blood on the quilt they had removed from the Jones family washing machin
e. Unfortunately “trace amounts of blood” hardly played well on a warrant. Trace amounts because the rest had been successfully washed away? Trace amounts because Sandra Jones had had a nosebleed sometime in the past few weeks? Blood type matched Sandra’s, but not having the blood type of Jason and Clarissa on file meant that, theoretically, the blood could be theirs as well.

  In other words, the evidence report alone didn’t do much for their case, but perhaps later, when combined with other relevant data, it would become one more bar in the prison slowly but surely being constructed around Jason Jones.

  D.D. touched base with the BRIC team in charge of analyzing the Jones family computer. Given the current level of urgency, the team was working round the clock. It had taken most of the night to create a forensically sound copy of the computer’s hard drive. Now they were running report after report, focusing on e-mails and Internet activity. They expected to have their first update bright and early in the morning. Which made D.D. optimistic enough to assume that if she missed the eleven o’clock news, maybe she could make the morning cycle.

  This was the type of momentum that made a homicide sergeant happy, and provided the whole team with enough incentive to work another long night after two previous midnight grinds. It didn’t necessarily explain, however, D.D.’s sudden interest in the honorable Maxwell Black or her need to look up the death of Missy Black eight years prior. The local sheriff’s office informed her that they’d never opened a case file on the matter, but gave her the contact information for the county ME, who would be available in the morning. The official ruling had been suicide, but the sheriff had hesitated just enough for D.D. to remain curious.

  Maxwell Black bothered her. His drawl, his charm, his matter-of-fact assessment of his only child as a reckless young woman, capable of habitual lying and sexual promiscuity. It struck D.D. that Sandy spent the first two-thirds of her young life with an outgoing father who said too much, and the last third of her life with a highly compartmentalized husband who said too little. The father claimed the husband was a pedophile. The husband implied the father had been party to child abuse.

  D.D. wondered if Sandy Jones had loved her husband. If she had viewed him as her white knight, her valiant savior, right up until Wednesday night when the last of her illusions had been violently, and sadly, stripped away.

  Sandra Jones had now been missing three days.

  D.D. didn’t believe they’d find the young mother alive.

  Mostly what she hoped for at this stage of the game was to save Ree.

  Ethan Hastings was having a crisis of conscience. This had never happened to him before. Being smarter than any adult he’d ever met, the teenager was naturally disparaging of them. What they couldn’t figure out, they didn’t need to know.

  But now, sitting on the floor with his mother’s iPhone—yesterday’s incident at school had resulted in a total loss of computer privileges for the next month, but technically speaking, no one had said he couldn’t rifle his mother’s purse—he was reviewing e-mail and trying to figure out if he should call the police.

  Ethan was worried about Mrs. Sandra. He had been ever since November, when it became clear to him that her interest in online security extended way beyond what one might need to know to teach a sixth grade social studies class.

  She’d never told him she suspected her husband, which meant, of course, that he was the most likely culprit. Likewise, she’d never used the words “Internet porn,” but then again, what else would drive a pretty teacher to spend all of her free periods working with a kid like him?

  Oh, she was kind about it. She knew that he worshipped her, because he wasn’t so good about hiding these things. But he got the message, loud and clear, that she was not in love with him the way he was with her. She needed him, however. She respected his skills. She appreciated his help. That was good enough for him.

  Mrs. Sandra talked to him, person to person. Not many adults did that. They either tried to talk over his head, or they were so terrified of his staggering genius they avoided engaging him in conversation altogether. Or maybe they were more like his parents. They both tried to talk to him, but sounded like they were grinding their teeth the entire time.

  Not Mrs. Sandra. She spoke warmly, with this pretty lilt he could listen to again and again. And she smelled of oranges. He never told anyone, but he got her to mention the name of the lotion she used. Then he bought an entire case of it online, just so he could smell her when she wasn’t around. He had the case of lotion stashed in his father’s closet, behind all the suits his father never wore, because he’d long ago figured out that his mother searched his room on a daily basis.

  She tried very hard, his mother. Having a kid as bright as him couldn’t be easy. Then again, it wasn’t his fault he was so smart. He’d been born this way.

  In November, after deducing that Mrs. Sandra was worried about her husband’s online activities, then determining that Mrs. Sandra’s husband was surprisingly computer savvy, Ethan had decided he needed to take further action to protect his favorite teacher.

  First, he’d thought of his uncle, the only adult Ethan considered intelligent. When it came to computers, Uncle Wayne was a pro. And, better yet, he worked for the state police, meaning that if Mrs. Sandra’s husband was doing something illegal, Uncle Wayne could arrest him for it, and Sandra’s husband would go away. This had been a very good idea, in Ethan’s mind. One of his better plans.

  Except Sandra’s husband hadn’t gone away. Neither, for that matter, had Uncle Wayne. Suddenly, his uncle had developed an enduring interest in JV basketball. Every Thursday night, Uncle Wayne would appear at the school, and off he and Mrs. Sandra would go, leaving Ethan all alone with pesky Ree.

  Ethan had started to be annoyed by Thursday nights. It didn’t take three months of weekly meetings to hack into someone’s computer. Heck, he could’ve done it in five minutes or less.

  Then it had occurred to him: Maybe he didn’t need his uncle or state police involvement after all. Maybe all he needed to do was write some code. It was called a Trojan Horse. He could tuck it into an e-mail. He could send it to Mrs. Sandra. And the Trojan Horse would open up a gateway on her computer just for him.

  He would have access.

  He could see what Sandra’s husband was really up to.

  He could save the day.

  Except that Ethan had never actually written the code before. So first he had to study it. Then he had to test it. Then he had to revise it.

  Three weeks ago, he’d been ready to launch. He wrote an innocent little e-mail to Mrs. Sandra containing some links he thought she might find helpful for her social studies class. Then he’d embedded the code and sat back to wait.

  It took her two days to open the e-mail, which annoyed him a little. Weren’t teachers supposed to be more responsive than that?

  But the Trojan Horse passed the gates, the computer virus embedding itself instantly into Mrs. Sandra’s hard drive. Ethan tested it on day three, and yeah, he had access to the Jones family computer. Now he could sit back and catch Mr. Jones in the act-literally

  Ethan had been very excited. He was gonna be on 48 Hours Investigates. A whole episode on the boy genius who nabbed a notorious child predator. Leslie Stahl would interview him, social websites would want to hire him. He’d become a one-man Internet security alpha team. A modern-day website Marine.

  The first three nights, Ethan had definitely learned some things about Mr. Jones. He’d learned, in fact, quite a lot about Mr. Jones. More than he really wanted to know.

  What Ethan hadn’t counted on, however, was how much he’d also learn about Mrs. Sandra.

  Now he was stuck. To rat out Mr. Jones, he’d have to also rat out Mrs. Sandra, and Uncle Wayne, too.

  He knew too little, he knew too much.

  And Ethan Hastings was a bright enough boy to know that was a very dangerous place to be.

  He picked up his mother’s iPhone, checked messages again. Told himself to call 9
11, set down the phone again. Maybe he could call that sergeant, the one with the blonde hair. She seemed nice enough. Then again, as his mother always told him, lies of omission were still lies, and he was pretty sure lying to the police would get him in even more trouble than school suspension and a four-week loss of computer privileges.

  Ethan didn’t want to go to jail.

  But he was terribly worried about Mrs. Sandra.

  He picked up the iPhone again, checked messages, sighed heavily. Finally, he did the only thing he could bring himself to do. He opened a fresh e-mail box and started, Dear Uncle Wayne …

  Wayne Reynolds was not a patient man. Sandra Jones had been missing for multiple days, and as far as the forensics expert could tell, the lead detectives were taking a slow boat from China to find her. Hell, he’d practically had to hand them Jason Jones on a silver platter, and still, judging from the five o’clock news, no arrests had been made.

  Instead, reporters had picked up the scent of a registered sex offender living just down the street from Sandra. Some pale, freaky-looking kid with a blistered scalp they’d caught walking down the street, then literally chased all the way to an old 1950s ranch. “I didn’t do it!” the kid had cried over his shoulder. “Talk to my PO. My girlfriend was underage, that’s all, that’s all, that’s all”

  Pervert had bolted into the house, and the erstwhile reporters had documented half a dozen shots of a closed door and blinds-covered windows. Really scintillating stuff.

  At least Sandra’s father had entered the fray, deriding Jason Jones as a highly dangerous, manipulative man who’d isolated the beautiful young woman from her own family. The grandfather was demanding custody of Ree and had already won visitation rights to begin shortly. The old man wanted justice for his daughter and protection for his granddaughter.

  The media were eating it up. And still no arrests had been made!