The Neighbor

by Gardner, Lisa

  The taxi pulled up in front of Aidan’s house slightly after ten P.M. Aidan didn’t step out right away. He took his time counting out a wad of wrinkled bills, while covertly studying the surrounding bushes for signs of trouble. Was that hulking shadow Mrs. H.’s rhododendron or another goon from Vito’s garage? What about that dark spot over to the right? More photogs hidden in the trees? What about the entire darkened block, yawning behind him. Maybe somewhere, out there, Jason Jones was ready to finish him off.

  Screw it. Just move.

  Aidan tossed twelve bucks at the driver, grabbed his laundry, and scrambled from the cab, house keys clutched in hand. He made it up the walkway while the taxi was still idling in place. Aidan dropped the trash bags, jammed the key in the lock, and managed to twist the door open the first time, though his hands were trembling now, and he was so overloaded on adrenaline and fear he could barely function.

  He could hear the taxicab revving up, pulling away. Gotta move, gotta move, gotta move.

  He forced the door open, swinging the laundry bags inside, then using his leg to kick the door shut behind him, leaning against it for good measure while he struggled to work the lock, finally firing it home.

  He sagged then, sliding down the door, overcome with relief. He was still alive. No goons had jumped him, no neighbors were picketing his front door, and no photogs were peeking into his windows. The lynch mob had yet to arrive.

  He started to laugh, hoarsely, maybe a tad hysterically, because, honest to God, he hadn’t felt this strung out since prison. Except he was a free man now—meaning, what was there to look forward to? When would he ever complete this time served?

  He forced himself to stand, picking up his laundry, schlepping the bags down the hall. He needed to pack. He needed to sleep. He needed to get away from here. Become a new person. Preferably a better person. The kind of stand-up guy who could actually sleep at night.

  He made it to the family room, dropping the trash bags on the floral love seat. He was just turning toward the bathroom, when he became aware of the wind on his face. He could feel a draft, floating into the tiny sitting area.

  The sliding glass door was open.

  Aidan realized for the first time that he was not alone.

  D.D. was finishing up paperwork when her cell chimed at her waist. She recognized Wayne Reynolds’s mobile number, placing the phone to her ear.

  “Sergeant Warren.”

  “You have the wrong computer,” Wayne said. He sounded slightly breathless, as if he were running.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Got an e-mail from Ethan. Kid’s smarter than we thought. He sent Sandy an e-mail infected with a Trojan Horse—”

  “What?”

  “It’s a kind of virus that allows you access to someone else’s hard drive. You know, a friendly little e-mail that allows the sender to be accepted inside the gates …”

  “Holy crap,” D.D. said.

  “That’s my nephew. Apparently, he didn’t think I was moving fast enough to protect Sandy from her husband, so he took steps to expose Jason’s online activities himself.”

  D.D. heard the rat-a-tat of feet on a stairwell. “Where the hell are you, Wayne?”

  “At the lab. Just got off the phone with Ethan, however, and am bolting out to the car. Told him I’d pick him up, we’d meet you there.”

  “Where?” she asked in bewilderment.

  “Here’s the thing: Ethan still has access to Sandy’s computer, and according to him, in the past forty-eight hours, over a dozen users have utilized the computer to conduct various online searches.”

  “Is that part of the forensic evaluation? The computer techs tracing Jason’s online tracks?”

  “Absolutely not. You never work on the source. If your guys had Jason’s computer, we should be seeing no activity at all.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have his hard drive. He switched it on you. Replaced either the guts of the computer, or maybe the whole damn thing. Don’t know; have to see it to believe it. In the meantime, he hid the real computer in a flipping brilliant location.”

  “Where? Dammit, I’ll have a warrant in the next twenty minutes!”

  “Boston Daily. Ethan can read the e-mail addies of the users, all of whom are Boston Daily accounts. Best guess: Jason stuck his computer in the newsroom offices, probably at some random desk. I’ll grant him this much—the son of a bitch is clever.” From the background came the groan of a steel fire door being forced open, then the corresponding slam as Wayne exited the building.

  D.D. heard the jangle of keys, the longer thump of Wayne’s stride hitting the parking lot. She closed her eyes, trying to process this news, foresee the legal implications. “Crap,” she said at last. “I can’t think of a single judge who’d let me seize every single computer at a major media outlet.”

  “Don’t have to.”

  “Don’t have to?”

  “Ethan’s currently tracking the computer’s activity on his mother’s iPhone. Minute a user logs on, he can see the e-mail address. Meaning, all we have to do is be at the office, locate the user with that e-mail address, and wherever that person is sitting, there’s your computer.” There was another muffled sound, then a curt, “Hold on a sec, getting the door.”

  From the background came the creak of a car door opening, then slamming shut. D.D. was out of her chair, grabbing her jacket. She’d need to prep a quick warrant, find a succinct way of defining such avant-garde search perimeters, then decide which judge to call this time of night….

  “So,” Wayne’s voice returned. “I’ll grab Ethan. You grab the warrant. We’ll meet you there.”

  “I’ll grab Ethan,” she corrected him, exiting her office. “Miller will get the warrant. You can’t be there.”

  “But—”

  “You can’t be alone with a witness, or at a scene with the suspect’s computer. Conflict of interest, tampering with evidence, witness coercion. Need I go on?”

  “Goddammit,” Wayne exploded. “I did not hurt Sandra! I’m the one who called you, remember? Furthermore, this is my nephew we’re talking about. The kid’s scared out of his mind!”

  “Tell me you never slept with Sandra Jones,” D.D. replied evenly.

  “Come on, I’m in my car already. At the very least let me be at Ethan’s side. He’s only thirteen, for Christ’s sake. He’s just a kid.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Won’t.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Tough. My sister’s house is still fair game.”

  “Don’t you dare!” D.D. started. Except she never got to finish. She heard the roar of the car engine firing to life as Wayne turned the key. Then she heard a curious little click.

  He heard it, too.

  “Dammit, no!” the forensic tech screamed.

  Then his car exploded in the middle of the crime lab parking lot.

  D.D. dropped her phone to the ground. She remained rooted in place, clutching her ringing ear and screaming for Wayne to get out, get out, though of course it was much too late.

  Detectives were running. Someone told her to take a seat. Then the first of their pagers started to sound. Officer down, officer down.

  Ethan, she thought.

  They had to get to Ethan. Before Jason Jones did.

  Aidan Brewster did not beg.

  Maybe once, he would have. He would’ve fought to live, he would’ve argued he still had value, he was a young guy with plenty of potential. Hell, if he could just get beneath the hood of a car, his hands on the engine …

  But he was tired. Tired of being afraid, tired of feeling hunted. But mostly tired of missing a girl he never should’ve fallen in love with in the first place.

  So he stood in the middle of the family room. Right next to the floral love seat, his hand on Mrs. H.’s favorite crocheted doily.

  As the gun appeared in front of him, took aim at his gut.

  No more worries, Aidan figured.

 
He thought of Rachel. She was smiling in his mind. She was holding out her arms to him, and this time, when he took her hands, she didn’t cry.

  The gun fired.

  Aidan fell to the floor.

  Dying took longer than he thought. That made him mad, so at the last moment, he flipped onto his belly, tried to crawl to the phone.

  Second shot took him in the back, between the shoulder blades.

  Well, fuck me, Aidan thought. He didn’t move again.

  Jason turned off his flashlight. He clutched the heavy metal object as a weapon and eased himself carefully toward the rickety attic stairs. The lit hallway provided a pool of illumination spilling across the bedroom floor. He used it as his target, placing his left foot on the top rung of the ladder, then his right. The top step creaked, the attic ladder trembling unsteadily beneath his weight.

  Screw it. He slid down in a rush, landing with a solid thud and rolling low into the darkened master bedroom. Then he was up on his feet, preparing to dash into his daughter’s bedroom and fight for her life.

  He discovered his wife standing in front of him instead.

  | CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE |

  “I don’t understand,” he faltered.

  “I know.”

  “Are you alive? Is this for real? Where have you been?”

  She took the flashlight from him. Belatedly Jason realized that he’d been brandishing it before him, threatening his wife, who, apparently, had just returned from the dead.

  She wore all black. Black trousers, black shirt. It wasn’t an outfit he recognized, cheap, ill-fitting. He saw now that there was also a dark baseball cap on the bed. The perfect outfit for stealth. Was she stealing in, or stealing away? Why couldn’t he understand what was going on?

  “I saw the news,” she said quietly.

  Jason stared at her.

  “My father made the five o’clock broadcast, claiming he deserves custody of Ree. I realized then that I had to come back.”

  “He claims you’re a liar,” Jason murmured. “Your mother was a fine, upstanding woman, and your father’s only sin was loving his wife more than his daughter.”

  “He said what?” Sandy asked sharply.

  “You’re troubled, have a history of drinking, promiscuity, perhaps multiple abortions.”

  She colored, didn’t say a word.

  “But your parents were solid. You were just jealous of your mother, then furious about her untimely death. So you ran away from your father, and then … you ran away from me. You left us.” He was surprised, now that he was saying the words out loud, how much they hurt him. “You left me, and you left Ree.”

  “I didn’t want to go,” Sandy said immediately. “You have to believe me. Something bad happened. And maybe he didn’t kill me Wednesday night, but it was only a matter of time. If I stayed, if he could find me. I … I didn’t know what to do. It seemed better if I disappeared for a bit. If I was gone, he couldn’t want me anymore. It would make things all right.”

  “Who? How? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Shhh.” She took his hands, and the first touch jolted him. He didn’t know if the feel of her fingers against his skin was the best or the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He had wanted her. Prayed for her to come home. Despaired over her return. And now, heaven help him, he wanted to wrap his fingers around the white column of her throat and hurt her as badly as her leaving had hurt him….

  She must have seen some of it in his eyes, because her grip on his hands tightened, becoming painful. She urged him closer to the bed, and after a moment, he followed her. They sat on the edge of the mattress, a couple returning to their marriage bed, and still none of it made sense to him.

  “Jason, I screwed up.”

  “Are you pregnant?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “From … from family vacation?”

  “Yes.”

  The breath finally left him. His shoulders sagged. He felt bewildered, but less pained. He shrugged off her hands because he had to touch her. This is what he had dreamed of doing, what he had wanted to do, since he’d first heard the news.

  He splayed his fingers across the slender expanse of her stomach, seeking some sign of growth. That a little miracle existed here. A real life. One they had made together and—at least on his part—with love.

  “You’re still flat,” he murmured.

  “Honey, it’s only been four weeks.”

  His gaze finally came up. He stared at her, taking in her shadowed blue eyes, gaunt cheekbones. He could see the remains of a bruise above her right temple. A swollen cut on her upper lip. His hands moved on their own, across her stomach to her waist, her shoulders, her arms, her legs. He had to feel each piece of her, to assure himself she was all here, whole, intact, okay. That she was safe.

  “I had to learn that you were pregnant from the police. From some sergeant who’s one step away from hanging me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned the screws a little tighter. “If they’d arrested me, Ree would’ve become a ward of the state. They would’ve placed her in foster care.”

  “I never would’ve let that happen. Jason, please believe me. I knew when I disappeared it might be risky. But I also knew you’d take good care of Ree. You’re the strongest person I know. I never would’ve done this otherwise.”

  “Let me be accused of killing my pregnant wife?”

  She smiled wanly. “Something like that.”

  “Do you hate me?” he whispered.

  “No.”

  “Is our little family that intolerable?”

  “No.”

  “Do you love the other man more?”

  She hesitated, and he felt that, too, another bruise to nurse in the days and nights to come.

  “I thought I did,” she said at last. “But then, I thought my husband was Jason Jones. So I guess we’re both very good at wanting what we can’t have.”

  He winced, then forced himself to nod. This is what it came down to in the end. He had started their marriage with a lie, so if she chose to end it with a lie, well, who was he to judge?

  He removed his hands from her body. Sat upright, squared his shoulders, steeled himself for what had to come next. “You came back for Ree,” he stated. “So your father can’t have her.”

  But Sandra shook her head. She lifted her hand, brushing the moisture from his cheek.

  “No, Jason. You still don’t understand. I came back for both of you. I love you, Joshua Ferris.”

  D.D. made it out of Roxbury in record time. She had sirens blasting, lights twirling, the whole nine yards. She was simultaneously working her radio, demanding that officers be immediately deployed to the Hastings residence. She wanted Ethan Hastings safely in police custody and she wanted it right now.

  In addition, she wanted BPD detectives dispatched to the state police crime lab crime scene, even if that pissed the state off. Wayne Reynolds might be their man, but he was BPD’s witness and whatever he’d known about Sandra Jones had no doubt gotten him killed.

  Furthermore, she wanted officers dispatched to the Boston Daily offices. Not a single computer was to be touched until they had further word from Ethan Hastings.

  Finally, she had explicit instructions for the two officers watching the Jones residence. If Jason Jones so much as cracked open his front door, he was to be arrested. Pick him up for loitering, late parking tickets, she didn’t care. But he was not to leave the confines of his house unless he was wearing a pair of BPD bracelets.

  They had just lost a man, and she was furious.

  So it definitely didn’t help when Dispatch returned to tell her that two officers had arrived at the Hastings residence. Unfortunately, the thirteen-year-old boy was not in his room and his parents had no idea where he might have gone.

  Three minutes past eleven, Ethan Hastings had vanished.

  “How did you finally figure it ou
t?” Jason was asking his wife.

  “Your birthday. I was installing the iPod software on the computer and I found a photograph in the recycle bin.”

  “Which one?”

  “You were naked, badly beaten. There was a tarantula crawling across your chest.”

  Jason nodded. His gaze was on the floor. “That’s the hardest part,” he said, softly. “On the one hand, it’s been over twenty years. I got away. The past is the past. On the other hand, the man took so many photos … and movies. He sold them. That’s how he earned money. Selling child porn to other pedophiles, who of course are still reselling the pictures, over and over again. There are so many images out there, hundreds of countries, ten of thousands of servers. I don’t know how to get them back. I can never get them all back.”

  “You were abducted,” she said quietly.

  “Nineteen eighty-five. Not a good year to be me.”

  “When did you get away?”

  “Three or four years later. I made friends with an elderly neighbor woman, Rita. She let me stay at her place.”

  “And the man just let you go?”

  “Oh no. He came looking for me. Tied Rita up, handed me the gun, and ordered me to kill her. That was my punishment for disobeying him.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.” He finally looked at her. “I shot him. Then, when he went down, I kept plugging him with bullets, just for good measure.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It’s been a long time. I killed the man. The police returned me to my family. The case records were sealed, and I was told to get on with my life.”

  “Was your family mean to you? Did they resent what had happened, what you’d been forced to do?”

  “No. But they were normal. And I … wasn’t.” He regarded her thoughtfully. Inside, the bedroom was dark and gloomy. Outside, the media mob blasted the front of their home with a thousand watts of klieg lights. To him, it seemed somehow fitting. They were like two kids, hunkered under the blankets, exchanging scary ghost stories long after the adults had gone to bed. They should have done this the first night, he realized now. Other couples went on honeymoons. They should have done exactly this.