The Neighbor (29 page)

“Sandy did. Day after we moved in. She was nine months pregnant, we had an entire house to set up, and first thing she did was secure all the windows.”

D.D. thought about it. “All these years later, she’s still locking Daddy out?”

“You said it, not me.”

D.D. finally rose from the chair. “Well, it didn’t work, because Daddy’s back and he has more clout than you think.”

“How so?”

“Turns out he went to law school with one of our district court judges.” She flashed her paper. “Who do you think signed our warrant?”

Jason managed not to say a word, but it probably didn’t matter, as the color draining from his face gave him away.

“Still don’t know where your wife is?” D.D. asked from the doorway.

He shook his head.

“Too bad. Really would be best for everyone if we found her. Particularly considering her condition and all.”

“Her condition?”

D.D. arched a brow yet again. This time, there was no mistaking the flash of triumph in her eyes. “It’s another thing they teach you in detective school. How to seize a person’s trash and how to read a pregnancy test strip.”

“What? You mean …”

“That’s right, Jason. Sandy’s pregnant.”

| CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO |

Fucking strangers isn’t an easy proposition for a woman. Men have it easier. They pull out, wipe off, move along. For women, the entire process is different. By nature, we are receptacles, meant to take a man inside of us, to receive him, to accept him, to keep him. It’s harder to wipe off. It’s more difficult to move along.

I think this often on my spa nights, generally when I’m checking out of the hotel, making my way home, trying to transition from wanton floozy to respectable mom.

Have I given too much of myself away? Is that why I feel so transparent, as if a gust of wind will blow me away? I shower I lather, scrub rinse, repeat. I try to wipe the fingerprints of too many men from my body, just as I try to purge the imprint of their lust-filled faces from my mind.

I’m not bad at it. Honestly, the two kids from the first night … couldn’t even pick them out of a lineup. And the episode after that and the episode after that. I can forget them easily enough. But I can’t forgive them, and that doesn’t even make sense.

I’ve started a new tradition on spa nights. After I return to my hotel room, I curl up in a ball and sob hysterically. I don’t know who I’m crying for. Myself and the dreams of the future I once had? For my
husband, and the hopes he probably had for us? For my child, who looks up at me so sweetly, without any idea what Mommy really does when she goes away
?

Maybe I’m crying for my childhood, for the moments of tenderness and security I never had, so that some depraved part of me must continuously punish myself, as if picking up where my mother left off.

One day, standing in front of the hotel mirror, looking at the huge bruises slowly darkening my ribs, it occurs to me that I don’t want to do this anymore. That somehow I have fallen in love with my husband. That by virtue of never touching me, he has in fact become the most special man in my life.

I want to stay home. I want to feel safe.

It’s a good vow, don’t you think
?

Unfortunately, I’m no good at clean, healthy living. I have to hurt. I have to be punished.

If not by myself, then at least by someone else.

When I first saw the picture on the computer screen, that single black-and-white image of unspeakable violence being committed against such a small, vulnerable young boy, I should’ve packed up Ree and left. That would’ve been the smart, sensible thing to do.

No wasting time with denial. So Jason was kind, considerate, and, the best I could tell, a remarkable father. It wasn’t like respectable family men couldn’t have dirty little secrets, right? Of all people, I should know that.

Was it the cycle of violence? In my calculating attempt to run away from my family, to pick the one man I thought was the antithesis of everything my father had been, had I run right into the arms of another monster? Maybe darkness speaks to darkness. I didn’t marry my husband because I thought he would save me; I married him to stay with the devil I knew.

I know the moment I saw that photo, I felt a stirring deep inside the ugly part of myself. A bitter sense of recognition. All of a sudden, my perfect husband was no better than me, and heaven help me, I liked that. I really, really liked that.

I told myself I needed more information. I told myself my husband
deserved the benefit of the doubt. One explicit photo in the trash bin did not a predator make. Maybe he’d received it by accident and immediately deleted it. Maybe it popped up on some website and he was getting rid of it. There could be a rational explanation. Right
?

Truth is, Jason came home that night, and I could still look him in the eye. Truth is, he asked me how my night was, and I told him “Just fine.”

I am an expert on lying. I excel at pretend normal.

And some terrible, angry part of me was happy to once again be in charge.

I took Ree to school. I started teaching sixth grade social studies. I considered my options.

Four weeks later, I made my move. I’d been doing some research on the student population, and my dear friend, Mrs. Lizbet, was helpful as always.

I found Ethan Hastings in the computer lab. He looked up when I entered the room. Immediately, he flushed bright red, and I knew this was going to be even easier than I’d thought.

“Ethan,” I said, the pretty, respectable Mrs. Jones. “Ethan, I have a project for you. I want you to teach me everything you know about the Internet.”

D.D. was pissed off. She exited the Jones residence, slid into her car, and started punching buttons on her cell phone. It was nearly eleven
P.M.
, well after the hour for polite conversation, but then again, she was dialing a state detective and he was used to such things.

“What?” Massachusetts State Detective Bobby Dodge answered the phone. He sounded sleepy and annoyed, which fit her mood nicely.

“Did I wake you, honey?”

“Yes.” He hung up on her.

D.D. hit Redial; she and Bobby went way back, had even been lovers once upon a time. She liked calling him at odd hours of the night. He liked hanging up on her. The system worked for them.

“D.D.,” he groaned this time, “I’ve been on call for the past four nights. Gimme a break.”

“Married life is making you soft,” she informed him.

“I believe the politically correct phrase is ‘balanced lifestyle.’”

“Please, in a cop’s world, balanced lifestyle is a beer in each hand.”

He finally laughed. She could hear the rustle of sheets, him stretching out. She found herself straining her ears, listening for the low murmur of his wife’s voice. It made her flush, feel like a voyeur, and she was grateful she wasn’t on video conference.

She had a weakness for Bobby Dodge not even she could explain. She’d given him up, but couldn’t let him go. Just went to show you that smart, ambitious women were their own worst enemies.

“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.