Jason Jones had washed his hands. Jason Jones had washed Ree’s hands. Then he’d basically kicked the police officers out. His daughter needed to rest, he announced, and that had been that. He escorted each and every one of them to the door. No What are you doing to find my wife? No Please, please please I’ll do whatever I can to help. No Let’s organize a search party and tackle the entire neighborhood until we find my beautiful, beloved spouse.
Not Mr. Jones. His daughter needed a nap. And that was that.
“Cold?” D.D. muttered now. “Arctic is more like it. Clearly, Mr. Jones has never heard of global warming.”
Miller let her rant.
“Kid knows something. Notice the way she shut down the moment we got past bedtime? She heard something, saw something, I don’t know. But we need a forensic interviewer, someone who specializes in children. Quick, too. More time that girl spends around dear old Dad, harder it’s going to be for her to recall any inconvenient truths.”
Miller nodded his head.
“’Course, we’re also gonna need doting Dad’s permission to interview his child, and somehow, I don’t think he’s gonna grant us access. Fascinating, don’t you think? I mean, his wife vanished in the middle of the night, leaving their daughter all alone in the house, and far from cooperating with us, or asking us any logical questions about what we’re doing to find his wife, Jason Jones sits on that sofa as mute as a mime. Where’s his shock, his disbelief, his panicked need for information? He should be calling friends and relatives. He should be digging out recent photos of his wife for us to canvass the neighborhood. He should, at the very least, be arranging for someone to watch his daughter so he can personally assist with our efforts. This guy-it’s like a switch has been thrown. He’s not even home.”
“Denial,” Miller offered up, trudging along beside her.
“We’re gonna have to do this the hard way,” D.D. declared. “Get a search warrant for Jason Jones’s truck, get an affidavit permitting us to seize the computer, as well as requesting printouts of the wife’s cell phone records. Hell, we should probably just have the entire house frozen as a crime scene. That’d give Jason Jones something to think about.”
“Tough on the kid.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the kicker.” If the house was declared a crime scene, Jason and his daughter would be forced to evacuate. Pack a bag, move into a motel under escort from a police cruiser kind of thing. D.D. wondered what little Ree would think, giving up her garden oasis for a cheap hotel room with brown carpets and the stale scent of a decade’s worth of cigarettes. It didn’t make D.D. feel too good about things, but then she had another thought.
She stopped walking, pivoting toward Miller so abruptly, he nearly ran into her.
“If we move Jason and Ree out of the house, we’ll have to assign officers to cover them twenty-four/seven. Meaning there’ll be fewer officers actively searching for Sandra Jones, meaning our investigation will slow down during a time when it’s critical to ramp up. You know that. I know that. But Jason doesn’t know that.”
Miller frowned at her, stroked his mustache.
“Judge Banyan,” D.D. said, resuming walking at a much brisker pace. “We can prepare the affidavits now, and get ’em to her chamber right after lunch. We’ll get warrants for the computer, the truck, and dammit, we’ll have the house declared a crime scene. We’ll knock Mr. Arctic right out on his ass.”
“Wait, I thought you just said-”
“And we’ll hope,” D.D. interjected forcefully, “that when Jason Jones is given a choice between vacating his own home, or letting a certified forensic specialist talk to his child, he’ll opt for the interview.”
D.D. glanced at her watch. It was just after twelve now, and on cue, her stomach rumbled for lunch. She remembered her early-morning fantasy of an all-you-can-eat buffet, and felt just plain pissy.
“We’ll need more manpower to execute the warrants,” she added.
“All right.”
“And we’re gonna have to think of a way to broaden our search without alerting the media yet.”
“All right.”
They were at her car. D.D. paused long enough to look Miller in the eye and sigh heavily.
“This case sucks,” she declared.
“I know,” Miller said affably. “Aren’t you glad I called?”
CHAPTER FIVE
At 11:59, Jason finally got the last law enforcement officer out of the house. The sergeant retreated, then the lead detective, the evidence technicians, and the uniformed officers. Only a plainclothes detective remained behind, sitting obtrusively in a brown Ford Taurus parked in front. Jason could watch him from the kitchen window, the officer sitting with his gaze straight ahead, alternately yawning and taking sips of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
After another minute, Jason moved away from the window, realized that his house was all his again, and nearly staggered under the weight of what to do next.
Ree was staring at him, her big brown eyes so much like her mother’s.
“Lunch,” Jason said out loud, slightly startled by the hoarse sound of his own voice. “Let’s have lunch.”
“Daddy, did you buy Oreo cookies?”
“No.”
She exhaled heavily, turning toward the kitchen anyway. “Maybe you should call Mommy. Maybe, if she’s near a grocery store looking for Mr. Smith, she can bring home some cookies.”
“Maybe,” Jason said, and managed to get the refrigerator door open even though his hand had started to shake violently.
He made it through lunch on autopilot. Found the bread, pulled out whole wheat slices. Mixed the natural peanut butter, spread the jelly. Counted out four carrots, picked out some green grapes. Arranged it all on a flowered daisy plate with the sandwich cut on the requisite diagonal.
Ree prattled about Mr. Smith’s great escape, how no doubt he would be meeting up with Peter Rabbit and maybe they’d both come home with Alice in Wonderland. Ree was at the age where she easily blended fact and fantasy. Santa was real, the Easter Bunny was best friends with the Tooth Fairy, and there was no reason Clifford the Big Red Dog couldn’t have a play date with Mr. Smith.
She was a precocious child. All energy and high hopes and huge demands. She could throw a forty-five-minute temper tantrum over not having the right shade of pink socks to wear. And she had once spent an entire Saturday morning refusing to come out of her room because she was furious that Sandra had bought new curtains for the kitchen without consulting her first.
Yet, neither Sandra nor Jason would have it any other way.
He looked at her, Sandra looked at her, and they saw the childhood neither one of them had ever had. They saw innocence and faith and trust. They relished their daughter’s easy hugs. They lived for her infectious laugh. And they both, early on, had agreed that Ree would always come first. They would do anything for her.
Anything.
Jason glanced at the unmarked police car sitting outside his house, felt his hand curl into an automatic fist, and checked the reflex.
“She’s pretty.”
“Mr. Smith is a boy,” he said automatically.
“Not Mr. Smith. The police lady. I like her hair.”
Jason turned back toward his daughter. Ree’s face was smudged with peanut butter in one corner, jelly in another. And she was looking at him again with her big brown eyes.