“Nah, I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her out in your yard.” The kid resumed snapping the green elastic band.
“Why are you here?” Jason asked.
“Because I didn’t kill your wife,” the kid repeated. He glanced at his watch. “But in about one to four hours, the police are gonna assume that I did.”
“Why would they assume that?”
“I got a prior.”
“You killed someone before?”
“Nah, but that won’t matter. I have a prior, and like I said, that’s how these things work. A woman has gone missing. The detectives will start with the people close to her, making you the first ‘person of interest.’ Next, however, they’ll check out all the neighbors. That’s when I’ll pop up, the second ‘person of interest.’ Now, am I more interesting than you? I don’t have the answer to that, so I figured I’d better stop by.”
Jason frowned. “You want to know if I harmed my wife, because then you’re off the hook?”
“It’s a logical question to ask,” the kid said neutrally. “Now, you claim you didn’t kill her. And I know I didn’t kill her, which leads us to the next problem.”
“Which is?”
“No one is gonna believe either of us. And the more we claim our innocence, the more they’re gonna come down on us like a ton of bricks. Wasting valuable time and resources trying to get us to admit guilt, versus finding out exactly what did happen to your wife.”
Jason couldn’t argue with that. It’s why he’d kept his mouth shut all morning long. Because he was the husband, and the husband started the process automatically suspect. Meaning every time he spoke, the police would not be listening for proof of his innocence, but rather for any gaffe indicating his guilt. “You seem to know a lot about how the system works,” he told the kid.
“Am I wrong?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay, so going with the old adage that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, the cops are our mutual enemies, and we’re now friends.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“Aidan Brewster. Neighbor, auto mechanic, innocent party. What more do you need to know?”
Jason frowned. He should be quicker than this, seeing the obvious flaw in such a statement. But he could feel the stress and the fatigue catching up with him now. He had not slept in nearly thirty hours, first watching Ree, then going off to work, then returning to the scene at home. His heart had literally stopped beating in the space of time it had taken him to discover the empty master bedroom and walk the twelve feet to Ree’s room, his hand curling around the doorknob, twisting, pushing, so deeply unsure of what he might find inside. Then, when he’d spotted his daughter’s sprawled shape, sound asleep under the covers, he had staggered backward, only to realize in the next instant that Ree’s presence raised more questions than it answered. All of a sudden, after five years of almost leading a normal life, of almost feeling like a real person, it was over, done, finished, in the blink of an eye.
He had returned to the abyss, in a space he knew better than anyone, even better than convicted felon Aidan Brewster.
“So,” the kid was saying now, snapping, “did you ever hit your wife?”
Jason stared at him.
“Might as well answer,” his neighbor said. “If the police didn’t get to drill you this morning, they’ll get to it soon enough.”
“I didn’t hit my wife,” Jason said softly, mostly because he needed to hear himself say the words, to remind himself that that much, at least, was true. Forget February vacation. Forget it ever happened.
“Marital difficulties?”
“We worked alternate schedules. We never saw each other enough to fight.”
“Ah, so extramarital activities, then. You, her, both?”
“Not me,” Jason said.
“But she had a little something, something going on?”
Jason shrugged. “Isn’t the husband always the last to know?”
“Think she ran off with him?”
“She never would have left Ree.”
“So she was having an affair, and she knew you’d never let her take her daughter with her.”
Jason blinked his eyes, feeling his exhaustion again. “Wait a minute…”
“Come on, pull it together, man, or you’ll be rotting in jail by the end of the day,” the kid said impatiently.
“I wouldn’t harm my daughter, and I would’ve granted my wife a divorce.”
“Really? Given up this house, prime real estate in Southie?”
“Money is not an issue for us.”
“You’re loaded, then? Even more moola to have to surrender.”
“Money is not an issue for us.”
“That’s crap. Money is an issue for everyone. Now you do sound guilty.”
“My wife is the mother of my daughter,” Jason found himself saying testily. “If we did separate, I would want her to have the resources necessary to take care of my child.”
“Wife, child, wife, child. You’re depersonalizing them. Claiming to love them so much you’d never harm ’em, but on the other hand, you can’t even bring yourself to call them by name.”
“Stop it. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“Did you kill your wife?”
“Get out. Leave me alone.”
“You’re right. I’m outta here. I’ve only spoken with you eight minutes, and I already think you’re guilty as hell. But hey, that means I got nothing to worry about. So see ya.”
Kid headed for the fence. He already had his hands curled around the wooden slats, preparing to lift himself up and over, when it came to Jason, the piece he’d been missing since the very beginning.
“You asked if my child was home,” he called out across the yard. “You asked about my child.”
The kid was up now, one leg slung over the fence. Jason started to run toward him.
“Son of a bitch! Your prior. Tell me what you did, tell me exactly what you did!”
Kid paused at the top of the fence. He no longer looked like a golden retriever puppy. Something about his eyes had changed, his expression growing secretive, growing hard. “Don’t need to; you already figured it out.”
“Background check, my ass! You’re a convicted sex offender, aren’t you? Your name is in the fucking sex offender database. They’ll be at your door by two.”
“Yep. But they’ll still be arresting you by three. I didn’t kill your wife. She’s too old for my tastes-”
“Fucking prick!”
“And I know something you don’t know. I heard a car last night. Best I can figure, I saw the vehicle that took your wife away.”
CHAPTER SIX
I fell in love the first time when I was eight years old. The man didn’t actually exist, but was a character on TV: Sonny Crockett, the cop played by Don Johnson on Miami Vice. My mama didn’t hold with such nonsense, so I’d simply wait until she’d pass out cold from the afternoon “ice tea,” then pop open a Dr Pepper and watch the reruns to my heart’s content.
Sonny Crockett was strong, world-weary. The kind of tough guy who’d seen it all and still went out of his way to save the girl. I wanted a Sonny Crockett. I wanted somebody to save me.
When I turned thirteen I developed breasts. Suddenly, there were a lot of boys interested in saving me. And for a while, I thought that might work. I dated indiscriminately, with a slight preference for older boys with body art and really bad attitudes. They wanted sex. I wanted somebody to load me up in the front seat of his Mustang and drive a hundred miles an hour in the middle of the night with no headlights. I wanted to scream my name with the wind tattooing my face and whipping my hair. I wanted to feel wild and reckless. I wanted to feel like anyone but me.
I developed a reputation for really great blow jobs and for being even crazier than my mad-as-a-hatter mother. Every small town has a mother like mine, you know. And every small town has a girl like me.