The Neighbor (19 page)

“Do you like music, Ree?”

The girl blinked. “I like music.”

“Did you and your mommy listen to music while doing the
puzzles, or maybe have the TV on, or the radio on, or something else?”

Ree shook her head. “I like to rock out to Tom Petty,” she said matter-of-factly, “but puzzles are quiet time.” She made a face, perhaps like her mother, embarking on a lecture with one wagging finger: “‘Children need quiet time. That’s what makes brains grow!’”

“I see.” Marianne sounded suitably impressed. “So you and your mother had quiet time with puzzles. Then what did you do?”

“Dinner.”

“Dinner? Oh, I like dinner. What is your favorite dinner?”

“Mac-n-cheese. And gummy worms. I love gummy worms, but you can’t have them for dinner, just for dessert.”

“True,” Marianne said sympathetically. “My mother never let me eat gummy worms for dinner. What did you and your mommy eat for dinner?”

“Mac-n-cheese,” Ree supplied without hesitation, “with little bits of turkey dog and some apples. I don’t really like turkey dogs, but Mommy says I need protein to grow muscle, so if I want mac-n-cheese, I have to eat turkey dogs.” The girl sounded mournful.

D.D. jotted down the menu, impressed not only by Ree’s level of detail, but the consistency with her first statement given Thursday morning. A consistent witness always made a detective happy. And the level of detail meant they could corroborate Ree’s account of the first half of the evening, making it harder for a jury to discount what the child might say about events in the second half of the night. All in all, four-year-old Clarissa Jones was a better witness than eighty percent of the adults D.D. encountered.

“What did you do after dinner?” Marianne asked.

“Bath time!” Ree sang.

“Bath time?”

“Yep. Me and Mommy shower together. Do you need to know who was in the shower?” Ree apparently recognized the pattern by now.

“Okay.”

“Well, not Mr. Smith, ’cause he hates water, and not Lil’ Bunny,
because she takes a bath in the washing machine. But Princess Duckie and Mariposa Barbie and Island Princess Barbie all needed baths, so they came in with us. Mommy says I can only wash three things, otherwise I use up all the hot water.”

“I see. What did your mommy do?”

“She washes her hair, then she washes my hair, then she yells at me I’m using too much soap.”

Marianne blinked her eyes again.

“I like bubbles,” Ree explained. “But Mommy says soap costs money and I use too much, so she puts soap in this little cup for me, but it’s never enough. Barbies have a lot of hair.”

“Ree, if I tell you I have blue hair, is that the truth or is that a lie?”

Ree grinned, recognizing the game again. She held up her first finger. “That’s a lie, and in the magic room, we only tell the truth.”

“Very good, Ree. Excellent. So you and your mommy are in the shower, and you have used a lot of soap. How do you feel in the shower, Ree?”

Ree frowned at Marianne, then something seemed to click. She held up four fingers. “I don’t understand,” she said proudly.

Marianne smiled. “Excellent again. I will try to explain. When you and your mommy shower … do you like it or do you not like it? How do you feel?”

“I like showers,” Ree said earnestly. “I just don’t like having my hair washed.”

D.D. could sense Marianne’s hesitation again. On the one hand, a mother and her four-year-old girl showering together was hardly inappropriate. On the other hand, Marianne Jackson wouldn’t have a job if all parents were appropriate. Something had gone wrong in this family. Their job was to help Ree find a way to tell them what.

“Why don’t you like your hair being washed?” Marianne asked.

“’Cause my hair snarls. My hair’s not really short, you know. Nope, when it’s wet, it goes halfway down my back! It takes forever for Mommy to get all the shampoo out, and then she has to
condition it or it gets all snarly and I don’t much like my hair at all. I wish I had straight hair like my best friend, Mimi.” Ree sighed heavily.

Marianne smiled, moved on. “So what did you do after your shower?”

“We got dry,” the girl reported, “then we go to the Big Bed, where Mommy wants me to talk about my day, but mostly I tickle her.”

“Where is the Big Bed?”

“Mommy and Daddy’s room. That’s where we go after bath time. And Mr. Smith hops up, but I like to wrestle and he does not like that.”

“You like to wrestle?”

“Yeah,” Ree said proudly. “I’m strong! I rolled Mommy onto the floor and that made me laugh.” She held up her arms, apparently in imitation of flexing. “It made Mommy laugh, too. I like my mommy’s laugh.” Her voice trailed off wistfully. “Do you think my mommy’s mad because I pushed her off the bed? She didn’t sound mad, but maybe … Once, at school, Olivia tore the picture I drew and I told her it was okay, but it wasn’t really okay and I got madder and madder and madder. I was mad all day! Do you think that’s what happened? Did my mommy get mad all day?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Marianne said honestly. “After you and your mommy wrestled, then what happened?”

The girl shrugged. She looked tired now, wrung out. D.D. glanced at her watch. The interview had been going on for forty-four minutes, well beyond their twenty-minute target time.

“Bedtime,” Ree mumbled. “We got on PJs—”

“What did you wear, Ree?”

“My green Ariel nightgown.”

“And your mother?”

“She wears a purple shirt. It’s very long, almost to her knees.”

D.D. made a note, another detail that could be corroborated, given the presence of the purple nightshirt in the washing machine.

“So after pajamas?”

“Brush teeth, go potty, climb into bed. Two stories. A song. Mommy sang ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’ I’m tired,” the girl declared abruptly, a trace petulant. “I want to be done now. Are we done?”

“We’re almost done, honey. You’ve been doing a really good job. Just a few more questions, okay, and then you can ask me anything you want. Would you like that? To ask me a question?”

Ree regarded Marianne for a bit. Then, with a sudden, impatient exhalation, she nodded. The girl had the stuffed bunny on her lap again. She was rubbing both ears.

“After your mother tucked you in, what did she do?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Did she turn out the light, close the door, something else? How do you sleep at night, Ree? Can you describe your room for me?”

“I have a nightlight,” the girl said softly. “I’m not five yet. I think when you are four, you can have a nightlight. Maybe, when I ride the school bus … But I’m not on the school bus yet, so I have a nightlight. But the door is closed. Mommy always closes the door. She says I am a light sleeper.”

“So the door is closed, you have a nightlight. What else is in your room?”

“Lil’ Bunny, of course. And Mr. Smith. He always sleeps on my bed ’cause I go to bed first and cats really like to sleep.”

“Is there anything else that helps you sleep? Music, a sound machine, a humidifier, anything else?”

Ree shook her head. “Nope.”

“What is the name of my cat, Ree?”

Ree grinned at her. “I don’t know.”

“Very good. If I told you those chairs were blue, would I be telling the truth or would I be telling a lie?”

“Nooo! The chairs are red!”

“That’s right. And we only tell the truth in the magic room, don’t we?”

Ree nodded, but D.D. could read the tension in the child’s body again. Marianne was circling around. Circling, circling, circling.

“Did you stay in bed, Ree? Or did you maybe get up to check on your mommy or go potty or do anything else?”

The girl shook her head, but she did not look at Marianne anymore.

“What does your mom do after you go to bed, Ree?” Marianne asked softly.

“She has to do her schoolwork. Grade papers.” The girl’s gaze slid up. “At least, I think so.”

“Do you ever hear noises downstairs, maybe the TV, or the radio, or the sound of your mother’s footsteps, or something else?”

“I heard the tea kettle,” Ree whispered.

“You heard the tea kettle?”

“It whistled. On the stove. Mommy likes tea. Sometimes we have tea parties and she makes me real apple tea. I like apple tea.” The girl was still talking, but her voice had changed. She sounded subdued, a shadow of her former self.

D.D. eyed Jason Jones, still standing against the far wall. He had not moved, but there was a starkness to his expression now. Oh yeah, they were homing in.

“Ree, after the tea kettle, what did you hear?”

“Footsteps.”

“Footsteps?”

“Yeah. But they didn’t sound right. They were loud. Angry. Angry feet on the stairs. Uh-oh,” the girl singsonged. “Uh-oh, Daddy’s mad.”

Behind D.D., Jason flinched for the second time. She saw him close his eyes, swallow, but he still didn’t say a word.

In the interrogation room, Marianne was equally quiet. She let the silence draw out until abruptly, Ree began speaking again, her body rocking back and forth, her hands rubbing, rubbing her stuffed toy’s ears:

“Something crashed. Broke. I heard it, but I didn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Mr. Smith did. He jumped off the bed. He stood by the door but I didn’t want to get out of bed. I held Lil’ Bunny. I told her to be very quiet. We must be quiet.”

The girl paused for an instant, then spoke suddenly in a soft, higher-pitched voice:
“Please don’t do this.”
She sounded mournful.
“Please don’t do this. I won’t tell. You can believe me. I’ll never tell. I love you. I still love you …”

Ree’s gaze went up. D.D. swore to God the child looked right through the one-way mirror to her father’s face. “Mommy said, ‘I still
love you.’ Mommy said, ‘Don’t do this.’ Then everything went crash, and I didn’t listen anymore. I covered Lil Bunny’s ears, and I swear I didn’t listen anymore, and I never, ever, ever got out of bed. Please, you can believe me. I didn’t get out of bed.”

“Am I done?” the child asked ten seconds later, when Marianne still hadn’t said anything. “Where’s my daddy? I don’t want to be in the magic room anymore. I want to go home.”

“You’re all done,” Marianne said kindly, touching the child softly on the arm. “You’ve been a very brave little girl, Ree. Thank you for talking to me.”

Ree merely nodded. She appeared glassy-eyed, her fifty minutes of talking having left her spent. When she tried to rise to her feet, she staggered a step. Marianne steadied her.

In the observation room, Jason Jones had already pushed away from the wall. Miller made it to the door just ahead of him, opening up the room to the brilliant fluorescent wash of hallway light.

“Miss Marianne?” Ree’s voice came from the interrogation room.

“Yes, honey.”

“You said I could ask you a question …”

“That’s right. I did. Would you like to ask me a question? Ask me anything.” Marianne had risen, too. Now D.D. saw the interviewer pause, squat down in front of the child, so she would be at eye level. The interviewer had already unclipped her tiny mic, the receiver dangling down low, in her hands.

“When you were four years old, did your mommy go away?”

Marianne brushed back a lock of curly brown hair from the girl’s cheek, her voice sounding tinny, far away. “No, honey, when I was four years old, my mommy didn’t go away.”

Ree nodded. “You were lucky when you were four years old.”

Ree left the interrogation room. She spotted her father waiting for her just outside the door, and hurled herself into his arms.

D.D. watched them embrace for a long time, a four-year-old’s rail-thin arms wrapped tautly around her father’s solid presence. She heard Jason murmur something low and soothing to his child. She saw him lightly stroke Ree’s trembling back.

She thought she understood just how much Clarissa Jones loved both of her parents. And she wondered, as she often wondered in her line of work, why for more parents, their child’s unconditional love couldn’t be enough.

They debriefed ten minutes later, after Marianne had escorted Jason and Ree out of the building. Miller had his opinion. Marianne and D.D. had theirs.

“Someone entered the home Wednesday night,” Miller started out. “Obviously had a confrontation with Sandra, and little Ree believes that someone is her father. ’Course, that could be an assumption on her part. She heard footsteps, assumed they had to be from her dad, returning home from work.”

D.D. was already shaking her head. “She didn’t tell us everything.”

“No,” Marianne agreed.

Miller glared at the two of them.

“Ree totally got out of bed Wednesday night,” D.D. supplied. “As is exhibited by the fact she went out of her way to tell us she didn’t.”

“She got out of bed,” Marianne seconded, “and saw something she’s not ready to talk about yet.”

“Her father,” Miller stated, sounding dubious. “But at the end, the way she hugged him …”

“He’s still her father,” Marianne supplied softly. “And she’s vulnerable and terribly frightened by everything going on in her world.”

“Why’d he let her come in, then?” Miller challenged. “If she came into the bedroom Wednesday night and saw her father fighting with her mom, he wouldn’t want her to testify.”

“Maybe he didn’t see her appear in the doorway,” D.D. suggested with a shrug.

“Or he trusted her not to tell,” Marianne added. “From a very early age, children get a feel for family secrets. They watch their parents lie to neighbors, officials, other loved ones—I fell down the stairs, of course everything is fine—and they internalize those lies
until it becomes as second nature to them as breathing. It’s very difficult to get children to disclose against their own parents. It’s like asking them to dive into a very deep pool and never take a breath.”

D.D. sighed, eyed her notes. “Not enough for a warrant,” she concluded, already moving on to next steps.

“No,” Miller agreed. “We need a smoking gun. Or, at the very least, Sandra Jones’s dead body.”

“Well, start pushing,” Marianne informed them both. “Because I can tell you now, that child knows more. But she’s also working very hard at not knowing what she knows. Another few days, a week, you’ll never get the story out of her, particularly if she continues to spend all her time with dear old dad.”