The Neighbor (41 page)

I became a better mother. More patient with the endless routine of feeding, bathing, and tending a small child. More willing to laugh at Ree’s precocious demands for exactly this fork positioned exactly this way on exactly this color plate.

Ironically enough, I even became a better wife. On the one hand, I managed to purchase a blank hard drive on which I was supposed to copy the contents of the family computer. On the other hand, I attempted the deed less and less, because once I had the “forensically sound” copy, I wouldn’t have a reason to meet with Wayne again.

So I made excuses for my husband. One random photo over a few months’ stretch of time did not a porn-addict make. Most likely, the image was downloaded to his computer by mistake. He’d stumbled upon the wrong website, copied the wrong file. My husband could not be a pedophile. Look at the way he smiled at his daughter or his endless patience for her attempts to braid his thick wavy hair or the way he spent the first snow day of the season pulling her around the neighborhood on her little purple sled. That photo was simply some odd, vaguely terrifying anomaly.

I fixed my husband’s favorite meals. I praised his articles in the newspaper. And I shooed him out the door to work, because the sooner he left, the sooner I could go online and talk to Wayne.

Jason didn’t question my new and improved mood. I knew he still remembered my middle-of-the-night request for a second child, and was grateful I’d let him off the hook.

I didn’t try to touch my husband anymore, and he was happy.

Ree and I developed a new routine for Thursdays. I would pick her up at home and we would go to the little bistro around the corner for an early ladies’ dinner. Afterward, it was back to the school for the basketball game, where Ree would take a seat next to Ethan, and, once the game got going, I would disappear with Wayne.

“We’re just going for a little walk,” I’d tell Ree, and she would nod placidly, already too engrossed in pestering Ethan to care.

We always started out talking about computers. Wayne would ask if I’d copied the hard drive yet I’d report on my various failed attempts. Jason’s schedule was highly unreliable, I’d explain. He would arrive home anytime after eleven
P.M.
, and first I had to put Ree to bed and then grade papers, and by the time that was all done, I was already nervous Jason would return home at any second. I tried, I aborted. I had a hard time concentrating….

“It’s all very nerve-wracking,” I’d say.

Wayne would squeeze my hand in support and I’d feel the contact of his fingers as a tingle all the way up my arm.

We didn’t hold hands. We didn’t find dark corners. We didn’t retreat to the back seat of his car and neck like teenagers. I was too aware that we were still in my place of work, where there were eyes and ears everywhere. And I was even more aware of my young daughter, never far away, who might need me at a moment’s notice.

So we walked the halls. We talked—innocently really. And the more Wayne
didn’t
touch me, the more his hands
didn’t
graze across my breasts and his lips
didn’t
brush along my collarbone, the more I wanted him. Crazily, insanely, until every time I looked at him I thought my body might spontaneously combust

He wanted me, too. I could tell by the way his palm lingered on the small of my back as he helped me climb onto the bleachers. Or the way he paused at the end of an empty hallway, never saying a word, but his eyes burning into mine, before finally, reluctantly, we both turned around and headed back to more populated areas.

“Do you love him?” he asked me one night. No reason to define “him.”

“He’s my daughter’s father,” I said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I think it does.”

I didn’t tell him about my sex life, or the lack thereof. That felt too much like a violation of the family code. I could flirt with a stranger. I could tell him I suspected my husband was engaged in unlawful Internet activities. But I could not tell him my husband had never physically touched me. That would cross the line.

And I didn’t want to hurt Jason. I just … I wanted Wayne. I wanted to feel the way I felt when I was around him. Young. Pretty. Desirable.

Powerful.

Wayne wanted me, and yet, he couldn’t have me, and that made him want me more.

By the end of January, the e-mails were replaced by text messages. Only during school hours; Wayne was not stupid. He would send me a smiley face. Maybe a picture of a flower he’d taken with his cell phone at the grocery store. Then the questions began.

Maybe I could get a babysitter for Ree, or tell my husband I’d joined a book club. How long were my lunch breaks
?

He never asked to have sex with me. Never commented on my body or made any overly suggestive comments. Instead, he began to actively campaign for a private rendezvous. It went without saying what we would be doing during this time.

I vetoed lunchtime. Too short, too unpredictable. What if Jason stopped by with Ree, or a student tried to find me? What if Ethan saw us leaving school grounds together? Ethan would definitely ask questions.

A babysitter was out of the question. All these years later, I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood. Furthermore, Ree was at the age where she would talk, and Jason would want to know immediately what I had to do that was more important than watching our child.

As for joining a book club … These things were easier said than done. Who would be hosting this book club? What contact information would I give Jason and what if he actually called during the appointed hours? He would do that, at least once, I predicted. He had a tendency to check up on me.

I could’ve arranged for a “spa” night. But again, I’d never told Wayne of my unusual marital arrangement, nor did I mention it now. Spa nights were for strangers. And this wouldn’t be with a stranger. This would be different.

So we went round and round. E-mailing and texting, but mostly anticipating our chaste Thursday night walks around the South Boston Middle School, where this one man gazed at me with unrelenting hunger, wanting, needing, demanding …

And I let him.

The second week in February, Jason surprised me. School vacation week was coming up and he announced it was time for the family to go on vacation. I was standing at the stove at the time, browning hamburger. I was probably thinking about Wayne, because I had a smile on my face. Jason’s announcement, however, jarred me back to reality.

“Yippee!” Ree squealed, sitting at the kitchen counter. “Family vacation!”

I shot Ree a dry look, because we’d never gone on family vacation, so how would she know it was such a good thing
?

Jason wasn’t looking at our daughter, however. He was regarding me, his expression contemplative, waiting. He was up to something.

“Where would we go?” I asked lightly, returning to the frying pan.

“Boston.”

“We live in Boston.”

“I know. I thought we’d start small. I got us a hotel room downtown. A swimming pool, atrium, all sorts of fun stuff. We can be tourists in our own town for a few days.”

“You already booked it? Chose a hotel and everything?”

He nodded, still staring at me. “I thought we could use some time together,” he said, his face inscrutable. “I thought it would be good for us.”

I poured in the Hamburger Helper seasoning packet. A family vacation. What could I say
?

I gave Wayne the news by e-mail. He didn’t reply for two days. When he did, he wrote one line:
Do you think it’s safe?

That jarred me. Why wouldn’t I be safe with Jason? Then I remembered the photo again, and the research I was supposed to be doing with the family computer, except I’d gotten so caught up in flirting with Ethan’s uncle, I’d forgotten Wayne was supposed to be offering me expertise instead.

We have a four-year-old chaperone,
I wrote back at last.
What could go wrong?

But I could tell Wayne didn’t approve, because the text messages dropped off. He was jealous, I realized, and was naive enough to be flattered.

Sunday night, I sent him a cell phone photo of Ree, dressed in a hot pink bathing suit with a purple snorkel, blue face mask, and two oversized blue flippers.
Chaperone prepares for duty,
I wrote, and included a second photo of Ree’s suitcase overflowing with the approximately five hundred things she believed she needed for a four-night hotel stay.

Wayne didn’t write back. So I cleared the inboxes of my cell phone, purged my AOL account, and prepared for four days of family vacation.

My husband will never hurt me,
I thought I guess right up until that moment, I didn’t realize how much both of us were living a lie.

| CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO |

D.D. was on a roll. She could feel it. First the conversation with Wayne Reynolds, then the interview with Maxwell Black. The investigation was coming together, key pieces of the puzzle starting to fall into place.

The moment they were done talking to Sandy’s father, D.D. had blasted Jason Jones’s photo over to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She was getting a solid profile in place now—known aliases, possible geographic connections, key financial information, and relevant dates. Jason had left a heavy paper trail from the past five years, after he disappeared from the radar screen. Now they were getting the sliver of insights necessary to crack his full identity wide open, including tracing his offshore funds.

At this point, D.D. was willing to bet that some other law enforcement agency in some other jurisdiction had the exact same file she did, except under a different alias. When she connected with that agency, Jason Jones/Johnson would finally be exposed, and she’d have her arrest. Preferably in time for the eleven o’clock news.

In the meantime, of course, they continued to work the basics. Currently, D.D. was reviewing several evidence reports, including
preliminary findings of a trace amount of blood on the quilt they had removed from the Jones family washing machine. Unfortunately “trace amounts of blood” hardly played well on a warrant. Trace amounts because the rest had been successfully washed away? Trace amounts because Sandra Jones had had a nosebleed sometime in the past few weeks? Blood type matched Sandra’s, but not having the blood type of Jason and Clarissa on file meant that, theoretically, the blood could be theirs as well.

In other words, the evidence report alone didn’t do much for their case, but perhaps later, when combined with other relevant data, it would become one more bar in the prison slowly but surely being constructed around Jason Jones.

D.D. touched base with the BRIC team in charge of analyzing the Jones family computer. Given the current level of urgency, the team was working round the clock. It had taken most of the night to create a forensically sound copy of the computer’s hard drive. Now they were running report after report, focusing on e-mails and Internet activity. They expected to have their first update bright and early in the morning. Which made D.D. optimistic enough to assume that if she missed the eleven o’clock news, maybe she could make the morning cycle.

This was the type of momentum that made a homicide sergeant happy, and provided the whole team with enough incentive to work another long night after two previous midnight grinds. It didn’t necessarily explain, however, D.D.’s sudden interest in the honorable Maxwell Black or her need to look up the death of Missy Black eight years prior. The local sheriff’s office informed her that they’d never opened a case file on the matter, but gave her the contact information for the county ME, who would be available in the morning. The official ruling had been suicide, but the sheriff had hesitated just enough for D.D. to remain curious.

Maxwell Black bothered her. His drawl, his charm, his matter-of-fact assessment of his only child as a reckless young woman, capable of habitual lying and sexual promiscuity. It struck D.D. that Sandy spent the first two-thirds of her young life with an outgoing father who said too much, and the last third of her life with a highly
compartmentalized husband who said too little. The father claimed the husband was a pedophile. The husband implied the father had been party to child abuse.

D.D. wondered if Sandy Jones had loved her husband. If she had viewed him as her white knight, her valiant savior, right up until Wednesday night when the last of her illusions had been violently, and sadly, stripped away.

Sandra Jones had now been missing three days.