The Neighbor

  BY LISA GARDNER

  The Perfect Husband

  The Other Daughter

  The Third Victim

  The Next Accident

  The Survivors Club

  The Killing Hour

  Alone

  Gone

  Hide

  Say Goodbye

  The Neighbor

  | CHAPTER ONE |

  I’ve always wondered what people felt in the final few hours of their lives. Did they know something terrible was about to occur? Sense imminent tragedy, hold their loved ones close? Or is it one of those things that simply happens? The mother of four, tucking her kids into bed, worrying about the morning car pool, the laundry she still hasn’t done, and the funny noise the furnace is making again, only to catch an eerie creak coming from down the hall. Or the teenage girl, dreaming about her Saturday shopping date with her BFF, only to open her eyes and discover she’s no longer alone in her room. Or the father, bolting awake, thinking, What the fuck? right before the hammer catches him between the eyes.

  In the last six hours of the world as I know it, I feed Ree dinner. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, topped with pieces of turkey dog. I slice up an apple. She eats the crisp white flesh, leaving behind curving half-smiles of red peel. I tell her the skin holds all the nutrients. She rolls her eyes—four going on fourteen. We already fight over clothing—she likes short skirts, her father and I prefer long dresses, she wants a bikini, we insist she wear a one-piece. I figure it’s only a matter of weeks before she demands the keys to the car.

  Afterward Ree wants to go “treasure hunting” in the attic. I tell her it’s bath time. Shower, actually. We share the old claw-foot tub in the upstairs bath, as we’ve been doing since she was a baby. Ree lathers up two Barbies and one princess rubber duckie. I lather up her. By the time we’re done, we both smell like lavender and the entire black-and-white checkered bathroom is smothered with steam.

  I like the post-shower ritual. We wrap up in giant towels, then make a beeline down the chilly hallway to the Big Bed in Jason’s and my room, where we lie down, side by side, arms cocooned, but toes sticking out, lightly touching. Our orange tabby cat, Mr. Smith, jumps on the bed, and peers down at us with his big golden eyes, long tail twitching.

  “What was your favorite part of today?” I ask my daughter.

  Ree crinkles her nose. “I don’t remember.”

  Mr. Smith moves away from us, finding a nice comfy spot by the headboard, and begins to groom. He knows what’s coming next.

  “My favorite part was coming home from school and getting a big hug.” I’m a teacher. It’s Wednesday. Wednesday I get home around four, Jason departs at five. Ree is used to the drill by now. Daddy is daytime, Mommy is nighttime. We didn’t want strangers raising our child and we’ve gotten our wish.

  “Can I watch a movie?” Ree asks. Is always asking. She’d live with the DVD player if we let her.

  “No movie,” I answer lightly. “Tell me about school.”

  “A short movie,” she counters. Then offers, triumphantly, “Veggie Tales!”

  “No movie,” I repeat, untucking an arm long enough to tickle her under the chin. It’s nearly eight o’clock and I know she’s tired and willful. I’d like to avoid a full tantrum this close to bedtime. “Now tell me about school. What’d you have for snack?”

  She frees her own arms and tickles me under my chin. “Carrots!”

  “Oh yeah?” More tickling, behind her ear. “Who brought them?”

  “Heidi!”

  She’s trying for my armpits. I deftly block the move. “Art or music?”

  “Music!”

  “Singing or instrument?”

  “Guitar!”

  She’s got the towel off and pounces on me, tickling anyplace she can find with fast, poky fingers, a last burst of energy before the end-of-the-day collapse. I manage to fend her off, rolling laughing off the edge of the bed. I land with a thump on the hardwood floor, which makes her giggle harder and Mr. Smith yowl in protest. He scampers out of the room, impatient now for the completion of our evening ritual.

  I find a long T-shirt for me, and an Ariel nightgown for her. We brush our teeth together, side by side in front of the oval mirror. Ree likes the synchronized spit. Two stories, one song, and half a Broadway show later, I finally have her tucked into bed with Lil’ Bunny clutched in her hands and Mr. Smith curled up next to her feet.

  Eight-thirty. Our little house is officially my own. I take up roost at the kitchen counter. Sip tea, grade papers, keep my back to the computer so I won’t be tempted. The cat clock Jason got Ree one Christmas meows on the hour. The sound echoes through the two-story 1950s bungalow, making the space feel emptier than it really is.

  My feet are cold. It’s March in New England, the days still chilly. I should put on socks but I don’t feel like getting up.

  Nine-fifteen, I make my rounds. Bolt lock on the back door, check the wooden posts jammed into each window frame. Finally, the double bolt on the steel front door. We live in South Boston, in a modest, middle-class neighborhood with tree-lined streets and family-friendly parks. Lots of kids, lots of white picket fences.

  I check the locks and reinforce the windows anyway. Both Jason and I have our reasons.

  Then I’m standing at the computer again, hands itching by my side. Telling myself it’s time to go to bed. Warning myself not to take a seat. Thinking I’m probably going to do it anyway. Just for a minute. Check a few e-mails. What can it hurt?

  At the last moment, I find willpower I didn’t know I possessed. I turn off the computer instead. Another family policy: The computer must be turned off before going to bed.

  A computer is a portal, you know, an entry point into your home. Or maybe you don’t know.

  Soon enough, you’ll understand.

  Ten o’clock, I leave the kitchen light on for Jason. He hasn’t called, so apparently it’s a busy night. That’s okay, I tell myself. Busy is busy. It seems we go longer in silence all the time. These things happen. Especially when you have a small child.

  I think of February vacation again. The family getaway that was either the best or the worst thing that happened to us, given your point of view. I want to understand it. Make some sense of my husband, of myself. There are things that once done can’t be undone, things that once said can’t be unsaid.

  I can’t fix any of it tonight. In fact, I haven’t been able to fix any of it for weeks, which has been starting to fill me with more and more dread. Once, I honestly believed love alone could heal all wounds. Now I know better.

  At the top of the stairs, I pause outside Ree’s door for my final goodnight check. I carefully crack open the door and peer in. Mr. Smith’s golden eyes gaze back at me. He doesn’t get up, and I can’t blame him: It’s a cozy scene, Ree curled in a ball under the pink-and-green flowered covers, sucking her thumb, a tousle of dark curls peeking up from above the sheets. She looks small again, like the baby I swear I had only yesterday, yet somehow it’s four years later and she dresses herself and feeds herself and keeps us informed of all the opinions she has on life.

  I think I love her.

  I think love is not an adequate word to express the emotion I feel in my chest.

  I close the door very quietly, and I ease into my own bedroom, slipping beneath the blue-and-green wedding quilt.

  The door is cracked for Ree. The hallway light on for Jason.

  The evening ritual is complete. All is as it should be.

  I lie on my side, pillow between my knees, hand splayed on my hip. I am staring at everything and nothing at all. I am thinking that I am tired, and that I’ve screwed up and that I wish Jason was home and yet I am grateful that he is gone, and that I’ve got to figure out something except I have no idea what.
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  I love my child. I love my husband.

  I am an idiot.

  And I remember something, something I have not thought about for months now. The fragment is not so much a memory as it is a scent: rose petals, crushed, decaying, simmering outside my bedroom window in the Georgia heat. While Mama’s voice floats down the darkened hall, “I know something you don’t know….”

  “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” I whisper now. My hand curves around my stomach and I think too much of things I have spent most of my life trying to forget.

  “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” I try again.

  And then, a sound from the base of the stairs …

  In the last moments of the world as I know it, I wish I could tell you I heard an owl hoot out in the darkness. Or saw a black cat leap over the fence. Or felt the hairs tingle on the nape of my neck.

  I wish I could tell you I saw the danger, that I put up one helluva fight. After all, I, of all people, should understand just how easily love can turn to hate, desire to obsession. I, of all people, should have seen it coming.

  But I didn’t. I honestly didn’t.

  And God help me, when his face materialized in the shadow of my doorway, my first thought was that he was just as handsome now as when we first met, and that I still wished I could trace the line of his jaw, run my fingers through the waves of his hair….

  Then I thought, looking at what was down at his side, that I mustn’t scream. I must protect my daughter, my precious daughter still sleeping down the hall.

  He stepped into the room. Raised both of his arms.

  I swear to you I didn’t make a sound.

  | CHAPTER TWO |

  Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren loved a good all-you-can-eat buffet. It was never about the pasta—filler food to be sure, and just plain bad strategy if there was a carving roast to be had. No, over the years she had developed a finely honed strategy: stage one, the salad bar. Not that she was a huge fan of iceberg lettuce, but as a thirty-something single workaholic, she never bothered with perishables in her own fridge. So yeah, first pass generally involved some veggies, or God knows, given her eating habits, she’d probably develop scurvy.

  Stage two: thinly sliced meat. Turkey was okay. Honey-baked ham, a step up. Rare roast beef, the gold medal standard. She liked it cherry red in the middle and bleeding profusely. If her meat didn’t jump a little when she poked it with her fork, someone in the kitchen had committed a crime against beef.

  Though of course she would still eat it. At an all-you-can-eat buffet, one couldn’t have very high standards.

  So a little salad, then on to some thinly sliced rare roast beef. Now the unthinking schmuck inevitably dished up potatoes to accompany her meat. Never! Better to chase it with cracker-crusted broiled haddock, maybe three or four clams casino, and of course chilled shrimp. Then one had to consider the sautéed vegetables, or perhaps some of that green bean casserole with the crunchy fried onions on top. Now, that was a meal.

  Dessert, of course, was a very important part of the buffet process. Cheesecake fell into the same category as potatoes and pasta—a rookie mistake, don’t do it! Better to start with puddings or fruit crisps. And, as the saying went, there was always room for Jell-O. Or for that matter, chocolate mousse. And crème brûlée. Topped with raspberries, dynamite.

  Yeah, she could go with some crème brûlée.

  Which made it kind of sad that it was only seven in the morning, and the closest thing to food she had in her North End loft was a bag of flour.

  D.D. rolled over in bed, felt her stomach rumble, and tried to pretend that was the only part of her that was hungry.

  Outside the bank of windows, the morning looked gray. Another cold and frosty morning in March. Normally she’d be up and heading for HQ by now, but yesterday, she’d wrapped up an intensive two-month investigation into a drive-by shooting that had taken out an up-and-coming drug dealer, as well as a mother walking her two young children. The shooting had occurred a mere three blocks from Boston PD’s Roxbury headquarters, adding yet more insult to injury.

  The press had gone nuts. The locals had staged daily pickets, demanding safer streets.

  And the superintendent had promptly formed a massive task-force, headed, of course, by D.D., because somehow, a pretty blonde white chick wouldn’t get nearly the same flack as yet another stuffed suit.

  D.D. hadn’t minded. Hell, she lived for this. Flashing cameras, hysterical citizens, red-faced politicians. Bring it on. She took the public flogging, then retreated behind closed doors to whip her team into a proper investigative frenzy. Some asshole thought he could massacre an entire family on her watch? No fucking way.

  They’d made a list of likely suspects and started to squeeze. And sure enough, six weeks later, they busted down the doors of a condemned warehouse near the waterfront, and dragged their man from the dark recesses into the harsh sunlight, cameras rolling.

  She and her team would get to be heroes for twenty-four hours or so, then the next idiot would come along and the whole pattern would repeat. The way of the world. Shit, wipe, flush. Shit again.

  She sighed, tossed from side to side, ran her hand across her five-hundred-thread-count sheets, and sighed again. She should get out of bed. Shower. Invest some quality time in doing laundry and cleaning the disaster that currently passed as her living space.

  She thought of the buffet again. And sex. Really hot, pounding, punishing sex. She wanted her hands palming a rock-hard ass. She wanted arms like steel bands around her hips. She wanted whisker burn between her thighs while her fingernails ripped these same cool white sheets to shreds.

  Goddammit. She threw back the covers and stalked out of the bedroom, wearing only a T-shirt, panties, and a fine sheen of sexual frustration.

  She’d clean her condo. Go for a run. Eat a dozen doughnuts.

  She made it to the kitchen, yanked the canister of espresso beans out of the freezer, found the grinder, and got to work.

  She was thirty-eight for God’s sake. A dedicated investigator and hard-core workaholic. Feeling a little bit lonely, no hunky husband or two-point-two rugrats running around? Too late to change the rules now.

  She poured the fresh-ground coffee into the tiny gold filter, and flipped the switch. The Italian machine roared to life, the scent of fresh espresso filling the air and calming her a little. She fetched the milk and prepared to foam.

  She’d purchased the North End loft three months ago. Way too nice for a cop, but that was the joy of the imploding Boston condo market. The developers built them, the market didn’t come. So working stiffs like D.D. suddenly got a chance at the good life. She liked the place. Open, airy, minimalist. When she was home, it was enough to make her think she should be home more. Not that she was, but she thought about it.

  She finished preparing her latte, and padded over to the bank of windows overlooking the busy side street. Still restless, still wired. She liked her view from here. Busy street, filled with busy people, scurrying below. Lots of little lives with little urgencies, none of whom could see her, worry about her, want anything from her. See, she was off duty, and still, life went on. Not a bad lesson for a woman like her.

  She blew back a small batch of foam, took several sips, and felt some of her tension unknot a little more.

  She never should’ve gone to the wedding. That’s what this was about. A woman her age should boycott all weddings and baby showers.

  Damn that Bobby Dodge. He’d actually choked up when saying his vows. And Annabelle had cried, looking impossibly lovely in her strapless white gown. Then, the dog, Bella, walking down the aisle with two gold bands fastened to her collar with a giant bow.

  How the hell were you not supposed to get a little emotional about something like that? Especially when the music started and everyone was dancing to Etta James’s “At Last” except you, of course, because you’d been working so damn much you never got around to finding a date?

  D.D. sipped more latte, gazed down at busy little lives,
and scowled.

  Bobby Dodge had gotten married. That’s what this was about. He’d gone and found someone better than her, and now he was married and she was …

  Goddammit, she needed to get laid.

  She’d just gotten her running shoes laced up when her cell phone rang. She checked the number, frowned, placed the phone to her ear.

  “Sergeant Warren,” she announced crisply.

  “Morning, Sergeant. Detective Brian Miller, District C-6. Sorry to bother you.”

  D.D. shrugged, waited. Then when the detective didn’t immediately continue, “How can I help you this morning, Detective Miller?”

  “Well, I got a situation….” Again, Miller’s voice trailed off, and again, D.D. waited.

  District C-6 was the BPD field division that covered the South Boston area. As a sergeant with the homicide unit, D.D. didn’t work with the C-6 detectives very often. South Boston wasn’t really known for its murders. Larceny, burglary, robbery, yes. Homicide, not so much.

  “Dispatch took a call at five A.M.,” Miller finally spoke up. “A husband, reporting that he’d come home and discovered his wife was missing.”

  D.D. arched a brow, sat back in the chair. “He came home at five A.M.?”

  “He reported her missing at five A.M. Husband’s name is Jason Jones. Ring any bells?”

  “Should it?”

  “He’s a reporter for the Boston Daily. Covers the South Boston beat, writes some larger city features. Apparently, he works most nights, covering city council meetings, board meetings, whatever. Wednesday it’s the water precinct, then he got a call to cover a residential fire. Anyhow, he wrapped up around two A.M., and returned home, where his four-year-old daughter was sleeping in her room but his wife was MIA.”

  “Okay.”

  “First responders did the standard drill,” Miller continued. “Checked ’round the house. Car’s on the street, woman’s purse and keys on the kitchen counter. No sign of forced entry, but in the upstairs bedroom a bedside lamp is broken and a blue-and-green quilt is missing.”