The Neighbor

  “Truth or dare,” I said.

  He finally looked up from the paperback he was reading. “What?”

  “Truth or dare. You know, like the game. Surely when you were a teenager you played Truth or Dare.”

  Jason stared at me, his dark eyes as fathomless as always. “I’m not a teenager.”

  “I am.”

  That seemed to finally get his attention. He closed the book, set it down. “What do you want, Sandra?”

  “Truth or dare. Just pick. It’s not so hard. Truth or dare.” I sidled closer to him. I had bathed after putting Ree down for the night. Then I smoothed an orange-scented lotion all over my body. It was a subtle scent, light, clean, but I knew he caught it, because his nostrils flared, just a fraction, then he leaned away.

  “Sandra …”

  “Play with me, Jason. I’m your wife. It’s not too much to ask.”

  He was going to do it. I could tell by the way he steeled his spine, squared his shoulders. He had been putting me off for months. Surely he realized at a certain point he’d have to acknowledge me somehow. It couldn’t all be about Ree.

  “Dare,” he said at last.

  “Kiss me,” I ordered. “For one minute.”

  He hesitated. I thought he’d renege, and I braced myself for the rejection. But then he sighed, ever so softly. He leaned forward, puckered up, and touched his mouth to mine.

  He was going to be chaste about it. I knew him well enough by then to anticipate. And I knew that if I tried to be aggressive or demanding, he would shut down. Jason never yelled. Jason never raised his hand in rage. He simply disappeared, someplace deep inside him where nothing I said or did seemed to reach him, until I could be standing right beside him, and I would still be alone.

  My husband respected me. He treated me kindly. He showered me with compassion. He did his best to anticipate my every need.

  Except when it came to sex. We had been together nearly a year now, and he had yet to lay a single hand on me. It was driving me crazy.

  I didn’t open my mouth. I didn’t grab his shoulders, bury my fingers in his thick dark hair. I didn’t do anything that I longed to do. Instead, I fisted my hands at my sides, and ever so slowly, I kissed him back.

  He gave me gentleness, so I returned his sweetness, my breath whispering across his closed lips. He gave me compassion, so I showered it upon the corner of his mouth, the full expanse of his bottom lip. He gave me respect, so I never once pushed the boundaries he had set. But I daresay I gave him the best damn kiss two closed-mouth people had ever shared.

  When the minute was up, he drew back. But he was breathing harder now, and I could see something lurking in his eyes. Something dark, intense. It made me want to leap onto his lap, flatten him into the sofa, and fuck his brains out.

  Instead, I whispered, “Truth or dare. Your turn. Ask me. Truth or dare.”

  I could see the conflict. He wanted to say dare. He wanted me to touch him again. Or maybe take off my nice silky shirt. Or trail my hands across his hard chest.

  “Truth,” he said huskily.

  “Ask.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I can’t help myself.”

  “Sandy.” He closed his eyes, and for a moment, I could feel his pain.

  “Truth or dare,” I demanded.

  “Truth,” he nearly groaned.

  “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done? Come on. Have you lied? Stolen? Seduced your best friend’s baby sister? Killed anyone? Tell me, Jason. I want to know who you are. We’re married, for God’s sake. Surely you owe me that much.”

  He looked at me funny. “Sandra …”

  “No. No whining, no negotiating. Just answer the question. Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Yes, I’ve killed someone,” Jason said. “But that’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  Then my husband got off the sofa, took his paperback, and left me alone in the room.

  Jason didn’t think he’d fallen asleep, but he must have, because shortly after one A.M., a sound roused him from the love seat. He jerked upright, registering a distant banging. The noise seemed to be coming from outside the house. He stood, crossing to the front windows, where he parted the curtains one inch and peered out.

  Two uniformed officers had taken the lids off his trash cans. They were now in the process of moving the white kitchen bags from the refuse containers to the trunk of their police cruiser.

  Shit, he thought, and nearly opened the front door to yell at them to stop. Then caught himself.

  Rookie mistake. He’d taken his trash out from long habit, and in doing so, had effectively turned it over to the police. He searched through his mind, trying to anticipate how much such a mistake might cost him. He couldn’t think of anything, so he finally relaxed, shoulders coming down, expelling all his pent-up breath in one giant sigh.

  All right. So the police had seized his garbage. Now what?

  Sergeant D.D. Warren, and her sidekick, Detective Miller, had returned to the house shortly after eight-thirty P.M. to execute the search warrant on his truck. He’d met them at the door, skimmed the warrant as was his right, then dutifully handed over the keys.

  Then he’d pointedly shut and locked the front door, spending the rest of the time tucked inside with Ree. Let them stew on that, he thought. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about his truck. He just needed something to keep them occupied so they didn’t focus solely on his computer.

  Speaking of which … He glanced at the clock. It was 1:52 A.M. Now or never, he decided, and headed quietly upstairs.

  It pained him to wake Ree. She looked at him with bleary eyes, still groggy and disoriented from sleep, let alone the emotional toll of missing her mother and her cat. He had her sit up in bed, slipping her arms into her winter coat, producing boots for her bare feet. She didn’t protest, just leaned her head against his shoulder as he carried her downstairs, her blankie and Lil’ Bunny clutched in both hands.

  He stopped by the door to grab a dark green duffel bag, tucking it over his shoulder. He positioned Ree and her blanket to shield the bag from prying eyes. Then he opened the door and carried both the bag and his daughter out to Sandy’s Volvo station wagon.

  He could feel the eyes of the patrolman upon his back. No doubt the officer was now picking up a notebook and writing urgent notes: 1:56 A.M., subject appears in front yard carrying sleeping child. 1:57 A.M., subject approaches wife’s car …

  Jason latched Ree into her booster seat, sliding the duffel bag unobtrusively onto the floor by her feet. Then he closed the back passenger door and headed straight for the unmarked police car.

  He tapped on the driver’s-side window. The cop lowered the glass a notch. “I have to go to work,” Jason stated briskly. “Wrap up a few things before I take time off. You want the address or are you gonna stay here?”

  He saw the officer debate his options. Watch the subject or watch the house? What were the officer’s orders?

  “Late to be out with a child,” the officer observed, obviously stalling for time.

  “Got kids, Officer? This won’t be the first time I’ve had to drag my daughter to the office. Good news is, she can sleep through anything.”

  Minute Jason said those words, he wished he could call them back. ‘Course, it was too late, as he observed in the officer’s responding smirk. “Good to know,” the officer said, and proceeded to make a very long entry into his logbook.

  Jason gave up, returning to the station wagon and firing it to life. As he drove down the street, he didn’t see the officer pulling out behind him. But then, around six blocks later, a police cruiser suddenly nosed out from a side street. His next handler, he supposed, and gave a silent salute to Boston’s finest.

  The offices of the Boston Daily were lik
e any other news media, which was to say it was a crazy, hectic bull pen of activity during the day, and still warranted a few dedicated souls even late at night. Stories were written, copy was edited, and pages were laid out even in the odd hours of the morning, perhaps even more so, because it was only after midnight that the place grew quiet enough for anyone to think.

  Jason entered the building with a dozing child cradled against his chest, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and now effectively covered by Ree’s giant fleecy bear blanket. He looked like a man carrying a heavy load, but then, one glance at the fairly large four-year-old collapsed like dead weight in his arms, and no one thought to question it. He swiped his reporter’s ID across the various door pads, and made his way into the inner sanctum.

  Most of the reporters worked both at home and in the office, so guys like Jason shared space with more than one person, in a system called “hoteling.” Basically, there were desks and computers everywhere. You found an available space and used it. Tonight was no exception.

  Jason took refuge in a corner cubicle, kicking the dark green duffel bag under the desk, while sliding Ree onto the floor and making a little nest for her with her blankie and her bunny. She was awake now, staring at him somberly.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered to her. “Daddy’s just gotta do a little work, then we’ll go home.”

  “Where’s Mommy?” Ree asked. “I want Mommy.”

  “Go to sleep, honey. We’ll be home shortly.” Ree obediently closed her eyes, drifting back into slumber.

  Jason watched her for a moment longer. The smudge of her dark lashes against her pale cheeks. The purple stain of exhaustion rimming her closed eyelids. She looked small to him. Delicate. An impossible burden that was also the most important purpose of his life.

  He was not surprised by how well she was holding up. Kids did not externalize their bone-deep terrors. A kid could scream for ten minutes over a small bump received on the playground. The same child would clam up tight when confronted by an armed stranger. Kids understood instinctively that they were small and vulnerable. Thus, in crisis the majority of children simply shut down, focusing on becoming even smaller, because maybe if they disappeared completely, the bad man would leave them alone.

  Or maybe, if a four-year-old girl slept enough, when she woke up, her mommy and her cat would have returned and life would magically be back to normal.

  Jason turned his attention to the desk. The newsroom was quiet at this hour, the neighboring workspaces unoccupied. He decided this was as good as it was going to get, and slowly unzipped the dark green duffel bag to reveal the desktop computer from the kitchen table.

  Technically speaking, Jason owned three computers: his laptop, which he used for work; the family desktop, which sat in the kitchen and was shared by all; and finally, an older desktop, once the primary family computer, but relegated to the basement last year when he’d upgraded to a newer Dell. Jason was not worried about his laptop. He used it solely for reporting, understanding the risks inherent in a portable computer that could be lost or stolen at any time. He was slightly more concerned about the old computer in the basement. True, he’d used an official Department of Defense program to overwrite the hard drive with meaningless strings of ones and zeros, but not even the DoD trusted such specs anymore. For the really classified stuff, they incinerated the hard drives, turning the internal workings to powder. He didn’t have an incinerator handy, so he’d done the basics. Ninety-five percent of the time, that should get the job done.

  Unfortunately, the family computer, the relatively new 500-gigabyte Dell desktop used by him in the early hours of the morning while Sandra slept, scared the crap out of him. He could not afford for the police to seize this computer; hence he had sicced them on his truck. Now, glancing at his watch, he estimated he had approximately three hours to run damage control.

  He began by inserting a memory stick into the E drive. Then, he started moving files after files. Program files, Internet files, document files, jpeg files, pdf files. There were lots of them, more than could be transferred in three hours, so he was strategic in his focus.

  While those files started to copy, he logged on to the Internet and did some basic research. He started with registered sex offender Aidan Brewster. Always good to know the neighbors, right? He found some basics and lots of jargon, such as “sealed files.” But he was a reporter, not one who stalled out every time he hit a shut door. He jotted down some phone numbers, did a little more digging, and got some happy results.

  First mission accomplished, he then opened up AOL and logged in as his wife. He had figured out her password years ago; she’d gone with LilBun1, the name of Ree’s favorite plush toy. But if he hadn’t cracked the code with good guesses, he would’ve used a computer forensic program such as AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit or Technology Pathways’ ProDiscover to do the same. These were the kinds of things he did. This was the kind of husband he was.

  Had Sandy figured that out? Was that why she had left?

  He didn’t know, so he started scrolling through her e-mail, looking for clues regarding his wife’s final hours.

  Her account registered sixty-four e-mails, the majority of which offered penile implants or urgent requests to transfer funds from third world countries. According to Sandra’s e-mail folder, she was either obsessed with male genitalia or about to become rich assisting some faraway colonel with a financial transfer.

  He worked his way through the spam, then through the phishing, then finally hit six e-mails that seemed actually intended for his wife. One was from the preschool Ree attended reminding parents to save the date for an upcoming fundraiser. Another was from the school principal, reminding teachers of an upcoming workshop. The final four were replies from an original mass e-mail from one teacher asking other teachers if they’d be interested in forming a group to walk together after school.

  Jason frowned at this. Last time he’d checked, several months ago, she’d had at least twenty-five personal e-mails, ranging from notes from students to information from various mom e-mail loops.

  He checked his wife’s old e-mail folder. All he found was the spam he’d just deleted. He tried the sent e-mail folder. Also empty. And then, with a growing feeling of dread, he began to search in earnest. Her address book: cleared. Favorite places: cleared. AOL buddies: cleared. Browser history of most recent Internet searches: cleared.

  Holy crap, he thought, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He was the deer caught in the headlights, feeling the panic in him grow and grow until it threatened to spiral out of control.

  Date and time, he thought frantically. Nail down date and time. It all boiled down to date and time.

  He clicked back on her old e-mail folder, scrolling to the oldest dated spam with a hand that was starting to tremble again. Sixty-four clicks and there it was: Oldest e-mail sent had been delivered Tuesday at 4:42 in the afternoon, over twenty-four hours before Sandra had disappeared.

  Jason sat back, hands clutched against his knotted stomach while he sought to make sense of this.

  Someone had systematically purged Sandra’s AOL account. If it had happened Wednesday night, the same night as her disappearance, one logical conclusion would be that whoever had taken Sandra had also cleared the account, possibly as a way of covering his tracks.

  But the purging had come first, by nearly twenty-four hours. What did that imply?

  Occam’s razor, right? The simplest explanation is generally the correct explanation. Meaning Sandra herself had probably purged her account. Most likely because she had been doing something online she now felt a need to hide. An Internet flirtation? A genuine physical relationship? Something she didn’t want him or anyone else to find.

  That explanation was less ominous than the image of a shadowy man, first attacking Sandra, then sitting smugly at the kitchen table and covering his computer tracks while Ree presumably slept overhead.

  And yet that explanation hurt him more. It implied prem
editation. It implied that Sandra knew she was leaving, and had wanted to ensure that he wouldn’t be able to find her.

  Jason lifted a weary hand. He shielded his eyes, and for a moment, the flood of emotion that choked his throat surprised him.

  He had not married Sandra for love. He was not a man who had that kind of expectation out of life. And yet, for a while … For a while, it had been very nice to feel like part of a family. It had been nice to feel normal.

  He had screwed up in February. The hotel room, the dinner, the champagne … He never should’ve done what he’d done in February.

  Jason cleared his throat, rubbed his eyes. He pushed his own exhaustion away, and gazing down at his sleeping child, forced himself back to the matters at hand.

  Sandra was not as technologically gifted as he was. He assumed that if she had been the one to purge the account, she’d done it through purging the cache file, meaning the information was all still on the hard drive, just the directory identifying the location of each data point had been removed. And, by utilizing any number of simple forensic programs, he could restore most of the deleted information.

  Time was the issue. It would take at least an hour to run such a program, and then hours more to comb through the re-created data until he found what he was looking for. He didn’t have hours. Jason glanced at his watch. He had thirty minutes. Crap.

  He rubbed his face again with tired hands, and took a deep breath.

  All right, time for plan B.

  His memory stick had reached capacity. He disengaged it, returned to the system menu, and perused the contents menu. He had removed both too much and too little. He selected half a dozen more files to delete, glancing at his watch again and feeling the urgency.

  Originally, he had hoped to capture what he could, then run an official purge program. Now, however, he couldn’t bring himself to trash the hard drive, not when it might contain clues regarding Sandra’s final hours. Which created an interesting dilemma. The computer potentially held the power both to find his wife and to put him in jail forever.