The Neighbor

  “Okay.”

  “Given the circumstances, a mom leaving a kid alone, etc., etc., the first responders called their supervisor, who contacted my boss in the district office. Needless to say, we’ve spent the past few hours combing the neighborhood, checking with local businesses, tracking down friends and families, etc., etc. To make a long story short, I haven’t a clue.”

  “Got a body?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Blood spatter? Footprints, collateral damage?”

  “Just a busted-up lamp.”

  “First responders check the whole house? Attic, basement, crawl space?”

  “We’re trying.”

  “Trying?”

  “Husband … he’s not refusing, but he’s not exactly cooperating.”

  “Ah crap.” And suddenly D.D. got it. Why a district detective was calling a homicide sergeant about a missing female. And why the homicide sergeant wouldn’t be going for her run. “Mrs. Jones—she’s young, white, and beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Twenty-three-year-old blond schoolteacher. Has the kind of smile that lights up a TV screen.”

  “Please tell me you haven’t talked about this over the radio.”

  “Why do you think I called you on your cell phone?”

  “What’s the address? Give me ten minutes, Detective Miller. I’ll be right there.”

  D.D. left her running shoes in the family room, her running shorts in the hall, and her running shirt in the bedroom. Jeans, white button-down top, a killer pair of boots, and she was ready to go. Clipped her pager to her waist, hung her creds around her neck, slipped her cell phone into her back pocket.

  Last pause for her favorite caramel-colored leather jacket, hanging on a hook by the door.

  Then Sergeant Warren hit the road, on the job and loving it.

  South Boston had a long and colorful history, even by Boston standards. With the bustling financial district on one side, and the bright blue ocean on the other, it functioned as a quaint harbor town with all the perks of big-city living. The area was originally settled by the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Struggling immigrants, mostly Irish, cramming thirty people to a room in vermin-ridden tenement housing, where a slop bucket served as latrine and a straw pile became a flea-infested mattress. Life was hard, with disease, pests, and poverty being everyone’s closest neighbor.

  Fast-forward a hundred and fifty years, and “Southie” was less of a place and more of an attitude. It gave birth to Whitey Bulger, one of Boston’s most notorious crime lords, who spent the seventies turning the local housing projects into his personal playground, addicting one half of the population while employing the other half. And still, the area soldiered on, neighbor looking after neighbor, each generation of tough, wiseass kids producing the next generation of tough, wiseass kids. Outsiders didn’t get it, and by Southie standards, that was just fine.

  Unfortunately, all attitudes sooner or later got adjusted. One year, a major harbor event brought droves of city dwellers into the area. They arrived expecting squalid neighborhoods and decrepit streets. They discovered waterfront views, an abundance of green parks, and outstanding Catholic schools. Here was a neighborhood, ten minutes from downtown Boston, where your toughest choice on a Saturday morning was whether to go right and head to the park, or go left and hang out on the beach.

  Needless to say, the yuppies found real estate agents, and the next thing you knew, old housing projects became million-dollar waterfront condos, and fourth-generation triple-deckers were sold to developers for five times the money anyone thought they’d ever bring.

  The community became both more and less. Different economics and ethnicities. Same great parks and tree-lined streets. Added some coffee bars. Kept the Irish pubs. More upwardly mobile professionals. Still a lot of families and kids. Good place to live, if you’d bought in before the prices went nuts.

  D.D. followed her GPS navigator to the address provided by Detective Miller. She found herself close to the water at a quaint little brown-and-cream painted bungalow with a postage-stamp lawn and a nude maple tree. She had two thoughts at once: Someone had built a bungalow in Boston? And two, Detective Miller was good. He was five and a half hours into a call out, and thus far, no ribbons of crime-scene tape, no parking lot of police cruisers, and better yet, no long lines of media vans. House appeared quiet, street appeared quiet. The proverbial calm before the storm.

  D.D. drove around the block three times before finally parking several streets down. If Miller had managed this long without advertising, she wasn’t gonna give the game away.

  Walking back, hands fisted in her front pockets, shoulders hunched for warmth, she discovered Miller standing in the front yard, waiting for her. He was smaller than she expected, with thinning brown hair and a 1970s mustache. He looked like the kind of cop who would make an excellent undercover officer—so nondescript no one would notice him, let alone realize he was eavesdropping on important conversations. He also had the pale complexion of a man who spent most of his time under fluorescent lights. Desk jockey, D.D. thought, and immediately reserved judgment.

  Miller crossed the lawn and fell in step beside her. He kept walking, so she did, too. Sometimes, policing involved a bit of acting. Today, apparently, they were playing the role of a couple out for a morning stroll. Miller’s rumpled brown suit was a bit formal for the part, but D.D., in her slim-fitted jeans and leather jacket, looked dynamite.

  “Sandra Jones works over at the middle school,” Miller started out, speaking low and rushed as they ate up the first block, heading toward the water. “Teaches sixth grade social studies. We’ve got two uniforms over there now, but no one has heard from her since she left the school yesterday at three-thirty. We’ve canvassed the local businesses, taverns, convenience stores; nothing. Dinner dishes are in the sink. A stack of graded papers next to her purse on the kitchen counter. According to the husband, Sandra didn’t usually start work until after putting their daughter to bed at eight P.M. So we’re working on the assumption that she was at home with her daughter until sometime after eight-thirty, nine P.M. Cell phone shows no activity after six; we’re pulling the records for the landline now.”

  “What about family? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins?” D.D. asked. The sun had finally burned through the gray cloud cover, but the temperature remained raw, with the wind blowing off the water and slicing viciously through her leather coat.

  “No local family. Just an estranged father in Georgia. The husband refused to specify, just said it was old news and had nothing to do with this.”

  “How nice of the husband to do our thinking for us. You call the father?”

  “Would if I had a name.”

  “The husband won’t give you the name?” D.D. was incredulous.

  Miller shook his head, jamming his hands in his pants pockets while his breath came out in faint clouds of steam. “Oh, wait till you meet this guy. Ever watch that show? The medical drama?”

  “ER?”

  “No, the one with more sex.”

  “Grey’s Anatomy?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. What’s the name of that doctor? McDuff, McDevon …?”

  “McDreamy?”

  “That’s the one. Mr. Jones could be his twin. That rumpled thing going on with the hair, the five o’clock shadow … Hell, minute this story breaks, this guy is gonna get more fan mail than Scott Peterson. I say we have about twenty more hours, and then either we find Sandy Jones or we’re totally, completely screwed.”

  D.D. sighed heavily. They hit the waterfront, made a right, and kept moving. “Men are stupid,” she muttered impatiently. “I mean, for heaven’s sake. It’s like once a week now some good-looking, got-everything-going-for-him guy tries to solve his marital difficulties by killing off his wife and claiming she disappeared. And every week the media descends—”

  “We got a pool going. Five to one odds on Nancy Grace. Four to one on Greta Van Susteren.”

  D.D. shot him
a look. “And every week,” she continued, “the police assemble a taskforce, volunteers comb the woods, the Coast Guard sweeps the harbor, and you know what?”

  Miller appeared hopeful.

  “The wife’s body is found, and the husband ends up serving twenty to life in maximum security. Wouldn’t you think that by now at least one of these guys would settle for an old-fashioned divorce?”

  Miller didn’t have anything to say.

  D.D. sighed, ran a hand through her hair, sighed again. “All right, gut reaction. Do you think the wife’s dead?”

  “Yep.” Miller said it matter-of-factly. When she waited, he offered up, “Broken lamp, missing quilt. I’d say someone wrapped up the body and carted it off. Quilt would contain the blood, which accounts for the lack of physical evidence.”

  “All right. You think the husband did it?”

  Miller pulled out a folded yellow sheet of legal pad paper from inside his brown sports jacket, and handed it to her. “You’ll like this. While the husband has been, shall we say, reluctant, to answer our questions, he did provide his own timeline for the evening, including the names and phone numbers of people who could corroborate his whereabouts.”

  “He provided a list of alibis?” D.D. unfolded the sheet, noting the first name listed, Larry Wade, Fire Marshall, then James McConnagal, Massachusetts State Police, then three more names, this time from the BPD. She kept reading, her eyes growing wider, then her hands starting to shake with barely suppressed rage. “Who the hell is this guy again?”

  “Reporter, Boston Daily. House burned last night. He claims he was there, covering that story, along with half of Boston’s finest.”

  “No shit. You call any of these guys yet?”

  “Nah, I already know what I’m gonna get.”

  “They saw him, but they didn’t see him,” D.D. filled in. “It’s a fire, everyone’s working. Maybe he asked each one of them for a quote, so they noticed him at that moment, then when he slips away …”

  “Yep. As alibis go, this guy scores straight out of the gate. He’s got half a dozen of our own people to say where he was last night, even if some of the time he wasn’t there at all. Meaning,” Miller wagged his finger at her, “don’t let Mr. Jones’s good looks fool you. McDreamy is also McSmarty. That’s so unfair.”

  D.D. handed the paper back. “He lawyer up?” They hit the corner, and by mutual consent turned around and headed back. They were walking into the wind now, the force of the breeze flattening their coats against their chests while carrying the sting of the water into their faces.

  “Not yet. He just won’t answer our questions.”

  “Did you invite him down to the station house?”

  “He asked to see our arrest warrant.”

  D.D. arched a brow, registering that bit of news. McDreamy was McSmarty. At least, he knew more about his constitutional rights than the average bear. Interesting. She tucked her chin down, turning her face away from the wind. “No sign of forced entry?”

  “No, and get this, both the front and back doors are made of steel.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. With key in and key out bolt locks. Oh, and we found wooden dowels jammed into most of the window frames.”

  “No shit. What’d the husband say?”

  “One of those questions he declined to answer.”

  “Is there a home security system? Maybe a camera?”

  “No and no. Not even a nanny cam. I asked.”

  They were approaching the house now, the adorable fifties bungalow that apparently was reinforced tighter than Fort Knox.

  “Key in and key out locks,” D.D. murmured. “No cameras. Makes me wonder if the setup is about keeping someone out, or keeping someone in.”

  “Think the wife was abused?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. You said there was a kid?”

  “Four-year-old girl. Clarissa Jane Jones. They call her Ree.”

  “Talk to her yet?”

  Miller hesitated. “Kid’s spent the morning curled up on her father’s lap, looking pretty traumatized. Given that I don’t see any hope of this guy letting us speak to her alone, I haven’t pushed. Figured I’d approach them both when we had a little more ammunition.”

  D.D. nodded. Interviewing kids was messy business. Some detectives had a knack for it, some didn’t. She was guessing, based on Miller’s reluctance, that he didn’t feel too good about it. Which would be why D.D. made the big bucks.

  “Is the husband confined?” she asked. They climbed the bungalow’s front steps, approaching a bright green welcome mat, where the blue scripted word was surrounded by a sea of bright green and yellow flowers. It looked to D.D. like the kind of welcome mat a little girl and her mother might pick out.

  “Father and daughter are sitting in the family room. I left an officer in charge. Best I can do at the moment.”

  “At the moment,” she agreed, pausing in front of the doormat. “You’ve searched the home?”

  “Ninety percent of it.”

  “Cars?”

  “Yep.”

  “Outbuildings?”

  “Yep.”

  “Checked with local establishments, neighbors, friends, relatives, and coworkers?”

  “Efforts are ongoing.”

  “All without sign of Sandra Jones.”

  Miller glanced at his watch. “Approximately six hours from the husband’s first call, there remains no sign of twenty-three-year-old white female Sandra Jones.”

  “But you do have a potential crime scene in the master bedroom, a potential witness in Sandra’s four-year-old daughter, and a potential suspect in Sandra’s journalist husband. That about sums it up?”

  “That about sums it up.” Miller gestured to the front door, revealing his first hint of impatience. “How do you wanna play it: house, husband, or kid?”

  D.D. put a hand on the doorknob. She had an immediate gut reaction, but paused to think it through. These first few hours, when you had a call out, but not yet a crime, were always a critical time in an investigation. They had suspicions, but not yet probable cause; a person of interest, but not yet a prime suspect. From a legal perspective, they had just enough rope to hang themselves.

  D.D. sighed, realized she wasn’t going home any time soon, and made her choice.

  | CHAPTER THREE |

  I’ve always been good at spotting cops. Other guys, they can bluff with a pair of deuces in poker. Me, I’m not that lucky. But I can spot cops.

  I noticed the first plainclothes officer over breakfast. I’d just poured myself a bowl of Rice Crispies, and was leaning against the dull Formica counter to take a bite. I glanced out the tiny window above the kitchen sink, and there he was, framed neatly in Battenberg lace: white male subject; approximately five ten, five eleven; dark hair; dark eyes, striding south down the far sidewalk. He wore plain-front chinos, tweedish-looking sports jacket, and button-up blue collar shirt. Shoes were buffed dark brown with thick black rubber soles. His right hand held a small spiralbound notebook.

  Cop.

  I took a bite of cereal, chewed, swallowed, and repeated.

  Second guy appeared approximately a minute and a half after the first. Bigger—six one, six two, with short-cropped blond hair and the kind of meaty jaw scrawny guys like me automatically want to punch. He wore similar tan pants, different sports jacket, and a white-collared shirt. Officer Number Two was working the right side of the street, my side of the street.

  Thirty seconds later, he banged on my front door.

  I took a bite of cereal, chewed, swallowed, and repeated.

  My alarm goes off at 6:05 A.M. every morning, Monday through Friday. I get up, shower, shave, and change into a pair of old jeans and an old T-shirt. I’m a tighty-whities kind of guy. I also prefer knee-high white athletic socks with three navy blue bands around the top. Always have, always will.

  Six thirty-five A.M., I eat a bowl of Rice Crispies, then rinse my bowl and spoon and leave them to dry on th
e faded green dish towel spread flat next to the stainless steel sink. Six fifty A.M., I walk to work at the local garage, where I will pull on a pair of oil-stained blue coveralls and take my place beneath the hood of a car. I’m good with my hands, meaning I’ll always have a job. But I’ll always be the guy under the hood, never the guy out front with the customers. I’ll never have that kind of job.

  I work until six P.M., with an hour off at lunch. It’s a long day, but OT is the closest to real money I’ll ever get, and again, I’m good with my hands and I don’t talk much, meaning bosses don’t mind having me around. After work, I walk home. Probably heat up ravioli for dinner. Watch Seinfeld on TV. Go to bed by ten.

  I don’t go out. I don’t visit bars, I never catch a movie with friends. I sleep, I eat, I work. Every single day pretty much the same as the day before. It’s not really living. More like existing.

  The shrinks have a term for it: pretend normal

  It’s the only way I know how to live.

  I take another bite of cereal, chew, swallow, and repeat.

  More knocking on the front door.

  Lights are out. My landlord, Mrs. H., is in Florida visiting her grandkids, and it doesn’t make sense to waste electricity on just me.

  I set down the bowl of soggy cereal and the cop chooses that moment to turn on his heel and walk back down the front steps. I move to the other side of the kitchen, where I can monitor his progress as he moves on to my neighbor’s and bangs on the door.

  Canvassing. The cops are canvassing the street. And they came from the north. So something happened, probably on this street, immediately to the north.

  It comes to me, what I didn’t really want to think about, but what has been floating around in the back of my mind since the instant the alarm went off and I went to the bathroom and stared at my own reflection above the sink. The noise I heard right after I snapped off the TV last night. What I probably know that I don’t want to know, but now can’t get out of my head.

  I give up on breakfast and sit down hard in a kitchen chair instead.