Lisa Gardner: The Neighbor

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.

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 mystomach 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.

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.