Lisa Gardner - The Neighbor

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.